The Running Mama

Sorry, I Fixed The Link

2009-10-17T10:32:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the bad link on the last post. Here is the corrected link for my new home!!!

Its So Hard to Say Goodbye...

2009-10-08T07:45:00.001-05:00

But, I've been working on a new home for awhile. Its finally ready, gulp. From now on I will be posting over here. I hope you like it. If you don't just say that you do anyway. We'll all be happier people.

Also... check your link on La Blogrolle. I transfered all of them one by one from my . Took for-e-ver. I would hate to go to all the trouble and not even have the right domain for somebody. If you don't mind, change my link on your site too. Its easy: andihawkins.com. Holla!!!

Chasing Kids Isn't A Workout

2009-09-16T05:00:00.003-05:00

Chasing the kids isn’t equivalent to an actual workout, says Jacqueline Stenson, MSNBC contributor, in a story posted yesterday. The article states that moms of young children may "feel like they are run ragged by the end of the day" but they "may not have engaged in as much physical activity as they think.” My heart is boiling with the collective indignation of mothers the world over.

The report explained a study conducted at the University of Iowa where mothers of children under six wore a device to measure physical activity for a week. Findings showed that most of the meaningful physical activity was of the intentional variety (i.e. sports and exercise) while any incidental activity (like chasing after kids) didn't offer a significant health benefit.

Despite the questionable validity (a whopping 58 subjects in the entire study?!), the researcher’s conclusion is hard to sell. During the writing of this paragraph, I was summoned across the house two times, once to "please close the bathroom door" and once for an official wipe. In fact, most of the day I whisked around shoveling loads of laundry and vacuuming the debris trail of the World's Hairiest Dog. If this doesn't have a significant health benefit, please somebody stop me.

As a runner, I would love for women everywhere to enjoy an hour of early morning quiet, pounding the sleepy streets like I do. But as a mother, I know that exercise often follows flossing to the archive of abandoned resolve. Why would a mother want to exert herself if she is already worn out? If she is, indeed, “run ragged” what conceivable perk does she gain by adding something else? I run because I enjoy it, not because some expert told me to.

Dear authors of guilt-inducing studies:
When you describe your target group as "run ragged" do not then accuse them of not doing enough.

Sincerely,
Your Mother

Ladies, do not under any circumstances give yourself fitness credit when keeping up with the children. Run, dance, swim if you like, but adhere to the guidelines. If you don’t, your under-exercised self may drop dead of a massive coronary during pre-school pick-up. It’s a proven fact.

Prayer Running

2009-09-09T07:30:00.008-05:00

My running partner, Jerri, and I have gotten very close in our three years of ~~yapping~~ running together.  Things between us got honest right away, since we both have unflattering mucous habits during exercise. You can't put on airs while hocking and blowing phlegm every quarter mile, and we settled for intimate friendship over mutual disgust. Recently, we decided to use our vulnerability with each other for a deeper purpose. Instead of spending the last half of our run rehashing the conversation from the first, we do something more spiritual... you know... like pray.

There is a beautiful street at the end of our run, lined with tall trees. When we round the bend to this last stretch, it is praying time. There are no rituals to make God seem far away. Our hands can't clasp, we can't bow our heads, we can't even close our eyes. We are two friends talking to each other and to our God who is as close as our own breath. Our prayers spout and gasp, but they surround us like little lamps, warming our insides with freedom and energy.

There is no pretension.  Our confessions, our worries, the stones of our souls, they float off like bubbles as we stomp down the road. We pray for our favorites- Her Jerrod, My Greg, and the four babies between us. We fight for them, with all the fervor our legs can muster. We can't help it, as we speak we run faster and faster, as if our effort is the measure of our passion.

When we finish, we are breathless. We have shown each other our ugliest, our best.  Like two lovely warriors we walk along, sweaty and peaceful, ready for another day.

Greg Calls It "Washed Out," I Call It "Classy"

2009-09-04T21:30:00.029-05:00

But this is my blog, so I get to design it however I want. I couldn't figure out how to do all the stuff I imagined because it required a Dr. Suess-ish vocabulary and I don't know a widget from a jaypeg. I guess you can't go wrong with a stock blogger template and photoshopped iphone pics. Don't argue.

In other news... I'm updating my blog links too, so if you haven't posted in over two months I'm cleaning you off the roster unless you comment on THIS POST. Believe me, I understand a neglected blog, but seriously Todd, it's been too long. To everyone who isn't already on my list and wants to be, leave me a comment and I will show you some love. That's how I am.

Preschool starts back next week (Glory!). I have a bone to pick with preschool. If preschool were nicer, it wouldn't have abandoned me all summer in the raging, never-ending heat. Where were you preschool while I tried to keep the boys alive under the Elmo sprinkler? Where were you while they ate their ice pops in the bathtub because it was too hot in the driveway? Where were you while our family rolled lethargically around the couch demanding goldfish and juice boxes [Toby and Charlie] and pretending to be asleep [me]? Now here you are again just in time for my boys to play outside in the mild(ish) fall weather instead of dangle whiningly from the fridge door. Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad you came back, but your timing is less than impeccable.

I forgive you preschool. Just the sight of your golden head peeking over the horizon like a seraph makes me gracious. With a couple of free mornings every week, I'm looking forward to sitting in my coffee shop again, plinking out whatever comes to mind and dumping it into cyber space for posterity. It's the good life.

Boundaries

2009-08-06T16:50:00.004-05:00

I am going crazy. I used to only feel this way at the end of the day, mostly when I was out of Chai. Now I am ferociously neurotic and weepy from the moment Toby pokes me awake in the morning, to the moment he pokes me awake the next morning. Just the fact that I’m writing about this again is just so insanely redundant. My only consolation is the respite this little journal gives my friends.

Have you ever felt like someone was rubbing a scouring pad over your nerves? I cannot explain how perfect an analogy that is for my life. I suddenly hate talking. Toby will not stop asking questions. Repetitive, idiotic questions. “Why are we going to move?” he says.
“We’re not moving,” I say.
“Why not?” he says.
“Because we like our house.”
“What happens when our house gets old?”
“Lots of people live in old houses. It’s fine, dude.”
“Will we take our windows when we move?”
“WE ARE NOT MOVING,” I would yell if my head wasn’t already detaching itself to escape.

Was there really a time, a severely misguided moment, that I worried Toby would never talk? Did I really lack even a shard of foresight?

Greg took me out to dinner the other night. We left the boys with a sitter so we could have big people time. (And not eat at Sonic.) I collapsed into the car seat with a huge sigh and just sort of stared blankly. He was all, “What’s wrong?” and I was all, “Do not talk to me, I’m liquefying.” I guess my continual edginess finally snapped his patience in two because he went totally Dr. Phil on me, spewing out the most annoying logic like how I need to “create boundaries” and “take charge.” It was so reasonable that I couldn’t reply, being that I was more in the mood for a maniacal rant than an actual solution. I didn’t say a single thing until after we ordered our food. Finally my “whatever, Greg” face cracked, and I slumped onto the table in tears. “I don’t know how to be better at this,” I said.

“You are a good mom,” He said. I think I’ll keep him.

This afternoon I called our little neighbor friend, Kennedi to come over. She bounced in the house all spry and happy and I realized that Toby and Charlie were their usual pantsless selves, crawling nakedly over the train tracks on the floor. It is dehumanizing to embarrass your kids, but after an emergency shorts hunt, Toby and Kennedi are in another room playing happily, while Charlie sits next to me like a cherub, probably drunk with relief that his brother is quiet.

Charlie is so competent and self-sustaining. He’s like a terrarium.

Sometimes I really do want to move. Maybe I could find some loft apartment or quiet cubicle and live all by myself. It sounds so sane and clean.

Too bad I love these people too dang much to quit.

Death

2009-07-23T00:20:00.000-05:00

All I said to Greg was "Who died?" As in, conversationally. As in, our good friends were called away to a funeral and I want to know how somber I should feel. Not as in, let's unravel the very long rope of mortality and pluck at each mysterious strand, right here at this very moment, when mommy's afternoon coffee has worn off and the taco soup is scorching on the stove.

But that is precisely what happened. I said, "Who died?" and Toby burst into tears, spraying us with worms from the can I'd opened.

"Did somebody die?" and "Am I going to die?" and "When am I going to die?"

Greg and I were completely unprepared. He was crying so violently, so out of nowhere. Greg scooped him into his lap to calm him down. I sat beside them both stroking Toby's arm, searching for a possible trajectory. How could he even know what "died" meant?!

"Am I going to die?" he said again.

Greg and I looked Toby straight in the eye and answered confidently "No!" [Greg] and "Someday..." [me]. What?! I shot Greg my subliminal indignation. Liar liar pants on fire.

Heartless messenger of evil, Greg shot back.

Clearly we had no plan. We sat for a moment, dumbfounded, watching Toby sob. Neither of us had a clue where to start, so we opted to board the Joy Bus through the valley of death like good Christian parents. "Let's focus on Heaven! and Living Forever With God!"

"Will it hurt when I die? Is Charlie going to die? How long will I be dead?"

"Heaven is super-fun! God is awesome to be with!"

He cried so hard that the hangy thing in the back of his throat wiggled with every wail. "How am I going to die? I don't want to die..."

It was more gut-wrenching than Beaches and Bridge to Terabithia together. How could we explain death and eternity to a four-year-old? Ten minutes before he was yelling "Come wipe me!" and now he was Socratically dissecting his own fate.

We whizzed through all the death scriptures we knew. "...conform to His death...?" "The wages of sin is death...?" Then we remembered this: "...Jesus, who has destroyed death..." That phrase became the pot in which we planted our integrity. We could look him in the eye and say "Dying is really scary, but don't worry little man, Jesus wins."

Then we all went to Sonic for a cherry limeade.

Satisfaction, Like It or Not

2009-07-07T05:00:00.005-05:00

I wore the boys out Saturday. Wore them out. It was one of those afternoons that scrapbooks itself involuntarily: the rosy-cheeked children splashing and giggling in sepialike snapshots. I bought them another baby pool, and I kid you not, I have never been so happy with a six dollar sale item. I sat in my lawn chair reading, reading! while they bounced around safely in two feet of water. Greg grilled burgers and hot dogs and we put his Sigma Chi mugs in the freezer for frosty root beers.

When it got too hot I actually crawled in the pool myself. It was really grassy, you know, after Toby and Charlie had climbed in and out all afternoon. I grabbed the strainer from the sandbox and lazily skimmed the water. It felt good to cool off, but also kind of lame sitting there in an inflatable pool spooning out debris.

“What are you doing?” Toby said.

“I’m just cleaning off the yucky grass.”

“Why is the grass yucky? It isn’t yucky on the ground.”

He didn’t have to be so rational about it. I don’t know why it’s so yucky. It’s so yucky because I would rather be floating on a raft in a big people pool with a nice vacuum thingy cleaning it for me.

I like to think I’m above the discontent raging through America like typhoid, but I’m not. I peer out of Eden, looking for that one thing that isn’t mine, completely missing the giant mountain of wonderful I’m already standing on.

My two little boys are fresh and sweaty with life, laughing wildly under the bright blue skies of summer. How on earth could this be any better?

Summer Blessings

2009-07-03T13:52:00.001-05:00

I know I haven’t written on my blog since, oh I don’t know, the Bush years, but believe me, I’m just saving my Shalom here. Nothing makes mommy grouchier than interrupted concentration. Like the “preschool is out and we can now leech every last drop of your humanity all day” variety. It is really much easier to abandon any personal accomplishment and surrender myself to the cause.

Which brings me to why I’m writing this post. Well, first it’s my birthday and the hubs mercifully gave me my laptop and car keys in trade for the children (I love that man). Time to myself is just logistics, however, because I have a deeper motive. My “cause,” my inspiration, my muses, are blooming like fresh summer roses and I don’t want to forget a single moment.

See, I’m crying here. Even through these days of interminable sameness, there is a violent need to hold on. First, is the growing. Growing documented daily by Toby in astonished hand-to-forehead comparisons. “Everyone!” he shouted this morning outside The Snooty Pig. “I am taller than this bench!”

“You are!” I said tearfully, plopping equal parts joy and grief in my motherhood repository. The doorknob! The fire hydrant! Mommy’s bed! He checks them off like a to-do list of vertical ascent.

Charlie too is sprouting with rosy-cheeked zeal. Every day he compiles a new stream of babble into an articulate sentence. A sentence! Sometimes my expectations are so behind I almost miss it. His sparkling brown eyes flicker intensely as he repeats “Wha Poby Dooeen?” in a consecutive stream until I smack my hand to my temple and get it.

“What is Toby doing? Of course! Let’s go find out!” I take his dimpled little hand into mine and we yell “Poby! Poby, where are you?” until we hear Toby laughing behind the curtains.

Some afternoons I sit down during their rest with my good intentions, ready to clink out another piece of my cyber memoir. Charlie opens his door and hollers “hello?” down the hall infinity times. Toby bursts from his room for a mid-nap poop. I just shrug my shoulders and sigh. There is nothing lost in a house full of life, this house, with two warm babies tucked under my arms, leaning on my chest as I stroke their beautiful heads.

God is so good to me.

Presently Ever-Present

2009-06-02T19:00:00.003-05:00

Ever-present, in reference to the children. I don't mean this as a sentimental nod to togetherness. I mean it in the "climbing in my lap while I pee," "tapping my hip while I cook," "clawing at my shirt as I type kind of way." We are only one week sans preschool and my independence is rocking itself back and forth in a forgotten corner.

I know I will miss these days. Even in my current delirium there are moments when it feels good. We loiter around the house like sleepy cats, doing what we want to do. I tickle Charlie right under his collar bone until he laughs so hard he can't breathe. Toby sits in my lap while I wash the caked dirt off of his feet with a rag. I love those things, I do. Lately, though, there is that "laying out in the sun was heavenly, but now I'm really blistered" factor stifling my pleasure.

Part of it is the constancy. My mental calendar unfolds into one long row of empty boxes marking the pilgrimage to Fall. The bleak highlights: Tues. Shopping at CostCo! Mon.-Thurs. Swimming Lessons! Fri. Trash Day! I see myself bumbling along, leap frogging from one mediocre affair to the next and hoping I don't drown in my own guilty ungratefulness.

The kids are just always there. Toby stalks me through the house performing interrogation torture. "How big was I when you were a baby?" "Where will we move when we grow taller than our house?" "When is my room going to catch on fire?" I answer him with logic until I realize that it is not a child I'm speaking to, but a three-foot expert on all things absurd.

"You were not born when I was a baby," I say.

"Yes I wa-as!" He says.

"If you already know, then why are you asking?"

"You are not being nice, mommy!"

Maybe I could handle the perpetual debate if Charlie wasn't in my face slapping the keyboard and honking my nose.

I feel like I'm going crazy.

"I feel like I'm going crazy!" I go ahead and yell to two people with sudden-onset indifference.

Several summers from now I'll be whisking my boys off to sleepovers and soccer games, choking on a stream of relentless action. I'll wonder when I ever had time with them. Toby will clam up like a secret agent protecting his thoughts with the conviction of Jason Bourne. Charlie will only crawl in my lap to steal the remote. When that day comes I will feel sad and nostalgic and recall only the best parts of where we are now.

But today, a little withdrawal sounds like heaven.

Who Bloody Nose?

2009-05-17T17:45:00.002-05:00

My kids are prone to odd maladies that lack medical urgency, yet still astonish and disgust everyone in their vicinity.

Take barfing for example. To this day Toby is the only toddler I have ever seen be personally delivered to his parents in the middle of church service by a gagging, vomit-covered child-care volunteer. If there were a barf Olympics I would enter Toby and tearfully cheer from the bleachers as he projectiled further than anyone in history. "That's my boy!" I would say and then I would reminisce about long nights spent on the couch holding towels under his chin and how worthwhile it was now that he was on the podium singing our National Anthem.

Last week we were outside for all of thirty minutes, wherein the absolute first mosquito hatchlings of summer congregated on Toby's shins for a celebration feast. It wasn't like I didn't know to hose the boys off in deet before subjecting them to the insect Hades of our backyard, but I hadn't checked my entomological calendar for the precise mosquito life cycle. One moment I'm dreamily sipping my Chai latte in Spring's sheltering arms, the next I'm digging through our medicine cabinet for the *AfterBite* cream and *Benadryl* because Toby's legs are swelling to the size of Redwood trunks.

I know what you are thinking. Lots of kids are allergic to insect bites and blah blah blah, but I kid you not, none of them (except B.A.D.) ever produced such hideous, colossal boils as what sprouted from my son's innocent flesh. Boils with eco-systems and lunar phases and fast food franchises. Part of me was a little excited to share this anomaly via Internet photo, and for that I apologize. In my defense, if your own child were capable of a grotesque reaction you would find the urge to shock your FB friends irresistible too.

Today I added "bloody noses" to my long list of *WebMD* queries. While my adoration and gratefulness for *WebMD* runs deeper than most consider prudent, there are times when I cannot convey the appropriate severity. "Bloody noses" are what happen when your brother throws a wooden train across the room, or when you go skiing in Breckenridge, or when you pick. Searching "Sudden failure of entire vascular regions while sitting quietly in Children's Worship" did not produce any valuable results.

What can you do? After four years of research I have learned there is usually nothing to worry about, and that just about anything is a symptom of cancer.

Anything except emetephobia. That is just a perk of mothering two uniquely gifted individuals.

Paradigms: Sometimes They Won't Fit the Mold

2009-05-11T16:30:00.002-05:00

Remember your first child? You know, the one who fell asleep in the shopping cart at Target during the Christmas rush? The one who jumped in bed before you got to "two?" The one who kissed you without your having to pretend cry? The one whose bibs went unstained under the threat of mashed yams? Remember him???

Just when you accepted either a) your chromosomal superiority or b) your (look out...) remarkable parenting skills, your second child springs from the womb yelling "no" and laughing while you try to snuggle his limp-bodied, kicking self into some semblance of the Willow Tree carving on the dresser.

"Oh, I'm sorry," you tell him, "I guess you didn't know that breaking all the glass votive holders was dangerous. That yelling 'Cookie!' the entire time we ate out (though you were, in fact, holding a cookie) was irritating. That shrieking 'Down! Down!' as I carried you from preschool every day was embarrassing. It should look like this: you kneeling beside my heart-shaped, featureless face while I tenderly stroke your wooden cheek. Yes, that's it! Isn't that what you meant to do?"

Then your second child locks eyes with you and smiles very dimply and peachy while reaching one toe into the street just a touch, just a little weensy bit. "Charlie!" you say, "No sir! Go to the naughty spot!" You wave your arms and squinch your eyebrows so the neighbors see you are not permissive or negligent or incompetent, though you yourself aren't really sure.

You scrutinize your care, your attentiveness, your goodness while he sits in time-out. You look at his tiny bean-of-a-self enduring this formality with the remorse of an artichoke. What am I doing wrong?

He grabs his wiggly feet and sings, "He ha da Whole worl in His han!" and "biddy biddy beebees, in his han!" until you realize the answer is nothing. What is flawed is the statue itself, because as moving as it seems, it isn't as delightful, as marvelous, as perfect as this stubborn, extraordinary soul.

God don't let me change him!

Separation Anxiety

2009-04-26T16:45:00.002-05:00

"My red is coming out!!!!" Toby yells. His alarm is always disproportionate to the actual trauma, so I have no idea if its a hangnail or a severed arm when he summons my highly qualified medical self to come rescue him. I nonchalantly grab a napkin and take it to the living room where he and Greg have all 87 parts of a ceiling fan sprawled out on the floor. Toby is sobbing and flipping me the bird. Well, not the actual bird, but he is sobbing and pointing my way with his injured middle finger.

"Is it a paper cut?" I ask because I forgot my go-go-gadget magnifier for microbooboo locating. "Mo-o-o-omm-y-y" he opens his mouth into such a wide cry that his lips barely reconnect for the m's. "I think your gonna make it buddy," I say. Greg returns to his screwdriverish super-project while I rinse Toby's finger in the kitchen sink.

Our underconcern makes him anxious-- as if some day he will puncture an artery or catch on fire and his parents might keep on weed-eating or browning turkey meat while he bleeds to death on the kitchen tile.

This is the part of four that baffles me. At two, I knew I could scoop him up and hold him for just a skinned knee. It felt so right reassuring him, letting him cry it out however long he wanted. Now I waffle between coddling and indifference, searching for a proper balance that won't land him in therapy twenty years from now.

Even more perplexing is his simultaneous need for manhood. One minute he wants gauze wrapped around an indiscernible wound, and the next he is following his dad up the ladder with a real screwdriver in his fist. I furiously dig through his plastic tool set for a safer toy replica wondering who to blame for his inconsistency, him or me?!

What I want is to have him both ways. I want him to be tough, independent, capable and I also want him to need me. I let him go with a wary unclenching of hands, then give him whiplash yanking his little self right back. Independence requires something of both of us that still feels foreign. I know I should lead and encourage him, but that requires a hint of risk, of danger that I'm too afraid to allow. The nurturing part is so much easier.

I think this will be my battle always. Like in the book "Love You Forever" when the old mother crawls through her grown son's apartment window and rocks him while he sleeps. Everything about that page is disturbing and muddled. You want to yell through the watercolor "Cut the cord, lady!" But when you sit on the bed next to a pair of chubby, bare feet you can't very well cast blame. It'll take everything you have to keep your own feet from clambering up behind her.

What I Couldn't Say

2009-04-16T23:45:00.001-05:00

Greg and I have important stuff to talk about. Probably. We are sitting at the kitchen table over tilapia, each of us throwing conversational paintballs in the vague vicinity of the other. Toby is sitting next to me unable to finish his nuggets because he "really needs to poop." Charlie's nuggets are squished into pancakes and one by one sailing down to the underchair netherworld where I don't even clean anymore.

"I mean it seems like a good idea, you know?" Greg says, but I don't know, because I have no clue what the idea was.

"Tell me what we are talking about again?" I say.

"Envelopes." He possibly said over Charlie who is pointing at the pantry yelling for I don't know what.

Toby stands next to his chair holding his pants and underwear. "Can you come wipe me?" he asks. Greg groans and follows him to the bathroom. I hurry to make Charlie some oatmeal.

And that is that. We regress to yelling our schedule essentials from one side of the house to the other.

"I have a paper due this weekend," he says.

"I have a meeting Sunday afternoon." I reply.

"I'm playing golf tomorrow. I won't be home until 7:00."

"I want to make an appearance at Jamie's make-up party."

This is the new us, the frazzled, noisy us, negotiating our independence like day traders. He is only in another room, but it feels further. I miss talking to him. I wonder if we'll ever stop bothering at all.

Later we load up the kids for a Sonic run. I look at Greg next to me in the car. He has a fresh hair cut. I like it. His face is tan from the golf course, making his green eyes more vivid. He boyishly taps the steering wheel to the Newsboys song from the radio. Once upon a time neither of us listened to music like this. It feels good watching him enjoy it, choosing to enjoy it, for the boys sake. He has substance. That is always what I liked about him.

I remember sipping a cherry limeade after school one afternoon, concealing my private obsession with the phone from my friends. Maybe Greg would call. Maybe he would invite me to a movie or to Harrigan's for cheese rolls. The very thought gave my life meaning. It was scary how much he meant to me. When I was with him, I called self-control from every continent of my soul to keep my hands from trembling.

What is so different now? It's been fifteen years since I met him at a basketball game somewhere in Oklahoma City. Fifteen years since my heart quit beating for mere life. Even though the boys are fighting behind us, even though our car smells like Sonic, even though we can't use actual words, when he turns to me and winks, I know why I bother trying. I know exactly why I bother.

The Running Mama Rules

2009-04-09T11:00:00.002-05:00

It has been almost three years since my first run with Jerri. In that time...

We have covered more miles than lie between Houston and New York City.

We have talked over 500 hours.

We have resolved the following issues: the best school for Jerri's girls to attend, the name of my second son, what we want to be when we grow up (Jerri=esthetician, Andi=writer), how to hide vegetables in non-yucky food, a color for my living room walls, what to buy our husbands for Christmas, how long one can run while pregnant (20 weeks until your back gives out!), our hormone imbalances, the best discipline techniques at every age level (up to ten anyway...), and of course our God, how He is the center, the everything, even when we just don't get Him at all.

While I was pregnant with my second son Jerri ran slower with me until I couldn't run anymore. Then Jerri walked with me until I couldn't walk either. Then Jerri swam with my pouting, super-sized self until I almost gave birth while we ate lunch one afternoon.

We have laughed and run, wept and run, been silent and run, prayed and run. We have prayed so hard that we stopped running, laid hands on each other and cried.

This is why I love running. On the quiet, dark road I am not alone. I have the sweetness of other feet thumping beside me, around every bend, over every hill. One pair wears worn Asics with double-knotted laces. The other pair I can't see, but He is always in front showing us where to go.

The Running Mama Rules:

Running Mamas Have Little Feet Who Need Them Around

Never wear headphones on the road. (You cannot hear cars.)
Run against traffic. (We have dodged into the ditch many times when a driver didn't see us.)
Be blinky. (We use little finger lights they sell at Halloween. They strobe!!)
Wear bright clothes. (We have reflective belts and arm bands. If you don't feel like a dork, you are not visible enough.)
Carry a phone.
Never run alone.

You Had Me at "5:15"

2009-03-29T15:30:00.004-05:00

After a few more weeks of pure baby devotion, I slowly went back to running. Once I could rest, I saw that I wasn't completely starting over. My legs felt sore, but my lungs hung in pretty well.

I sputtered along as Emily's half-hearted, second-rate running partner though our schedules were different now. Emily needed to run in the afternoon, the worst time of day for a baby. I couldn't keep up while pushing the baby jogger, and I refused to dump a cranky infant on my husband the minute he walked through the door. Emily was my friend and it hurt to see the close of our era. We met to run here and there, but in the end, I casually drifted away.

For awhile I didn't do much but gawk at my baby. I couldn't be with him enough. I had no idea he would take over my heart, no my very being, with such ferocity. If I planned to do anything for myself it would not be at his expense. I hated to give up running, but in comparison, I really didn't care.

Was there someone else as devoted to her babies as I was? Someone willing to run at odd times on low-energy, maybe even wearing mashed bananas on her shorts? To stick with it, I needed a different breed of woman. Someone whose legs only took her as far as two tiny arms could reach.

I needed another Running Mama.

I mentioned my hope to a few friends at church, and through a friend of a friend, I met my running soul-mate. When I found her, heaven itself burst into song and unfurled the rainbow of joy over my snot-crusted shoulders. Her name was Jerri, disciplined runner and mother of two.

I said "Can you be up by 6:00?"

She said "How about 5:15?"

I said, "I will cancel last minute if my baby is sick."

She said, "Me too. Times two."

I said, "Do you run fast?"

She said, "Let's just stay together."

Cue tears of jubilation.

Oh Baby

2009-03-26T11:59:00.000-05:00

Obviously, there's the birth, which is no spa pedicure. Toby's was light years easier than his brothers would be two years later. I was induced in the morning and he arrived at 2:05 under the covering of the single greatest breakthrough in modern medicine: a la epidurale.

Emily was greasing up the wheel bearings on the baby jogger a few days before my six week Dr. visit. Her optimism was flattering. I don't know how she saw any hope at all, since I had been through six weeks of extreme sleep deprivation, raging mastitis, and accidental undernourishment (who had time to eat?). Miraculously, my Dr. sent me home with a clean bill of health, which seemed a little sadistic since I looked like a corpse compared to my former self. But apparently, actually being alive is not a prerequisite for caring for your newborn, or in Emily's case, resuming an exercise regimen.

First hurdle: the baby jogger. When I put Toby's eight-pound self in the seat, the shoulder harness hit him in the forehead. Uggh, maybe in a few months... I left him with Greg knowing this completely unnecessary stint away from home would cost my husband his Shalom for the next thirty minutes.

When Emily and I set out, my sports bra felt like a vice holding two leaky water balloons (which was reeeeeally ooky). "You can make it a mile," said Satan, skipping off unencumbered. It was really hard. Really, really hard. I panted and wheezed and took it one mailbox at a time. It didn't seem fair that I was starting over. I ran a half marathon the month before I got pregnant and now I was back at the beginning again.

I did make it a mile, but it was different. It took more out of me than my nursing and overtired self had to give. Something had changed in me -- something deeper than my lack of fitness. At home, I stood over my baby boy, swaddled and beautiful in his Moses basket.

He would come first.

The Running Mama-To-Be

2009-03-23T05:00:00.002-05:00

Emily would not go down without a fight. She was intensely devoted to my pregnancy fitness. It was my first baby and my head floated in a cloudy plain somewhere between neurotic jubilation and maternal fantasy (when I wasn't dry-heaving on the front lawn). Emily however, was googling specialty workout ideas and buying prenatal Yoga tapes on E-bay. If I had put in half the effort Emily did, my baby might have popped out ready for the White Rock.

I liked the idea of shattering the plump, lumbering stereotype of pregnancy in lieu of svelte athleticism, but I didn't have it in me. Running was so hard now, with the extra weight and nausea, and I sort of wanted to enjoy the break. Every day Emily would come over to yank me off the couch, and every day I would half-heartedly succumb.

In November she finally gave up. She bought a bright red jogging stroller for my baby shower and presented it with obvious hope. I still love that girl.

Christmas passed quickly for everyone but me. The hands of the clock seemed locked in place, though I watched them with fierce devotion. I read What to Expect, The Girlfriend's Guide, and Pregnancy Week-By-Week until they were floppy and redundant. I surfed BabyCenter message boards and envied the women posting newborn pictures and typing out lengthy birth stories with obscene attention to detail.

The slowest increment of time known to humanity is the final week of pregnancy. While you are living it, tortoises seem to undergo a full life cycle. It is tortuously boring, turning you into a bloated whiner, compulsively devoted to your own well-being.

And then one day it's over. Just like that.

Well, sort of...

How I Got Fast(er)

2009-03-21T11:50:00.000-05:00

I didn't run by myself for long before word got out that I was "on the market." Runners are notoriously savage at capturing one another for training partnerships. I didn't know Emily at all before she cornered my husband at church and claimed me. Greg warned that she might be a touch faster. I figured it couldn't be that bad since she was only five-two. Right? Crickets.

Emily rationalized our partnership as mutually beneficial. She was fast, but couldn't run far. I was slow, but used to long distances. It was running stasis, equal and opposite parts balancing each other into harmony. Lovely.

The harmony sounded like a wheezing, barfing, housecat being drug behind a cheetah. Emily was so darned competitive. No matter how fast I ran, her pace was two notches faster. I think If I ran at the speed of light, Emily would have projected herself into the future and beat me anyway.

I finally gave up trying to stay with her and kept a couple steps back. As long as I wasn't beside her, she would sink into a non-puke-inducing pace. Believe it or not, Emily and I became quite the pair. For almost two years we wore out running shoes on our Texas country roads. We entered dozens of road races together (and the Hotter n' Hell Hundred cycling ride!) and in the end, we both met our original goals. Still when I think of Emily, my mind fills with sunshine and the smell of hay blowing across the hills.

There was only one thing compelling enough to quench our running bliss. It was an evening mid-May when I saw it, plain as day, and marvelled at the powerful emotions it stirred in my heart.

Through the tiny window on a little white stick were two pink lines.

While I'm In Between

2009-03-17T05:00:00.004-05:00

It was iliotibial band syndrome. Just an overuse injury caused by a tight, irritated muscle on the outside of my thigh. (I, along with half of all runners, am an expert on this injury so feel free to e-mail questions about it!**) The only cure was complete cessation of all running.

Running is spiritual. It is the shadow of my relationship with God, a physical symbol for an invisible inner life. Through it I learned to be strong, to be humble, to persevere. Now it was time to surrender.

So, for three months I didn’t so much as jog across the parking lot.

Winter passed slowly. Things began to change. Greg and I moved into a new house in the country. I secured a teaching job at a school close by for the following year. I started a small group for teenage girls in our upstairs room.

One morning I looked out the window at the fresh blue skies of Spring. I grabbed my running shoes from the dark corner of my closet and started again. This time, it was no girl, pouting and selfish who flew across the countryside under the warm sun.

It was a woman.

*“While I’m In Between” taken from Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman by Britney Spears.

**Iliotibial Band Syndrome (ITBS): The IT band connects the iliac (hip) to the tibia (at the knee). A healthy IT band can move back and forth across the femoral epicondyle with each step, pain free. When the band is overused, it tightens, becomes inflamed, and causes a painful burning on the outside of the knee or down the outside of the thigh.

If you think you have an IT band injury, stop running immediately and focus on getting it loose again. Special stretches here can show you how to properly care for the injury and prevent it from happening in the future. Also, a foam roller is miraculous for IT bands.

If you live in the metroplex, GO HERE for an evaluation and adjustment. This guy has saved the running careers of half our church.

The Best Laid Plans

2009-03-16T05:09:00.004-05:00

And that was good.

It was a slow death. I decided to train for a marathon. A group from church was doing the Houston HP, and it seemed like the perfect diversion from my sulking self-absorption. I paid the entry fee and immediately increased my mileage.

Four and six miles morphed into eight, ten, and fifteen miles. Sometimes my runs were so long it felt like the seasons changed from the beginning to the end. I trudged forward like a soldier because it wasn’t just about running, but creating my place in our new life. It gave me value, friends, an identity.

I completed a twenty-miler, our longest pre-race distance, two weeks before that chilly afternoon in January. I stopped by my trail after work for a quick eight. The temp dropped during the day, and all I had with me was shorts. I thought about skipping to bundle up with a latte, but it mattered too much to me. I changed clothes and set out. My legs never got warm. When I finished, they were red and splotchy, tight, and a searing pain shot down my right thigh.

Everything rational told me to rest, but I didn’t. The next Saturday I was back on the trail with a group from church, limp-running to keep up. A dull burn in my leg heated into a raging fire until I couldn’t force another step. I sat down on my butt in the middle of the path and cried.

All the training. All the time. All the plans.

But no marathon.

The Long and Lonely Road

2009-03-14T15:52:00.004-05:00

We moved in June. Sold the cute house. Quit the jobs. Said goodbye to Melissa. Left my family and friends.

And off we went to the little town in Texas where Greg would be youth pastor of Toby's two-year-old church. A church that formerly held services in a bar.

When I crossed the threshold of our new rent house I was greeted by two dead roaches and a fog of must. We knew we were supposed to be here. We knew. But suddenly, I was scared of what we were doing. I had no friends. I had no job. I had no place that was mine to make home. I didn't want to be sad, but I couldn't stop it. I cried and I cried and I cried.

For two months.

At the end of summer, a school across the metroplex hired me to teach PE. A commute that took two minutes in Oklahoma now took forty-five. I thought about how to survive it, and my answer came in the form of a trail halfway between work and home. It was a two-mile loop that surrounded a health club frequented by many members of our church. Greg and I joined and I became the world's most grateful runner.

Every day after work I stopped at my trail and ran as many loops as light allowed. I was ashamed of how difficult our new life was for me. I thought about everything. My old friends, my family, my cute house in Edmond, now home for someone else. I thought about our life here, how hard people were on a new youth pastor, and how lonely I was.

As I ran, the green summer turned into frigid fall and everything around my trail died.

Including me.

Melissa Could Run Reeeeeally Far

2009-03-10T10:46:00.006-05:00

Melissa taught at the same elementary school I did. It only took a week's worth of gossip in the teacher's lounge for our coworkers organize a running partnership for the two of us. I was the youngest person on staff, newly married, and almost as qualified to teach as the custodian. She was the mother of three boys, stellar at her job, and beloved by all. She needed someone to keep her company on runs when her husband was on fireman duty.

She informed me that their usual distance was ten miles, but she was willing to cut it in half if I wanted. I said, "Thank you," though I should have said "please bring a defibrillator and oxygen tank in your fanny pack because I am grossly overstating my actual abilities to impress and befriend you." We made plans and I was a little nervous.

Mellisa preferred running at dawn over dusk. I drug myself out of bed and we set out on the dark, quiet streets of Edmond. The first day I really thought I might die. I don't know how I even made it since I still hadn't actually run three miles before without a walking break let alone five. I knew I could not blow the chance to be her friend. Though I was a much slower running partner than her husband, she never complained. We talked about work, and marriage, and her kids. We talked and talked and one day I came home from our run and I didn't feel like puking.

Some friends of Greg's in Texas invited us out for the weekend. Greg was going to play golf and I decided to run my very first 10K at the Ft. Worth Cowtown. A group from a small country church was running their first marathon the same day. One of them was Toby Slough, the church's pastor. Since Toby was a good friend of Greg's we stayed to cheer him across the finish line.

Maybe it was prophetic, maybe it was just a pointed coincidence to look back on later when times got lonely. We watched the men as they came to the end, hurting, leaning on each other, and crying tears of joy. I was inspired, not only to keep running, but to find that same kind of belonging. Only God knew that within months our lives would change and we would be among them, following Toby down a different kind of road, a longer, harder, more beautiful road than I had ever run before.

"I'm Right Behind You..."

2009-03-07T17:00:00.003-06:00

The only thing worse than the first few weeks of running is starting with a friend who is a “natural.” My friend was Courtney and to this day I am still bitter.

While I drug myself through the neighborhood in shame, Courtney opted to train on the treadmill. She was with me at the first 5k, but at that time neither of us really knew split from fartlek, so I wasn’t aware she had stinking lungs like Lance Armstrong.

At our second race, I expected to steamroll passed her because the treadmill is a lousy substitute for pavement. I thought. About two seconds after the gun fired she was gone. I didn’t see her again until the finish line whence she was sucking on an orange slice and cheering for me. Evil freak of nature…

Over the course of months I worked very hard to catch her. I tried everything to make me better. It didn’t. Instead, I learned two valuable running lessons.

The first was not comparing. Nothing killed my drive more than feeling like I would never catch Courtney. It wasn’t fair. I worked just as hard. No harder. How long could she blaze past me? Finally, one day I got my answer. It was “forever.” The truth is that some people really are born to run. Sometimes to be happy yourself, you have to just let them go.

The second lesson was time. I was nearing college graduation and there wasn’t much of it left after classes, homework, and my job. Before, I sort of thought a person could toss in a few miles here and there and still get better. After months of this, I wondered what would happen if I formally regimented myself to the cause. I tried all methods: training journals, new workout gear, music, lake runs. Ugghhh. Something was still missing. Something more compelling than my own strong will.

It wasn’t until after collecting my diploma and landing a teaching job nearby that I got my first running windfall. She was cute, quiet, and disciplined.

And she changed my life.

Running Isn't Hard. STARTING Running Is Hard.

2009-03-06T21:15:00.006-06:00

I wasn’t going to show up for my second 5k without a bit more practice. I set out for a jog feeling very fit and healthy because choosing to run already set me in a higher existential sphere. I imagined how I must look to people driving by, wishing they were a svelte athlete in training like me.

It was precisely .5 miles around my block according to my odometer. I figured I would circle three or four times. All I needed was will power, yeah? Set my mind to it! I waved to the old man across the street and kicked up my heels.

I passed only two mailboxes when suddenly the only sound in the whole neighborhood was my abnormally loud breathing. I tried to control it by puffing out my cheeks with each exhale, but it only made my brain feel hot and whooshy like every blood cell in there was trying to escape. In fact, my whole body pounded like it might explode. This doesn’t seem right, I thought because I had seen tons of people run and not once did any of them spontaneously combust.

As I rounded the first corner, I stopped to walk which really hurt my pride and snuffed my enthusiasm for the whole idea. It took the entire half block before I could inhale without sounding like an asthmatic Darth Vader.

I jogged again before I passed the old man across the street. I wanted him to think I ran the whole way, because I am that shallow. I ended up going four times around in the same pattern. Run my street, walk to the opposite street. I hope he was impressed.

When I finally found myself back in my own driveway I was completely spent. No one told me running felt like strapping your lungs in a vice and dragging eight bowling balls behind you. How did people do this? And why????

Later, after a shower and a sandwich I noticed something. I felt sore and tired, but also… great. It was like happy-relaxed-exerted-great.

Maybe I could try again.

Before There Was Moo

2009-03-05T15:50:00.005-06:00

I signed up for my first 5k because I wanted Kim Zmeskal's autograph. (It was the Edmond Classic-- do they still have that one?) I walked most of the course, and afterward I felt like someone shoved six Valium down my throat before dropping an anvil on my chest. I hadn't really trained because I didn't want to be an actual runner. I knew from high school track that running took a gene I didn't get.

Strangely, I fell in love with the whole race atmosphere. Races are easy to love. There are fresh, sporty people, free bagels, and this happy energy you can't explain. I signed up for another one right away.

ONE YEAR LATER I finally ran an entire 5k without walking. ONE YEAR. That has to be the slowest any runner has ever progressed. There are not any books on How To Run Your First 5k Within 12 Months, but why are we in such a hurry? If I were to write a running book I would call it How To Love Running and it would be a slow-paced, sweet book about relationships, silence, and God.

The next few posts are dedicated to my friends, who at various stages, are beginning their running journeys. But it is also for anyone who struggles. Running, just like life, is about doing what you think you can't. Maybe it will inspire you to run, but I hope it inspires you to persevere.

Jamie, Jen, Jessica, Michele, Tara, and of course, my Jerri. This is our story.

Moo

2009-03-02T14:47:00.004-06:00

For all of you who prefer the "Running" to the "Mama"...

Saturday was the Cowtown Marathon, Ft. Worth's biggest running event each year. My running partner, Jerri, and I planned to run the half. Despite the ugly t-shirt with a huge flaming bull, the race is supremo. It is big enough to offer awesome perks (hand sanitizer at the Port-O-Pottys!), but small enough to cross the starting line before you need Geritol.

Jerri and I are race experts. We leave home with the EXACT amount of time needed to stop at Starbucks (Grande Mocha Latte TO GO!), park in a parking garage, pee, and check in our bag of junk for after the race. This has to be timed perfectly or you end up freezing your tushy off waiting for the gun, or worse yet, weaving through baby strollers to find your pace group.

The only snafu turned out to be our salvation. A big clog of runners was trying to work their way behind the starting line. Guards had gated off the area on both sides so you had to walk around to find your pace group. The crowd was so agitated that a merciful officer snuck a little opening in the partition to let a bunch of us through. GLORY!!!!!!

I have NEVER started at the very front of a race, but Saturday, we had no choice. There was no time to find our marker. We scooted over to the side and tried to look fast next to the line of very tall Kenyans.

We felt awful during the race. Everyone was passing us. The wind was blowing 20-30 miles an hour so it was impossible to feel comfortable. I was really grouchy because I realllllly wanted to break two hours this year and the Cowtown is already too hilly for a PR even on a windless day.

We barely even talked. We put our heads down and trucked along, stopping only briefly for a cup of Powerade now and then. And...

Just as I wanted to stop and crawl the rest of the way, we caught sight of the finish line. The clock read 1:58:47. Ya'll I looked at Jerri with pure adrenaline in my eyes and we SPRINTED the last tenth of a mile. There was no way we could be that close without closing the deal.

Final time: 1:59:43. Boooyah!!!!!!!!!!

The Naughty Spot

2009-02-24T12:20:00.003-06:00

Precisely five seconds ago he was draped over the crook of my arm like a warm pea pod while I peacefully enjoyed the Harry Potter saga and sipped Chai lattes (with no lid!). Suddenly my straw is making that empty-glass gurgly sound and he is gone! He has slipped out of my dreamy embrace to fight with his brother and throw chicken nuggets on the floor.

Thankfully, I knew just what to do. "Charlie! No sir!" I yelled and I mean YELLED with my mean frowny eyes digging right into his hard little head. Hahaha, that got Toby in line every time. I heard whimpering...

from Toby (wha?). Charlie, however, looked at me and laughed before running away with giddy excitement.

Mayday!

Over the past weeks I have spanked him. (Hilarious!) Put him in time out. (Thanks, I felt like a rest!) Took away toys. (I was done anyway!) Put him in his room. (I love it in there!) Yelled some more--louder, finger pointy-er, until the veins in my temples exploded and my head spun off into outer space. Did he wince? No! He appeared jubilant, no PROUD, of his powerful little self!

I overheard his preschool teachers talking about the "naughty spot." The naughty spot, hmmm, worth a try. Later, I caught him throwing an expectant peek over his shoulder as he casually unplugged the DVD player during Toby's movie.

"Charlie, do you need to go to the naughty spot?" I asked. And...

His lower lip trembled. TREMBLED! He let go of the plug, hung his head, and waddled away. I have never felt such joy making a child cry in shame. Booyah!!!!

Today, I am going to ignore his charming dimples (okay, one little cheek squeeze). I am going to ignore his father (the pastor!) who insists "naughty spot" sounds a little dirty. Today victory is mine!!!! Mwahahaha!*

*Feel free to leave ideas for tomorrow...

On Trial

2009-02-19T10:08:00.008-06:00

I'm distracted by this. Without giving creepy Internet weirdos my exact address, let's just say it was nearby. Grief veils the village faces-- rescue workers, neighbors, parsonage, mothers-- all are affected. My friends and I mope around with sore lips from repeatedly kissing the warm cheeks of our babies.

Some things just won't fit in the mini-van. No one has answers. When fear and confusion spew from the town spicket, the church flips to it's default setting of "defense attorney," puking out arguments for God's infallibility. "Some important blessing will come out of this!" "All things work for good in those who fear Him!" "He has a plan!" "His ways are not our ways!" I hate the sound of it, us defending God as if he needs a publicist to clean up after Him. Yet here I am standing in my driveway fumbling through stock answers with terrified, doubtful mommies while we run our fingers through downy heads of precious, irreplaceable hair.

Yesterday I was thinking. (It happens.) We are stuck in the reality of peanut butter sandwiches, and cat litter, and coffee shops-- things requiring no faith at all to believe in. Now suddenly we have to answer, void of reason, void of warm-tingles, void of evidence: Do we believe God?

The bitter pill to swallow is that God's fallibility is not on trial. Only our faith is.

How will you answer?

Chaos Theory

2009-02-05T23:24:00.002-06:00

I can't think. I can't think. I am doing a load of whites. I am making sandwiches. I am gluing decorations for the coffee social at church. No, actually, I am slathering Vick's Vapo-Rub under Charlie's snot-soaked t-shirt while peanut butter and scrapbook paper and dirty socks sputter through my cranial mess of smoldering, sparking wires.

I hate it when I get like this. When I have so many things to do, so many unrelated, taskly things, that I stumble around completely zombified, unable to finish even one of them.

Why do I need peanut butter? When I press my fingers to my temples I imagine my brain's secretary fumbling for the file amid a cluttered, coffee-smelling office. You are hideously inept I say as she stares back guiltily.

We don't have time to fight because Toby's shoes were mysteriously summoned to Jesus, again. I send Greg outside to dig in the outdoor trash bin. “We should just buy new," he mumbles.

"Sometimes it’s the principle!" I yell because more than anything I want to know how shoes can vanish inexplicably.

I step over Charlie who is now driving a train on the bedroom floor. "Charlie? Where are Toby's shoes?" I ask hopefully when I notice poop falling out the back of his diaper. For the love!!!

I whisk him to the bathroom for a strip and rinse, trying to decide exactly why I'm gagging. Is it his poop-smeared back or the rope of green snot sliding down his upper lip? I sacrifice a whole bar of soap to the cause as I scrub the offending orifices. Now bleaching the bath-tub is following peanut butter through my frontal lobe like a tourist asking for directions. Except that peanut butter answers in confused French and it's obvious that NO ONE KNOWS WHAT'S GOING ON IN THERE!

Are there mothers somewhere darning fluffy-toed socks while their good-smelling offspring sort the recycling and eat beets? Children in some dry, remote corner of Arizona who never have sinusitis or crusty eye goo? How did I end up here, raising shoeless, allergy-ridden vegetable-haters, searching for poo in my carpet?

God why is this ridiculous exercise in anarchy part of it all? Why am I LOSING MY MIND?

I finally get them to bed and it is quiet. Instead of reading, or watching Grey's Anatomy, here I am clinking out the whole dirty mess of it for posterity. God, is it this? This now, sitting down to capture the wild confusion of our day? I roll each moment in my palm like a precious stone and it doesn’t seem exasperating anymore. It reminds me of how much I love this life, these children of mine, for whom I give all of my sanity. For whom it is an honor.

Oh My...

2009-01-27T18:53:00.000-06:00

Go read this.

Blah

2009-01-24T11:40:00.000-06:00

Oh, the loveliness of winter. And by lovely, I of course mean banishment to the lonely prison of our living room with just the bickeringly swell company of each other. It should be cozy. It was cozy in November. Now it is the guilt-inducing festival of Noggin. Want to watch Backyardigan's? Dora? Oswald? Sure! In fact, I'll make you a 100% carbohydrate lunch that you can eat right on the couch! You won't even have to be conscious! I'll poke the fish crackers through the gap in your teeth and you just keep breathing. In the music video version I link arms with my boys and sing "So Happy Together" but with Slash playing a menacing guitar rift in the background to symbolize the depravity of our existence.

Today was unseasonably warm so I marched Toby and Charlie outside with a rather unfriendly command to ENJOY THE FRESH AIR. (Fresh air that my germophobic self won't completely trust since the neighborhood is trading gastroenteritis like cups of sugar.) I thought the sunny pardon from our bleak indoor netherworld would motivate self-entertainment so I could veg out under the sun. It was quiet for all of one nanosecond before Toby became Socrates, pondering life's mysteries while flinging lumps of potting soil into the grass with a plastic shovel.

"Why are the Wonder Pets not too tough?" he asked.

"Toby, let's have five minutes of no talking starting right... now."

"Well, how do you grow small like a baby?"

"You don't. Everyone is growing bigger."

"But what about babies. How do you grow into a baby?"

"You don't grow into a baby, babies grow into big people."

His philosophizing was not slowed by Charlie who stomped unhappily around the driveway because his feet wouldn't reach the trike pedals.

There are days when Toby could contemplate the theme songs of the entire Nickelodeon network and I would find it endearing. Charlie could sulk and pout while spewing caveman expletives at over-sized riding toys everywhere! and I would stroke his head gently and smile.

But not today. It is winter and my sanity dangles from a skinny, burning thread. The sun shines unexpectedly in the blue January skies and I want to enjoy it. I need to.

Four

2009-01-14T21:20:00.001-06:00

Its your birthday! Though I'm certain you remembered because I woke up to your giggling face two inches from my nose. "Am I four?" you asked. Little, little you with your hands clasped in expectation, and your stuffed Dalmatian, Samson, drooping over the crook of your arm.

Little four-year-old you with a furious brain casting its nets in every direction, catching and sorting the new of it all. "I am having a baby," you explain, "All you do is eat a people and then it pops out your tummy." Little you. Little practical, sensible you.

Practical like this: When you step on the new scale daddy bought for our bathroom. "I think I will measure my feet," you say. Measure your feet. Of course.

Little you, full of anguish, because we are all out of oatmeal cookies. Little you, exploding with glee because the diggers are moving the dirt on the lot down the street.

I am so proud of how you've grown. But when you stand in your big four-year-old bones and words burst from your mouth like bubbling candy, I just can't believe it. I still see the itty-bitty you that cried if I walked in the bathroom to pee.

Four years of you. The best four years of my life. Happy Birthday, little man.

The Olden Days

2009-01-10T18:25:00.001-06:00

I wanted to record our boys on Christmas morning. I went shpelunking through the cabinet for an unused tape, but the three I found were from who-knows-when. I popped one in the camera to see if it had enough space left. What I saw made me wonder why I bother doing this to myself .

Toby was about six months old. We were in our big house, the one we custom built back when I was working. I was holding his hands and "walking" him on a clean, shiny floor. I was tan. I had cutely-styled hair. The couch in the background was new and still holding its shape. Greg was working the camera, making baby talk to get Toby to smile at him. It was insanely perfect.

The worst part was seeing my pajamas. The light blue ones I still wear all the time, because they are new. On the video they were not light blue, they were dark blue. Their spaghetti straps rested lightly on the beautiful shoulders of a fresh young mother, still glowing with promise. I barely recognized her.

I did the mental math. Greg bought me those pajamas on my first Mother's Day four years ago?? Has it been that long?? I looked around for something to prove it possible. Our couch, now disfigured from years as an indoor jungle gym slumped in the middle of the floor like a grumpy bag of potatoes. Our down-sized house looked not-so-fabulous, functionally surrounding a living room scattered with toys.

And me. No longer sparkling with fresh dew, but just... tired.

I reflected a moment, realizing that no price is too high for the two bundles of joy Greg and I have the honor of raising.

Not really. I hid the tapes and ran to the phone to make a hair appointment.

Fingers in Ears/ Eyes Squinting Shut

2009-01-07T20:22:00.007-06:00

That is my kitchen right now. It is a "landfill". I am trying not to notice because:

a) My last post was one WEEK ago.
b) I am currently reading Twilight and it is literature *crack*.
c) My dear husband went to a movie and I am NOT going to spend my golden alone time vacuuming.

Insert fingers into ears. Squeeze eyes closed. Hum.

Bliss.

Togetheritis

2008-12-30T13:36:00.004-06:00

It's Christmas break at Preschool. Greg is off work. Its even too cold for the dog to go out for very long. We are having ourselves some real family time. Lots of good 'ole family time.

Its the kind of family time where you loop the Baby Einstein video during every wakeful moment to keep from having a bored, snotting, toddler dangling from your shin while you clean out the fridge. Where a pouting, whiny three-year-old inspires the next round of "What do you want to do today?" from Greg and I that ends with me making the boys nuggets for lunch (again) and Greg playing some shooting game on his iphone to hopefully kill another half hour.

We have ripped down the Christmas lights, spontaneously caulked all the window casings, cut the boys hair, played out all the Christmas toys, cleaned out our closet, and swept the garage. All that is left is the obligatory lolling around on the carpet annoying each other to keep from actually dying of under-stimulation.

Today, after Charlie threw two platefuls of food on the kitchen tile and encored with thirty minutes of writhing anguish, I finally said it. "Greg, I am tired of being with us. I have togetheritis."

"I think we have 'Doing-nothing-together-itis'" he points out while opening yet another sleeve of Ritz crackers.

We need help. I am one Mighty Machines Video away from "All work and no play makes Andi a dull boy."

To quote Cindy: "I'm just sayin'."

Clarification

2008-12-27T13:49:00.010-06:00

Merry Christmas

From The Hawkins Family

First of all...

This is a late, cheap, unoriginal Christmas E-Card. Please consider it the heartfelt gesture of love I truly intended to post a few days ago... I love you all dearly and have had more fun this year blogging than you can imagine.

And for the clarification...

It was Christmas Eve service. Me and my two noisy, irreverent, children were sitting with my in-laws. It was a solemnly quiet moment, and the gazillion people around us were reflective while Big Toby gave the message.

Big Toby: Baby Jesus came to the world, grew into a man, and, finally, died for us on the cross.

Little Toby: (With a loud gasp) He died?

Apparently we have 32.9 years in the Life of Christ to cover in the new year.

Landfills

2008-12-22T22:35:00.001-06:00

All I want to do is clean the [stupid] floors because they are covered with torn up bits of toilet paper [and dog hair] that two chubby hands are pushing around with a yellow bulldozer.

"Toby, please clean up this mess!"

Toby is outraged. "It is NOT a mess, it is a landfill!" but I do not see the justification his tone implies, because Charlie has trash bits stuck to his upper-lip snot and that is where I DRAW THE LINE!

"I will not throw the trash away [while you are looking]. I will put it in the special place [where I keep the preschool projects made with popcorn kernels]," I say, but he isn't listening anymore because Charlie is pushing the bulldozer out of the living room and throwing a taunting giggle over his shoulder.

Sometimes I wonder what it is like for Greg at work every day doing his job without anyone trying to stop him. I imagine him sitting at a quiet desk checking off items on his "to -do" list with a sharpie. How quaintly productive.

I have to squeeze all the cleaning into one episode of Oswald or I might as well not bother.

I might as well not bother anyway because I have two little boys and this is just life.

A dirty, snotty, cluttered life.

But a good one.

William Runs The White Rock

2008-12-14T23:20:00.001-06:00

I don't post about running very often because most of my friends would rather gouge a stick into their eye than cover any distance on foot, but every so often I feel it necessary to justify my blog title.

I almost didn't get into the race because I procrastinated and they sold out of bib numbers. Me, Jerri, and Jamie had to scrounge for an entry. Thankfully someone in my kettlebells class wasn't going to use his and gave it to me. [Thanks, Bill] So, this morning I ran The White Rock Half as a 42-year-old male from Flower Mound who wore purple shorts and raisenberry lipstick.

There were 17,000 runners lined up at American Airlines Center for the start. Crowds give me germ anxiety and it was really hard to avoid sharing air. No matter what direction I turned my head I could smell breath and it made me want to gag. I had to quit worrying about it at mile four when my running partner accidentally sprayed me with a wayward loogie, so thanks, Jerri, I guess.

I don't want this blog post to sound like a training journal so here are the highlights of the Dallas White Rock Half:

-Gun goes off [Don't worry it was planned]
-Five minutes later we cross the starting line
-Five minutes after that we stop to pee because the lines at the starting line were so friggin long
-Slight altercation with the girl who cut in front of me at the port o potty
-Thirty minutes later we pass the one and only person to yell my real name on the course [Thanks Blake] and not be cheering for William.
-Jerri and I run out of stuff to talk about and revert to our ipods [she=Van Halen, me=Beyonce]
-We blaze across the finish line seconds from the Kenyan superstars. [Okay, they ran the full, but whatever]

So, that's it. My first half since I got preggers with dear Toby five years ago. 2:06:50... Could have been worse.

[Oh yeah Kim... your aprons ROCK]

Booger-Nose and Poopy-Pants

2008-12-10T05:00:00.003-06:00

Booger-nose is running through the house with a yellow yard stick, swinging it around like he is a ninja. Oh wait... no, he's a railroad crossing and a train is coming. He grasps the yard stick end with both hands and down it goes, "ding, ding, ding". It is just so exciting that I must watch it happen or else he appears exactly one centimeter from my eyeballs to make sure I see him. "I do see you," I say, but I would rather not have this exact vantage point because the booger in your left nostril is very close to my face.

Poopy-pants waddles his stinky bottom our way, coughing up a misguided sip of water from the Ozarka bottle he found under the couch. "Oh Poopy-pants are you Okay?" I say as I gently pat his belly. He looks happy to be belly-patted and encores with an experimental "cuh, cuh" just to see if I do it again. I do.

Suddenly, the yard stick whirls through the air searching for its next identity. It nicks a speck of paint off the wall and almost takes out poopy-pants altogether. Booger-nose does not notice though his eyes faithfully follow the whirring streak of yellow as if it might spring to life any second.

Poopy-pants is bored with coughing and is now perfecting his sneeze. "Ah, ah, ah, ah too!" He emphasizes the punchline so well that his whole body follows his nose straight into the carpet. He rolls over wondering where he is. "Yayyyyy!" I say to Poopy-pants and he smiles a big gap-toothed grin.

Booger-nose stops because he needs "a little bit of love". He crawls into my lap for a hug. Poopy-pants can't be left out and he waddles in too. I squeeze their snotty, stinky, little boy bodies.

Booger-nose and Poopy-pants, I couldn't be happier.

The Funniest Thing Toby Ever Said

2008-12-09T05:00:00.002-06:00

I am re-posting this story from early summer for Kim's Favorites Party. It is my all-time favorite post.

"The Girl Next Door"

He held nothing back. Her eight year old self floated gracefully up on a light purple Schwinn. Something inside him said Toby, she is special. Let her know you are a big kid. So after pointing out that her bike was "pwitty", he reached for the all-time greatest pick-up line anyone under five ever attempted...

"Lexi, do you need to poop? Because I know how to poop in the potty."

Bold move, little buddy. Very bold.

The Gift

2008-12-02T07:14:00.004-06:00

When I was seventeen I went to Honduras during Spring Break. Our group flew from Oklahoma City to Houston, then took an International flight to Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital city. From there we drove hours to a small town in the foothills. We drove hours more in All Terrain Vehicles up twisty, bumpy, wet mountain roads. Then finally, we rode horses to a remote village. Our traveling took days. I have never felt so far away from home.

Our first night in the mountains I was carsick, homesick and full of anxiety over our primitive surroundings. When it got dark, I felt a cloud of doom hover over me as my friends and I walked outside the spider-infested structure where we planned to "sleep".

I suppose it is the irony of the universe, the funny way that ugliness and beauty contrast in the same place and make each other more vivid. Over the grass-roofed huts, and the stench of roaming pigs was a sky so bright it seemed to move with life of its own. A million, no a gazillion speckles spread like a field over us, blinking, shooting, smiling. I have never seen so many stars. I could have read a book underneath their light. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

Its the only time I have seen a sky like that. So, thank you God for showing me your vastness and sovereignty, and the veil of love you drape over humanity, even in the wildest, remotest corners.

Thanks, Kim.

Sweet Potato Souffle

2008-11-25T08:38:00.003-06:00

If you are still putting marshmallows on top of your sweet potatoes (dry heave) and wondering why your kids won't eat them, this recipe will save your day. It is the kind of dish that tastes like dessert, yet contains enough vegetableness to count as a side. En-joy.

Sweet Potato Souffle

Boil 5-7 Sweet Potatoes until tender. Remove skin.

Mash with:

2-3 eggs

1/2 can condensed milk (more if needed)

1/4 cup sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

Put in baking dish and add topping:

1 stick of butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 cup pecans (crushed)

Bake for 1/2 hour to 45 minutes at 350.

Watch topping to make sure it doesn't get too brown.

Locomotion Videos

2008-11-21T13:47:00.007-06:00

My dear friend Jessica asked me recently if I knew of any good train videos for boys. I broke out into evil laughter because our DVD cabinet is like the Blockbuster of live locomotion. So, if you are in the market for some little boy *crack* here is a synopsis of Toby's favorites:

Real Trains For Kids
If you really hate yourself and sanity in general, you will want to buy the "Real Trains for Kids" videos. This genius took his Best Buy video recorder and parked it on tracks all over New Jersey. Hours of live train action. Literally, hours.

All About... [Fast Trains, Garbage and Recycling, Airplanes]
The "All About..." series is badly-acted and illogically-plotted, yet addictively entertaining to a three-year-old. They do contain a lot of information if you want your child to be well-versed in sanitation or railroad construction.

Mighty Machines: Diggers and Dozers
Last, the all-time most irritating video ever shot with a cam-corder and dubbed over with eye-gougingly good singing is "Mighty Machines". Each tractor in this video has its own character voice, brilliantly performed by the same guy. This is Toby's current favorite. You don't have to send me a sympathy card, because I already have a stack from my mother who purchased it.

Bonus: Charlie Trash Truck
Charlie Trash Truck was conceived by a pediatrician named "Dr. Jay" who started his own production company for this one video. The show contains live garbage truck footage with lots and lots and lots of factual snippets. It is the kind of cheesy production you get when education and entertainment mingle together. The video's salvation is an astonishingly svelte trash man named "Operator Tom".

This is my Christmas gift to all of you mothers of boys (sorry Sarah). Consider it an hour of free babysitting courtesy of the runningmama. En-joy.

A Weekend With the Crankertons

2008-11-17T09:00:00.003-06:00

"Stop looking at me Charlie. Stop looking at me Charlie. Mommy make Charlie stop looking at meeeeeee."

"If you don't look at him, he won't look at you," I say as I flip down the visor mirror and make sure it is really me talking and not my mother.

"Say 'Stop it!' to Charlie. Why is he looking at me when I'm not looking at him?"

I turn up the volume on the stereo so the rhythmic "aha's" of Voulez Vous drown out the one-sided brawl from the backseat. Charlie's eyes are so dead-locked on Toby I wonder if he secretly understands Toby's complaint and is internally laughing.

"Charlie, stop looking at Toby," I say, just in case.

Before I have a chance to stop it -- and I would have given my right eye -- the final track of my ABBA 1 CD fades away and the changer dutifully ushers in the next disc. Back, Back, Back I push but it is too late and Boz the big green bear repeats "Here we..., Here we..., Here we..." until I finally give up and let him spit out the full "Here we go!" in his irritating jubilation. Toby forgets Charlie's death stare to cheer for Boz, the big fat Christian version of Barney and for a moment I think I might prefer the whining.

Soon it doesn't matter because I can think of nothing but the stomach bug floating through pre-school again and if I remembered to put hand sanitizer on the boys before they ate the animal crackers in my friend Jenn's office. I can almost hear the triumph of the crittery virus making its way into the innards of my unsuspecting children because, I know I didn't remember and now we will all be barfing up a lung come tomorrow. And that makes me cranky.

But not as cranky as Charlie was later in the driveway, protesting the wretchedness of humanity because the front wheels of his riding fire truck were stuck in the grass. He waddled around me a few times with a squinched-up, moaning face before depositing his 2 foot self head first into the yard.

What is everybody's problem?

I could understand this better if we lived in a parched Ethiopian desert and relied on locust wings and cactus dew for survival, but we have no legitimate complaints. The hovering, nurturing parenting style I credit for their neatly trimmed nails and taste for yogurt smoothies is also responsible for the Bratty Crankertons that we have all become.

When it is time for bed, I briskly yank the oversized t-shirt over Toby's head. "Mommy, can we sleep in the living room again? I like sleeping in there with you."

We had a couch camp out weeks ago when he had the flu. What made him recall a night of puking into bath towels as a chummy slumber party I can't fathom. I squish his chubby cheeks in my hands and smooch him. "Toby, we sure did have fun, didn't we?"

And isn't that the beauty of family? Looking back on all these times, good or bad, and remembering only that you were loved.

Couch Throwing

2008-11-07T07:30:00.003-06:00

Its the kind of evening when the bits of nothing I did all day lump themselves together into one large energy-sucking wad and sit comfortably on my shoulders while I survey the toy explosion that is my living room floor.

I could get up and sort the tractors and race cars and trains into their beautifully irrelevant bins, but then the world's youngest defense attorney would follow me around to justify the mess in his customary whine and I am too tired to litigate. No, I feel more like collapsing to the floor on my back and tickling the boys as they run by to hopefully avoid an actual game of chase.

This part of our evening, between dinner and bed, I sometimes watch the clock like an employee waiting for the end of my shift. Greg is equally unmotivated and flips between ESPN and ESPN 2 to catch a glimpse of what? I don't know, maybe the famously chiseled super-athlete he would have rather been at forty. The crowd-cheering game highlights and chatty commentary makes it harder to ignore the vehicular debris and the hint of dog smell on our carpet.

Only half an hour more... I think at seven-thirty as if then I will be putting on my sexy jeans and some high heels for martinis with the girls instead of staying in this same position, in this same t-shirt recycled from yesterday, staring blankly at the football stats whizzing below the SportsCenter news desk.

Its not that I mind being with my boys, me with a hyper-awareness that every day is a brief and finite luxury. Its just after replying cheerfully to the quantillionth snot emergency and rhetorical "Do you know...?", even they are tired of my smilingly present face.

These kind of evenings have a way of surprising me. Like when Greg, out-of-nowhere, grabs Toby and throws him on the couch like a giggly bag of sand. When Charlie's knee-high bean-of-a-self rushes toward his dad with arms lifted high, begging for his turn, its then that all of those nose wipes and time-outs have measured value and bring me satisfaction. Suddenly we are the world's happiest family, laughing hysterically as throw after throw, the pleasure of being together sails through the air on a small delighted face.

If tomorrow doesn't bring us a bowlful of sunshine at least we'll know that today, we didn't miss this.

I can think of no greater achievement.

Missing

2008-11-04T06:00:00.001-06:00

Sunday morning I sat in church like my usual self, distracted by the people around me. I wondered what I was doing there. I thought about the yucky feeling that follows me around and keeps me from praying. I thought about it until it was with me and I felt bad.

I have been a Christian for a long time. I have been a Christian at church camp and chorused the togetherness songs and spilled my guts and cried and hugged. I have been a Christian in college and fought against legalism! and quenching the spirit! and hypocrisy! I memorized scripture and highlighted and underlined and studied three translations. I was a Christian and I felt good and I served and I was a Christian and I felt bad and I confessed. I was a Christian who rejoiced at birth and I was a Christian who mourned at death. I worshipped when worship meant "singing", then I worshipped when worship meant "living for God everyday". I was a Christian in a pew, I was a Christian on an old couch, and I was a Christian in a snazzy stadium seat.

Now I am tired of being a Christian.

People are hurting so bad around me and it is killing me. Being a Christian is not enough. They have heard it all before.

What is missing, and I mean this, is Christ.

I'm Moving... Kind Of

2008-10-31T07:39:00.005-05:00

UPDATE: Apparently there is still a glitch in blogger's custom domain feature. I have chosen to use my blogspot.com address again until it is sorted out. I will let you know when my new domain is up and running. For now, I am staying here.

Inflatable Death

2008-10-24T15:45:00.001-05:00

It bobs around on our neighbor's lawn with a gigantic axe and frightens my innocent children (and the dog). Behind it is an array of severed heads hanging from tree limbs and impaled on wooden posts, all draped in faux spider webs. It is irritatingly festive if you are a psychopathic serial killer.

Which I am not.

I have to sneak up behind the stupid thing and unplug the air pump before Toby will walk by. I encourage him to be brave while explaining how it is not a real person, just a blown-up Halloween decoration. But it doesn't seem fair. Reality is very elastic to him and I toss truth and illusion around in an ironically confusing jumble. This ugly, scary thing he can see is not real. The invisible, silent, elusive God is.

"God is bigger than those scary things," I say as I whisk he and Charlie past the skeletal hand reaching forth from its bloody grave. He looks at the grave skeptically and I know I failed the writer's highest calling: show, don't tell.

At night we say our prayers as he crawls into bed. "Where is God?" he says unphilosophically, as if asking for the nearest bathroom. "God is everywhere," I offer because I can't think of an unlousy answer. He sits up quickly and looks at his mattress in confusion. "Am I squishing him?" Excellent question.

No dear, mommy is.

I've been a Christian so long that I barf out illogical religious rhetoric when I don't know what to say. Which is a lot. Toby is bright for three and I can see doubt on his face. Maybe it is my own reflection. Inside, my heart longs for God-- the God who satisfies, the God I used to trust. But an inflatable Death looms in front of my eyes and I can't reach the plug.

My boys are precious and I want them to know a powerful, real Savior.

God, start with me.

What. Am. I. Doing.

2008-10-16T13:56:00.003-05:00

It bothers me that we are out of dryer sheets but not enough to go to the store. I sent the boys off to school this morning in staticky clothes and hoped that Charlie wouldn't get sent home for his oozing, crusty eyeballs because I am really busy. Sort of. Two days ago I sent off my first query letter and now I am chained to my email inbox compulsively clicking "check mail" every nanosecond. The magazine has six weeks to respond. My finger is already tired.

And by respond I quote from their editorial guidelines: "Each article idea will receive the attention it deserves." Ouch. I feel sorry for my poor little query whimpering in cyberspace all alone.

I promise I will not junk up Tales From the Running Mama with the tragic epic of a wanna be writer, however, since a lot of you are going down this same road, I thought you might like a little update here and there. So, if you ever wondered what you are doing thinking your writing has actual monetary value, I know exactly how you feel. I am thirty years old now, and my seventh grade self I would kick me if I didn't try.

And trying is pretty exhilarating.

Being A Man

2008-10-15T06:45:00.000-05:00

Every little boy wants to know that he is strong, that he matters. Only a man can tell him. Thank you, thank you for loving my boys and not leaving them to wonder...

Boys and Girls

2008-10-08T08:30:00.002-05:00

I didn't miss the finer points of Anatomy in eleventh grade. How could I have known that physiology is only the leafy display of a towering, deeply rooted tree? What I saw in the lab, casually dissecting a formaldehyde-soaked cat cadaver while smoothing the pleats on my cheerleading skirt, were just symbols that shroud a deeper truth.

Its me and him. And we are the same because he is three and I carried him not long ago, not long ago at all. I knew there would be a day that he suddenly noticed, anatomically speaking. A moment when I shrugged my shoulders and admitted with a lump in my throat that he'd probably known for awhile. I imagined an awkwardly encoded conversation regarding the important "parts". He would be old, you know, years from now when I am ready to let him go. Years from now. Instead, I realized that boys and girls are different long before "parts" have any relevance and letting him go is happening now, in a slow frenzy that I will never be ready for.

Since school started, there has been Ava. She captivated him with her brown-eyed beauty. He mentions her freely while talking about storybook time or music class. His teacher stopped me the other day to tell me all about their chase game on the playground (which I found positively un-funny).

I decided to ask him about her. Tell me about Ava, I said. His eyes gleamed and it hurt me a little. He told me about sitting beside her at chapel, and asking her to be his friend. He told me about the toys they play with in class and what they make in art. He narrated conversations and pointed out the matching color of her hair in a picture book nearby. He told me about the rescuers. The game where Ava is in trouble and he saves her day. Mommy I save Ava, he said, like I am Fireman Sam.

His hands are chubby and he hasn't grown into his wide sparkling eyes, but he already feels the desire of a man's heart to be the hero. You are not a man! I want to say. You are my little boy! That is how I want it to stay. Let's go play trains, because I want you to need me forever. Years from now, we will talk about grown-up things and then you can go search for your princess and save her day.

Years from now.

Later we sit together in the big chair because it is storming outside and he is scared. "You are my favorite girl, mommy" he says with his head on my shoulder. I can smell his head smell. I kiss it slowly, and wonder how something can fill you with so much pleasure and pain at the same time.

Toby, what a man you will be.

(Years from now.)

Can You Believe This??

2008-10-05T14:49:00.003-05:00

It has only been two weeks. The doctor said he is healed and he will have NO scars. Amazing.

God is good.

It Was Coffee...

2008-09-26T09:13:00.003-05:00

I still can't believe it. Charlie is doing very well. We went for a follow-up appointment Tuesday and the nurse said it looked good. At least I think that is what he said. I couldn't really hear anything over Charlie's uncontrollable hysteria. He lost it the millisecond we entered the clinic. We go back on Friday, Oct. 3rd to see the doctor and determine what therapy he needs. I am going to try to get my hands on a sedative... for Charlie that is.

Yesterday... Unedited

2008-09-22T13:50:00.001-05:00

This is not for the faint of heart.

Or coffee lovers.

I was talking to a friend and trying to balance the stroller that had tipped over by the donut table. Charlie dunked his hand in my cup of coffee. I didn't even see him do it.

When he started screaming, the entire church was congregated in the lobby staring while I held his contorted, thrashing, panicked self. His hand was swelling and turning red.

Don't freak out I said to me as I freaked out.

I took Charlie to the bathroom and ran cold water over his hand. He screamed louder. I took him back out to the lobby and asked Greg to go for ice.

He brought back one cube. Someone else handed me a bowl filled with ice water. Other people started handing me odd items they found that might help, but nothing would calm him.

We should take him home. Greg and I grabbed our stuff and headed to the car. I knew he would calm down once we were away from the mass of people. But he didn't. And his fingers were molting.

I started crying because it was my coffee, my negligence, and my fault. Greg is frustrated because he can't fix it. We snap at each other and debate what to do. Charlie screams and Toby keeps talking about trains as if the world is not tumbling into anarchy.

Our church is nowhere near a hospital, but we commit to an ER and take off on a terrible ride.

Charlie is outside of himself with anguish. I can't hold him in the car so I gently rub his cheek even though he keeps pushing my arm away while he waves his hurt hand around and beats it on his own face.

At the hospital, Greg lets me out at the ER doors and I am greeted by a stoic front desk worker. Maybe she was trying to impress me with her de-sensitization to calamity. I was not impressed. She didn't say a single word as I fumbled around the desk for the sign in sheet, crying, and holding my baby whose finger skin was dangling around his knuckles.

I hate you I don't say when I hand the form over the counter.

We wait. Charlie is hysterical. No one reacts but us. Greg goes for ice in the vending area and the front desk lady shrugs her shoulders when we ask how long.

I hate you I don't say again, but Greg does. She goes to the back and when she comes out a person is with her to collect Charlie. She threatens to call security on Greg who is tearing out his hair with frustration. The lady takes her time showing us to a room and I wish she would prove her point in some other way because my baby is hurting so bad.

They give Charlie a shot of morphine and after a few minutes his sobs melt into sniffs, and then he is out. He had been crying for two hours.

We need to transfer him to Parkland, the doctor says.

Really. He's pretty burned, huh? That's what we were thinking during the infinity wait when my sons shrieking had to compete with the crickets in your lobby.

They call an ambulance for me and Charlie and Greg takes Toby home. He will meet up with us after he finds a sitter. Neither of us has our phone so we say a wary good-bye.

At Parkland we are greeted by a sixteen-year-old resident who is skippity do about having a pediatric burn patient. He is so proud of his medical knowledge and experience and he explains how cleaning the burn will be very painful, but luckily Charlie will not remember it.

Oh that is lucky, Doogie, I say while I think I hate you in my mind. Thankfully the burn team arrives with a genuine, tender-hearted doctor and nurse who treat Charlie like a sweet baby boy and I am relieved.

They explain the burn care carefully, but nothing can prepare a mother for that kind of trauma. I wondered how many moms have restrained their child for a bigger burn than Charlie's. It broke my heart.

When they were done, they bandaged him up nicely and gave us instructions to change the wrap at home.

At 4:30, 8 hours after I left the house for church in the morning, we left Dallas and headed home.

Charlie slept the whole way.

Today he is fussy and groggy, but fine. He wants me to hold him when he is awake and I am glad that he needs me. He is going to recover with no problems at all, thanks to the wonder of modern medicine.

I, however, am permanently scarred.

News On Charlie

2008-09-21T17:20:00.004-05:00

I hope this sufficiently takes the place of a zillion phone calls and emails. Please forgive us for not calling you all individually.

This morning in the lobby after church I was holding a scalding hot cup of coffee in one hand and Charlie in the other. He was sitting on my forearm with his arm around my neck. Our stroller dumped over so I transferred the coffee to the hand on Charlie's side so I could set it back up. Before I realized it, Charlie had dunked his hand in the hot coffee. It took me a moment to see why he was screaming, so his hand was actually in the hot liquid for a couple of seconds.

He was inconsolable. We did the normal stuff: run it under cold water, set it in ice water. I decided to take him home to soothe and calm him, but in the parking lot Greg and I saw that the skin on his hand was peeling and blistered. We took him to Denton Presby instead. After a consultation with their ER doc, they sent Charlie and I via ambulance to Parkland. (This is a bigger hospital in Dallas that has a good burn unit.)

Charlie's burn was only second degree, but we learned that burns are more dangerous the more surface area they cover due to swelling. Since Charlie's burns surrounded his entire hand and fingers, it was a serious burn. Swelling can cut off circulation and threaten the health of the affected area.

At Parkland they cleaned his burns and medicated him heavily so he could sleep. It was a very painful process that I will not fully describe. I am thankful that we have access to modern medicine and that Charlie is young enough that he will not remember.

We just got home a little bit ago. He is in his bed still asleep, with a bandage the size of a boxing glove on his hand. We go back in a few days to have it cleaned again. Please pray that he has a speedy recovery and feels little pain.

I will write more soon. Love you all.

BTW my Facebook was hacked and now I cannot log on at all. If you post messages there I can't write back, but I do get them in email.

The Writer's Conference

2008-09-18T00:00:00.001-05:00

There were name tags. There were bagels. There were interestingly clad women with no make-up. My boys were at home with daddy. I was in heaven.

It lived up to the stereotypical conference in every possible way. When I arrived at the host church I could smell the coffee before I was even ten feet from the propped open double doors. I checked in at the folding table and clipped my plastic coated name tag onto my shirt. Andi Hawkins, Texas. This was going to be good.

Everyone is happy to be at a conference on the first morning. Not me though. I was ecstatic. For two whole days I planned to live it up. I was going to network, you know like business people do. I spent days deciding what to wear. I settled on a cream colored sweater with a jean skirt. Dressy for a woman who lives in t-shirts and capri sweatpants covered with snot smears. I wanted to break out my cute shoes to match, but turns out "cute" is just another way to say "torturous". Believe me, some of the attire I witnessed at this conference took all attention from the comfy flip-flops I chose instead. There was a puff sleeve and lacy collar here and there, odd hats, and faded knits with those little bally things clinging all over the fabric. There is no clear explanation for this except that writing is a very introspective career that doesn't pay very well, hence, clothing is merely functional. Call me crazy, but it seemed to add to the mystique. I cannot express to you how much I love these people.

I met a woman right off the bat from my hometown and we became instant friends. Christy I know you are hating me for mentioning you after my fashion analysis, but I am only working chronologically here. You looked great, girl. Christy and I spent many hours this weekend bonding and talking about blogging. She has an amazing story and a gift for encouraging others with her writing. She also has a fabulous website and plans to add a blog soon. Show her some love when you get the chance.

I went to classes all day. Writing basics, query letter writing, formatting manuscripts, personal experience articles, interviewing. I ate up every minute. I had a wonderful lunch with two friends and no one asked me to squirt ketchup or cut up their nuggets. It was refreshingly adult. I had that feeling from summer camp as a kid when you somehow forgot home and adopted a new reality. Almost.

At the end of the first night, the conference director planned to announce the winners of the writing contests. Entries were pre-submitted by attendees prior to the event. I submitted two things: a version of my post "The Garbage Man" rewritten as a children's book, and my post "Running: A Relative Term" as a poem. I didn't want to feel nervous. That would mean I thought I could win and I didn't. But I was nervous. This place was filled with people who knew what they were doing. I felt like a wannabe trailing the popular girls after school.

The director climbed to the stage with a stack of certificates. The winners would also earn fifty dollars cash and a signed copy of the new book Eyewitness. I wanted to win.

He introduced the children's book category. I gulped. I tried to appear casual. And...

I won.
What do ya think of that?

I walked up on stage to get my award and the director read a line from the book to the whole group. I was so stinkin' proud I cried when I got back to my seat. It was unbelievable.

So, if you see me out in public anytime soon and I am wearing ten year old sandals and tapered knit pants you will know why. This world I loved as a child and lost somehow along the way, is calling me back again. I can't wait.

Lunch... Interrupted

2008-09-08T00:00:00.004-05:00

I ate a ham and cheese panini in a little cafe on the edge of Southlake Town Center. I had already been to the doctor that morning and told it was not time, see you next week. My friend Jerri sat across from me making idle conversation while I pouted about my inhumane state of being. Every so often we paused so I could breathe in and out and adjust to the intermittent cramping in my belly, false labor rallying to mock my ginormous, bloated, blob of a self. When we finished, Jerri looked at me curiously before parting with an intuitive suggestion: go home and rest. I waved off this gross overreaction like any deliriously pregnant idiot.

Though the cafe was around the corner from my hospital, I drove the fifteen miles back home with Toby in the backseat. I called a couple of friends to nonchalantly ask labor questions -- but not because I thought I was in labor or anything. That would be really melodramatic. What I had was just a tightening around my middle every so often.

I was getting Toby down for nap when I suddenly doubled over in pain. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was very intense. I decided to call the doctor and Greg, just to be on the safe side. Greg flew home... the doctor, however, told me to call him in the morning if I still felt like something was happening. I sent Greg back to work and called my pregnant friend Jennifer to come over and sit with me. Greg protested, but I told him how labor lasts forever and I was not actually having it anyway. It was false labor.

Jennifer and I timed my contractions for almost two hours. They were getting worse, especially since it wasn't the real thing. We called the doctor back -- just to check in. He said it was no big deal until the contractions were six minutes apart for a complete hour. We cheerfully kept tabs on the clock and gabbed about how huge we were and how we would always remember the day we sat around my house keeping our cool when most pregnant women would have rushed off to the ER like dorks only to be sent right back home. Hahaha.

I went ahead and called my mom and dad, you know, just to let them know I was not about to have a baby, just feeling some terrifically strong Braxton-Hicks. In fact, now that I have them on the phone I think I am going to let them talk to Jennifer for a few minutes... I am suddenly unable to stand. Actually, I can't even breathe without crying a little bit... is this typical of false labor?

It was at that point that Jennifer took over, God love her. She pulled a groggy Toby from his bed and whisked him next door to my friend Keri's house along with two diapers and an indefinite pick up time. She and Keri hoisted me into Jennifer's mini-van, which I assure you was no small feat. Jennifer talked to me, called Greg, drove, and timed contractions. I cried. I thought, what kind of person cries through Braxton-Hicks? How would I ever survive the real thing???

We stopped at the church where Jennifer intended to drop me off to my husband. Unfortunately, I could not get out of the van. Greg had to hop in the driver's seat with me and Jennifer followed in his car. It was 3:30.

At 3:50 we pulled into the hospital parking lot. Greg had been on the phone with the L and D floor to explain our situation and they had a nurse waiting for us in the circle drive. I was white knuckling the seat cushion and moaning like a wounded lion. As we pulled up, an innocent bystander inadvertently walked in front of the mini-van. I remember yelling out the window in my best Linda Blair for her to "MOVE"!!! Greg, however, recalls it with a bit more @$#%#& thrown in. You can pick.

My nurse, Suzy, whisked me up to a room in a wheelchair. She gave me a gown to put on which I unfortunately was never able to do. I got as far as undressing before a surge of pain prevented anything more. Suzy rushed in and helped me to the bed. I begged for my epidural. I screamed. I crawled around on the white sheets pleading for someone to cut the baby from my abdomen and put an end to this ridiculous formality. Somewhere in my delirium, a pack of medical professionals arrived to not save my day. Equipment was rushed into the room and this and that person were paged STAT.

My doctor explained that he could break my water and speed things along, but an epidural would never have time to work. I explained that it would work even if I had to gouge the needle into the center of my own brain. As if staged for a TV movie, my water broke with a loud pop. I started bawling, crouched on the hospital bed that looked like the background set for a horror movie. I guess he had pity on me and an anesthesiologist was allowed to give the epidural a try. She was wonderfully quick -- but not quick enough. At 4:20 pm, approximately one nanosecond after my epidural went in, Michael Charles was caught by the doctor with the gown I never had the joy of donning.

It was a miracle. The first baby to ever be born to a woman in false labor. Everyone walked around me like I was the Blessed Mother. Okay, not really. Everyone seemed pretty put out with me and my capacity for denial. Greg was utterly traumatized after witnessing a birth void of pain relief and dignity. My mother was somewhere between Oklahoma City and Ardmore missing the whole thing. Jennifer was relieved to not be scrubbing placenta out of her mini-van floor mats. I was the only one feeling quite dandy. I spared myself the anxiety of impending labor and even better... I never missed single meal. By 5:00 I was in a private room munching on a turkey sandwich.

Charlie, some day when you are old enough to read this without dying of embarrassment or gagging, I hope you know that you were worth every minute. I love you.

Ripple Effects

2008-08-26T14:20:00.004-05:00

Today I made our second grocery store trip of the pay period. Its the trip I detest because we are already out of everything, but can only buy the essentials without busting up our budget. I felt Dave Ramsey perched on my shoulder like Blackbeard's parrot eyeing my every selection. "Cubed cheese?," he chided. "CUBED CHEESE? Buy the 8 oz chunk and hack it up yourself, you lazy over-spender!" He carried on like this the whole time... it was terribly exhausting.

At the register I loaded up our stuff on the conveyor belt, keeping an item or two aside for emergency re-shelving in case I underestimated the total. A friend of mine got in line behind me and we chatted for a minute while we waited, though I was distracted by the increasing total on the register. When the checker finished I went for the scanner with my trusty debit card. Suddenly, I heard a "Wait, Don't run that!" from my friend. I looked up thinking I was mistakenly overcharged or something, but instead she gave the checker her card.

Girls, she bought my groceries. All of them.

"You don't have to do that!" I said, but I could see by her smile that it was a pleasure. I couldn't help it. I started crying right there in line at Super Target. THEN, the cashier started crying. I mean really, who goes to Super Target to be nice? I thanked my friend profusely and got all of our stuff in the car.

I was so stinkin' blessed, I had to call a few friends and tell them. Since I am usually complaining after I go to Super Target, it was a refreshing break for them. I dialed and talked all the way home. Here is the cool part: Everyone I told was inspired to do the same thing for someone else. I am getting chills just writing about it.

So, today, because of the overflow of love in one woman's heart, the ripple effects of blessing are as follows:

Me
My boys
Cashier
Greg
My mom
3 different friends (so far)
Unknown number of people who will soon be similarly blessed by those named above

And of course... you.

That is a huge return for a simple act of generosity. So, what could you do with $93.86?

Peach Fries

2008-08-19T15:10:00.008-05:00

Not exactly Jessica Seinfeld, but who has the time to puree a gallon of steamed zucchini?

And... that's gross.

I sliced up the poor peach into unrecognizable strips. Sorry peach, you were beautiful the way you were, just inedible to a three-year-old. I stuck the strips in a plate compartment along side strawberry yogurt, because "dip" is half the battle.

I demonstrated.

"See! Mommy loves peach fries. Yum-yum!!" I overemphasized the deliciousness like the desperate idiot I have become.

He picked up the peach fry skeptically. He took a bite. He chewed as if it were a poop from the cat box. I smiled encouragingly, though inside I wanted to jam it down his picky little throat.

He winced. He whimpered. He pointed at the sink. I shook my head "no" and hoped he couldn't really muster up a barf.

Then... he swallowed it.

I. Am. Not. Kidding.

Peach fries. The ridiculously improved sequel of the peach.

My Prayers

2008-08-15T16:30:00.001-05:00

God knows I love my boys.

I love my boys with painfully passionate longing.

I love them so much, in fact, that I find it hard to trust them to God. "God", I say, "Here they are, the very marrow from my bones, the very beat of my heart, the very best of me. I lift them up to You to protect and nurture because you can do it better then me." Then I don't lift them up because my hands are white knuckling their small, vulnerable shoulders and I just can't let go.

Someone told me once that when I feel the need to protect my kids, it is good to pray a special prayer for them instead. So, as I tuck them into bed at night I ask God to give them STRENGTH and give them WISDOM. Not to shield them from any harm or obstacle, but for the tools to overcome it.

How do you pray for your most sacred treasure?

Dental Work

2008-08-12T16:01:00.002-05:00

You should try it some time. Its really fun. I got some this morning and I was all like that was awesome right after my dentist made a porthole in my tooth deep enough to catch the men's water polo semi-final in Beijing. I'm just kidding. About it being awesome that is... I think he really did drill to China.

I made a preemptive strike this appointment. Normally I hide the whining, gagging, nauseous flincher that is me in lieu of what I want to be, which is tough. I have had enough dental work over the last few weeks that I suddenly don't care if the entire office staff groans when I whimper through their doors -- in fact, I own it. Yes, sweet dental hygienist I am "the one" who requires 8 pain shots plus several boosters throughout the procedure I smile confidently. Yes, I do want the happy gas, no, that is not too much.

By the time my dentist lowers his archaeological equipment into my mouth I can barely tell you my name. I tap my foot jauntily to the instrumental worship ballads as if it were Abba Gold. The room is spinning a little...no problem... this is probably what it felt like at Woodstock. Yes, Woodstock was a place of infinite love. I like love. I can handle love.

Okay, the room is really spinning and I feel like I'm losing consciousness. I open my eyes, which I didn't know were closed. A bright light that says Pelton and Crane in slanty cursive is two feet from my ever-loving face. Focus, focus. The talking I hear is warbled and unintelligible. Oh no! He's drilling a hole to China in my tooth and he is high on happy gas and lidocaine!

No, I am the only one high I say to me. I am nauseous. It takes all of my energy to not throw up all over the blue bib on my chest. Honey I am still free... Take a chance on me... I hear, but sung to the tune of Jesus Loves Me, elevator style. I tap my foot. I train my eyes on Pelton and Crane and think about the irony of advertising your company name in the face of a suffering, tortured captive. I think about love, Woodstock style. Andi, that is enough you are a pastor's wife.

Okay, all done he says after forever. I blink myself back to reality. I make intelligent small talk with the half of my mouth I can feel. The looks I get tell me there is nothing intelligent about anything I say, so I close my mouth. The half I can move, anyway.

There is no tidy conclusion to this story -- I am still a little loopy people. Maybe I should just give thanks to my dental office for pretending I am really no bother and never sighing or eye rolling to my face. For this I will forever choose your clinic over any other and any time you want to see the Olympic competition live, you are welcome to peek into my mouth. Tooth number eighteen.

Peace.

My Son Is Not a Brat

2008-08-08T09:12:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I find myself wandering around my life muttering this like a self-confidence mantra. Then I wonder, why, oh why is it necessary to tell yourself something is true every six minutes?

Self, don't answer that question.

Our good friends drop by just as Toby is waking up from nap. I hear him in his room grunting hung-over-and-starving-lion noises while we make distracted chatter in the doorway.

"I will get him up for you" the helpful husband-friend offers.

Actually, he is recovering from leprosy and a rare yet highly contagious strand of tuberculosis I should say before the man opens the protective barrier of Toby's door and unleashes the wild beast on the world.

"I don't know what's gotten into him. He never acts like this," I say with no conviction.

And then there are his "injuries". No real damage is required, but noise and flailing are non-negotiable. Even Charlie questions the necessity of this display. He watches Toby with a look that says why are you so weird? But Charlie will bleed all over the train table sans acknowledgement, so he isn't the best judge.

Toby's inspiration:
Sharing
His Brother
The word "no"
Dead batteries
Holes in socks
Thunder
Nap

Its not an exhaustive list. I mean, at the moment he is crying because his toast tore when he picked it up. Seriously.

I don't know how I turned a perfectly sublime infant into a yammering thespian. I'm sure it had to do with coddling, boo-boo kissing, and unflinching devotion. I can't really help myself.

Today I offer an apology to every mother I secretly blamed for her child's behavior. Moms, I exonerate you completely and hope you feel satisfaction knowing that I do, in fact, have an unruly pre-schooler, so your wish came true.

Those of you who have one too, the following is a list of excuses to deflect the angst of society. No one really believes them, but they are good one-liners to toss over your shoulder as you carry the screaming banshee to a private location.

He's running a fever (press cheek to forehead).
He missed lunch (dig in purse for crackers).
He's teething (only works early on)
Its nap time. (check watch regretfully)
He's one.
He's two.
He's three.

I could think up more but someones trains just derailed... any one else have an idea?

Tiredness

2008-08-06T14:19:00.006-05:00

I have it lately. Maybe its my kids. Maybe its an immunization to caffeine from my increasing daily intake.

Maybe its five o' clock runs catching me in the middle of the day as I lay next to Toby looking at books before nap. I cheerfully narrate The Little Engine That Could, squeaking or bellowing each character's voice like good moms do. Then somehow, on our way up the mountain with all of the toys and cookies for the children of the village, Little Engine begins to chant I think I can I think I can until the words melt into a breathy slur.

This afternoon I made it through This Train, Freight Trains, and The Bear Detectives before my head lolled over onto Toby's choo-choo pillowcase muttering about "resting eyes". When Greg came home unannounced I felt like my hand was guiltily digging in the candy jar instead of rescuing the living room from Fisher-Price besiegement.

Staying home with my kids is the best thing I have ever done. But with all the tenderness and satisfaction I feel every time my lips rest on their puffy little cheeks, there is sometimes a haze of monotony draping its weary veil over me and threatening to suck it all back out. Everything I accomplish is methodically undone before I even acknowledge the success.

I fixed the boys lunch today. We stepped on the exasperatingly dull hamster wheel of meal selection. Our wheel only divides into thirds due to the most unadventurous palate God ever knitted in a mother's womb.

It is always the same. Always.

Should we have sandwiches? Nuggets? Fish Sticks? Fish sticks you say?... Great choice. I bake them. I blow on them. I plunk them in the big compartment of the Veggie Tales plate. I squish a sludgy dollop of ketchup into the smaller one. I chop up the tiniest piece of fruit and place it hopefully over Larry's green cucumber nose. Then I cut two fish sticks into a dozen and a half pieces for Charlie's high chair tray.

Today I offered Toby a trip to our prize box for eating the shard of peach.

He said, " I wanna go to the pwize box."
I said, "Eat your peach."
He said, "No."
I said, "Then no prize box."
He said "I wanna go to the pwize box."
I said, "Eat your peach."
He said, "I was talking to my chair." Then he walked around the kitchen saying "I want to go the pwize box" over and over to the patio door, the dog, the fridge.

He did not, however, eat the peach.

I thought about burying my head in the couch pillows. It is peaceful in there if you can ignore the grains of crunched up cheerio. I could catch a few winks while the boys whine and tug at my legs, and laundry goes sour in the washing machine, and chaos blows over our house in a dizzy wind.

I picked up the tiny shard of peach from Toby's abandoned plate and offered it to Charlie. He let me lay it right on his ever-loving tongue. Did he gag? Did he shudder? Did he grab his throat and drop to the floor? No, he did not. He flashed me a wide, toothless grin.

I made another latte.

The Garbage Man

2008-07-22T16:04:00.009-05:00

His truck is a work of art. A gigantic, belching, rank, marvel of lever technology. It has a claw. An enormously frightening, squeaking, crunching claw. I am postively riveted. Fascinated, really.

I love the groaning engine, the hissing brakes, the smack of the bin against the hungry chomping mouth. I love the way it gobbles the trash like a gloriously ravenous beast.

I want to be a trash man. No, no that's not it. I want to be a trash truck. I wander the house all day with my arms cocked to one side, squeezing the life out of anything in my path before dumping it upside down. My bin of Lincoln Logs, my case of racecars, my baby brother... No NOT your brother my mom says quickly.

I hear it. I think I hear it. Hurry! Let's go to the driveway and watch. Get a chair, mom. Put Charlie in the stroller with a bottle. We can sit together and wait for him to come around the corner.

But I can't sit. I want to see. I am giggling and straining my eyes far down the street. Now here it comes. Janie's house. Todd's house. Mom, its here! Look it has our trash! Watch it lifting the blue bin into the air like an angry monster. I cannot contain my excitement!

The trash man waves at me as our trash can falls limply to the curb, happily empty, with its lid flopping open. The trash truck poofs out a smoggy snort from its rear and drives away. I watch it go. I watch until it is just a gentle rumble in the distance.

Trash truck, I love you.

Summer Nights

2008-07-10T22:09:00.006-05:00

I don't even clean up the supper dishes after we eat. One minute, our table is alive with the sounds of our voices: me cajoling Toby to lick a chunk of banana, Toby driving a tractor around his plate obliviously, Greg recounting his day or dreaming aloud about a car he wants to buy, and Charlie interjecting nonsensical babble with hearty ten-month-old conviction. The next minute, our spoons sit dejectedly in their bowls on a lonely puddle of taco soup while we dash outside to enjoy the only survivable portion of a Texas summer day.

I use "survivable" loosely due to the ravenous mosquito squadrons hunting and feasting on the blood of my innocent children. Since one bite has Toby swelling up like a bloated puffer fish it can be a real obstacle. Don't go all crazy commenting on Skin-So-Soft or Spring Fresh Off. Here in Texas, our mosquitoes are like super-powered biologically mutated versions of any insect deterred by a sweet-smelling non-carcinogen. We practically hose our kids off with deet before we send them out in the elements. (Okay not really so please don't actually do this.)

What I love about our summer nights are the subtleties, the inconsequential images that burn into my brain's very matter. Toby riding his trike barefoot down our sidewalk with his sweaty buzz-cut melon head flashing me a dimpled smile. Charlie crawling around the grass on only his hands and feet like a baby Spiderman. The neighborhood kids catching toads and insects while dripping Popsicle juice down the front of their t-shirts. These are the times when I know I am blessed. I sit next to Greg in a cheap folding chair and chat about life and hopes and love while we watch it all unfold under our noses.

When it is too dark to see, we gather up all the chairs, and toys, and Popsicle sticks and herd everyone into the house for a bath. We're sticky and red-cheeked, but peaceful.

If you told me at twenty-one the perfect evening started with a hasty soup dinner and ended in the tub scrubbing grass-stained toes I would have contested you vehemently.

But I what did I know?

Thirty Years

2008-07-03T14:00:00.000-05:00

It sounded like a long time twenty years ago. That was when my laugh lines showed only when I laughed.

Back when I knew, that at thirty, I would be rich and famous. A published author and former Olympic gymnast. Married to a... yuck. Not married. Boys made me barf.

It was a show my mom watched. Thirty Something? It was about old people.

It was older than my science teacher who still wore braces, but younger than my English teacher whose coiffed hair slumped over her forehead in an eerie black swoop. But not that much younger.

My dad's thirtieth inspired "Over The Hill" balloons from my mom. Because he was so old.

Thirty. A very long way into life when you are ten.

Today is my thirtieth birthday. Some of you crossed this bridge already and are now sailing sweetly into mid-life bliss. Others still dangle in the twenties wondering if your thighs will explode with cellulite once you are here. Either way, it is not the kind of number you float over unawares.

I thought it would feel lousy today, saying good-bye to the decade of searching and transition while a fog of predictability looms over my head. Instead, it is liberating. I know where I am going. My hallway once branched into a thousand open doors, each proposing its own adventure. Over the last ten years, I found the one I wanted and walked through.

In my twenties I finished college. I said "yes" to Greg. I got my first real job. I moved to a new state and started a new life. I got pregnant and gave birth to the single greatest boy in the universe. Then I did it again. My twenties were passionate, grievous, joyous, and humbling. I began them as a girl, and ended as a woman.

Thirty isn't what it used to be. Its better.

Looking Ahead...

2008-06-24T09:20:00.005-05:00

I read a wonderful post today that made me think about what I teach my kids. Right now they are mine, but ever so slowly forces are vying for their allegiance. Who will win? An intoxicating culture that revolves around them? A sport that demands everything and promises to fulfill? Or an invisible God that loves them more than I do? I am looking ahead as one mom is looking back. Listen to her heart because it is filled with the wisdom of someone who traveled the road and knows...

The Girl Next Door

2008-06-17T22:01:00.005-05:00

Actually, she lives down the street. I am not sure what manner of charms she imposed on Toby or if it is just her gloriously shiny blond hair, but he has suddenly become the pre-school version of George Clooney, flaunting three whole years of sophistication around the driveway on his swanky red trike.

He held nothing back. Her eight year old self floated gracefully up on a light purple Schwinn. Something inside him said Toby, she is special. Let her know you are a big kid. So after pointing out that her bike was "pwitty", he reached for the all-time greatest pick-up line anyone under five ever attempted...

"Lexi, do you need to poop? Because I know how to poop in the potty."

Bold move, little buddy. Very bold.

My Photo Albums

2008-06-12T07:03:00.006-05:00

They are a half-hearted nod to satisfy the unspoken mandate of childhood:

"Thou shalt preserve every memory no matter how insignificant on a four by six square and if you really love your kids in an expensively adorned the heavier the better album."

I have friends with gargantuan books that took hours upon hours of cutting, designing, and gluing to achieve. Special glue, special designs, and special scissors. When all is said and done, the book ends up being about 95% decor from Hobby Lobby and 5% actual photos.

Knowing my distaste for wasted space, I started smaller. Albums with the slidey-inny picture holders and a margin for writing details. If you set the bar low, it is easier to reach, ya know? I trudged through Toby's first year and managed to organize enough photos to account for every season and formally document the most important "firsts". Ughhh. Charlie on the other hand, is approaching his first birthday and the last pictures I officially preserved for him are of his hospital homecoming -- and my mother-in-law had to send them to me because I didn't take any myself. Double ughhh.

Today I had an epiphany. A mother who spends hours cutting and gluing and baubling up an album is probably doing it because it is an expression of herself that she enjoys sharing with her child. Her creativity and thought are scattered all over the book among the ornate papers and specially chosen snapshots. She is leaving a legacy to them that says you were known and you were loved.

I was thinking about a few of my friends that are further down the road, and the legacy they are leaving their children. The stuff that isn't forced out of them to check the box of societal expectation.

My Jen, and her ever-working mind that answers the cool questions to which most moms slap a stock response. Her children know why spider webs have different patterns and what is inside a robin's egg. They traipse around the neighborhood independently, "sciencing" whatever odd plant or insect they discover.

Jerri and her femininity, always knowing just the kind of things to plant in her daughters' hearts to show them they are lovely.

Keri, whose garage is home to more soccer balls than Brazil, spends her summer evenings kicking in the yard with her three kids and husband, laughing and smearing grass stains on joyfully dirty clothes.

Sundie, whose kids are living life with passionate adventure, climbing to the highest branches in the tree, the places most moms would forbid. Her children will never doubt their strength or her trust in them.

For me, I love thinking about my boys. I love reliving our experiences together in my mind and turning them over like precious stones. I love their presence, their smell, their cheeks, their toes.

Toby and Charlie, I know a picture is worth a thousand words, but I hope you will understand why a thousand words is what I am leaving you. This is my legacy, a piece of my soul, and it is crafted with all of the care and thought that I have.

Tyranny

2008-06-06T09:28:00.005-05:00

It gets a little annoying.

I can't remember exchanging Toby's personality from pleasantly compliant charmer to compulsively opinionated dictator. Yet here I am with snot streaming down my nose while he separates individual sections of toilet paper into satisfactory squares. No, I won't hurry up, he says as his chubby fingers work to remove a rogue fragment that dangles from the perforated edge much like me to my composure.

I am feeding Charlie a bottle while actually holding him (for a change) and wiping my nose on my shirt sleeve to keep from dripping on his forehead. I just need a real tissue you little OCD Hitler I don't say as I blow my allergy ridden congestion into a Thumbelina sized hanky.

I take the boys walking around the block and Toby must push the stroller. And I must back up. Far away. No not there, over there. Yeah, right there in that grassy, scratchy plant. Stand there and don't think about taking the stroller back. Or collecting your dignity and committing to a well-planned insurgence.

Charlie takes to disdain when he and Toby crawl around on the floor together. Toby, who is curiously adept at assigning sinister motive to unmistakable babyishness, freely tattles and orders and "No's" him until Charlie defaults to some passively simple irritation to counterstrike (if that's possible). Mommy, Chah-wie is twying to take my twains away he says when Charlie playfully explores the bright colored wheels of a red and blue engine with his fingers. No Chah-wie! Charlie stares blankly at him and bangs the train on the table casually, just because.

I imagine him later in life sitting in therapy explaining the angry voice in his head shouting orders as he goes about his daily business sipping espresso or driving to work. No Chah-wie! That's MY mocha latte. Give it to me! Move, Chah-wie I get to dwive the car, its MY turn! he hears until he resigns into a dejected stupor.

At the sandbox we pack damp mounds into plastic molds forming a tractor, a bulldozer, a concrete truck. I relish these times, working together, building and talking, even the windy evening air blowing my hair into tangles. He admires our ingenuity fondly and I think to myself, this is the sweet baby I carried and nursed and snuggled and smooched. His doe eyes look up at me with a hint of wild excitement. Now can I cwash them Mommy? he says like any good tyrant, yellow spade already raised above the sandy masterpieces.

At least he asked.

Running: A Relative Term

2008-06-01T14:09:00.006-05:00

Like if you were a slug, a turtle might seem fast.

I am slow and steady too. I get up on running days and double knot my Mizunos with fervor, because how else should I? They don't know that I am no Deena Kastor, blazing a path through the dawn like a whitetail deer. I can lope along the road in the safety of darkness and enjoy the impartiality of it all.

Like if you were a bird, your church would be a hickory tree.

I worship here too. My sanctuary, a hilly stretch of road between grassy undulations of wild Texas fields. I see them when they are still sleepy, eyes blinking open, but not yet stretching and yawning to rise. Their breeze brushes me with onions, and hay, and maybe honeysuckle. Breathing and footfalls are the only song.

Like if you were a tractor, work would be your joy.

Mine is too. My back is wet with sweaty purpose. My legs are swollen with vigorous life. I push them hard, swiftly down the road and they lilt with pleasure. The labor of my breathing is a luxury, my joie de vivre.

When my run is over I stop to walk awhile. The pink dawn bends over the horizon and I drink it like water. This is what I love, my solace.

But it might just be me.

A Disturbance in the Force

2008-05-29T16:14:00.011-05:00

Since I have been writing for 36 straight hours on the new Cross Timbers Women's blog I needed a refreshingly masculine post title. So, thanks to my neighbor and only male blog pal, Todd Mead, I sort of plagiarized his. (Todd, I hope this shameless link to your site will indicate my gratitude.)

I referenced my "disturbance in the force" in a previous post about my struggle to believe God is good in a world that really, really, really isn't.

The day my first son was born, a new something was also born in me. I don't know if every mother feels the way I did, or if I am especially neurotic. I just know that along with a deep, aching love, was an oppressive fear of losing it.

I don't think any mother can properly put into words the way she feels about her children. It is a consuming, furious, intoxicating river plunging straight through her heart. Mine terrified me. My very soul left my body and transposed into a tiny baby boy, naked and vulnerable. I was paralyzed by the thought of anything hurting him.

Almost two years later, my worst nightmare became a reality for a friend of mine. There are things that I wish I didn't even know could happen. Things that take a long time to heal and things for which heaven itself may be the only balm. The pain of seeing a family suffer in the most cruel way was too much for me to bear. I no longer believed God was good or even that He was at all. I sunk my claws deep into the idol of my child and turned my arrogant back on Him.

I've gone through the motions for a couple of years because frankly, I know them well and it is easier than admitting my anger. I made myself comfortable in this place for a long time.

Now I have reached a paradox. It seems the one thing I am hiding from is the one thing I know my boys need more than safety, more than happiness, more than life.

More than me.

I want them to know God. My God. My God that is especially fond of me. Finding my way back takes more trust, more grace, and more faith than I ever wanted to give. Before, my faith was unwittingly based on an expectation of security. Now who knows? Nothing is certain. I have no more answers than I had before. I guess I'm just finally OK with that.

So God, here I am.

Women's Ministry Now Has a Blog!!!

2008-05-28T00:39:00.002-05:00

Hello friends who go to Cross Timbers Church. I would like to unveil the beautiful new blog for the Women's Ministry. Come check it out. There is not much there now, but whoa... just wait. If you don't mind, please link us up. We are really trying to get the word out. Love you all!

Toby Gets Religion

2008-05-25T13:57:00.012-05:00

The flu. A very long, feverful, snot-tacular, exhaustingly monotonous crater in our late winter bliss. It is the malefactor I now blame for my son's relentless presence beside me in Sunday morning service.

It started out as sober precaution. A desire to not relive eight straight days of isolation and nauseating amounts of Thomas and Friends. Just a temporary quarantine from church childcare, where influenza lives a life of germy luxury.

When spring arrived, I happily marched my boys back to the children's check-in area, ready to enjoy service by myself. I passed Charlie over the counter without incident. Toby, however, staged a frantic coup by disintegrating into a noisy puddle of anguish on the lobby floor. I should have scooped up the blubbering mess of him and poured it into the three year old room where it belonged. Instead, I offered him a glazed donut and implored a promise to whisper during the talking parts.

So, here I am in late May walking into the auditorium with my perpetual "pew" buddy flopping along behind me with his mouth crusted up from donut glaze.

I stand him up on a chair slightly behind me, our usual routine, and I join in the chorus of "God of Heaven Come Down" with everyone else. I glance back every now and then to make sure he is not engaging anyone behind us with silly faces or peek-abo like he has in the past. He flashes me an angelic grin as if he knows my motive.

When the communion tray goes by I let him help pass it along, but not before he spends the better part of a minute selecting the biggest cracker square for himself. Then I try to appear casual while my non-baptized, non-prayerful, heathen son defiles the very blood of Christ by jauntily drinking a cup of juice in three relishingly slow sips as if this were nothing more than a refreshment break. (For those of you who were sitting two rows back and throwing me scorn arrows from your offended, legalistic eyeballs just remember that I know it's inappropriate, but I am living by grace so that you can peacefully direct your thoughts to the Savior of the World without a soundtrack from my three year old son whom Jesus LOVES.)

Once communion is over Toby and I sit together, my arm around him, his legs straight out in front and only long enough for his two green flip-flops to hang over the seat edge on his chubby, wiggly feet. Toby do you know that we eat those crackers and drink that juice to think about Jesus? It's hard to hear over the loud music, but he looks at me when I talk and I hope in a tiny way he begins to see a bigger picture of why we come here every Sunday morning.

The band launches into "Nothing but the Blood" in a groovy remix that has everyone in the room on their feet and singing loudly. I sway and bounce to the catchy beat. Suddenly, my son, who has no understanding of abstract concepts like sin or sacrifice or redemption, raises one hand in the air, palm open in a gesture of worship, as if this were the most natural thing in the world to do. I try not to react because I want him to have this moment for himself, but I just can't stop all the heaven inside me from bursting open in colorfully radiant pleasure.

I know he is only a little boy, but someday, he may see things in his heart that he wishes weren't there. He may find himself lonely and afraid. I hope when that day comes, he'll know just what to do.

Another Year Goes By

2008-05-22T13:58:00.009-05:00

Toby's second year of preschool is over. It felt odd because, wasn't it just yesterday that he finished his first year? Charlie was still a little bean in my stomach making me nauseous and swollen and grouchy while I feigned excitement over the rented water slide that Toby WOULD NOT go down.

This year was the same, except Charlie was strapped into a baby carrier with a bottle propped in his mouth and Toby didn't require a swim diaper under his suit anymore.

A suit, I might add that was wholly unnecessary since Toby melts if any water touches his clothes or head. A sweet girl from his class splashed him playfully with a cup full so he serenaded the 50 foot periphery with heaving sobs complete with those little pauses of breath-holding as if we are all going to jump out of our lawn chairs and rescue his poor little wet self. Oh Toby, you got wet?? With that highly corrosive, painfully burning irritant that God covered 80% of the earth's surface with? Let me call a HazMat team to come and save you. Or how about I WIPE you off with a TOWEL...

I wasn't in the cajoling mood, so we opted out of the scary dragon bounce house station and killed time in the empty sanctuary which is entirely more amusing to him anyway. Playing on the stage is a fundamental right for any church staff kid. He ran up the steps to the stage and back down and all around the instruments and baptistery and sound booth. It was so funny watching his small body compete with the enormity of the huge auditorium. Even though his second year of preschool has come to an end, he still looked sufficiently babyish when his legs pitter-pattered across the wooden set like Fred Flintstone.

Tonight I chased him around the living room to steal some kisses and my hands found a tummy that was not babyish at all. It was thick and solid like a bag of sand. I grabbed his leg and it too had sprouted a chunk of muscle.

I pinned him down on his back and tickled him. You are not mommy's baby anymore Toby I said too sadly. His eyes twinkled with a glimpse of his future self, wise and intuitive. A lil' bit I am still mommy.

Toby, I am happy that you are growing into a big boy and that you can jump off the couch and make your brother laugh and even eat an apple without barfing. But it makes me smile to know that in a small way, you will miss being my baby too.

Dear Blog: I Miss You

2008-05-19T08:00:00.007-05:00

I know it looks like I have abandoned my blog since I have not written anything in a week, but I can assure you that my heart is here if not my time. My life is looping around me, swirling and turning, and I feel like I can only catch my breath in brief moments and just enough to keep from turning a deep shade of blue.

It won't be long and I will not be sharing a computer. I cannot wait to write my posts during normal, wakeful hours instead of squeezing them in at midnight or five in the morning when Greg's computer is available. Until then, I will try to quell the sense of guilt and longing I feel every time I think of Tales From the Running Mama whimpering in cyberspace like a neglected puppy.

Since I don't have long I will have to save most of my thoughts for another day (soon I hope). I just want to bring up an interesting topic that seems to be jumping out at me from every turned corner. Its a little book called The Shack and though I have not finished it, I think it might be one of the most important works I have ever stayed up too late devouring.

This book covers the one topic that conceals my God in a terrifying shroud of painful mystery. In fact, after an experience two years ago with a dear friend, I might upgrade mystery to bitterness. How can God be present in a world full of horrible suffering, sin, and hate? If this question could settle in my mind, even on a tiny thread of truth, it would give me peace in my deepest places, the ones I push back during play group, or while I am vacuuming the floor, but that crawl into view in the quiet of night and haunt me like angry monsters.

My faith so far has been shaky at times, waffling at times, forgotten at times, and taken various shifts and turns down my long road. However, until recently, I never doubted God's goodness, power, or love for me. I suppose it is inevitable for any Christian to grapple through murk and mire and either drown in it or emerge closer to Him than before. Right now God still seems elusive to me: in one moment a refuge, in another, the source of my indignant scorn.

During my first few weeks on this blog I noticed a trend that bothered me: His noticeable absence in any of my writing. I cover my children like beautiful, cherub-like idols, the very embodiment of love that feels safe to me. But bringing Him up feels like cheapening the outpourings of my heart with feigned contrivances. How I got here, a girl who would have given her very life for Him a few years back and longed for heaven like water in a desert, I'll never fully understand. I guess it is easier to live with abandon when you have nothing to lose.

I don't want to sound hopeless. He is chasing me, this I am sure. I am walking the road, though limping and questioning and I believe that He is strong enough to tackle my doubt when I am not. I still love Him enough to stay the course and trust Him enough to be honest.

If I have learned anything about Him in nearly twenty years of relationship, I think that will be enough to pull me through.

Absurdity

2008-05-12T23:30:00.001-05:00

Toby wakes up and cries because he doesn't feel like going pee pee in the potty right now he just wants to watch his train video in his pajamas and drink chocolate milk. Or maybe he wants to see what things he can hold in the mouth of the toy plastic pliers that he is waving around the bed like a villainous claw. Look mommy! James! They can hold James like this! And he grips James the red engine while making a squinchy, growly face. James falls loose and Toby cries again and I want to run out of the room to my bed and throw my covers over my face for the rest of the day.

But I don't. OK I say, you can stay in your pajamas, but I regret this when we take the pajamas off to pee pee and put them back on again in our usual slow way that makes my bones cringe in frustration and produces no real accomplishment for our day.

I need THAT mommy, get me THAT. He runs to his closet and points at his blue piggy bank on the top shelf. I clangily hand it to him before pulling Charlie from his room and plopping him in the bouncy seat with a bottle propped on a wad of fluffy blankets. Toby follows me closely, his horde of coins clanking with each step like the ghost of Christmas past dragging a trail of chains.

In my bathroom I try to get ready. I let him loll around on the floor while I blow dry my hair and he finds all the treasures a mom's bathroom proposes. An eyelash curler, a contact case lid, my wedding ring. Oops, you can't play with that, I say as he tries to stuff it into the slot of the piggy bank. Whyyyyy? He whines dolefully while playing with it anyway.

Don't you know that it is MOTHER'S DAY and Charlie's Baby Dedication Day and I just want to look NICE at church with my hair NOT in a ponytail for ONCE. And even though it may prevent anyone there from recognizing me altogether, I just don't care today, because it is MOTHER'S DAY and I want to enjoy living it, because I am your MOTHER.

He blinks at me with total incomprehension and tries to hold the contact case lid in the clamp of the eyelash curler. Charlie rallies and drops his bottle over the edge of the bouncy seat with a yelp of glee. I feel like I am somehow missing the magic of this day, and that probably all other mothers are lying in bed with a tray of pancakes festively served beside a long stem rose and steaming cup of coffee, opening construction paper cards with I Heart Mom scrawled in red crayon. Mothers whose husbands are not pastors and working on Sunday.

We make it unceremoniously to service and meet Greg just in time to march Charlie up on stage along with nine other babies for his important spiritual debut. We smile when they call his name and we kiss him and squeeze him and promise in front of the congregation to raise him to know the Lord. I look at his little bean of a body in my arms and hope that I really can do it. That my pouting over Mother's Day and my impatience with his brother and my just imperfectness will not be all he sees in me. I hope he sees something deeper: the thousand foot well that is my heart exploding with wild hope for him.

We sing together, our little family lined up in a row, and I feel a surge of peace when I realize I would never be enough. That even though I love my boys with an aching, relentless energy, I am NOT everything they need. And if I was lovelier and every note sung from my mouth was rich and pure like buttery syrup dripping from a spoon I still couldn't capture the beauty of God for them. And if I was stronger, and when Toby sat by me in church, I didn't guiltily let him fondle the communion crackers and sneak a juice cup just to keep him quiet, I still wouldn't convey the strength of God for them.

I am just their mother, someone to point the way not be the way.

Suddenly, I don't think myself capable of any more joy than I am bursting with today, singing "Beautiful One" loud and free in my own croaking boisterousness with my boys and Greg at my side on my Mother's Day. This morning, if I wrote about happiness it would have been pancakes and compliance, daintily ideal and sickly perfect. In this moment, happiness is feeble and weak and wonderfully satisfying.

God help me trust them to You, my most sacred treasures.

OK, OK... Its a Chain Quiz, So Shoot Me

2008-05-09T17:39:00.007-05:00

April, this is for you...

Seven Random Facts About Me:

1) I can eat a half gallon of pistachio almond ice cream in one setting.

2) I can stand on my hands for an unusually long time.

3) I HATE Chuck E. Cheese.

4) I read all seven Harry Potter books the first three weeks of Charlie's life. (What else are you gonna do when you're nursing, ya know?)

5) I barely ever clean our shower.

6) I went number 2 in a field during a long run one day. (It was an EMERGENCY.)

7) I was voted "Most Likely to Succeed" by my Senior class. **

**Fake Fact. I couldn't think of anything else.

I tag Jen Stokes and Jamie Mullins.

Toby's Fever: The Epic Trilogy

2008-05-08T14:37:00.005-05:00

He did not exactly grab his camera for our mini-vaca to the pediatrician yesterday morning. I was excited however, to pass the burden of his diagnosis on to someone more qualified in the actual field of medicine instead of relying solely on a love affair with WebMD.

Apparently his poor ear developed a gross infection and popped open like a big zit somewhere between Monday's appointment and Wednesday morning. I don't know why this news evoked a giddy excitement in me (soberly concealed under grave concern, of course), but I think it was just the knowing.

He has medicine, a collection of live train videos, and enough whine left in him to ride out the entire healing process to the bitter end. Life is good.

"Cured" Is the Opposite of What Toby Is

2008-05-06T22:35:00.004-05:00

Sorry to refute the conclusion of my previous post, but apparently a child can leap off the couch to scold his brother, bounce from the big chair to the Ottoman for an hour, eat a piece of pizza, and still not be CURED of the mysterious virus lurking around his poor, confused, irritable little self.

Unless "cured" means boiling hot lump of woeful wretchedness sweating profusely under the watchful eye of a very uneasy and restless mother. In which case, he is cured.

Due to a fever that soared above 104 this evening, Toby and I will be making a cameo at the doctor's in the morning, just for old time's sake. Hopefully we will help him get better and avoid contracting anything new from the germ crusted wooden bead table that my own son snotted all over last time we stopped in for a play-date.

Don't worry, I'm packing the anti-bacterial hand gel.

Sick Days

2008-05-05T21:50:00.000-05:00

Every time we travel Toby comes down with a sudden illness and spikes a high fever just when I have no Motrin, thermometer, or sanity. So it was no surprise this Saturday, when visiting my Dad in Oklahoma, that he woke up crying and wet, with only enough energy to barf lethargically into the toilet before slumping into my arms like a steaming heap of misery.

I scrambled to create our usual sick day comfort rituals though not at home: repeating episodes of Thomas and Friends (thank you On Demand), his stuffed Dalmatian Samson tucked under one arm, and his plaid blanket covering only his legs though a barf towel covered his entire body (and the couch) "just in case".

After "in case" happened infinity plus times I was out of towels and patience. Panic set in. If he has a stomach virus how am I going to make a three hour drive back? What if I get it? Will we be the loathed house guests yacking in the bathroom while the disgusted hosts wait in horror for the moment they can hand us our germ-infested luggage and burn the sheets we slept in?

Toby and I shared the couch for a very, very long night of fever, Thomas, and insomnia. I raked my fingers through his sweaty head and hoped his suffering would end quickly. I held a towel to his mouth so he didn't have to miss the freight cars crashing over a bridge while he puked. I felt his head. I checked the clock a thousand times. I got out my Bible and tried to read it over him, but I knew I was really reading it over me. I wondered how many moms were awake with sick kids, and how many moms were awake with really sick kids. I felt his head again.

The sun eventually came up, like it always does, and Toby's stomach settled down long enough to eat a piece of toast and drink some Gatorade. Though my gracious father insisted we could stay, I dosed him up on Motrin, threw our stuff in the car and drove home. He slept the whole way.

This afternoon when his fever was still raging my "wait and see" philosophy was usurped by my hypochondria and I rushed him off to the doctor. We learned Toby has a virus, and that waiting and seeing is never a bad idea.

An hour after our return Toby popped off the couch and yelled at baby Charlie for playing with his trains.

He's cured.

Overseas Plane Ticket Wanted

2008-05-01T14:18:00.015-05:00

Can someone please invite me on a long trip to France until Toby turns four?

I can't spend another day skipping smilingly around the house like an imbecilic Pollyanna gently coaxing him to perform the simplest task.

If I don't help him put on his Thomas underwear he gets frustrated. If I do help him he unleashes a rabid burst of independence and takes them back off so he can do it over himself. Then I have to stand in silence while he thrashes around his bedroom yanking and tugging away while my hair grows down to the floor and I have to fight the urge to grab the waistband and jerk it right up to his eyeballs.

But I do something worse. I open my mouth and yell TOBY, just LET ME DO IT. And I can tell by the crestfallen look in his eyes that I have crushed him in the most shameful way because nothing would mean more than showing me that he is capable. That he can put on his clothes or make chocolate milk or push baby Charlie's stroller through the parking lot just like a big boy. Just like I do.

I look at his little buzzed head, face contorted in a wash of unabashed defeat, underwear elastic printed with the silhouette of a train slightly disheveled and twisted around his tummy. Look Toby, you DID it. Mommy didn't even have to help. You did it all by YOURSELF. I hug him and grab his stout shoulders in my hands. I am so proud of you buddy. What a big boy you are.

He looks at me and sniffs while wiping away sweaty tears. I hope he forgives me. I hope I show him how strong he is and how smart he is and how big he is.

That I am so proud of him sometimes that it hurts.

Maybe France can wait one more day.

Friends

2008-04-28T23:35:00.008-05:00

Welp, my site got an overhaul. Thanks to the talent of a borrowed Mac Notebook you will now spend the first moment on "Tales from the Running Mama" hoping I remembered to Lysol the high chair tray. At least its a diversion from counting the spider veins on my thigh which is what I spend the first moment doing.

I have a confession. I do not have a computer. Well, I have a "computer" that my mother-in-law gave me two years ago that may be the actual first laptop man ever carved from stone. I think King Tut was clutching his gnarly mummified arms around it when they dug him out of his rickety old tomb. So if all you want to do is play solitaire or move the tiny hourglass cursor around the screen all afternoon while you are waiting for the Internet to connect, then I have the perfect machine for you.

Go ahead and feel sorry for me. I do. I pout every time I sit next to my husband at the kitchen table, tapping my foot, waiting for him to finish checking his e-mail and updating his Facebook status so I can use his own personal laptop that he has to himself all day. That is what I do just before I type up my post that I pre-wrote ON PAPER. In case you were wondering, paper is this white stuff that ancient peoples used to scrawl runes on before there was Microsoft Word.

Every cloud has its silver lining, and mine is this: Sunday afternoon I spent an hour and a half taking "Mac" pictures of my stupid running shoes in front of any baby paraphernalia available while laughing my face off with my best friend. Jen, thank you for everything you have ever done for me. I love sharing my life with you because you make it funnier, sweeter, and deeper than it would ever be alone.

Good Stuff for Week of 4/27...

2008-04-27T11:08:00.001-05:00

I thought it would be nice to share some of the best "mom" posts I found this week during my ample time creeping the blogosphere. Enjoy one of these if you...

Need Validation and Inspiration

Have a Strong-Willed Child

Are a Single Mom

Are a Pastor's Wife

Love Your Slow-Cooker

The Demotion of Man's Best Friend

2008-04-26T23:10:00.001-05:00

Have you noticed how quickly a dog moves from "beloved family member" to "faintly barking from the crate in the garage" as soon as a new baby is brought home? I used to love my dog. I used to remember to feed her too. Now I am only aware of her presence when I vacuum the hair accumulating on the baseboards.

Actually, I do value her in a practical sense. Like when Toby knocks an entire plate full of spaghetti on the kitchen tile and I can sit back and watch it get cleaned up for me. Then I love having her around.

What I can't stand: seeing her lick the spoon Charlie is dangling over the edge of the high chair. I know dog's mouths are supposedly cleaner than ours, but since our mouths are only slightly less germy than raw sewage it's not really anything for dogs to brag about. (Disclaimer: Any scientifically knowledgeable people... Jen Stokes...reading this, I totally made up my germ analogy and have absolutely no idea how our mouths compare to raw sewage.)

But seriously, here is a list of things I have seen my dog eat: cat poop, throw-up, dirty diapers, dead frogs, trash, raw meat packaging, and blobs of spilled ??? from the sidewalk. And it wasn't like she had to be coerced. She would knock a blind grandma into the road for a lick of the spilled Ensure she was standing beside.

However, there is one compelling reason to keep my dog in the family forever:

So anyone who is about to call the ASPCA on me, just set the Blackberry down. He likes her a lot. And you know I would do anything for him.

Concentration

2008-04-24T15:45:00.010-05:00

Sometimes I just want to have a moment to myself to think. A moment where Alec Baldwin is not reading the narrative to Thomas and Friends on t.v. in competition with the dog's incessant barking at the patio door. A moment where baby Charlie is not crawling around my lap like a confused gerbil, slinging snot all over my pant leg and clawing at my face until my skin is just sore. Where Toby is not squalling on the tile in the kitchen in the throes of apocalyptic catastrophe because I forgot to let him open the yogurt container himself. I just want to grab a chai and sip on it slowly, listen to some music sung by a non-cartoon, non-Disney, human and pass a few minutes in a lazy stupor, responsible for no one's immediate welfare.

I try to manufacture this pleasure in the afternoon when both boys magically fall asleep at the same time and leave me a bit of glorious silence, scarce as a bald eagle's feather. Instead I end up flitting around the house in a frantic rage, folding infinity loads of laundry and slathering Italian dressing on the chicken breasts for dinner because it must be done now or our very lives will tumble down around us into a pile of stinking, rotten chaos.

When I was sixteen I remember driving down the highway in my best friend's Blazer, listening to the Reality Bites soundtrack blare "Stay" from the stereo, toes pressed up against the front windshield, windows open, warm summer air swirling my hair into tangled pieces of rope. We had nothing to stop us from driving to the next state if we wanted. It was a sort of wild bliss that only teenagers can embrace. How did it fade so far into distant memory that I have to pull it out from the brittle, time-soaked archives of my life?

It's early evening and Greg has just come home from work to weed eat the back yard and scoop up the piles of dog poop we can no longer justify as fertilizer. Toby is sifting around in his sandbox, his sweaty red-cheeked face covered in gritty, brown splotches. He squishes a stuck-together clump in his fist and watches the grains fall through his fingers. Baby Charlie chatters away on the baby monitor patiently waiting for me to lift his little bean of a body out of the crib.

Maybe we will eat out on the patio tonight. Maybe we will have corn on the cob and ice cold pop and sit around laughing at Toby ask for his own "gwass of Coke" through a mouthful of chicken nuggets. Maybe we won't notice our dog licking the mashed carrots from Charlie's messy face because we are too busy talking to each other.

Maybe I will stare at the faces of my men with a frenzied passion that only a grown woman can feel.

Maybe I will discover a more profound satisfaction than I ever knew possible.

Brevity

2008-04-22T20:54:00.005-05:00

Tonight's prayer was unusually succinct.

"Dear God... Amen."

You're three and you already grasp omniscience.

Bothered

2008-04-21T07:29:00.003-05:00

Has anyone been watching the coverage of the polygamists in Texas? I read this on MSN, and I am more than a little bothered. I am sad if these kids were being abused. I am also sad that mothers and children are forced to separate. I hope they prove or disprove something soon so it can be resolved. I can't stand the thought of tons of kids (lots of LITTLE kids)having to go through this without the comfort of their mothers. But if they were being harmed...

It is hard to find truth amid such blatant weirdness.

So...
Do you think that most or all of the children were in danger with their mothers (some agreed to leave the compound just to get their kids back, but were denied)? Do you think removing the kids indefinitely until it is all sorted out is the best option to prevent further abuse or risk of flight?

Manners

2008-04-20T22:24:00.006-05:00

He has good ones. Really, really, really good ones.

Me: Toby, you shared your train with baby Charlie! Good Job!

Toby: Thank you.

Me: Your welcome.

Toby: Your welcome too.

Me: Uh...Thanks?

Toby: Your welcome.

Awkward.

The Hiding Place

2008-04-16T18:47:00.013-05:00

When I was little I would crawl into my mom’s arms and press my face to her chest to feel the safety of her heartbeat. My legs would dangle over her lap as she chatted with a friend on the phone or sat at the kitchen table recounting the day to my dad over a cup of hot tea, her voice penetrating through my cheek into my skull. It was muffled and warbled through her skin, but so familiar, like it must have been when I was a miniature version of myself, stuffed inside her cozy womb, amidst a whooshing and bubbling world of darkness.

I loved her smell. Not the perfume, the harsh and intoxicating fragrances that always changed with her moods, but the subtle scent, like the one on her pillowcase in the morning. I breathed it in steadily while her hand unconsciously found its way to my hair and raked through the baby fine strands around my forehead sending tingles down my neck. Her lap was the best place in the world.

This afternoon when Charlie woke up from nap crying hysterically, I pulled him in tight and tucked his soft plum of a head under my chin. I shushed and hummed and bounced him around the living room. His squalls turned into sniffs that turned into silence as the last crocodile tear rolled down his cheek in lonely defeat. I kept him close anyway, relishing the warmth of his languorous body melded into mine. I let my fingers trace a path through his downy hair.

Will he remember this feeling? Way inside the inner chambers of his mind where all of the earliest memories are stored as feeble impressions, unreachable save for the day a smell or taste plunges in from the outside world and coaxes them forth as hazy bits of a dream? I hope so.

When I kiss the top of his head a smile emerges at the corners of his mouth. His eyes catch mine and for an instant they twinkle with the profundity of an old sage. I love you.

Member When?

2008-04-12T21:29:00.009-05:00

Having a baby in the house has awakened Toby to a new dimension. It is called the past and it has proven itself a tricky little concept to squeeze a brain around.

He asks:

Member when I was in dat bed mommy? (Points at crib)

Member when I yoos to eat in dere mommy? (Points at high chair)

Member when I put my poop in my diaper? (Yes, I say with emphasis, since it was like two months ago)

Member when I was in a box at Big Toby's house? (He says after visiting our friends new puppies, to which I quickly say no, you were not ever in a box)

The past is complex.

No Comment

2008-04-11T20:53:00.005-05:00

My Nose Are Runnin'

2008-04-06T22:48:00.012-05:00

So... we have snot. Drippy, watery, streaming, spoil-my-enjoyment-of-the-spring-weather booger juice. "You do not seem ill," you may surmise. And you would be quite correct. However, when you are three, even the slightest of ailments cannot be borne alone, and I have been invited along as the guest of honor to pull his highness's Kleenex's from the box and gently squeeze the mucous from his crusty little nose. A privilege that begins with a not-so-sweet directive ("MOMMMMMMMYYYY!! MY NOSE ARE RUNNIN'!!") and ends abruptly absent a "thank you". It appears the prince feels snot is "yucky" and is therefore unwilling to touch any, albeit his own.

I graciously accept this esteemed position, and as evidence of my gratitude I wish to thank the following:

Thank you pollen for blowing yourself around our yard and up Toby's nostrils so that he and I can enjoy the subsequent sneeze-a-thon.

Thank you Kleenex for folding your product so efficiently into the box that my son's chubby little fingers are unable to remove you without my assistance.

Thank you baby Charlie for your superior ability in outshining your brother and removing more than half of the Kleenex's without struggle before rendering them useless with your ample drool.

And last, I would like to thank antihistamines everywhere for never making Toby the least bit drowsy but giving him the extra umph he needs to stalk me from room to room all day.

At the risk of sounding unappreciative, is it unreasonable to expect even a teensy weensy bit, just a smidge really, of autonomy from a boy who can touch a warty frog, stand barefoot on a public restroom floor, and eat green beans dipped in ketchup and ranch dressing mixed together without even the slightest hesitation? Am I asking too much??

The Funderstorm

2008-04-04T13:45:00.028-05:00

I was given the book called Raising Children Without Going Insane by Australian Author Jane Evans. I thought, how apropos and I read and read until I was so tired that my mental narrator began to sound like The Crocodile Hunter which was really irritating. So I put the book down and went to sleep for the night.

But not the whole night... A storm blew in at four in the morning and regaled the entire house with unfortunately loud thunder and bright flashes of lightning. I wanted to roll over and stay asleep, I really, really did. I tried to ignore the panging in my stomach prompting me to go check on Toby who was probably frozen with fear under his covers gripping tightly to his stuffed dalmatian, Samson. I willed that he was sleeping soundly through it, snug as a bug, blissfully unaware of anything unusual. But I knew I was wrong.

Toby has an anomalous list of fears that ebbs and flows in intensity: bounce houses, large inflatable Christmas decorations for the lawn, getting his head wet (hence the buzz cut...), loud noises, and socks with holes. The other night he gave a sidelong glance at the yellow fire hat perched above a matching raincoat on his bedroom wall that I hung to accent his firetruck quilt. Mommy, I don't like that Toby, he whispered as if it were not an ornamental novelty but an evil alter ego, he no have eyes. A good mother would have removed it at once and explained that it didn't have eyes because it was just a hat and jacket, nothing more. But I was too busy marvelling over my son's imagination to be a good mother. If there is one neuroses this mom can appreciate its an over-active imagination. I spent my childhood dreaming of scrubbing the floors in Miss Hannigan's orphanage like Annie or riding on the back of giant flying dog with Atreyu in The Neverending Story. I would lay awake at night and terrify myself with all of the creepy things that might be lurking behind my own closet door. If I can't offer a cure, I can certainly empathize.

Most often, Toby's creative enterprises compel me to play along because he is just so sincere. I spent a month in the fall sweeping invisible "dinosaurs" from his path while commanding "Shoo! Go away" because it delighted him so much that I saw them too. To him dinosaurs, the very embodiment of evil, are not huge prehistoric lizards (and extinct), but knee-high and mechanically roaring like the toy T-Rex in his friend Kyle's bedroom. Therefore, in September, when I became the lone member of the Dino Extermination Squad, it didn't require any extravagant heroics on my part. And it was easier than wasting logical reasoning on someone who still maintains that Sodor is an actual geographic location.

But this night is different. Standing up to an invisible pest while already awake is not as self -sacrificial as rousting from a deep sleep in the wee hours of the morning to invite a wiggly, chatty three-year-old to share your bed. I slump over the edge of the mattress and drag myself to the bedroom door, but I am stopped by a whisper from Greg.

"Are you going to check on Toby?" he asks.

"Yes, I don't want him to be afraid," I say nobly.

"Well, neither did I so I went and got him already." And in the dark I spy a small quiet body snuggled safely in the crook of his daddy's arm.

"Mommy, the funderstorm made me skeerd," He says in a hushed, sweet voice. I crawl back in beside him and kiss his fuzzy, buzz-cut head. As I drift off to sleep I think of chasing dinosaurs and magical lands and the wonder of crashing thunder outside your bedroom window. I pull him closer to me. Sweet dreams little buddy.

The Frenetic Blog-Hopping Crazy Stalker Has Arrived

2008-03-29T23:20:00.002-05:00

It is almost midnight and I have been reading random blogs for over two hours. I started off just scanning the blogs of people I know, then the ones I kind of know or thought I might know if I saw their picture, but it turned psychotic when I began a furious rampage down the right side of each site accessing the "Blogs We Love" one by one, narcissistically wondering if the posts were funnier than mine or if their kids were cuter, etc. Then, I just went ahead and commented on a few as if anyone wants to actually know there are people out there they have not seen in years or have never even met reading all about their son's hernia surgery. (Summer, if you read this your commentary on the screaming epidural-less child serenading the third floor was just too dang funny to ignore.)

So would someone please answer me this... Is it creepy to read blogs of people you don't know? I mean, not like famous people who expect a lusting curiosity, but just everyday families who want to keep grandma updated on the soccer games and birthday parties? I sort of felt like a virtual snoop lurking around some body's living room without asking, while I shamelessly commented to myself about all of their private family events. Like, "oooh... I see you made deviled eggs for Easter lunch how delicious, the children look lovely in their new dresses..." and "Oh my goodness, four baskets in one game, you don't say, you must be so proud"...and "yes, that was a wonderful sounding trip to the lake house, I wish I could have come along." Oh wait, no I don't because you live in Seattle and I have never even heard of you or that stupid lake and all of the sudden I am feeling like a total weirdo. Which brings me to my senses and has me calling myself to a short blogging moratorium.

Not really. I'm still here. But so are you. Get out of here sicko.

Ha, no I'm kidding you can stay. I just want to add that some people's blogs are incredibly boring. But of course no one will be traversing their cyberspace unawares because even grandma has to feign interest. If I was that poor grandma, I would rise up in angst and demand a juicy tidbit or two to accompany the blah blah (picture of junior at summer camp) blah blah blah (family snapshot including dog) blah blah.

Also, I would like to point out how dirty it looked on Facebook when I changed my status from "going to see Thomas" to "had fun riding Thomas with boys". It took me approximately one nanosecond to realize the fun Matt Ferguson would have quoting me to the Youth staff at church in the morning so I revised it. But confound Facebook for documenting every single edit on the wall so there it is for all to see anyway. I just want to emphasize the train, Matt. Thomas the Train.

Well, I hadn't really planned on posting for a couple of days so... enjoy.

"My Eyes Was Broken" and Other Insights

2008-03-27T07:49:00.003-05:00

Over the last year Toby has traveled from the land of shrieking tantrum throwing and erratic hand gesturing to the peaceful bliss of real language. (Okay, shrieking tantrums are still a part of life, but at least now we can ask him why) Although his vocabulary is extensive enough to provide hours of what Aunt Savanah calls, "an explosion of train information," there is a gaping chasm keeping me from accessing the things I actually want to know. While he is sublimely compliant when talking about items that interest him, any sort of perceived interrogation from me on other matters will have him clamming up like a government spy. Not to mention that a recount gleaned from him in this way is more than likely, dare I say... inaccurate. Getting factual particulars from a three year old is like retrieving the grains of wheat from a fully cooked lasagna noodle. After a long chain of arduous chemical breakdown processes you must piece together the tiny bits of matter so chemically altered they are practically irrelevant.

Of all the communication vortexes, preschool is the cat's pajamas. Because I am not present, I have no system of checks and balances to fill in the missing plot elements. I might be told that "so-and-so went to time-out for playing in his poop" or "someone-or-other hit me in chapel" but be left hanging for the logical circumstances surrounding these allegations. Some days a take-home report appears in his folder to guide me, a daily inventory that tallies the number of poopoos and peepees and how much of the PB&J was left in the sandwich bag after lunch. The focus of study for the morning appears under the heading "Ask Your Child About..." followed by an activity or nursery rhyme that was of particular importance (which curiously ends up being the one thing for which he has no recollection). The teachers are wonderfully forthcoming if I feel the need to pry (an act that requires my lingering in the doorway of the classroom, bouncing a very heavy seven month old on my hip and making idle chatter until every last whining and groggy child is collected by a parent), but even they are often baffled. Due to his array of imaginary friends and ability to recall insignificant events (e.g. seeing a dead fish floating in an aquarium at Wal-Mart, the engine that pulled the North Pole Express was named "Puffy"), I must determine what is fact and what most likely occurred on an episode of Calliou two weeks ago.

A post preschool conversation might happen like this:

Me: So how was your day at school? (My eyes burrow right into his buzzed little head hoping to read his mind and forgo the formalities.)

Toby: "My eyes was open at skewel. They was bro-ten."

Me: "Really. Was that during rest time?"

Toby: "Yes. Miss Julie say 'Toby, be steel.' Sometimes I not need be steel. Sometimes I need be a lil' bit widdly at skewel."

By utilizing the decoder ring from the bottom of the Frosted Flakes box I can now simply substitute all "t's" for "g's" or "k's"...or leave them as "t's" if it makes more sense. It is really a brilliant demonstration of algebra being useful in an everyday situation. Maybe it could be added as a story problem on the SAT.

As his linguistic skills evolve, I must also keep up with the improper usage of new words. Upon hearing an event happened "today" I know he clearly means today or yesterday or last year or next Easter, all of which are virtually interchangeable distinctions. For nearly six months he began every single sentence with either "probably" (sounding like prolly) or "maybe". It was the kind of habit that I found irritating until one day he woke up from nap bluntly asking for chocolate milk and I sort of missed the cuteness of those silly adverbs.

Toby's language is a sort of mysteriously morphing blob that is slowly shaping itself into something recognizable. But whose complaining? My son, with two of the darkest, deepest wonders of the whole earth, which are his delicious little eyes, surrounded by eyelashes as long as a peacock's feathers, looks up at me to ask out of nowhere, "Member dat mommy? Member when we wode on Puffy last night?" I do remember, Toby, I do. And even though I know that it was months ago, I get what you're saying because you had so much fun and you just wanted to tell me about it again. I'm listening.

An Unmemorable Day to Remember

2008-03-24T22:20:00.004-05:00

The crock pot is still out on the counter from last night's roast, rinsed but not scrubbed. The kitchen rag has fallen into the sink and collected bits of uneaten food from our dirty plates. The dog is on the back porch barking to be let in the house. Folded clothes wait to be put away. They all beckon me, but I do not answer. I am laying on the living room carpet, still in my flannel pajamas, my elbows nestled deep into the plush fibers. My boys are playing trains. (Actually, Toby is playing trains, but Charlie is chewing on trains...) The sun is shining just right through the glass to pour over the whole floor and speckle the air with tiny bits of dust like snow. Toby watches a fleck drift his way and tries to capture it in his hand. He is still young enough that his knuckles are dimpled and his fingernails are slightly overgrown and dingy. I watch his face pause in curiosity as he uncurls his fist to reveal an empty palm. He gives it two more tries before conceding and returning to his train table. Charlie follows him with his half crawl, half scooch, a look of yearning on his face for stronger legs to jump and bounce like his big brother.

Has it already been three years since Toby himself was bound to his tummy, swimming around on the floor like a baby turtle? I realize that pages are flying off the calendar faster than I can catch. I want to pause time in this place, when I am an acceptable substitute for a jungle gym, and dinosaurs are the scariest thing imaginable, and wooden trains have faces and feelings and are real. Childhood is magical and consuming when you are in it, but infinitely more so as a mother.

Toby rearranges his tracks to create a trap for Gordon and the Express Coaches and hisses crashing noises as the cars tumble over. Charlie clambers up the side of a wooden bin nearby, his heavy breathing revealing the intensity of this feat, hoping for a better view of the action. "Mommy," Toby looks reflective, "I don't like apples." He pauses and spins the wheel of his train with his finger, "But I like juice boxes." Because I am his mom I know what he means and it makes sense. Apples are crunchy and fleshy and surrounded by thick peel that might be hiding something even worse. Juice boxes are made with apples, but only the sugary and smooth parts. And they have a bendy straw. I answer him with the best mom-lesson I can devise. "Juice boxes are good, buddy, but maybe you can like apples too someday."

I wish I could save this kind of morning: the dimply fingers, the timbre of their voices, the downiness of their hair -- the very essence of their smallness. I imagine snapping it safely into a Tupperware bin and throwing it in the attic with my old yearbooks to preserve for forever, but I know that I can't. And besides, to visit this place again after the dimples pull taught, and the fingernails are neat and trimmed because they can do it themselves, and hair is gelled and prickly, and their eyes no longer worship me, but are independent of me, that would break my heart into a million pieces.

So instead, this morning, I let the dishes get dusty where they lay. I turn away from the dog hair accumulating on the baseboards. I am busy. My kids need me to teach them how to somersault, and eat broccoli, and aim at the cheerio in the toilet bowl. The important stuff. Never before have I pursued a goal so foreign to my heart's true desire. All of my effort will be pointing to the day I dread most. A day when they put on big shoes that don't flash blinky lights with each step, not fastened with Velcro, but real laces, and walk out my door for the last time.

The sun shines vividly on one side of their faces, both engrossed in the moment's new discoveries. Pleasure and sadness mingle together, stinging my eyes, and I know I will mourn today's sunset.

Charlie Is Sooooooo Wiggly

2008-03-21T22:17:00.002-05:00

Charlie makes even the most innocent task completely unsafe. He has barely been bathed in his short little life because he has a tendency to dive out of my arms even when he is not wet and soapy. I have given up on any snappy or buttony outfits because I can never do more than one before he flips over and lurches out of my grasp. He went without clothes for a while until our dog, Sadie, nuzzled his diaper open and was happily licking his bottom clean one afternoon while he played on the floor. I didn't know whether to scold her or to thank her for saving me the trouble. He has wiggled his way over the safety railing on Toby's bed, out of the Bumbo seat, underneath the exersaucer, and between the couch cushions. I can't leave him alone for a second which is why my back is aching every evening. On the bright side: my arms look really ripped just in time for summer!

Last Night

2008-03-21T14:47:00.003-05:00

It was a calm and serene evening. Both boys were bathed, in their jammies, and surprisingly subdued. Toby was watching a little "Boz" and Charlie's eyes were drooping as he sucked down that last little bit of bottle before I layed him down for the night. Only thing left to do was change his diaper one more time to give him a fresh beginning to a hopefully long sleep.
Like any great mother would, I decided it too cumbersome to take him to the changing table and opted instead for the quick exchange on the ottomon. I barely let go of the bottle as I peeled back the velcro tabs on the old diaper and slid it off like a pro, eyeing the new diaper opened and ready next to us. In an unfortunate series of events it all came crashing sadly down. I laid the old diaper down, then screamed in horror as I discovered that, despite the large poo of an hour before, my son had stealthily filled his size three Huggie yet again. Barely any of the stuff traveled away with the diaper, but instead layed like a lump on his tummy and nestled between the creases of his thighs. I was completly unprepared ... where are the wipes? ...a changing pad? For the love of God someone hand me a kleenex or something. His legs flailed about, happily unaware of the danger, smearing doo doo on his socks and my shirt. Toby jumped off of the couch, a toy train in each hand, to see what peril had befallen me. "Mommy what happen'?" He asked helpfully as he began crawling up to us to gawk at his brother's handiwork. He had no sooner planted his first hand beside me when he began a whail of his own. "Mommy (sob) there is poop on Diesel Ten!" He held up his chubby little fist, dirty fingers grasping protectively around a yellow engine dipped in a brownish green mess of you-know-what. "Its Ok", I lied, "Let mommy take care of baby Charlie and then we can go wash Diesel Ten together." He obliged, but not before he instinctively gave Diesel Ten a quick wipe down across the chest of his blue pajamas. Of course. "Nobody Move!" I bellowed as I clung to Charlie's feet to prevent any further spread and wrapped him, poo and all, in a bath towel Greg tossed to me (from a safe distance). "Everyone to the bathroom!" I commanded. And that is how the Hawkins family along with Diesel Ten, ended our once beautiful evening, back where it began, in the bathtub, thirty minutes after bedtime, much stinkier, slightly grouchier, all except for baby Charlie who was feeling understandably delightful.