This past weekend, we celebrated A’s 2nd birthday. This involved a playground picnic, a trip to the zoo, and his favorite songs playing on repeat as we drove around town (did you know that the word “lollipop” is said 46x in the song “Lollipop” by the Chordettes? Because I did).
This also involved him accepting pretzel bribes in exchange for sedentary patience at his brothers’ overlapping soccer games, two Slurpees in one day (apologies to pediatric dentists everywhere), and opening gifts while standing atop the kitchen table… because what is childhood as a third-born if not spent in part benefiting from the lowered standards of your more veteran parents?
At 2 years old, A is my “sunshine” baby, owner of the world’s most bashful smile, and the fiercest bro of them all. In a span of 10 minutes, he will have a sympathetic melt-down upon witnessing one of his older brothers get hurt, and then snatch a toy straight out of their hands, proclaim “mine,” and push them around just to drive home the point. He is the great household explorer, locating every danger we could have sworn we’d baby-proofed long ago. He is part of whatever action is happening, evinced by his most recent verbal addition of the phrase “wat[ch] me, Mom!” as he mimics whatever risky behavior his brothers — who have substantial advantages in size, mobility, and (evidently) depth perception — are engaging in. His happy place is swaying on a swing, his favorite book is “Where’s Spot?” and he gives – without question – the greatest running hugs upon daycare pickup. He may live in a wardrobe exclusively comprised of hand-me-downs, but he is definitely one-of-a-kind.
Happy birthday, Scooch.
The more time we spend as parents, the more often I catch myself watching Dave with the boys, thinking about how deeply endearing it is that the same young man I found so intimidatingly witty, so intellectually captivating, so absurdly handsome 14 years ago — the man that I married — is now the father to my sons. And, dare I say, how often that mental train of thought is followed by a wave of validation: damn right he’s knocking fatherhood out of the park in a fashion equally as impressive as anyone who knows him is accustomed to.
There are many ways in which Dave sets a wonderful example for our sons… around work ethic, self-care, environmentalism, compassion for others, generosity (just to name a few)… but these particular aspects of his style of “dadding” are my personal favorites:
- Credit-less care: I am not exaggerating when I say that Dave has more raw intelligence than perhaps anyone I’ve ever met. He has a post-graduate degree. He works as an officer in a financial company and has to be available at essentially any time of the day, any day of the week. So it’s all the sweeter to me that he also painstakingly reassembles and glues the broken tail of J’s styrofoam plane after its crash landing, or creates a tension-based repair solution for O’s “special ring” (dentist prize) after it was left out and stepped on, or reattaches the lift-the-flap pages from “Where’s Spot” after too many enthusiastic reads by A. He does these types of things shortly after bedtime so the glue can dry by the time the boys wake up, and they are reliably elated. Unless I catch the exchange and make a point to acknowledge what he’s done for them, the boys rarely question how their possessions seem to miraculously rebound from the brink of certain doom (the garbage). He does this — this unasked, unexpected, credit-less care — in a thousand different ways throughout the year. I can only imagine all the things that even I don’t notice.
- Physicality of play: this dynamic I don’t think is unique to our family, but I appreciate it nevertheless. I love that Dave’s style of play with our boys is so different from – and incremental to – my own. We went sledding last winter at some nearby sand dunes. I climbed maybe 25% of the way up the hill, thought that was plenty high, and started stabilizing my sled to have a boy join me to sled down, only to realize that Dave had continued the march upward until they reached the very top. The experience of Dad pushing the tire swing vs Mom is not even close anymore (and probably explains why they don’t ask me if Dad’s nearby…). J had only just mastered the monkey bars last fall when Dave demonstrated how one can also climb on top of them. Years ago, Dave read an article about how dads tend to stop being affectionate with sons around the age of 2, despite the fact that sons still need the physical affirmations as much as daughters for many years afterwards. So the physicality of play and affection also extends to everyday interactions, and creates this incredibly warm sense of heart in the core of our home.
- Quality of leisure time: give Dave a 2-hour block of 1:1 time with his son, and he will turn it into a memory they’ll talk about for months. He will turn uncommitted time into a child-paced walk around a downtown, a bike ride to somewhere novel, lunch out someplace special. Contrary to how someone else (not pointing any fingers here, just hypothetically speaking, I assure you…) might approach those 2 hours, however, where she is compulsively compelled to also fit in something like a pit-stop at the library to return books, or lunch as restricted to being near a store that she has to run an errand at anyway, or just trying to hype-up an otherwise pretty standard grocery excursion… Dave is strictly motivated by the joint leisure time. The drive is spent listening to music selected to the son’s taste (which they then request during car rides for weeks afterward). Waiting for the meal is spent playing games on the back of the restaurant place mat. There’s somehow always an opportunity for ice cream or Slurpees or poppities afterward. J came home with his “journal” from junior kindergarten, and a number of the pages with prompts like “what did you do over the weekend” featured answers around simply being with his dad — in the hammock, playing, lying in the grass and looking at “clowds.” In our increasingly busy microcosm, the little moments of focused attention shine – and matter. And Dave makes the most of them.
And, of course, I’d be remiss to exclude what is evidently key, touted by many: “the most important thing a father can do for his children is love their mother.” If that’s the gold standard, then I am particularly happy to report that 14 years after this witty, captivating, handsome man first told me he loves me, our children have their most important bases covered.
Happy Father’s Day, Dave.
This is a screenshot of my calendar from September 2020. It was J’s 3rd week of Junior Kindergarten, fully remote. They switched to a “hybrid” (4 days in-person, 1 day remote) model mid-October… which was followed by us having to quarantine for a COVID case on J’s bus, which turned into the entire district shutting down for two weeks, which turned into 6 weeks, which turned into “through the holidays and part of January just to be safe as we expect another surge,” which turned into “you can come back to hybrid but seriously please keep your home work space ready in case we need to bail out at any moment,” which carried us through the rest of the year. Ah, memories.
Back to the calendar: blue are my work meetings, pink is our family calendar, and brown are J’s class times. Classes involved whole group sessions, small group “cohorts” that alternated times depending on the day, live participation (read: paying attention and coming off mute to answer questions), homework to reinforce lessons, specials (music/PE/art), and the encouragement to have “purposeful play” (as in, no screens) in between. As you can visually deduce, the frequent and short class segments were perfectly tailored to the kids’ attention spans, and horrifically tailored to the kids’ working parents’ schedules.
This morning, after an entire academic year spent making it work with whatever was the expectation du jour — and, let’s be real, with some genuinely epic failures therein — J dialed out of his last remote class of the year.
I was surprised by how sentimental I got as he hung up on his class for (hopefully!) the last time. I’ve had my eyes affixed to this coming Friday as his last official day, but on the other hand, the remote classes are so symbolic of the absurdity of this, our first academic year as parents. Dave & I still have no idea what the layout of the Junior Kindergarten classroom really looks like except that J used to sit at the “purple hexagon” table and then moved to “orange triangle.” We have never set foot in the music room or the gym, and have only a vague sense of the playground sections designated to 1 group per day to reduce cross-contamination of classes. We can only imagine the state of his locker and how many belongings of his have grown comfortable in their home at his school’s Lost-&-Found.
But as with so many things since March 2020, there is some silver lining to the strangeness. In the case of Junior Kindergarten and these standing remote learning days, I’ve had a full year of unusual access to my son’s education, development, and relationships, witnessing the following:
- Our 5 year old demonstrating better VC etiquette than 90% of the adults I know, able to toggle between tabs, ‘pin’ screens to get closer visuals of the materials being reviewed, begin to troubleshoot tech issues like dropped connections, and, most importantly, transition from the level of nerves he had on his first day (hiding under his desk) to being a reluctant, then active, then eager participant, with progress and friendships and literacy to show for it.
- The astounding thoughtfulness of his teacher’s lesson planning, even with such little kids, even in such a bizarre setting… stories about virtual school, becoming “mask ninjas” in preparation for returning to in-person learning, and seasonally-tailored activities (such as practicing how to independently dress oneself for outdoor play in the snowy months — in order: pants, boots, coat, hat, gloves — set to the tune of “head, shoulders, knees, and toes”).
- A level of familiarity with the kids in the class that I would never be privy to otherwise, which has in turn facilitated far more robust color commentary from J over time… I know, for instance, that Logan is the fastest kid in class (which is saying something given that J considers himself akin to “the Flash”), that Emerson has a pet fish named “Prince,” and that Isaac will, without fail, find a dinosaur-related artifact to satisfy any show-&-tell prompt.
To commemorate the end of this chapter, I want to highlight 3 people without whom Dave and I would surely not be able to look back on this experience as fondly:
- My manager, whom I will never be able to thank enough for the trust and air cover he provided me during this segment of my career where work/life felt relentlessly zero-sum.
- J’s teacher, who not only handled the academic year’s challenges with poise and quick pivots, but also unwittingly taught me so much about how to effectively lead and interact with small children.
- Jack Hartmann, who I had never heard of before September, would not assume would be a good candidate for kids’ entertainment, yet without question has the best days of the week song on the web (see Days of the Week Rap Back) — a highly informed opinion after comparing many (so, so, so many) other days of the week songs over the course of the year.
Despite the fact that it’s a Saturday night and the summer sun is still very much shining, the boys had an early bedtime tonight. I was scrolling through some of the photos from the weekend so far, and caught myself thinking how blissful it is to be this kind of tired at the end of a couple of wonderful days. The kind of tired that carries you sleepily from a well-earned shower directly to your bed and the soft drape of your top-sheet. The kind of tired that makes you actively aware of how good it is to (literally) put your feet up. The kind of tired that renders your mental ticker tape all but silent, and allows you to appreciate just how good it feels to close your heavy eyelids.
Yes, looking at the photos from the first portion of the weekend already tell a pretty compelling story. I picked J up from the bus stop with my bathing suit already on, pool bag packed, noodles in hand. Make no mistake: we were starting the weekend in the 87* heat at exactly 3:36 and not looking back. We headed over to our neighborhood pool, took a few silly selfies while waiting for our sunscreen to soak in, and then spent an hour+ swimming. Eventually Dave joined with O, A, and a host of new pool toys that provided another couple hours of entertainment. Because I was very much in on the pool action, my phone stayed stashed until we came out for potty and snack breaks, but we do have a few shots of the boys huddled on pool chairs in their beach towels, which is quintessential summer to me.
This morning, Dave took A out to run some errands and get some 1:1 quality time (read: walking around a nearby downtown at whatever pace A set + pizza lunch + ice cream). I took J and O strawberry picking for the first time (for all of us). We rode the wagon behind the tractor, picked 6# of fresh strawberries, impulse bought all kinds of strawberry-related jams and sweets from the shop, and then hustled back to blow through nap and quiet time in favor of attending a friend’s backyard birthday party. Said party included an inflatable water slide, a kiddie pool, a slip-&-slide, and 3 types of dessert. By the time we got home, it was after 4, and the boys plopped their soggy, bathing-suited bottoms down on the couch (oops) to watch A’s favorite rendition of Wheels on the Bus on repeat while Dave prepped baths and I prepped dinner.
Net-net, I have something like 50 pictures from the past 36 hours, featuring my beautiful sons having beautiful childhood experiences during a beautiful time of year in Michigan.
Until I thought about it, in fact, I almost forgot that part of the reason I was so determined to kick off the weekend with fun and pool time was because I had a miserable meeting at work that had deflated me on Thursday. Or that I got so frustrated with the boys’ behavior getting ready for bed on Friday night, that Dave checked in with me later to ask if I was “really that mad, or just putting on a performance for effect” (unfortunately it was the former). Or that we were over an hour late to the birthday party today because I grossly underestimated how unhelpful the boys would be at actually contributing to our strawberry collection, and therefore how much more time it would take me (who, at 31 weeks pregnant, is not particularly well-suited to bending over or squatting down for extended periods) to complete the activity almost entirely by myself.
Clearly, not every day is idyllic. In fact, I’m willing to bet that there were bona fide snafus in every. single. one. of our days for the past several years – with the odds exponentially increasing with each additional child and the myriad variables they introduce. These are almost never documented in photo form, despite their frequency.
But by the end of the day, when I scroll through the day’s pictures – frozen moments of our family memories being formed – all I can see are the smiles, the love, and the joy. And while I openly acknowledge that those are only part of the story, they sure do match my holistic feeling of hours well-spent.
So take the pictures of your favorite people doing their favorite things. Take the pictures of experiences in action. Take the pictures of bright moments that can provide you with a self-indulgent mental destination to visit later in your day (or month, or years from now). Let the internal narrative grow. If seeing is believing, if a picture is worth a thousand words, if perception is reality, then I am definitely in favor of creating a paper trail of all kinds of evidence that your life is that happy.
Or, if not strictly “happy,” then at least full of so much action and fun that you are as spent as J after our Friday evening at the neighborhood pool, captured in photo form below:
NB: I am really enjoying the title of this post, as if – after 6 years of practice – I have some secret cache of parenting tricks. I don’t, but I’m pretty confident a few of the things we learned to do on the fly, or habitually (but originally accidentally), can be helpful to others, so I’ll try to spot them and share along the way.
Hack #1: Snack Foods as Inspired by Still Life Paintings
We used to stock a small drawer with “snack foods” to encourage the boys’ independence. Unfortunately, however, those snacks that could be stashed without refrigeration were almost all convenience foods (read: not particularly nutritious and packaged individually in a way that makes me cringe at our ever-growing waste production).
One day, I bought a big, casual-looking bowl and stocked it full of gorgeous fruit: apples, pears, clementines. I left it right in the center of our kitchen table. The boys saw it and went bananas (ha). They ate so much fruit in the following days that I was able to catch up with Steve the Wine guy twice that week. We now buy 2 small bags of lunchbox-sized apples each week just to keep the bowl itself stocked. To the boys, they seem to enjoy it not just because they can help themselves to snacks, but also because there’s this choose-your-own-adventure component involved.
With very few exceptions, we make a point to give them the green light when they ask if they can help themselves to the fruit bowl. Does it interfere with dinner appetites sometimes? Yes, but then again, there are worse things than filling up on fruits and carrots (which we also dole out liberally if they simply cannot wait for the meal itself & their pleas for food are so intense that surely someone will call CPS if they find out in which conditions we force our children to live).
All that said, a warning: appealing though the fruit bowl may be for those of us that live here & have few qualms sharing germs with small children (which is to say, those of us who prefer not to follow in Sisyphus’ footsteps), a visitor to our home should double check their fruit selection as closer inspection of our beautiful bowl of fresh fruit does — on occasion — bear the signs of a certain toddler’s early efforts at eating in moderation.
Let’s start with the most important point: in this baby-making season of life, I’ve become far more aware of other people’s experiences conceiving (or not), feeling healthy and supported (or not), carrying to term (or not). There’s so much you can’t control, so much that you don’t know about your own body until it’s tested in this unique way, and no shortage of unprecedented scenarios that come up during the process to keep you humble to the fact that even if things appear to be going “as planned,” your world can turn upside down in an instant.
All that to say, I am currently pregnant with our 4th baby, and I am profoundly grateful for my almost entirely unearned privilege of having pleasant, uneventful pregnancies.
By the numbers, however, Dave & I realized recently how comical the breakdown of time looks during this chapter of our lives. Since J was conceived in fall 2014:
- I have been pregnant for 3 years, nursed for 2.5 years, and therefore had just 15 glorious months when my body was not quite so directly responsible for another living being.
- As a result of point 1, I have fluctuated in weight from my former (pre-pregnancy) average, ranging from -15 lbs to +40 lbs. I have spent so little time at what might be my “normal” size in the past 6.5 years, frankly, that I’m not even sure what my body’s dimensions technically are anymore. Thoughts and prayers go out to my credit card bill when I officially retire my maternity + nursing clothes & restock my “solo” wardrobe.
- I have received the recommended 3rd trimester Tdap vaccine 4 x in 6 years, whereas the normal booster cadence is 1 x every 10 years. I am pretty convinced at this point that if I were to step on a nail, the nail would simply melt under the strength of my juiced up tetanus immuno-response.
Jokes aside, I really enjoy being pregnant, I have minimal qualms with nursing, and I made a deal with myself years ago to be more appreciative of my body after seeing it demonstrate what it can do (on autopilot, nonetheless!) in the most critical moments I needed it to perform. But I’m simultaneously looking forward to the fact that when Dave & I are ready to close this chapter of creating incremental life in the world, I’ll be able to enjoy the silver lining of having my body back to myself. Maybe this time wearing a new, well-fitted bra. And definitely while enjoying a glass of wine.
At the end of next month, our eldest son, J, will turn 6 years old. To commemorate his 5-year-old self, here are a few recent anecdotes and observations:
- On unadulterated sweetness: today I tried to snap a picture of him and his buddy palling around as they boarded the school bus. Instead, I captured him in a moment of turning back to me with the sign language symbol for “I love you.” On just about every school day this year, he started his bus ride by waving goodbyes, “I love yous,” blowing kisses, and otherwise making goofy gestures out the window at me until the bus pulled away. I reciprocated in equally animated fashion & from underneath my umbrella or behind my layers of winter clothes or whatever else the elements mandated throughout the seasons. I know this won’t last forever, but for now, his affections are uninhibited and resolute, and the bus stop is therefore a place of happy associations in my mind.
- On independent development: with several small children in our home, we spend a lot of time teaching, helping, and doing things alongside our boys. Watching J grow, where every new milestone as our eldest is a new milestone for us as his parents, I’m increasingly noticing the many things that we cannot do for (or even with) him. My first conscious taste of this was watching him learn to ride his two-wheeler: repeatedly falling, crying, frustrated… getting back on and trying again until he mastered the physics. I could burst with pride for the way he’s stopped preemptively asking for help before sounding out long words in his books, the way he volunteered to play goalie his first soccer game this spring, the way he happily assures me he can just “help himself to something else” (read: deli meat, see also: a battle I’m not willing to wage) in the refrigerator if he really doesn’t like our dinner entree.
- On the increasing influence of friends: J brought home a drawing from school recently that featured a figure on a path to a building labeled “WWE.” I asked him what it was. He casually replied, “John Cena.” As if we have ever, ever viewed or discussed or even tangentially referenced professional wrestling (much less John Cena) in our home. Upon further probing, he told me that his friend at school introduced him to John Cena and WWE, and while he didn’t have many more specifics than that, he is confident that John Cena is a “great guy, Mom.” I’ve loved watching his humor and enthusiasm for imaginary play matched by his friends before, but this was my first overt reckoning of the fact that, over time, the direct influence of my son’s friends will only grow… and there’s no reason to believe I will ever be privy to the full extent of it. I contemplated this fact solemnly that night along with the realization that I had said “John Cena” more times in a single evening than the entirety of my lifetime before.
In sum, I’m feeling pretty content about closing out this 5th year with a son who loves his mom enough to bring her home a dandelion from recess (however mangled it may be by the time it arrives), who seems fundamentally motivated by making progress rather than expecting perfection upfront, and who has spent >1/5 of his life in various stages of severity in a global pandemic, yet is genuinely delightful to be around. And just in case anyone else is equally as uninformed as I, it turns out John Cena is evidently a pretty great guy indeed.
