Did I ever post about Sophie’s skirt? I don’t think I did.
About a year and a half ago (maybe two years?) Sophie drew a picture of a princess. My mom saw it, asked to borrow it, sent it to Spoonflower and presto, Sophie became a fabric designer.
Then, summer of last year, she and my mom got to work.
Sophie admired her work …
and then posed for a picture. (Gosh she looks so young! I can’t believe this was only a year ago.)
My mom made a matching skirt for Colleen, which they wore together during a weekend visit to North Carolina.
“Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that – one stitch at a time taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery.” —Oliver Wendell Holmes
I’m so excited to introduce a new feature, titled “Mothers.” Every so often I’ll post a pictorial essay showcasing everyday life in motherhood. In part inspired by this, my hope is to provide a glimpse into the life of all mothers—mothers who spend their day at home, mothers who spend some of their day at work, mothers of young children and mothers of teenagers, mothers who are expecting and mothers who have children who are now grown, mothers who live in the United States and mothers who live in other parts of the world.
Each pictorial essay will depict a day in the life of a mom. And maybe it’s a good day. Maybe it’s bad. Maybe you spent 10 hours at work. Maybe you got two hours of sleep. Maybe you were on vacation. Maybe the kids went to school. Whatever. I just think it would be really interesting to take a peek into each other’s everyday life, in terms of motherhood, showcasing all our differences and similarities.
And that’s where YOU come in! If you’re a mother (in any sense of the word), I’d love to include you. Simply start snapping pictures the moment you wake up and keep snapping until your kids go to bed. Send me your favorites (six to 12, with captions to kara (dot) uhl (at) gmail (dot) com) and I’ll feature them as soon as I’m able to. And if you know of a mom who would be a great fit, particularly a mom who lives outside of the United States, please send her my way—I would be grateful.
And with that, I’m so pleased to present a fellow twin mama, Julie Hall. Julie and I went to high school together and she was a huge help to me when Owen and James were born. More than once she took Sophie away for an afternoon so I could dedicate my time to my newborn sons (and sleep!). Thanks, Julie. (By the way, to view the picture larger, simply click on it.) Enjoy!
I decided to take my three boys and two of their friends to Keehner Park to hike in the creek. “Wait for me before you head down the trail to the creek!”
“Try not to get too wet, I didn’t bring a change of clothes or shoes.”
I remember caring what I wore in public … before I had kids, that is.
“Don’t go too far ahead, I have to be able to see you!”
Stopping to skip rocks and look for fossils.
We passed a big group of boys on our way back, turns out they were friends from school with two moms trailing behind. I guess moms of boys know where to go for a cheap summer adventure!
As a writer mom I’m much more likely to tell you about the time I had to carry both screaming boys out of Joseph-Beth, one under each arm, while fellow book shoppers shook their heads than I am about the time everyone sat quietly at a restaurant. I believe stories of my parenting mistakes and mishaps are better reads whereas stories reminiscent of those “my kid is on the honor roll” bumper stickers are simply tedious.
But I’m a writer mom who also is a worrier mom and as such, I worry posting this and this and this and this and this paints, well, a bit of a one-sided picture.
So quickly, today has been a good day. We met friends for a picnic lunch at Ault Park (which is where I took the above picture) and it was a fun and gorgeous afternoon. Later in the day I had to take all three to my eye doctor’s appointment. And they were so.well.behaved. While I was staring at little red lights and reading teeny tiny letters the nurse commented on how well behaved they were and I looked and all three were sitting, silent, just sitting, not moving, not hitting, not whining, not fighting, just sitting. And they stayed that way. The doctor gave them each two Tootsie Roll Pops (one for now one for later he said) and then said to me, “You’re doing this parenting thing right.”
I’m sure he’s forgotten those words by now. But given that I think at least 63 times a day how badly I’m doing this parenting thing, I don’t think I ever will.
I pushed things and took all three to Target and except for one incident over a need (which I tried to explain was a want) for Thomas the Train toothpaste, it was great. They did their daily chore (cleaning the stairs, which is where I put everything that’s downstairs that belongs upstairs) without hassle.
Bedtime was a bit of a disaster (a board game that ended in tears, sneaking—and eating—the newly bought gummy bears, an upturned sprayer resulting in a partially flooded bathroom, one child’s computer privileges gone for tomorrow) but, hey—no one’s perfect.
It’s getting easier. It really is. And the things I’ve been saying over and over and over (and over) are slowly starting to stick. And the real concerns I’ve had about behavioral issues with Owen and James are ever-so-slightly lessening. And so with slight worry that this may sound like bragging (again, I promise to never write on and on about report cards and milestones and homeruns) I will say this: Today was a good day.
“There are good days and there are bad days, and this is one of them.” —Lawrence Welk
We had lots to do today—our weekend to-do list, thanks to a leaky basement, is fuller than usual.
And yet today, in particular, I noted how much we held our children.
We played airplane.
Snuggled, all four of us in bed (Sophie was down the street at a friend’s house).
The boys fell asleep on my lap (a rarity) while Andy grilled chicken for dinner.
Boredom. “Sit on my lap,” I said.
A stubbed toe. “Do you want to cuddle?” I asked.
“I’m tired,” said a small voice. “Here,” I said. “I’ll carry you.”
After dinner, before Sophie left with (another) friend down the street, I saw Andy swoop her up. She laughed. I smiled. And I know we both wondered, Is this the last? No, we both thought, silently.
But when?
“Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.” —Percy Bysshe Shelley
But gosh that was a fun afternoon. A really, really, really fun afternoon.
And it’s sometimes nice to remember those fun afternoons after evenings like tonight. Evenings in which my dear, hardworking husband didn’t come home until 6:40pm and instead of finding dinner on the table found me, in bed, hiding under the duvet.
I was without a working laptop this past week, but a trip to the Genius Bar at the Apple store this evening and I’m back, with my first throwback post—this one to spring of last year.
Sophie knows her butterflies. She insisted on wearing a floral dress and bringing her own silk flowers, both of which the butterflies loved.
“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” —Nathaniel Hawthorne
With a goal to post every day, going back in time and documenting all I missed, until I catch back up.
This past year threw me for a loop.
Age 3, times two, was hard.
But I excel at looking back through rose-colored glasses, which is why going back in time and writing about all the happy moments, holidays, meltdowns and celebrations I didn’t write about day of, will be possible. (Still, I’ve promised myself to remain honest and true.)
It’s a lot like this:
You step onto your porch and see the above lining your front walk and you think, Why are there drawings of penises all over my front walk? And you sigh and wonder where your children are and you think about all the things no one told you about parenthood and you realize how tired you are, how very, very tired you are, and you know there is no way you’re going to be able to write about this because it’s just too much.
And then you find your kids and you inquire and you realize what you thought were penises really are parking spots for scooters.
And everything seems so much better. Doable. Hilarious, even.
And that’s where I am now. Although I still have what look like drawings of penises all over my front walk, I know they’re parking spots for scooters.
And so, I’m diving back in. Because as difficult as this past year has been, there have been some really great moments. Things I worry about forgetting without documenting. And even the most difficult moments seem funnier, softer and easier, months after the fact—as is true for much of life.
Plus, I’ve realized how much I miss writing when not writing. And the act is much cheaper than traditional therapy.
So here goes.
“Don’t call the world dirty because you forgot to clean your glasses.” —Aaron Hill
Glennon Melton of Momastery recently asked writers to post an essay about their messy, beautiful lives to celebrate the paperback release of her book Carry On, Warrior. I realize she’s using “messy” in reference to life’s big things—parenting, work, marriage, friendship, health. But I decided to take a literal spin on the project and write about one of my own messy beautiful that I carefully hide behind a closed door—my bedroom.
Something had to give. Every child goes through tougher periods and for Owen and James, 3 has been hard. With everyone in school in the mornings, I’ve tried to pick up a lot more freelance work. Thankfully, I’ve been successful. Unfortunately, it has taken me many months of 2am bedtimes and feeling like I was failing at stay-at-home parenting as well as freelancing before I allowed myself the grace of sometimes hiring daytime babysitters. I’ve had some odd health things going on, the latest of which requires light therapy treatments up in Cincinnati three times a week. My current life story is the same as all of our current life stories. We’re all busy (even when I try, daily, to live a life of not-busy). It just happens.
Still, something had to give.
So I threw in the towel (literally, into a pile of all the other clean clothes on the floor, waiting to be folded) on trying to maintain a clean bedroom. Schedule Pennsylvania house cleaning services to maintain the order and cleanliness in your home. It would be wise to invest in a mattress vacuum cleaner so you can regularly deep clean your mattresses and keep them pest-free.
It was so easy.
Sophie has a play date and I don’t want the kids getting into the paint? Throw it into the bedroom. Guests coming over and I don’t have time to properly put everything away? Throw it into the bedroom. Seasons change and I don’t have time to switch the clothes over? Stack the boxes in the bedroom.
I would go through and pick things up, put things away. But always there was a clothes basket filled with odds and ends that needed sorted and put away—wooden beads, game pieces, Barbie shoes, car wheels, a broken Nutcracker, loose change, a half-empty pack of wipes, mesh bags used when traveling, pencils that needed sharpened, too-small socks, too-big shorts bought on clearance, the extra contents of a purse acquired when I switched everything else of importance over to another one. If you need help with a major cleaning project, consider hiring experts in house cleaning in Desoto KS.
I wasn’t always like this. In my previous life I was managing editor at several magazines, a job that is based around organization. In my previous life I prided myself on having an always-cleaned-out fridge, an organized basement and books arranged alphabetically on my bookshelf. In my previous life I hung up my clothes by sleeve length with a nod toward the color wheel and sorted my M&Ms before eating them.
Children change you.
These days, I’m lucky if my clothes even make it to the closet. Turns out, when I have more than just my wardrobe to deal with, I’m terrible at laundry. Every morning, while sifting through the piles of washed-thanks-to-Andy-who-takes-care-of-that-every-time-he-video-games-in-the-basement-but-per-our-deal-I-never-actually-fold-and-put-away clothes I silently curse and swear I’ll fold everything that night. I continue silently cursing while ironing everyone’s outfits because everything is wrinkled and while giving up on matching socks because everyone has approximately three minutes to get to school before they will be considered late.
While lamenting to a friend about my laundry woes she mentioned that she was hiring a laundress. A laundress. It sounded so decadent, so Downton Abbyish. I daydreamed about my own laundress (a modern Cinderella came to mind) before coming back to the reality that some days the kids are going to have to play a board game (or five) without me and some nights I’m going to have to forgo freelance work and/or skip puttering around on the Internet, reading a book or watching a show.
There’s a threshold for everything. And last night, I reached mine.
Despite my freelance deadlines, despite the fact that I had pulled late nights two nights prior, despite the fact that I’m three episodes behind on “Parenthood,” I cleaned my bedroom.
And instead of dreading it, all day, I looked forward to it. All it took was some rethinking. I wasn’t cleaning my bedroom. I wasn’t giving up play time with the kids or my nightly TV show with Andy. I was reclaiming my bedroom. My beautiful bedroom I purposefully painted off-white and in which I hung floor-to-ceiling white drapes from Ikea to create a sense of calm. My beautiful bedroom with the huge leather chair I found on Craigslist, with the ribbon board my mom made for me years ago hung up behind it, filled with loved mementos, and the broken brushed-brass floor lamp next to it, held together with some twine—my reading nook I never used, because of the pile of clothes encroaching it. My beautiful bedroom with the queen-size bed that more often than not holds five instead of two, the same bed with the wedding album tucked underneath it, which Sophie loves to pull out and look through (when the room is clean enough for her to be able to). My beautiful bedroom with the two Target dressers I so desperately want to replace with antiques, the same dressers that now hold framed photos, alarm clocks and perfume bottles but for years held handmade burp cloths and breast pump parts and were decorated with rings of milk leftover from bottles. My beautiful bedroom with the handmade jewelry cabinet my uncle made filled with handmade jewelry my mother-in-law made. My beautiful bedroom with the non-working fireplace and gorgeous wood-and-mirrored-and-columned mantel that surrounds it, one of the key things that made me fall in love with the house before we even purchased it.
So I took out all the dirty clothes. And old water glasses. And gathered all the loose items and put them in their proper places, which took a ridiculous amount of time (and prompted a glass of wine). Then I turned on “Weeds” on Netflix and for two hours I folded. I folded all the clothes. All.of.them. And put them away.
I reclaimed my bedroom.
I reclaimed my office (which is my bed).
I reclaimed my reading nook and dusted off the pile of magazines next to it, noting the bookmark in my book that hasn’t been moved in weeks.
I reclaimed the floor, another play space in our small, old house.
I reclaimed my bed, which the boys immediately jumped into the next day insisting I make a cave with our down comforter and my arms and feet for them to play in.
I reclaimed my sanity. My sanctuary. The place I go to read. To write. To sleep. To be on my own. To be with Andy. To snuggle with the kids during a middle-of-the-night thunderstorm. To dress for the day ahead. To retreat after a day done well. To hide after a day done poorly. To be.
And now my door is wide open. I’m calmer, just thinking about it. I’ve already allowed myself grace, for when it will invariably get messy again. But I also have given myself permission to reclaim it more quickly. Life is easy when you can throw a bunch of stuff in a room during a super-quick cleanup and close the door. But it’s a short-lived easy. Because even though the rest of the house may be beautiful, there’s still a hidden mess to deal with (isn’t there always?). And already, this morning, I’ve learned this: Life is a whole lot easier when clothes are in drawers and all the socks match.
“I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It’s amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor.” —D.H. Lawrence
And now, a giveaway! The folks at Simon & Schuster were kind enough to send me a copy of Glennon’s book, Carry On, Warrior, which I would love to pass on to you. Simply post a comment telling me how you deal with laundry by Saturday, May 10. I’ll randomly choose a winner on Mother’s Day, and send it your way!
