Dan and Em's Blog

So, today, it happened.  Just over an hour after I had left him, I got a phone call from one of the teachers, saying, “Ben is very upset and is crying a lot.  We think you should come and get him sooner than we had planned.”  (They all call him “Ben” all the time — it doesn’t bother me, but I’m surprised at the 100% assumption of using the nickname.)  As I was only 15 minutes away, having coffee, I was happy to oblige.  When I got there, he was hysterical — “Mommy!  Mommy!  I want my Mommy!”  I could hear him in the hall.  I walked in, Liam in my arms, and sat down on the floor in front of him and gathered him up in a huge hug, Liam and all.  His face was wet, red and swollen from crying.  My poor guy.

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Today was the second day of school for Benjamin.  Liam and I went with him and got him settled in, just like yesterday.  But once he was set and playing happily (about 20 minutes after we got there) the teachers suggested that we say goodbye and leave him to play without us.  I was nervous — I was sure he was going to fall apart when I said I was leaving.  Nope.  I went to tell him and I had to drag a hug and a kiss out of him before he turned around and headed for the “grocery store”.  Sigh.

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Last night, after the kids were in bed, I completely fell apart.  Heartbroken, sobbing.  Wishing to be able to replay sections of the past 3 years of my life and make different choices — play more, cuddle more, read more, clean less, never be frustrated, irritable or too worn out to play.  I don’t want to give up any time with Benjamin every day — not even 4 hours.  I want to be with him.  I want to be able to play with him, kiss his boo boos, read stories, do art projects, go out and see things.  My sadness is almost completely selfish.

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For over three years, I’ve been a “stay at home” mom.  Tomorrow, for the first time, one of my children will be in daycare.  Sure, it’s more appropriately preschool (kindergarten, here) than daycare, and it’s only 4 hours a day, but it doesn’t change the reality of it.  Benjamin starts school tomorrow.  It’s not like I’ve been with them both 24/7 since their births:  I did work a few hours a week at home, I go out and do things from time to time, I even came to Austria for 4 days when Benjamin was only 18 months old, and, of course, I was in the hospital when Liam was born (and for days after, since he was in the NICU) — and thus, away from Benjamin.

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On the recommendation of a coworker of Dan’s, we took the boys to a soccer gathering this morning.  It was a set of games, plus registration for the fall soccer season.  It was our first experience with organized sports for little kids, and we had fun, although our boys were too little to participate (it’s for 4 and over).

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It’s inevitable:  having an 11 month old who doesn’t nap means that I don’t have a lot of time to spend one-on-one with B.  When Liam was very little, he napped for a few hours every day, and that gave Benjamin and I time to do things together:  read, color, build things, play.  As Liam has gotten older, his nap has gone away, and now much of my play time with Benjamin is now shared play time with Liam.

Much of the time, he doesn’t mind.  I’ve gotten better at finding things for all of us to do together (like playing ball, which Liam is amazingly adept at) but I miss the one-on-one time with Benjamin, and I think he misses it, too.  Sibling rivalry has started cropping up more and more, although he still loves Liam (he tells me so) and is still very affectionate and caring towards him.  I’m grateful that our reduced playtime hasn’t turned him against Liam entirely, but I know it’s something I need to address before it creates larger resentment.

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Being a mom comes with an inexhaustible capacity for worry.  It starts during pregnancy:  in the beginning, you worry if everything is ok.  Once you can feel the baby moving, you worry that he isn’t moving enough, or maybe too much.  Every ache or pain causes concern — it’s the physical equivalent of being in a dark and creaky house after seeing a scary movie:  everything is interpreted as a potential threat.  As the nine months wind to a close you start to desperately wish for the baby to be born, in large part because you feel like it will be so much easier to know if they’re ok once they’re on the outside and you can see them and touch them.

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Did you know that it’s 4 months until Christmas?  I do, because I have a 3 year old who asks me daily (often more than once) if it’s Christmastime yet, where Santa is and when he’s coming.

I’ve recently started introducing to Benjamin the idea of a Christmas list:  the idea that when he wants something, rather than demanding it today, we write it down and ask Santa for it at Christmas.  The idea seems to be taking root.

He decided, the other day, that he would like a red kite.  I told him we should write it down on our list for Santa.  He told me that he actually wants two things from Santa:  a red kite, and a yellow kite for Liam to chew on.

My 3 year old just asked for 2 things for Christmas, and one of them is for his brother.  I acknowledge that the request for the yellow kite for Liam was probably self-serving (if he has a kite to chew on then he won’t chew on mine), and that his Christmas list will grow in the next few months, but, still, it’s a cute and sweet thought for him to have.

I have great kids.

I laugh when I read information about how much little kids and babies are “supposed” to sleep.  My children never got those memos.  When he was a baby, Benjamin hardly ever slept for more than 2 or 3 hours in a row.  He’d sleep for a few hours at night, and then he’d get up, I’d feed him, and Dan & I would take turns walking with him for an hour or two (or more) until he finally went to sleep, and then he got up 2 or 3 hours later and we did it all again.  This isn’t abnormal for a newborn’s first few months, but this went on through and beyond his first birthday (and it had gotten old well before that).  He started sleeping through the night reliably sometime between 18 months and 2 years, but he didn’t nap for more than 20 minutes at a time until this past spring, after we moved here.  Now, he’s a sleeping champ — sleeps about 9 hours at night, and another hour or two (sometimes more!) during the early afternoon.

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A few years ago (pre-kids) I was talking to a friend about what I wanted in my life that I didn’t have — I struggled to come up with the right word, and finally settled on “magic”.  At which point she looked at me like I had, perhaps, lost track of reality.  I wasn’t talking about magic like Harry Potter:  wands and spells and potions (although, if there really is a Hogwarts out there somewhere, and I get my letter, I’m absolutely going).  I didn’t, at the time, really know how to explain what I meant.

I do now.  The kind of magic I wanted in my life is exactly what I have now — it’s the kind of magic you get watching your children play with a balloon or look at a ladybug or wake up Christmas morning.  It’s the kind of magic that you feel when you do something pretty ordinary and your kids are just amazed by it:  making cookies, drawing with chalk, fixing a favorite toy.

I get to have the privilege of discovering the wonder and magic of childhood all over again, by witnessing my children’s experiences.  I absolutely love it.  And there’s the feeling that I get when I look into their faces or hear them call for me or hold their hands.  If that isn’t magic, I don’t know what is.