The MotherVerse Blog: mothering out loud

Jessica was one of the MotherVerse workshop attendees in May. Thank you for the submission of “My name is…What?” Jessica.
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I try to resist the pull to fulfill his desires. He craves my attention, my embrace, my gaze, but I want the moment to be mine alone. I am successful only until he says my name. Then my will is gone, and I’m his.

“Jessica! Jess!”

My two-year-old son has taken to yelling out my name when a few rounds of “Mommy” haven’t yielded desirable results. He usually employs this strategy to get my attention when I’m cooking or typing – when my back is turned or my forehead wrinkles betray the fact that his current endeavor is not the first thing on my mind. With his eyebrows arched in gleeful discovery and his chubby index finger pointing to his newest project, excitement is the dominant undertone in his voice. Still, there’s an insistence that registers to my ears as more demanding than anything. Feeling guilty for multitasking my motherhood, I give in.

Being on a first-name basis with my son implies I am both his equal and his servant – a familiar dynamic. Since the beginning of our relationship, he and I have spent a lot of time breastfeeding. At twenty-six months, my son’s love affair with my breasts still sizzles. The concept of my body as both mine and the boy’s has long been a challenge for my husband, even before the boy was walking or talking. Or calling out my name.

His language and cognition have matured, but his desire for my body blurs boundaries, challenging me. It was one thing to be felt up when he was an incoherent blob. Now he can tell me, “I wanna nurse you, Mommy” and “other side” while trying to wedge his whole arm under my bra and creep his fingers toward my unoccupied nipple, as though this time I might decide I like it instead of telling him, “Move your hand.” I instinctively hug my chest, pressing my unsupporting arm against the dormant breast, sometimes cupping myself, or pulling him off to stop the groping.

Nursing used to be the panacea for all ills: hunger, fear, fatigue. Now we’re on a more predictable schedule, but my son’s eyes flash when I’m naked like lollipops are taped to my chest. He pretends to reach out and coyly tells me he wants to nurse, just because he can say the words, and then proceeds to ponder my genitalia, fascinated with the embouchure required to say “vagina.” His mouth plays with different tones and tempos for the word. I both laughed and cringed when he began toggling between the v-word and “Jessica,” whispering as though both were magical mantras holding the key to a delicious mystery. Perhaps they are.

Fortunately, though, when we have a real “conversation,” my son usually displays an uncanny situational appropriateness, using my first name only in a way he might have heard from his father. I hope this means that as long as we continue to breastfeed, I’ll be safe from hearing, “I wanna nurse you, Jess.”

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Jessica Haney is a former high school teacher who is now staying home with her son and working as a writer, copy editor and tutor. Much of her time is spent experimenting in the kitchen and researching traditional nutrition, allergy-free diets and alternative medicine. Her personal blogs are Crunchy-Chewy Mama crunchychewymama.blogspot.com, Mama’s Mouth www.mamasmouth.com, and Inexact Science: Raising Healthy Families inexactscience.blogspot.com.

I’ve had a stressful week (or month) and I’ve been feeling kind of down about, well… everything. It’s easy to get caught in a slump and start feeling like nothing is ever going to go right; that everything you’ve been working towards is never going to happen. And the things that I’ve been working towards are things that are going to improve my son’s life (and mine). But it’s been darn hard lately to get motivated and keep pushing forward.

Yesterday, after finishing work, I drove over to my son’s daycare to pick him up. I parked the car and walked across the asphalt to the playground where he was swinging on the monkey bars, a slender, blond haired little guy in black shorts and a white t-shirt. He’s getting so big that on the lowest bars, when his arms are stretched above him and his legs are pointed towards the ground, his feet skim the mulch.

The sight of those sandal-clad feet skimming the ground only served to remind me how much time was passing and how I just want to slow down a minute and breath, to savor the moments I have with him. It makes me wonder if I’m spending enough time with him. I wonder if I, as one parent, can be strong enough to be both parents for him. I wonder if I’m doing enough for him.

I don’t know if I can answer any of that, but I do know my heart was heavy as I walked over to him.

And then his one teacher lifted my spirits.

She’s new, going to college for early childhood education and working at his center over the summer. She waved at me and I walked over to her.

“Hi!” she said, “You know, I just have to tell you - Tommy just adores you.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just replied, “He does?”

She nodded and continued. “Oh yeah. Everything he makes in class is for you. And he always talks about you - I’ve never met a kid that talks about his parents as much as he talks about you.”

She smiled and shrugged. “He just absolutely adores you.”

“I adore him too,” I said softly. I looked up at the monkey bars where Tommy was swinging. He caught my eye and grinned, then let go and leaped. He ran full tilt at me, crashing into me and wrapping his arms around my waist. He looked up, still grinning, blue eyes mischievous. “Hi, mommy. I love you.”

I lifted him up and kissed his cheek. He smelled like dirt and sweat and I’ve never smelled anything better. “Hi, sweetie. I love you too, and I missed you.”
“Missed you too, mommy.”

Over his shoulder, I caught his teacher’s eye. She was smiling at us.

Sometimes people might think that what they’re saying is only a little thing; nothing, really. I’m sure she thought she was saying something just in passing that I already knew. But it wasn’t a little thing, not to me, not at that moment. Her words came to me at just the right time and were a kindness and a reminder that I needed.

And for that I’m very grateful.

The Holistic Moms Network’s 5th Annual Natural Living Conference and 5-Year Celebration will take place Saturday, October 18, 2008 at the Sheraton Crossroads Hotel in Mahwah, NJ.

Keynote speakers include Barbara Loe Fisher, founder of the National Vaccine Information Center and Annie B. Bond Author and non-toxic living expert.

Breakout Sessions on:
*Positive Parenting and Nonviolent Communication
*Eco-Action Plans for Kids
*Homeschooling 101
*Stress and Your Health

To register online, please visit www.holisticmoms.org or call (877) HOL-MOMS.

Here’s another funny story for you!When I was first married my husband was in the navy.He was gone to sea and when my second baby was about to be born I stayed at my parent’s house. I had a little brother who was 13 years younger than me. He was my special pet and he was none to happy when I got married and moved away when he was 6 years old. He was even unhappier when my first baby was born and I came home shortly afterwards. He made it no secret that he didn’t like the baby and didn’t want her in the house taking my attention away from him Strangely enough he seemed more excited about the second baby. In those days you didn’t know the sex of the baby until it was born. My mother told me that when she told him that the baby was a boy he seemed quite pleased.

When I came home from the hospital with my little blue wrapped bundle He looked at him and said, “Well that’s just another little old baby I thought it was a boy like me and I would have someone to play with!”

” I have to be honest with you, he doesn’t look like over a year old.”

My children have always been quite low on the weight percentile, and somewhat average and above average on the height percentile. The pediatrician has always told us,

“It’s fine. You’re not that big.”

One other pediatrician said,

“He can’t eat more even if he wanted to.”

I grew up with the mentality that size is equivalent to health and full nourishment. Where America is dealing with obesity in children, I am dealing with ’skinny kids’ and a baby who

“looks like he’s seven or eight months old.”

I can already hear my father’s remarks were he to see his grandchildren now,

“You’re not eating?! Eat more! You’re too skinny.”

How do I know this? I was fed an ‘appetite-increasing’ pill each time I came home for holidays from boarding school, to ‘fatten me up’. It worked. Everytime I went back to school, I was chubbier than I was when I came home, but I lost all that chubbiness in school, only to repeat the cycle when the time for holidays came.

Last weekend, someone picked up my now fourteen-month old and expressed surprise that he was 14 months-old.

“He looks like he’s only seven or eight month old! My sister is 6 months and she’s bigger than this!”

When Baby went for his 9-month check up, his weight and height didn’t increase much, and on the way home, hubby expressed his worry. Since Baby has multiple allergies, we worry that he might be malnourished. I dashed upstairs, rummaged through the older kids’ immunization-growth booklets and compared their weight and height at 9 months. Turned out that Baby was going through the same growth pattern as his older siblings. My worries vanished, as my oldest daughter is now even taller than me, at almost 11 years old, and so far, none of our kids have been diagnosed as malnourished.

However, as a mother, you do still worry, especially when you get remarks and advice from people saying,

“Don’t delay, see the doctor now.”

We just went for his 1 year check up! And going again for his 15 months-old check up next month!

Thank Allah the pediatricians know not to follow the Caucasian growth chart to the t on Asians. We’re not big-framed and not that tall.  5 lbs babies at birth is pretty common for Malaysians.

Yet, as I look at Baby, recently just acquiring his ‘walking legs’, thereby officially making him a toddler, I can’t help but hear in my head,

“I thought he was just seven or eight months!”

Oh, Sugar. Well, that’s what I should’ve said. Instead the violent force of the intended word came shooting out of my mouth like a cannon ball.

I have this overwhelming need to share my story out of guilt and pure parental responsibility because I feel I have crossed the blaspheme bridge of no return. 

My 19 month old daughter and I were conducting our normal nap time routine after lunch. The changing of the diaper; locating the infamous “nonny,” and a change of clothes (we spent the morning filling up her kiddy pool—but to my dismay she was more interested in drenching herself with the garden hose).

In the midst of removing her damp, ketchup stained, green ice-cream cone tank top, I hear the tiny tapping of a light summer rain on her bedroom window. I start to day dream briefly about checking WATER THE FLOWERS off my to-do list during nap time. Then I remembered the rugs.

Earlier in the day I draped my indoor rugs over my deck railing and left them there to soak up the fresh scent that summer afternoons bestow (really I was just to lazy to wash them).   During the moment of my revelation I said it. The villainous S-word.

Frantically, I jumped to my feet and escaped down the hallway to rescue my burgundy shag. I quickly corralled my carpet in my arms and  brought them safely to dry land.  As I walked back to her bedroom I hoped and prayed that upon my return my daughter would have forgotten about my Freudian slip. Wishful thinking, I guess.

I tried to ignore what just happened, but she didn’t. She absorbed every consonant, vowel, and emotion the word had to offer. She repeated the word approximately 207 times and I explained that it wasn’t a nice word 207 times. I laid her down for nap as if I was saying good-bye to her verbal innocence. Wishing that when she wakes she would forget the sullied expression her mom was so kind to pass her way.

As I closed her bedroom door, I smiled and let out a quiet chuckle. I knew it was bound to happen some day just not this early on in her literary expedition. 

Moral of the story: Choose your words wisely in the company of your very impressionable toddler.

Someone (I’m talking about the someone with a capital S) has a sense of humor.

This afternoon my 11-month-old son, Xavier, was in a fit of giggles watching our neighbor’s Golden Lab run through the hose and shake himself dry. The harder the dog shook, the harder my son laughed.

Fast forward a few hours. I decided to treat myself to an after dinner bath. When I got out of the tub I realized there were no towels in the bathroom. I remembered the dog and thought it might be fun to try a good “wet dog” shake.

I wasn’t prepared for how long it took my behind to catch up with the rest of me.

Lesson: Someone invented towels for a reason.

The Dar a Luz a Network, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing knowledge and support for women during their pregnancies, births, and early motherhood, introduces their new blog “We Birth” at www.daraluzwebirth.blogspot.com. The blog includes stories from women who have had many different kinds of births, including some wonderful homebirth stories! They are also accepting submissions of your birth stories. Check it out.

Also don’t forget to check out Hathor’s new comics on the American Medical Association scandal surrounding their unfortunate discouragement of safe homebirthing. Hathor has brilliantly tackled the issue as usual in her comic series “AMA and ACOG are against Homebirths”.

The solstice is creeping upon us: summer in the Northern hemisphere, and here in the South, winter. I’ve yet to experience a full circle of seasons in South Africa, so this winter is new. Yet even now, even before the solstice, it’s clear our Canadian winter rituals will fare poorly in the Western Cape.

At home, early winter means raking leaves, mulching the garden, rooting out last-year’s snowsuits and, when the cold finally snaps, cranking up the heat and spending a great deal of time indoors.

Temperatures rarely drop near freezing here and, I’m told, snow stays high in the mountains. Cape winds are fierce, however, and our house has neither heating nor insulation. People think Canadians are naturally frost-hardy. We’re not – we have central heating!

But we’re adapting.

My three-year-old has learned how to lay a fire in our enormous open fireplace and how to bring in firewood from the garden shed. He also knows that he must be as big as me to strike the matches and that, yes, he grows a little – not much – each day. The two-year-olds recognize the twang! of the starter on our portable gas heater, and the words grate, kindling and vent.

On dry days, the kids play outside in multiple layers of fleece. Alex chases guinea fowl across the yard and knows when a wagtail lands near the bird feeder, it will indeed wag its tail. Proteas and other flowers are fading but Thomas has helped to plant winter irises and anemones. The bulbs are sprouting already and will, apparently, bloom in August. That’s the equivalent of February blossoms in central Canada, which just doesn’t happen.

On rainy days, and most days are rainy now, the kids still go outside. They’ve created a fabulous mud puddle in the corner of the garden and despite cool temperatures, pull off their rain gear to jump into it. Maybe Canadian children - or maybe all children - are naturally frost-hardy.

I will either put on a layer of duck fat or drop a few pounds in adjusting to the chill. Either way, I hope to bring a few new winter rituals to Canada when we eventually return: more time outdoors, more flowering plants indoors, and a much, much lower thermostat.

Here I am, perched on the four legged stool by the kitchen table, multitasking (writing up this post while feeding my 13 months-old) yet again. The surprisingly cool summer breeze invites itself in through our back door, held ajar so Baby won’t be bored.

Today started out bad. You could probably say I got out the wrong side of bed this morning. At 6 a.m., after completing our morning prayer as a family, I went back to my room, with a baby who needed nursing, thinking,

“Can’t I quit being a parent?”

The rational part of me had forsaken me, and while I lay down nursing Baby, I did so grudgingly, all the while thinking,

“We have too many kids, and my middle child is quite something to deal with, and they’re just impossible!

Baby’s sucking probably stirred up some gushes of oxytocin, and the more rational part of me said,

“Being a parent is difficult. Your parenting style matters, you need parental wisdom and you need loads and loads of patience!”

Which I don’t have, evidently.

I fell asleep and woke up at around 10 a.m. to see Baby sitting on the bed, babbling away happily.

I hate it when I go back to sleep after our morning prayers, which usually is before sunrise. However, nowadays, I always do, especially because the time for our night prayer comes in around 10:45, after which I almost always fail to go to bed right away, and then I have to wake up in time to perform the morning prayer before the sun rises. A snooze after that always feels like wasted time to me, despite the long summer days.

Enveloped by that feeling, my already bad morning felt worse. I felt like I missed the train. I have been resuming my workout regimen these past few days, and going back to sleep just threw me off my schedule.
Too bad for the kids, they had to contend with a very grumpy and grouchy mom. To make my day worse, I had to cook lunch. Since the night prayer starts so late and the morning prayer ends so early, the kids usually take a nap either before our noon prayer (which is around 1:30 p.m.) at 12 p.m. or after it, at 2 p.m., which means that they have to have lunch at 11 a.m. I usually cook our dinners and lunches in the late afternoon, providing us all freshly cooked dinners and enough leftover for the next day’s lunch. Let’s just say I don’t like working under pressure, and cooking lunch close to lunch time is a lot of pressure for me. By 11 a.m. this morning, we still didn’t have any lunch to eat.

Muttering and grumbling, I exhorted the kids to help me out by peeling carrots and boiling the pasta. Not really wanting to cook, I lingered at the computer, leaving the kids in the kitchen to do my bidding. Err…is child labor illegal?

At around 12:30 p.m. my eight year old came back from his British Soccer Camp with our next door neighbor, and I still hadn’t produced lunch. If I could have just said,

“I quit!” and walked out, I think I probably would have, at this point.

Grudgingly, I headed to the kitchen, and started cooking. Since Baby is allergic to a lot of stuff, I can’t eat the normal durum wheat spaghetti or pasta, so whenever I make a pasta dish, I have to cook two separate batches; the normal cheap pasta for them and the expensive rice bran pasta for me. I don’t know why I chose today of all days, knowing this, to whip up a pasta dish.

It came to be that while I was working my triceps, biceps, and deltoids, stirring Farfalle in a huge saucepan so it would absorb the seasonings consisting of soy sauce, tomato ketchup, hoisin sauce, oyster sauce, chilli paste, and sauteed onions and garlic that I was interrupted with,

“Ummi! SY and SG said they put stuff in our dryer hole thingy!”

Suffice it to say, I was really not ready to receive yet another crisis to handle, and since the kids were loading the dryer, while another batch of washed clothes waited in the washer, my aggravation built to a climax. Two boys (our neighbors) had apparently stuffed ’stuff’ into our dryer vent outlet. That meant, no drying clothes until we get the ’stuff’ out.

To make the story short, I hailed the boys and told them to retrieve the ’stuff’, but they couldn’t because they had gone further in the vent than I expected. As for me, I still had three more batches of pasta to stir-fry, and by the time I was done, it was pretty late. Late for our noon prayer. Baby had woken up from his nap, and with his waking, you can be sure that nursing would be in order pretty soon.

Well, I managed to regain my sanity, and talked to the two boys, and one of their moms. Later, in the evening, we had to detach the vent from the dryer and retrieve the ’stuff’ and oh, what a lot of junk it was!

It had started out bad. I thought of quitting being a parent, but I ended up ‘parenting’ two additional children who are not even mine.

Wisdom and patience? I think Allah is answering my pleas for parental wisdom and patience by giving me additional children, misbehaviors, and situations for practice. After all, practice makes perfect, right?