To Mark on his 34th birthday

This being the eve of my dear husband's birthday, I thought I'd take this opportunity to sing his praises a little bit. Mark and I celebrated 13 years together in May. The guy I'd dated before Mark was, let's just say, not a good choice for me. I was stumbling through college at UW-Fox Valley not working particularly hard and kind of aimless. My whole life shifted when Mark came into it. He was the kindest, smartest guy I'd ever met, and he made me want to be a better person.

The fall after we started dating, I transferred to UW-Oshkosh. I became much more focused. I did well in school for the first time in a long time. Mark was attending UW-Madison, so we had a long-distance relationship for two years. It was hard to be apart, but still, our relationship thrived. A little more than a year after our first date, Mark proposed. We were young - just 21 at the time (one uncle called me the child bride when we married at 23), but I'd say we've done pretty well for ourselves.

When Mark showed up at my bridal shower with dozens of roses, my sister-in-law, Sara, who's married to Mark's brother, Steve, laughed knowingly and said, "Don't expect that to last." She was right, because I'm sure she knew that grand gestures are a small part, at best, of good, long relationships. Don't get me wrong, Mark still surprises me from time to time, but that's not really the point. Long after the romance and excitement of new love has faded, after we've been married several years and the appearance of kids has whittled our one-on-one time to nearly nothing, I know: Mark is the kind of guy you want by your side for the long road ahead. There is no one with whom I'd rather experience the good times and bad.

I recently read a piece Tom Hanks had written about questions he's always asked on the press circuit. One is, "What's your secret to a happy marriage"? His reply? "I was smart enough to marry Rita Wilson." That would be my answer, too. I was smart enough to marry Mark Thiel.

I'll close this post with some lines from a favorite Avett Brothers song, All My Mistakes. Mark first quoted these to me in our 10-year anniversary card, and I think they're perfect.

I made decisions some right and some wrong
And I let some love go I wish wasn't gone
These things and more I wish I had not done

But I can't go back
And I don't want to
'Cause all my mistakes
They brought me to you

A holy terror

Leave it to my youngest child to lay waste to yet another situation I thought I had all figured out. As soon as my firstborn was past that sleep-all-the-way-through-church phase, I decided that though it would be tough, we should try to keep him in church rather than putting him in the nursery or sitting in the "cry room." Sure, each week, Mark or I would have to take him to the lounge to run around a bit, but it always seemed logical to me that a child couldn't learn to behave in church unless he was, you know, in church. Besides, the little chapel reserved for parents at our church, aka the cry room, oddly seems to attract plenty of random adults without children, so I would still feel like my child was bothering someone.

Our philosophy served us fine through our first two kids. We did the whole pack a snack, bring some books thing, and most of the time church went fairly smoothly for us, as much as can be expected with two little boys in tow, anyway.

Then along came Gus. To put it simply, Gus and church do not mix. He is just too much of a frenetic ball of energy to be contained by the confines of church. By the time the first two boys were almost 3, as Gus is now, of course they still would be wiggly and bored (let's face it they're still that way now), but at least they could sit somewhat calmly in one of our laps and look through a book. Not so with Gus. By the time he was about 2, we had quickly abandoned our no-nursery policy - and just as quickly learned that the nursery often doesn't have volunteers, anyway.

Most weeks, we have no choice but to slog through our first chosen method of bringing kids to church (could this be some kind of punishment for my self-righteous proclamations about the right way to do things?). On a good day, Gus makes it through 20 minutes of Mass, and then he'll loudly announce that he'd like to take a walk. Mark and I usually trade off weeks of Gus duty. Yesterday was my turn.

I had forgotten to bring a drink for Gus, so less than five minutes into church, I took him out with the idea of taking him to the water fountain. Instead he ran right to the nursery. Fine, I thought, we'll just stay here and he can play a while. What's the difference, really, anyway? He stayed there a bit, and then got bored of it and decided he'd like to head back to church. He barreled down the hallway, much faster than I could walk, and really it didn't seem appropriate for me to be running through church. He was about to slam right into a door and cause a big commotion when I finally caught up to him. I snatched him up and took him to the lounge, where, in my best try-to-control-my-rage voice, I fruitlessly tried to explain to him I would be holding him for the rest of church. That's not how Gus rolls. He always wins these battles of will. I ended up closely tailing him for the rest of the miserable time. When it was time for Communion, I carried him in, and though the whole thing takes but a minute or two, he whined loudly and tried to wriggle out of my grasp. I encountered Mark, and said, "keys" through gritted teeth. We proceeded directly to the car to wait out the end of church.

We're at an impasse. Taking Gus to church truly makes us unhappy. The unlucky provider of Gus care inevitably winds up grumpy for the next couple hours. It's the opposite of the peaceful experience I want from church. Mark and I have discussed several possibilities, from going to church separately to avoid taking Gus, to simply having one of us stay home with him each week. But while churchgoing with Gus drains me so, I'm stubborn. Having us all go together there is important to me. I still think Gus needs to go and try to learn how to behave in church. So I guess the answer is, there is no answer. We'll just have to keep doing what we're doing and hope that this is one battle of the wills we can win - eventually.

I'm back! And, yeah, still the same ...

So it's been a few months. My blog had been on life support and, you probably assumed, died a slow death. I'm here to tell you, reader, that I'm redoubling my efforts to keep my blog up to date. Please accept my apologies for having left you breathless with anticipation.

I'll pick up right at the present, the first glorious day of the first full, beautiful week of summer vacation. I will give you a rundown of the boys' schedules, and you will never believe that I had intended to keep them "relatively free" this summer. Paul is taking a "get ready for kindergarten" summer school class, mostly because I feel strongly that he's not at all (emotionally) ready for kindergarten. I hadn't planned on signing up Ben for any summer school classes ... but then his teacher recommended this great robotics class. I signed up Paul for T-ball, because, hey, he might like it. And I enrolled Ben in kickball and "It's Game Time!" because, man, that sounds fun. Summer school runs Monday through Thursday mornings for the next four weeks. T-ball games are Monday and Wednesday mornings, after summer school, natch. Kickball is Wednesday afternoons, and Ben will partake of game time Friday afternoons. Rounding out our schedule, all three boys take swimming lessons on Saturday mornings.

Honestly, I have the best intentions. I know for a fact that I do not enjoy spending my days driving the boys from one place to the next, and over-scheduling is no good for them either. All I can surmise about how I get myself into these situations is that I develop some sort of amnesia about how much I am indeed undertaking. Summer school? Great! Park and rec activities? Those are such good opportunities for learning sportsmanship and social skills.

As if some kind of divine sign, today, the first day of all the activities, was perfectly awful. I knew Paul would be fretting about starting his class. That's why I roped Mark into dropping him off today. When I called Mark for an update, he said Paul had been weepy and that I probably wanted to get there early (so I'd be waiting for him, not vice versa). While Paul was at school, I had brought Ben to my mom's while I took Gus to drop-in at the Y and went for swim. I ran back to pick up Ben to take him to his class and was supposed to have plenty of time - and I would have had the Clovis parking lot not been a nuthouse. Yes, that's nobody's fault but my own for failing to have foresight. Nevertheless, I flew into a mini road rage trying to get out of the full parking lot and to a spot on the street. I called the driver in front of me an idiot for taking too long to make her move; meanwhile Ben, I'm sure, looked on in horror at my bad behavior.

I reached Paul's classroom at the appointed time, but the door was open already and other parents had begun picking up their children. Paul sat sobbing while an aide patted his back. "He was fine until he thought you were going to be late," she said. Great. I got him calmed down and brought Ben to his class. "These kids all look older than me," Ben worried. I assured him he was in the right place and left with Paul and Gus to run to Shopko to get the boys snacks and drinks before Paul started T-ball. When I was at the store, my cellphone rang, which almost never happens, and I was so surprised that I dropped it on the floor and it stopped ringing. I didn't have time to think about it: we were running late for T-ball.

Once at T-ball, Paul and Gus dropped into their normal, comfortable roles. Paul, watching me like a hawk to make sure I was in sight at all times, Gus, running away from me at every opportunity, ensuring that I would not be in Paul's sight at all times. At one point, I was chasing Gus around, and Paul came to our spot for a drink. I saw him, but he could not see me. "I want you to stay close!" he wailed. In the meantime, Ben came to the field as planned after his class. It turned out that I had gotten the time wrong, that his class wasn't starting until later. The phone call. He had played computer in the lab during the other class, and now he actually had to go to his class.

Ben ran back to the school, and I realized that I didn't know when his class ended. I called Mark and asked him to call the school and figure it out, as I was more than a little frazzled - and still chasing after Gus. He called the school, and the secretary told him that she couldn't help him, that summer school is separate from Clovis. She gave Mark the phone number, and of course it rang and rang. Mark called the Clovis secretary again, and she told him that though the summer school office is ADJACENT to the Clovis office, she couldn't do anything to help. The best thing, she said, would be to come to the office in person to straighten it out. So Mark left work to do just that. Finally, we figured it out. By this time, it was past our normal lunchtime, and Paul, Gus and I were tired and hungry. My mom agreed to pick up Ben after his class, and finally we headed home.

Later, when we were playing outside, Ben accidentally squirted me with the hose. I glared at him and said his name in that just-so way. He burst into tears. When I asked why he was crying, he blurted, "You've been in a bad mood all day! And I didn't like it when you called that person an idiot!" I told him he was right, that I had been in a bad mood all day and tried to explain that I was wrong to call the other person a name, that I was only worried about getting to Paul.

The first day of the first full week of summer, and I had managed to damage Ben, making him witness my bad behavior, and I scarred Paul, when I turned up late and failed to stay in sight. At least Gus was spared. Unless you count all those YouTube videos I let him watch while I prepared supper. (One of them he chose was a "My Friends Tigger and Pooh" that was in some language that sounded to me like a cross between French and Japanese - turns out it was Thai. Do I score some points for making him more cultured?) The summer is young. We'll see if I can manage to do more good than harm.

Taking time for me

I recently read the phrase that being a mother is the toughest job you'll ever love. So true. I've written many times about how unprepared I was for the unexpected challenges that stay-at-home mommyhood entails. While the job is gratifying and I am incredibly lucky to be able to do it, it has got to be one of the most emotionally, not to mention physically, exhausting jobs you can do. Whether your child is acting sullen, hyper or anything in between, Mom must rise to meet his needs. On any given day, you could be called on to diffuse one or many temper tantrums, be puked on, or have your child blow his nose on your sweater. You just never know. OK, it sounds like I'm complaining, but really I just mean to say, it takes a toll.

Ever since I began staying home, I've found myself in an odd position. It's hard for me not to earn money, to fail to contribute to our household in that tangible way. It feels wrong sometimes to buy Mark a gift with money that I haven't actually earned. And while I'm married to one of the best guys of all time, who reminds me all the time that I contribute plenty and that it's silly for me to think of it as "spending his money," the feeling remains. I think that's why it's been hard for me to justify taking time for me.

Last year, after I had faced a couple months of insomnia, I decided to see a counselor. We quickly zeroed in on the fact that anxiety mostly was responsible for my sleeplessness. (I know - surprise, surprise that I'm an anxious person!) One of the things Mary, my counselor, encouraged me to do was take more time for myself. Get a baby-sitter, put the kids in child care for a few hours a week while Mark was at work. I was, to put it mildly, resistant to this idea. How could I justify spending money on child care - it's my full-time job to take care of my kids. Are other stay-home moms bad for taking a couple hours for themselves during the week? my counselor challenged me. Well, of course not, but ... Mary actually assigned me homework: take some time for yourself. I fudged, I did it as minimally as possible. I finished up my counseling sessions in the fall. I still hadn't done so well on my goal of taking more me time.

Slowly, I began to take some steps. I brought Paul and Gus to drop-in care at the Y for an hour a week while I took a class. To my surprise, both have done great with it. Gus, in fact, loves it. I took my mom up on her offer of watching Gus while I went to the grocery store on Wednesdays. It felt good, very good. Then on Friday, for the first time, I brought Gus to drop-in at the Y while Paul was at school and went and did something completely frivolous: I shopped by myself. I practically skipped out of the Y.

I always understood, at least intellectually, why taking a break is good. We've all heard this before: a happy mom is a good mom. Well, it turns out it's true. It was hard for me to be that good mom when I was going around with a near-empty tank all the time. Taking a few hours for me can make a world of difference. For a couple bucks, I brought Gus to the Y for child care. He got to play with other kids. I got two glorious hours of silence and unencumbered wandering around stores. Priceless. Mary would be proud.

Groundhog Day

This time of year is always hard for me. January feels like the longest month ever, so even though February still is part of the doldrums of winter, I'm eager to flip the calendar to a new month. Around Feb. 2 each year, I also love to watch the movie Groundhog Day. Of course it makes me laugh, but more than that, it's utterly relatable, I love its message, and it puts me in just the right mood to face the rest of the cold winter that lies ahead.

In the beginning of the movie after the confusion wears off and the caustic and self-centered Phil Connors realizes that he's doomed to keep reliving Groundhog Day, his first instinct is to live it up a little bit. He has some flings, he steals some money. The novelty of that soon wears off, and Phil winds up depressed. No one can understand the hell he's living, and he offs himself in many and varied ways - all to no avail. He always wakes up to the sound of Sonny and Cher at 6 a.m. on Groundhog Day in the same insipid B&B. Finally, Phil decides he will become a better man. If he's stuck repeating the same day ad infinitum, he wants to make something more of his life. I'm a sucker for redemption, and this part of the movie always gets me.

Even if you're not Phil Connors and living the same day over and over again, winter in Wisconsin can make anyone feel that they are. Invariably, when winter has really only just begun, I'm already feeling cooped up, ready to go out of my mind if I'm stuck inside one more day. After my dose of Groundhog, however, I'm trying to remind myself that I'm really not stuck. Undeniably during this time of year, it's more challenging to overcome inertia, but I have options. I may not take this winter and learn to play piano and carve Andie MacDowell's likeness in ice a la Phil Connors, but I can take the boys sledding, take a walk, make some popcorn and hot chocolate and watch a movie with my family.

At the end of the movie, Phil offers what will be his final commentary on Groundhog Day: "When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter."

I may never feel that warmly toward winter, but since I'm stuck in it, I want to try to make the best of it and recognize its beauty.

I've been hitting the (parenting) books

Wow, it really has been a long time. It has come to my attention recently that I've been remiss in updating my blog of late. I guess my excuse would be that first Mark, then my mom, then Paul had surgery, all within the space of less than two weeks. Almost three weeks have passed since Paul's surgery, and he's come through the whole experience marvelously. Seriously, we got so lucky.

But I digress. What I really wanted to write about today is my never-ending quest to find parenting strategies that will get me through the day-to-day frustrations I experience while raising my boys. I've gotten to this point so many times. Suddenly, I'll notice that the majority of my dealings with Ben end with me making some sharp comment, or I find myself nagging him all the time. I'll get done, well, lecturing Ben, and he'll dejectedly proclaim that "everything he does is wrong." That's certainly not the message I want to send. He's sad, I feel helpless. It's the same with Paul and Gus, just different problems.

I want to reach that parenting nirvana, that place where I can discipline my kids lovingly so we can all live in harmony. Yeah, that probably doesn't really exist, but I'd still like to get as close to it as possible. It just seems like there's this chasm that separates kids from adults. I remember being a kid and thinking adults have no idea how hard it is to be a kid. Now, as an adult, I think that kids have no idea how hard it is to be an adult. I empathize with Ben (and Paul and Gus), I really do. Somehow that just doesn't translate.

So I did what I always do when I feel stuck on a problem. I turned to books. My friend, who's a social worker who leads parenting workshops, told me I might want to check out the "Love and Logic" program. I rented the DVD from the library, and Mark and I sat down to watch it, ready to emerge better parents. The program's founders contend that the parenting world today is filled with "helicopter parents" who hover around their kids constantly and seek to solve all their problems. This, they say, leads kids to feel helpless, un-empowered, ultimately frustrated. Am I a little helicopterish? (Or is the correct term helicoptery?) I think that would be fair to say, though I certainly am uncomfortable being referred to as such.

The solution: give kids back their problems. First, they say, "hit them with a dose of empathy." The scenario they offer in the video is one of a child losing his coat, saying that someone "stole" it at school. (Read: the kid lost his coat and doesn't want to admit it's his fault.) So first you would say something like, "I'm so sorry that happened to you." Next, you would offer some suggestions, putting out stupid ones first, saving the best ones for last. "Some kids would just wear three shirts. Would that work for you?" "Some kids would take money out of their piggy bank and go to the thrift store and buy a new one. Would that work for you?" (That's the good suggestion, in case you didn't pick up on that.)

All of this was presented in an overly jokey way that tends to irritate me, but OK, I can see some really good suggestions here. I'm not saying that it would be style to proceed exactly as the presenters laid out, but maybe I could adapt it. However, I still wanted to expand my parenting repertoire, so I checked out the book, "How to Talk so Your Kids Will Listen and Listen so Your Kids Will Talk." In this book, the authors say that parents often fail to truly listen to their kids. We're prone to saying dismissive things, leaving kids to feel they've been disregarded. When a child presents a problem to you, try to pick up on what your child is feeling. ("You must be feeling really sad." "You must have been so angry.") Even offering sympathetic sounds like "oh" and "mmhmm" is great, they say. This book definitely sounded more like something I could do.

We've been using techniques from both approaches. Mark and I have been getting some strange responses from Ben, in particular. When we use the "some kids would ..." technique, Ben seems to be a little dubious. "Why are you guys talking so weird?" he's asked us. To be honest, often saying these things feels a little clunky and disingenuous. However, I, for one am going to keep at it. What I was doing before certainly wasn't working. My friend, the social worker, talks about keeping a parenting toolbox. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to put these in my parenting toolbox and hope that someday I'll assemble the perfect one that will lead me to parenting nirvana.

He's testing my sanity - again

Who could I be talking about but my darling Gus? Almost from the day he was born, Gus has taken me to new places. Before Gus, I had thought parenting at times could be extremely challenging, but I soon learned I hadn't seen anything yet when my youngest boy became colicky at four weeks old. For sometimes three or four hours a night, Gus would howl inconsolably.

After the colic cleared, we had a few months' respite ... until Gus became mobile. A walker at 10 months old, Gus quickly became a climber. We have had to purchase every child-proofing contraption imaginable - locks of every kind - door knob, Lazy Susan, oven. We never needed these devices before Hurricane Gus.

When Gus turned 2, it seemed that things were improving a bit. Toys and activities could hold his interest for longer periods of time. He was still climbing, but less. Just when I was breathing a tiny sigh of relief, Gus devised new ways of torturing me. Here's a sampling of his latest tricks. He pushes toys over to the computer desk to give himself a boost so he can climb up and do a little victory dance on top of our desk. He loves to "help" me cook, so I can't so much as go to the bathroom without hearing the squeak of a chair being pushed over to the counter.

Gus's pièce de résistance, however, has been his discovery of the joys of taking off his diaper. "Go potty!" he'll exclaim. Naturally, I've set him on the toilet many times, and of course he never goes. When I tell people this, they tell me it's great, that he's showing potty-training readiness. At the risk of sounding like a completely unmotivated parent, I don't feel like potty-training him right now. I just want him to keep his diaper on! He can get a onesie open in no time flat, and he's been taking off his diaper a good dozen or more times a day. The worst part is that he's especially prone to doffing his diaper when it's filled with poop. I finally hit my limit and after lots of Googling discovered the Little Keeper Sleeper, escape-proof baby pajamas. The two pairs I ordered arrived yesterday. Hallelujah! He will be wearing his LKSs every day under his clothes. Let's hope they work, otherwise the you-know-what might just hit the fan.