Melissa Anne Cohen

I think it’s World Breastfeeding Week.  I could be wrong, but there do seem to be a lot of stories out there about nursing.  I have nursed all of my children, and had very different experiences each time.  This is the first story.

I was late to the party, so to speak, with mothering.  And by the time I got there (Jessica was born a week before my twenty-ninth birthday), I had a lot of preconceived notions about what I’d do as a parent.  A lot of those got thrown right out the window (she was a pacifier girl from the beginning, and I swore I wouldn’t do that) but nursing was one thing that went exactly the way I wanted it to.  She had been born via emergency c-section, after twelve hours and four minutes of labor (because a contraction woke me up at 6:28 a.m.).  By the time I recovered enough to be able to hold her, I was so head over heels in love with her.  More than love – I NEEDED her, in a way that I hadn’t ever needed anyone before.  I didn’t feel right unless I was holding her at first.  Nursing felt so natural, of course it was how I was going to feed her.  I wanted to be with her all the time, and nursing on demand meant that I got to have her with me.

By the time I went back to work, at fourteen weeks (got two weeks extra for the c-section), nursing was well established.  So well established that she stopped taking the bottles after the first few days and would simply go on a hunger strike until I came back to nurse her.  I’d nurse her in the mornings, come back at lunch and nurse her again, and then she’d sleep until I got there to pick her up.  I was never more grateful than when my boss laid me off when she was three months old.

I don’t remember any struggles with Jessie and nursing.  I had thrush, but it was easily treated, and not much of an issue at all.  She used to fuss before sleeping (and by fuss, I mean scream hysterically and refuse to nurse), I’d have to trick her with the pacifier to calm her down enough to get her to latch on.  Of all of my babies, Jessie was the least interested in nursing.  She was much more into the pacifier as a self-soothing tool.  She nursed, but she did it because that’s where the food was – and that’s very different from how her brother approached it.

We started solids at four or five months, and she… just loved it.   She gradually tapered off nursing, a little bit at a time, until she got to eight and a half months.  Then she was done.  Just done.  If I had known then what I know now, I might have tried harder to get her back to the breast, but at the time, it felt like it was just the natural progression.  She was done.  I had to respect that.  We switched to formula for a few months and then I transitioned to regular milk.  Her weaning process was entirely Jessie-led, and so incredibly easy.  I was never uncomfortable, she tapered off so gradually and slowly that my body just adjusted.

Jessie is still my most difficult sleeper (she still fights sleep like it’s the enemy) and oddly enough, is still my only child who will happily skip a meal if she doesn’t like the presentation.  She used her pacifier until she was four or so, and gave it up reluctantly (which should have been a clue as to what weaning future children would be like…).  But nursing her was so blissful, and I’ll never forget what those first few weeks were like.  Because I was recovering from surgery, and had no other babies to chase, I was able to literally just sit and rock her all day long.  She’d nurse and drift off to sleep and I’d rock and read and then we’d repeat the whole cycle.  It was fabulous.

We went to Great Wolf Lodge on Friday with the kids.  And I have literally never before seen Sam as happy as he was on Friday night.  It was adorable, because he was just so excited to be there.  Sam’s a water park kind of kid.  He loves swimming, loves waterslides, is happy to play in the little kid section with Julianna and even happier to line up to do the big scary waterslides as well.  There was an arcade, two queen size beds next to each other so that he could jump from one to the other – it was very nearly heaven for my eight year old.

Julianna was a little less enthused.  She likes the water.  Kind of.  She does NOT like getting splashed or having water sprayed at her (which is kind of the whole point of the water park for her age).   But she was relatively happy, as long as one of us was right there with her.  Marc let her dump water directly onto his head, so he definitely scored as the more fun parent to supervise her.

My Jessica… she liked a lot of things at the hotel.  The wave pool was a big hit, and she’s always been a fan of the lazy river ride (where you just drift along on a floaty).  She’s a relatively competent swimmer, but she’s not particularly adventurous.  Bike riding is too scary for her, she’s the last one to want to do anything physical.  She doesn’t wrestle with Marc, she doesn’t climb trees, she hates any game that involves throwing a ball her way.  She’s me, essentially.  And I was afraid of waterslides for the longest time.

It was Sam that got me past my fear of waterslides.  I didn’t want him to be afraid, and when he asked me to take him, I did.  It’s not that I wouldn’t have taken Jessie, but she never asked.  I offered, I think, but she’s always been afraid.  So Sam’s been a waterslide boy for years, but Jessie always refused.

But yesterday – she did it.  I pushed her, and I was really conflicted about it – should you push a child to do what she’s terrified of?  What if she chickens out at the last minute and then feels terrible about disappointing me?  I don’t want her to feel bad about who she is, and if she’s someone who honestly hates the idea of doing stuff like that – maybe I should just let it go.   But I really thought she’d love it, and I pushed.  I asked her several times, and then I finally said that I really wanted her to do it, at least once.  If she hated it, I wouldn’t ever ask her to do it again.  I told her that there was nobody in the whole world who was more on her side than her dad and I, and I would never ask her to do something she couldn’t do – and that she shouldn’t miss out on the opportunity for something awesome just because she was too scared to try.

She was so brave, because I knew she was terrified.  But she did it anyway – and it ended up being her favorite part of the park.

It’s hard being eleven.  I know that.  I know sometimes it doesn’t seem that way, but I do remember what it was like.  The hitch is that, in addition to remembering what it’s like, to be eleven, I also know what it’s like to be the mom of an eleven year old.

I wish you had the perspective to know that you will miss this.  That the day will come when you’ll look back on the days when you could sit on the floor and play with play-doh with your sister and wish that you had enjoyed it more.  Wished that you hadn’t gotten stuck in an argument over who got to play with the little cup, and then devolved into a screaming match that resulted in you being sent into your room.  Again.

I wish that you could hear me if I told you this now.  I wish that I could wrap my arms around you and somehow make you see how much I love you and how much your siblings love you.  I wish that I could guarantee that you won’t ever feel as though things are unfair and that you have an bigger burden because you’re stuck being the oldest.   I wish you could see yourself thru your siblings’ eyes, and know how badly they want your approval and your attention. How sometimes, when I see one of them trying to get your attention and failing and resorting to just bugging you to get a reaction, I don’t want to step in.  I want you to turn around and give them what they need.  Not to fight with you, but to play with you.

I know it’s hard, because you are so much older than they are.   Three and a half years older than your brother, and seven years older than your sister.  You are in a very different place, mentally and psychologically, than your two siblings.  You are stuck right in the middle – not a grown up and not a little kid either.  You have all the responsibility of being older and more reasonable, and none of the privileges that go along with it.  You don’t get to lay down the law, institute rules and expect compliance.  And it is unfair, I do expect better behavior out of you than I do out of your sister.  Age appropriate, I tell myself, but it’s cold comfort to you.

The facts are that being the oldest kid is a pain sometimes.   I know that, I’m an oldest kid too.  With great power comes great responsibility, and you are in a position of enormous power right now.  Your opinion of them matters more than almost anyone else.  They look up to you and love you and want to be you.  And when they can’t – they’re going to do their best to get your attention any way they can.  I can’t change that, baby girl.  You have a relationship with them that’s going to have to be independent of me.  I can’t always step in and save the day.

You are such a wonderful big sister.  From the very first day, when you plowed into the hospital room and ran past me to get to your new baby brother, your love has been a constant for them.   You are responsible and loving and one of the very best parts of their lives.  As much as they bug you, you have never not had their backs when it really mattered.  They are incredibly blessed to have you, and you are equally blessed to have them.

Even when they won’t let you have the little play-doh cup.

My cousin passed away when I was fourteen.  I’ve got a huge extended family, and I’m the second of twenty-something grandchildren.  My cousins, Becky and Bridgett, were closest in age to me, and we were together a lot.  So many of my childhood memories are wrapped up in time spent with the two of them.   They taught me to roller skate, and it was on their bike that I crashed into a tree (and never really rode again after that….).  We played Barbies and went swimming, stayed up too late and gossiped about our parents together.

Bridget was eleven when she got sick, and twelve when she died.  It wasn’t a long time, looking back.  I think it was in the fall that we found out she had cancer, and by April, she was gone.  It was more than twenty five years ago, and I can remember the song that was playing when I drove up to my uncle’s house, the weekend she died.  I still can’t listen to Fire and Rain by James Taylor without crying.

There was a lot that changed in my life, because of Bridgett.   And so much that didn’t.  Because my life went on.   I wasn’t sick.  But after that, I always knew that it could happen.   I never worried about getting sick myself, not really.  Which is odd, now that I think of it, because I’m a champion worrier.  Bridgett’s death changed the way I related to God, the way I thought of the universe and my place in it.  It changed my relationship to Becky, I became her sister.  It was too lonely otherwise.   My kids are her daughter’s first cousins, and I am her daughter’s aunt.  She is Auntie Becky to my kids – it would never occur to either of us to remember that she’s actually their second cousin.

When I count my blessings (as I do often, especially when I’m freaking out about the economy and school shopping and dance classes and ohmyGod we really need a new car…), I always start with “My kids are all healthy.”  I never forget that.  It’s such an incredible gift, to have these three children, so healthy.  We’ve never had any serious health scares with one of them.  Minor things, like stitches and broken bones (hello, Jessie).  But they’re healthy.  It’s not ever something that I can gloss over or ignore.  Health is such a fragile thing, in the end.  And a child can get terribly sick and die in the time it takes the snow to melt in New England.

So today, on a day when I’m especially stressed out and worried, it helps to remember that I really don’t have all that much to worry about at all.  I’ve got three happy healthy kids rolling around and screaming in the next room (they aren’t unhappy, it’s just Julie screaming with joy at Sam).  They’re all healthy.   And in the end, that’s what really matters.

There are many things I cannot do.  I cannot perform surgery, or diagnose a virus versus an actual infection.  I can’t drive an eighteen wheeler or sell someone insurance.   I can’t replace brake pads or build you lighting fixture.  And I absolutely, unequivocally cannot, under any circumstances, design a website.

I can write for a website.  I can think about what I’d like on it, and click away with wild and reckless abandon.  But I’ve managed to delete all of my side widgets, give you the option to “like” the facebook developers page, get rid of all of my side menus and reduced myself to tears twice this morning over trying to get this website to look nice.

I need a facebook plug-in, where you can click “like” and see updates from my facebook page.  I need a posting of my most popular posts, and a drop down menu where a reader can access my archives.  I had a really cool thing where you could see the location of my readers from all over the world, but that’s gone and I can’t figure out how to get it back.  There’s a really neat slider thing on one of the theme options, that pulls old blog posts from years back and displays them at the top – but I can’t figure out how to have that and not lose absolutely everything else on the page that I liked.   I cannot figure this out for the life of me.

I probably need to find someone to do this for me.  Anyone want to volunteer?

This is a repost from last winter – but given that we had another rough night last night (although nowhere near as LOUD), this seemed like a good weekend post

Marc’s job entails a lot of late nights.  It’s got a lot of flexibility, in that he’s able to do pick up and drop off from school and various afterschool activities, and get to the gym occasionally.  It also means that most nights, he’s not here for bedtime.

I’m not great at bedtime.  On the list of parenting tasks, it’s probably got to count as a fail on my part.  I don’t put my kids to bed, kiss them goodnight and have them fall asleep on their own.  I snuggle them to sleep.  Jessie, not as much, she’s at the point where sometimes she’ll happily bop off to bed on her own, but mostly, she likes to fall asleep in my bed and then I haul her up and walk her into her own room.  They can, and do, sleep in their own beds, but they like to fall asleep all snuggled up and fun.  If I had just one, I could do it in their own beds and then go back to my own.   But, as I’ve got three, I just keep doing it this way and hope that the day doesn’t come when I’ve got a sixteen year old, a thirteen year old and a ten year old all in my bed.   Or maybe I do hope that day’ll come – I’m a little foggy this morning due to lack of sleep.

So last night… it’s all flowing well.  We went out for dinner. By the time we got home, it was eight thirty, and Jessie still had homework.  So I explained long division to her.  Again.  Sam got himself ready for bed, and fell asleep in my bed.  Julie was next (she was up later because of an ill-timed nap earlier that afternoon).  Jessie finished up her homework and came in to snuggle next to me.  Sam fell asleep easily enough, he’s far and away my best sleeper.  Once he was officially out cold, I hauled him up and tossed him into his bed.   His queen bed, because I can’t throw him up into the loft bed.  Which is an important detail for later.  Julie ended up crawling into bed and falling asleep a little earlier than I had anticipated.  I fell asleep before Marc came home, with Jessie still in the bed next to me.

Marc apparently decided that he was too tired to be moving children hither and yon, and since Jessie was in my bed, and Sam was in the big bed in his room, his options were to climb up into the loft bed (which is an image that amuses me) or to just crash in Jessie’s room.  Which would have been FINE, except that Julianna woke up around two thirty.  She never wakes up for any length of time, she just fusses a minute, latches on for a bit, and then drifts back to sleep.  But it was enough to wake Miss Jess, who got up and toddled her little self into her own bed.

Which is when all hell broke loose.  Jessie had no idea her Daddy was in her bed, and just climbed in.  When she realized that there was SOMETHING in her bed, she started screaming like she was being attacked.  Which in turn freaked Marc out, who had been in a sound sleep, until he suddenly was actually being attacked by an extremely loud and freaked out nine year old.  So he also started screaming in terror.  Which was funny, now, in retrospect, but last night, I was just irritated.  Because I knew instantly what had happened and that it wasn’t going to end well.  Lo and behold, Jessie came tearing back into my bed, launched herself on top of me and Julie, still sobbing and screaming.  Which woke Julie, who had been mostly still dozing, so she was wide awake.  Three minutes later, barely enough time to shove Jessie over to the side and get her to mostly stop crying, in wandered my boy.  “Why is everyone screaming??”  I just shushed him and told him to snuggle back up.  “Everyone back to sleep, shhhhh”  I kept repeating, until, eventually, everyone did.  Except for me.   Because when everyone’s in bed with me, I can’t sleep.  I’m trapped, unable to roll over or move or adjust a pillow without waking someone.

So tonight, even if it kills me, I’m staying awake long enough to shove everyone into their own beds.

We’re having a relatively quiet week here.  It’s been really hot, and we’ve been swimming almost every day down at the pool.  Public pools still seem foreign to me – but Worcester has a lovely one and it’s just down the hill.  It’s big and clean and the kids love it.   I love it.  Because it’s super easy to watch three kids of varying degrees of proficiency, I just plop myself down in the shallow end and they bop around me.  Jessie and Sam are both getting more confident, Sam is swimming underwater and working on his dead man’s float, and Jessie is working on the backstroke.

We’ve also recently discovered the pool at our local JCC.  We have a membership because Julianna goes to preschool there, but other than Marc using the boxing room, none of us have really taken advantage of the facilities.  But we’ve been up there two or three time in the past week or so, and it’s fabulous.   Julie is tall enough to go in the shallow end of the pool, and it’s not as crowded as the public pool down the street.  Everyone is tan and swimming – exactly what you’d want a summer to be like.

Sam and Jessie both have put some time in outside at our lemonade stand.  They’ve got a poster, a little table and an umbrella and I make them take a book out there and combine summer reading with earning ice cream truck money.  Of course, the ice cream truck has stopped coming up the street, but I keep telling them that it could come at any moment.  Sam, in particular, has been enormously successful out there (I’m pretty sure it’s because he hollers as passing cars, and makes his little sister dance around holding the sign), but made enough to take everyone out for ice cream the other day (because seriously, that ice cream truck isn’t coming up here anymore…)

We’ve done a couple of day trips, here and there, and mostly just spent a lot of time together.  I keep thinking that this time is so short – how many more summers will I have when all three are home?  A summer where Marc has so much flexibility in his schedule, and where Jessie isn’t working at a summer job (she’s already doing mother’s helper stuff once a week), I think that Sam will probably go to camp next year, and Julie will be gearing up for kindergarten next fall.   Summers will look really different in the future, and I’m trying to enjoy every minute of this one.

(They’ve grown so much since this picture two years ago – I’m already wistful, imagining how much bigger they’ll be two years from now….)

One of the perks to having the kids that I do, to having the kid spacing that I do, is that they’re all at very different life stages.   It’s been like that from the beginning, Jessie was three and a half when Sam was born, and Samilicious Boy was three months away from his fourth birthday when he became a big brother.

Today, we spent the day out and about.  It wasn’t a great day, honestly.  I started out with a trip to the mall, which is never a fun way to start out the day.   I have a craptastic sense of direction and got mildly lost finding the Auburn Mall (a mall that’s actually just a few miles away from me, but I don’t go there often enough to remember exactly where it is and always get just a little lost when I try to find it).  After forty five minutes of shopping (first I went to the wrong Macy’s – because of course, there are two in this mall) and then not being able to find the registry thing, and then not being able to find ANYTHING on the registry for Marc’s cousin’s shower gift), I finally staggered out with a gift.  Made it home in time to shove a little lunch into the kids and pack everyone up for a trip to Purgatory Chasm.

Purgatory is a state park (reservation?) not far from here.  And it’s Sam’s favorite destination.  We were half-heartedly celebrating his 8th birthday for the third time (it’s a long story), and were going to have birthday cake, play on the playground and potentially climb the chasm.  Julianna was rocking a couple of pretty significant bug bites, and I ended up leaving the party early and rushing her into urgent care when we realized that they were actually starting to get hot.

Turns out the bug bites were fine (watch for infection, keep an eye on them, blah, blah, blah) and I ended up back at the house, with my cousin Becky and her daughter Abby-with-a-bow.  Marc dropped the other two off and went into work.  We made chicken for dinner, and the kids all ate with varying degrees of enthusiasm.  Abby collapsed into tears – you could tell it was close to bedtime) and after they left, I put the girls into the bathtub.  I don’t bathe the kids together as a rule.  Jessie is a shower girl, obviously and so not into amusing her sister in the tub, and Julie’s old enough so that it’s not really appropriate to shove Sam in there with her either.  But tonight, Jessie was feeling magnanimous and liking her sister and offered to take a bath with her so she wouldn’t be alone.  The bath lasted longer than I would have suspected but both girls ended up furious at the other one – and I had to wash Julie’s yard of hair (seriously – that kid has super long hair) and whisk her out of the tub before they killed each other.

Poor Jessie got out of the tub, and was just a hot mess.  She’s riddled with bug bites too, and was yawning and crying.  I hugged her and wrapped her in towels, got her jammies and combed out her hair.  Brought her into bed, and tucked her in with motrin and benedryl.  She was asleep within minutes.

Sam had come home from his party with two new lego boxes, and I’ve had little to no interaction with him since.  He ate, and got into jammies, brushed his teeth.  I helped him twice when he got stuck, but he’s been in his room, happily putting them together for the past three hours.  He’s still in there, quiet and happy, almost finished.

Julianna got out of the tub, I drew new circles around her bug bites (to make sure they don’t grow overnight again) and gave her benedryl too.  I put her in super cute jammies, got her a snack and read her three stories.   Then I tucked her into bed, and snuggled beside her until she drifted off.

Even though it wasn’t a great day, and the night ended with more tears than I would have liked, I love nights like this.  When I have time, for each kid.  When their needs all sort of dovetail the others’, and I’m able to focus on each one individually.  When Jessie was crying and sad, I was able to take care of her completely because Sam was lego-ing it up and Julie was chilling out watching something on PBSKids.  I was able to read to Julie without stopping because Jessie was sleeping already and Sam was still lost in lego-land.  And then when both girls were sound asleep, I was able to sit with my little boy while he explained what he’d done, and showed me how intricate and challenging the lego things were.

So maybe it wasn’t a crappy day.  Maybe it was kind of an awesome day – except for the mall part.  I really didn’t like the mall part.

This is a repost from a few years ago – but definitely still worth a read.

1.  Number one rule is to get the baby fed.  If that means supplementing with formula, it’s not the end of the world.  But breastfeeding is so much more than just feeding the baby, and you don’t want to miss out on it.  It really is worth all the struggles.

2.  You really never do regret the time you spend holding your child.  Even if you are told by everyone that you are spoiling your baby, at the end of the day, it’s your baby and you can spoil them if you want to.

3.  A broken arm doesn’t really look like a broken arm.  Sometimes it looks like a four year old who’s being too dramatic.

4.  Benedryl really does fix everything.  Runny noses, hives, coughing, crappy moods, etc.  It’ll even get rid of contractions.

5.  The worst pregnancy leads to the easiest delivery.

6.  Being a good parent is accepting the child you have and loving them, not blaming yourself and them for personality quirks that make everyone’s life more difficult.

7.  Sometimes, the best way to avoid a fight with your beloved husband is to pretend that he’s not home.

8.  When your child hurts, it hurts you ten thousand times worse.

9.  Letting your child know that it hurts you isn’t always a good idea, because if they know that you’re freaked out, it just makes it harder for them.

10.  Standing with all the other parents waiting to pick up your child from school feels an awful lot like standing on the playground when you’re a little kid yourself.

11.  Nobody really cares if you’re late or cancel plans last minute.  People understand you’ve got kids – and if they don’t, you should really rethink your social group.

12.  Nothing bad happens if you occasionally give your kids oreos for breakfast.  Not saying it’s a great idea for every day, but every now and again, it’s a nice break.

13.  Speaking of breaks – it’s totally okay to hand your nine month old food you know damn well she’s just dropping on the floor or shoving down into the high chair, if it buys you enough time to eat your own dinner while it’s still hot.  You can always clean up later.

14.  When your baby wraps her arms around your neck for the first time and squeezes, and follows it up with an open mouth sloppy kiss, you will literally be brought to tears at how incredibly blessed you are.

15.  Having a little boy is baffling (who are these super heros and why does he keep trying to emulate them, screaming “I’m the FLASH” and tearing around the house, or hurling batarangs at imaginary villians), but it’s one of the most tender, loving relationships you’ll ever have.

16.  Listening to your daughter sing along with the radio is the most disconcerting sensation, because you’ll suddenly start thinking of her as someone who will one day actually feel those emotions and it freaks you out – because you could swear that yesterday she was still saying “wuv” instead of  “love.”

17.  You’re never really as good at mothering as you want to be.  At any point, you could list a million things you wish you had done differently.

18.  Your kids will fight faster and meaner with their siblings than with anyone else.  This doesn’t mean that they don’t love and adore them – and it doesn’t mean you’re a crappy parent.

19.  You will feel like a crappy parent far more often than you will feel like a good one.  Because the job definition is so endlessly changing and there’s no way to prepare for any of it.

20.  Your job isn’t to make your child happy – in fact, making your child happy all the time is the quickest way to screw it up.  Sometimes, lots of times, you have to kind of make them not like you all that much.  Bedtime, eating vegetables, taking baths and going to the doctor – nobody wants to do them, and that’s why God gave children parents.

21.  Speaking of God – there’s no faster way to figure out how you feel about religion than to have a child who asks about it.

22.  It doesn’t really matter what bed everyone sleeps in at night.  You can make the most beautiful bedroom and your eight year old would still rather sleep snuggled up next to you, and you can not share a bed with your husband for years on end and still have a really awesome sex life (apologies to my children who may be reading this years from now…).

23.  Really grasping that your husband is as much a parent as you are is incredibly hard, and infinitely worth it.  Because your kids deserve two equal parents – and your husband brings stuff to the table that you’d never think of.  Like knowledge of super heros, for example.

Every one of my kids benefits from having older siblings.  Except for Jessie, obviously, and I’m sure it’s only one of the reasons she’ll end up resenting me as an adult.  But yesterday, I did everything differently with Julianna and karate, and count the day as a total success – and if I hadn’t been down the anxiety road with Sam, I would have walked out of the class completely discouraged and probably wouldn’t have gone back.

Julie had wanted to take karate for a while now.  With Sam as a big brother, I suppose it makes sense… but it was still a little disconcerting.  Karate.  I had enrolled her in the Terrific Twos dance class, and now that I’m looking back at it, I stopped going a lot earlier than I should.    She was miserable in dance class, clingy and scared and was begging to go home five minutes after we got there.  Every other little girl was happy to dance, to answer the teacher back, and to just off their mom’s lap and not look back.   We dropped out of dance, and decided to wait until she was older before starting another activity.

Over the past few months, she’s started asking more and more for karate classes.   Frequently the request would be followed by “so I can learn more karate moves” and she kick at the air or move her feet really fast while punching out in front of her.

So… karate.  I was hesitant, especially after the dance debacle.  I found a karate class that was relatively inexpensive, and even better, allows me audit a class before I enroll, and I can pay by the class, as opposed to enrolling for a 13 week class.   It was for 3-5 year olds, at the local YMCA.   When I told Julie that we’d be going, she was delighted.  For about ten minutes.  Then she started rethinking the whole thing, and promptly decided she didn’t really want to go to karate.  Sam valiantly offered to go with her and watch, and after that, karate sounded a whole lot better.  Because in Julie’s world, everything sounds better if Sammy’s along with her.

Her class started at 8:15, which is super early for this girl during the summer.  I woke her up and carried her to couch, she promptly wiggled off me and staggered back into bed.  I gave her another half hour, and then she was good to go.   Got dressed, got  her a little sports bottle and packed she and Sam into the car.  We walked into the Y, and met her instructor.  She high fived him, and was totally excited.  We walked into class and she got a little quiet.  She took her shoes off, and lined them up with the rest of the class, and then… crawled into my lap and stayed there for the rest of the class.

I still count it as a success.  Because she walked in on her own feet with a smile, she actively engaged with the instructor and followed directions (in that she put her shoes alongside everyone else’s).  She sat thru the class with a minimum of complaining, and high fived the instructor at the end, and agreed that she’d come back.  The best part is that the whole rest of the day, she was so happy to tell everyone that she had gone to karate class.  She practiced moves with me (I’ve got that whole block/punch thing down), and you’d never know, unless you were me, that she actually hadn’t done a damn thing in class.

Sam taught me about anxiety.  About how to manage it, how to get past it, and how to persevere, even when it looks like a total disaster.  Instead of seeing that she didn’t participate in class – I’m able to see that she walked in on her own and talked to the instructor, participated a tiny bit, and agreed to go again.  I might not get her to participate for a few weeks, and that’s okay.  I’m so proud of her for wanting to go, for trying something new, and for doing her best.  Two years ago, I would have been completely discouraged, and thinking that I was a failure as a parent because my kid was sitting on my lap, miserable and not doing what all the other kids were doing.  I know better now.   And I bet a few months from now, Girlfriend will be karate chopping like a champ.

Have your kids ever gone thru something like this?  What counts as success for you, when it comes to kids and activities?