Melissa Anne Cohen

Marc is working more and more on Saturdays now.  Which sucks, for me, on a couple of different levels.  One being that it’s Saturday, Shabbat, and I like to spend the day with him and the kids, and the other being that it’s Saturday, and he’s not here to help me with the kids.  I’m doing religious school, dance, errands, everything else with all three kids and no Marc.

I woke up bright and early, and got all three kids up and dressed.  Mostly, sort of, fed.  We were out the door by eight, dropped Marc off at work and go to the synagogue nice and early.  We’re NEVER early for services, so that was actually kind of pleasant.  Except that the toddler service didn’t start until about twenty minutes later than it should have.  Jessie went upstairs to her classroom, but because Sam’s class was going to be coming downstairs to join the tot service with Julie and I, I just kept Sam with me.  After the toddler service, I went into the big sanctuary, and watched the last part of the bat mitzvah that was going on.

I’ve been officially Jewish for about five years now, and attending religious services for close to eleven years.  BUT, I’ve never actually attended a full service.  I’ve never not had a little kid there who’d start making noise.  I’ve spent hours in the lobby, hanging in the bathroom (they’ve got a big cozy couch in there for nursing and reading).  I’ve organized the playroom, and had story time in the lobby.  I’ve organized races in the big hall, and spent a lot of time reading articles posted on the bulletin boards.  But actually attending services, not so much.

I’m President of the Sisterhood now, and mostly I really love it.  And I’m trying hard to be more visible, more THERE.  Partly because I want to do it well, being President, partly because I want to make sure my kids see that Judaism is a lot more than just attending classes when you’re a kid.  And partly because I’m sensing, as I get older, and move out of the hugely hands-on portion of parenting, that there might be something to attending services.  I’m not sure, but would like to explore the option.  So I’m trying hard to actually get into the sanctuary, and be a part of what’s going on.

But with three kids, it’s not always feasible.  Fortunately – the kids keep getting older.  And yesterday – Jessie actually took Julianna out for a while, and let me sit with Sam and stay in services.  I still missed the vast majority of it, between attending the tot service, and Julie melting down and me having to spend another half hour in the bathroom trying to chill her out… but I made it longer than I ever have before.

There were a million people there yesterday – which didn’t help Sam feel at all okay.  He still struggles with anxiety, and big crowds are always going to make him uncomfortable.  He didn’t know exactly where I was all the time either, which added to his stress.  He wasn’t freaked out, just stressed.  Jessie was wonderful with him, not only did she get candy to bring him because he was too nervous to go get it with all the other kids, but when I finally got Julie happy enough to leave the bathroom, she was walking him thru the buffet line and helping him get food.  Once he saw me, he started crying, and it took some consoling, and a little chocolate, before he felt better.  I went to try and get him some food (nobody had really eaten anything) but it didn’t take long before he and Julie got into a fight and he set off looking for me, holding it together but only by a thread.  I gave up – and said goodbye and dragged my three kids, one sobbing, one whining and the other happily holding a sundae to go, out to the car.  Sam was so stressed and miserable at this point that he couldn’t even hear me talking, he was crying so hard, and he sobbed the whole way home.  Then winged himself in the eye with the seatbelt when he unbuckled at the house.  As I’m sure you can imagine, this did nothing to improve his mood.

It didn’t get appreciably better.  I got him calmed down and relaxed.  Got Jessie to dance class, and set off to Walmart to pick up Marc’s rx.  Then realized that I didn’t have the debit card/credit card in my wallet, had to leave.  Drove back to dance class, picked up the  girl, then remembered that nobody had eaten yet, and stopped for coffee/bagels.  Had an extra forty five minutes before we had to pick up Marc, and went to the library to get new books for kids.  Then we went to Home Depot, picked up Marc and stopped at Walmart (stupidly) to get the medication.  As any parent knows, taking a kid shopping when they’re exhausted and hungry is a recipe for disaster, and yeah, I relearned it again.

In the end, it turned out to be a lovely night.  After a considerable amount of tears and hysteria (Sam cried in the store, Jessie cried on the way home because Sam’s crying in the store embarrassed her, and Julie lost it once we got home because she had gone all day with no nap).  I got Girlfriend to go the bathroom, into jammies and teeth brushed and laid her down for bed.  Marc and I made dinner (trading off between cooking and childcare) and then the four us (minus sleeping Julie) sat together and watched Modern Family reruns until bedtime.

I don’t like Saturdays without Marc.  I don’t like doing this without him.  Not just because it’s harder to be the one parent with three kids, but because he’s my buddy and I’m sad and lonely without him on Saturdays.  And Sundays, because he’s working again today.

She’s not a baby anymore. Intellectually, I know that. She’s closer to four than three, has been potty trained for a year and a half, and is more than capable of carrying on in-depth conversations. But, she’s still my baby. And the reason I know that is that last night, she was up every hour. Not crying, just coughing and needing comfort and reassurance that I was still right there.

It’s not a bad cold, not really. She’s not running a fever, and her nose isn’t running. But it’s in her chest, I can hear the breath moving through her lungs, and as she told me this morning emphatically “I feel BAD, Mama!” So today’s a quiet day, with lots of her sitting on my lap, and I’ve read Green Eggs and Ham seven times this morning.

It’s only when she’s sick than she’ll sit on my lap for any length of time. I didn’t realize that until she got sick. Because when they grow up, it happens so slowly, so gradually, that you don’t realize that something has changed until it’s been gone for a while. It used to be that her default spot was in my arms. It used to be that she wanted nothing more than me, on the couch, snuggled up with her. But she’s big and bold and almost four now, preschool two mornings a week, and far too busy and occupied to curl up and just sit with me anymore.

I’m a little wistful today. Because it occurred to me that when Jessie and Sam, my ten and seven year old, get sick now, they don’t want to sit on my lap anymore. It’s not even really feasible for them, because they’re big. And as much as they still want attention and comfort when they’re sick, they’re happier with small doses of it, interspersed between episodes of Big Bang Theory, Avatar, and Friends reruns.

Mothering is all about adjusting. No sooner do I get used to a stage than they’ve moved on. We go from pregnancy to nursing, to solids to all of a sudden, they can request and get their own snack. We go from koala babies who cling and sob when we leave to big grown up kids who dash off for their latest activity/playdate without looking back. And it all happens without any fanfare, both so slowly that you don’t notice it changing and so fast that you can’t believe that stage of your life is over.

So today, I’ll snuggle my baby. My almost four year old baby, who’s not really a baby any more. But today, today, she’s all mine. I know tomorrow she’ll feel better, and she’ll be back to being busy and bold, with far too much going on to sit on my lap and read for hours. That’s exactly as it should me, and I’m mostly okay with it. But I’m grateful for the opportunity to be able to everything she wants and needs today. To be Mama, which is kind of my favorite thing to be.

I read a blog post the other day that I loved.  Instead of just doing the usual facebook gratitude posts (which I also love, btw), the post has prompts for each day, leading up to Thanksgiving.  Today’s prompt was “blessing.”

I’m going thru a relatively difficult patch.  Actually, we are, as a family.  Scheduling concerns, school drama, parenting challenges, career woes, etc.  Nothing overwhelming or extraordinary, but still… difficult.  And what’s great about is that it’s really brought us together, as a family.  As a couple.   Because we’re a team, Marc and I.  We’re buddies.  It’s not just that he’s my husband, it’s not just that he’s my best friend.  He’s my other half.  And if the past few months have done anything, they’ve reinforced how very, very lucky I am to have him.  Because when I get stressed and panicked, he doesn’t.  He’s calm, and stable and reassuring, and the balance is what works.  My strengths compliment his weaknesses and he’s strong in all the ways that I’m not.

I’m not saying that we don’t fight, because we can.  I’m not saying that there aren’t days when he makes me nuts, or days when he probably wants to kill me for not neatly putting away the silverware.  But at the end of the day – he’s still my best friend, and I’m his.  He’s what makes my life work.

There’s a small scene at very end of Jerry Maguire – and every time we watch the movie, Marc gets all teary-eyed.  And when my cousin Becky got engaged, we were toasting them, she and Greg (which is sort of like a blessing – at least for the purposes of this post), and this is the blessing that Marc used.  “Hey, I don’t have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my wife. I love my life. And I wish you my kind of success.”

So even though we’ve got a zillion little problems right now, and the brakes need to be replaced and Christmas/Hanukkah are coming up, and Marc’s working crazy hours and we’re mostly overwhelmed – we’ve got each other.  And more than each other, we’ve got these great kids, Lilli and Sarah, and our three, Jessie Bug Noodle, Samilicious Boy, and our Julianna Chocolate Chip.  So even though we don’t have all the answers, and we’ve had our failures as much as successes – we really do love each other, and love the life that we’ve created together.  And the blessing that I wish for everyone, especially my own children, is that they have our kind of success.

Things have been super crazy busy lately.  I feel like I’ve been running around frantically trying to get everything done, and only getting maybe 75% of it accomplished.  Kids are all well and healthy, with the minor exception of Jessie being sick last week (or was it two weeks ago?) and then Julie was throwing up on Saturday.

Jessie is doing really well.  She’s almost eleven, does that make any sense at all?  Eleven was a big year for me, when I was a child.   A lot happened that year, my grandmother died, my parents’ divorce was finalized, I got my period (TMI?).  I just feel like it was such a pivotal year for me, and it’s so bizarre and strange to me that Jessie is actually old enough to be eleven.  She’ll be turning eleven and I’ll be turning forty.   Hmmm – I sense a lot of introspective posts coming around the end of January/beginning of February.   She’s growing up so fast – and the reality that I have a tween-age daughter is still one that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Sam’s rocking the first grade, and all is well there.  We’ve had a couple of fairly significant hiccups, times when the anxiety gets really intense and he struggles, but mostly, he’s doing great.  What I like most about pick up after school is watching him interact with all the other kids.  He gets up to the top of the hill, tosses his backpack at me and then dances off to run and yell and be insane with all the other kids.  He’s got a best friend – he and Nicky have been together for the past two years, and I love it.  But he plays with a whole bunch of different kids, he’s so social and relaxed with his peers.  I love it.

My Julianna – oh, my Julie.  In some ways, she’s thriving – she’s finally at the point where she actually enjoys going to preschool.  It was a HARD adjustment, and so many times, I wanted to give up and just let her stay home.  She was too young, it wasn’t worth this level of stress for a three year old.  But we seem to have to gotten to the other side, she isn’t crying anymore, she’s still a little wistful at drop off, but only at drop off, and she isn’t sobbing relentlessly all morning on the way to school.  On the flipside, she’s also adopted this incredibly infuriating habit of fake crying when things don’t go her way.  Just hollering in a wailing sort of way, no tears, just loud irritating screaming.  The other night, she dropped to the floor and yelled for fifteen minutes because she changed her mind about the way she wanted her hot dog (in a bun as opposed to cut up) and I had already gotten it ready for her.  I try to not stifle their expression – it’s okay to cry if you’re upset, or express unhappiness  – but I swear, I’ve found myself actually yelling at her and demanding that she STOP screaming or I’ll put her in time-out.  What consistently surprises me is that it works – putting limits on the yelling is almost a relief to her, because left unchecked, she just keeps yelling.

I’m busy, busy, busy doing Sisterhood stuff, ECC stuff, and trying to keep up with the housework (which never happens) and, when I can wrestle the computer away from Marc/kids, and the house is quiet and I can actually work uninterrupted – writing.  I wish I had more time for writing, but it’s hard to find it.  Even right now, I’ve got laundry piled up, and a dishwasher to unload/reload and Julie is sitting right beside me, a few minutes away from demanding time/attention from me.

Jessie wants a baby.  Bad.

Every couple of days, at least once a week, my girl comes to me with some version of the question above.   Do you think someday, you might have another baby?  And each time, I want to shake her, just a little, and point out that I’ve been trying to read Anne of Green Gables to her for the past few months and we’re still on chapter four.  I want to show her the books piled up on the living room couch that never get put away because Mama’s just too tired to fight that battle, the piles of outgrown toys that used to be neatly organized but are now just heaped up in a corner, bins on top of other bins, and crowned with a doll house.

I have a million other reasons why I’m not having another baby (finances, lack of a second car, lack of a first car that’s big enough for another car seat, inability to pay enough attention to each kid now, miserable memories of a really tough pregnancy with Julianna, etc), but I can’t quite bring myself to completely squash her hopes.  “Maybe someday, not right now, and maybe not ever.”  That’s the response I’m sticking with.  Maybe someday.

Maybe I’ll do it again – feel that first stirring of nausea, and another nine months of building a baby.  Nothing brings a family together like pregnancy (I still have vivid memories of Sam, Marc, and Jessie all huddled around me, rubbing my back and trying to hug me while I vomited, day after day, with Julie).  It was hard, really hard being pregnant, and I was really close to preeclampsia and I was so ridiculously, painfully, tearfully itchy… I’m not sure I want to sign up for that again.  I remember thinking that even if I wanted to, I couldn’t put my kids thru another nine months of having me be so compromised.

But a baby… I love a baby.  And I look at Jessica now, almost eleven years old, and so beautiful and smart.  My Sammy boy, seven years old and so big and grown up -and my Julie, my baby Julie, and she’s so funny and sweet and absolutely adorable – why wouldn’t I want to do that again?  If I had missed on a single one of them – God, I can’t even begin to describe how much richer and blessed and perfect my life has become with each one.  How much I’ve learned, how much they’ve added.

But for right now – I’m going to keep in mind those million reasons – the finances, the lack of a second car, the lack of a first car that can fit another car seat, etc.  I’m going to remember that I’m not quite yet forty – there still is time, if I really wanted to.  Eventually, the choice will be taken from me, and if it doesn’t happen, I’m okay with that.  I have Jessie, I have Sam and I have Julie.

And if anyone has a baby – and is looking for a mother’s helper or babysitter, please, please, call Jessie.  She’s ready and available.

I love Sunday mornings.  It’s the only morning I don’t have to get up and do something.  Monday, Wednesday and Fridays would be my next favorites, because I don’t have to do the dreaded Julie preschool run.  Tuesdays and Thursdays unilaterally suck because really, when your toddler wakes up sobbing, it’s never fun – and Saturday, Sam starts sobbing about Hebrew School.

But Sundays, oh, I love Sundays.  I stay in bed for as long as possible, and make people bring me coffee.  Sometimes, if Marc is home as well, Sam will talk him into getting me breakfast in bed as well.  I make sure that I’ve got a good book in there, and just laze in bed all morning long.

Today, I’m up a little earlier, but mainly because Sam had taken over the television in there and I grew weary of Digimon.  There’s just so much Japanese weird little creature television I can take.  But both my girls are still sleeping (Julie is in her bed, and Jessie is oddly enough on the couch because Sam was watching a movie in her room last night).  The house is quiet and still, and I might know that there are baskets and baskets of laundry to be folded, but I can’t see them, and am finding it very easy to not think about.

I think Jessie might go back to the doctor’s today – Girlfriend is still sick.  It’s always hard with her to see how much of it is actual physical sickness, and how much of it is just drama.  Which is not to say that she feels wretched and miserable, merely that it’s not entirely of a physical nature, and if I just chill about it, and get her to calm down, she’ll feel better.  But she was lying in bed last night, sobbing and sobbing about how much she doesn’t want to be sick – and she was utterly, totally sincere.  We’ll see how she’s feeling when she gets up, but it’s almost nine and she’s still sound asleep…

I worry about my Jessie sometimes, one of the things I love most about her is the intensity and commitment that she has, but it’s one of the things that makes her life more challenging and difficult at times.  If she’s sick, or sad, or happy – whatever the emotion or feeling she has, she does it all the way, with no looking back.  It’s a double edged sword, because it’s part of what makes her awesome, part of what will make her successful and happy, and also a quality that adds an enormous amount of stress and difficulty to her life.

But today’s not the day to overanalyze (at least not more than any other day in my world).  It’s Sunday, my day of days.  And I’m going to spend it puttering around, cleaning and folding laundry, making finnish pancakes for my kids and waiting for Marc to come home from work.  Then I’ll either go visit my parents, home finally from their travels to Hawaii, or take Jessie Bug Noodle to the doctors.  Again.

I kept Jessica home from school today.  She’s not contagious, her allergies are so bad that her throat is all red and raw, she’s congested and crabby and just not feeling well.  I brought her into the pediatrician’s yesterday, and the doctor told me to keep her home, give her advil and let her rest.

Which is exactly what she needs, she slept for a while in the car last night to pick up Marc, and was in bed asleep by ten.  Then slept until well after nine this morning.

But… it did mean that Sam had to go to school by himself.  Which is always hard -whenever one stays home, the other one freaks out.  But he handled it really well yesterday, and didn’t balk at doing it today.  So I rewarded him – a little bribe, a little incentive to encourage good behavior.  I made a deal with him last night, and he got up super early this morning and got his little self dressed.  And we were out the door a full half hour earlier than we usually are.

I got up early and woke up just Sam.  He had crawled into our bed around five thirty or so, so I was tricky and quiet.  Didn’t want to wake Julie or Marc.  I plopped him on the couch and put on Big Bang for him.  I brought him his clothes, he got all ready.  And we snuck out the door.  We went to Dunkin Donuts, and had two donuts.  One chocolate covered with sprinkles and one honey dipped.  He finished up his homework that he forgot he had, and we talked and hung out and it was so sweet.

One of the hard things about having three children is just time.  Finding time to get everything that needs to get done is impossible, and scraping out time to spend, one on one, with a child is always a bonus.  And he was just so cute.  His hair is growing, and he was all scrubbed up.   Sam tends to get lost at home, I think.  He’s my easiest child, in a lot of ways (actually, I could say that about all of them – they all have ways in which they are my toughest and my easiest).  But emotionally, he’s very simple.  It’s not complicated with Sam – it can be hugely intense and dramatic and challenging, but it’s very easy to decipher.  My girls are more layered, emotionally.  And half the time, they don’t even know what’s bugging them, let alone how to fix it.  Sam’s just easier.  He’s more like Marc.  (The flipside is that I have to admit that Jessie is just like me, in terms of emotional processing – she’s hugely emotional and dramatic and handling fifty seven different emotions all at once).

But I loved having that time this morning with Sam.  It was lovely, he was fun to hang with, and I was so proud of my beautiful boy.  It’s enough to make me want to keep a kid home every week, just so I get that one on one drive time alone with the other.

My head is killing me, and it’s my own damn fault.  I was too polite to refuse a cup of coffee at dinner last night, and because drinking coffee at seven thirty is never a recipe for a good night’s sleep, spent most of the night staring up on the ceiling panicking about money.  Which is what one does, in the middle of the night, right?  To mix it up a little, I also stressed out over Sam’s anxiety issues, Jessie’s allergies and Julie’s separation freak out at preschool.

I’m not happy today.

But I’m treating it with ice cream and advil, and yeah, more coffee.  Because as soon as Marc gets home from picking up Girlfriend at preschool, I’m going to launch into super productive mode, and drop Marc off at work, pick Sam up at school, take Jessie to the pediatrician’s office for her allergies (because she sounds so gross and congested I wouldn’t want to sit next to her at school), pick up Harrison, come home, cook dinner, feed them, drop Harrison off, pick Marc up and then go to the PTG meeting.  Late.

Marc and I had a nice talk last night, and he’s going to try and be more… anticipatory?  Is that the right word?  He’s always willing to help out, but sometimes he relies too much on just doing what I instruct him, which can almost feel like more work than just doing it myself.  Which leads, inevitably, to things getting missed and not done, and me feeling overwhelmed and like I’m really crappy at parenting.  This morning – Julie, again, woke up sobbing because she didn’t want to go to preschool.   But Marc handled it – just handled it, which was AWESOME, because I was too busy trying to figure out if Jessie was sick enough to stay home or not.  He told her a long involved story, which distracted her from being miserable and even managed to get her shoes on.  And dropoff went relatively well.  Because relative to other drop offs that we’ve had, this was was good.  She was crying but walking on her own.  Not begging me to stay, just sobbing quietly.  I called and checked on her, and she was doing great, even sitting at the table for snack (which was extra good, as she refused to eat any kind of breakfast this morning).

Sam was even a little bit late this morning – not really, but late enough so that he couldn’t go out back and play, just went directly into class.  And it was a non-issue.  He didn’t freak, didn’t panic.  Definitely reassuring.

Busy, busy weekend here.  Actually, it’s been a relatively frantic couple of days around here.  Thursday, my poor little Sammy had some massive and major issues at school.  He’s an anxious little kid, with some pretty major separation/social anxiety struggles that we’ve been dealing with since… well, birth, I guess.  And he’s gotten so much better, but there are still triggers that can send him completely over the edge.  Being late for school is still a huge one.  Because I know this – he’s simply never late.  And our policy is that if he was late, it was better to not send him to school rather than send him in late, because it’s that difficult for him.  But it’s not much of an issue, because we are just NEVER LATE.  Except for last Thursday.

Marc had forgotten to grab his backpack.  Or Sam did.  Or I forgot to remind him (nothing I like more than spreading the blame around).   But because he’s been so great lately, adjusted to first grade without even a hiccup, I thought we could power through.  I was wrong.  Long story short, the whole morning ended up a complete fiasco, with the Boy not making into school, me getting into a fight (me, a fight – I’m the least confrontational person I know) with a school adjustment counselor and Julie never made it to preschool either.  It was just a disaster, all the way around.  And certainly confirmed my original theory, which I will now never forget – if he’s going to be late, just don’t bring him at all.

So that was Thursday – and it was pretty much all day Thursday, because by the time I made it home, we had already missed preschool, and I was so stressed that the rest of the day was pretty much wasted.  Friday, the kids had off from school, and Glennys arrived.  All is better when Glennys comes down.  Marc and Jessie went to pick her up, and I had Abby-with-a-bow and Leah and Devin here as well, so it was chaos and busyness all day.  Devin ended up spending the night, actually, now that I’m remembering it, Leah slept over as well, so I put the three older girls in Jessie’s room, Devin in Sam’s room, Sam in my room and I think Marc crashed on the couch.  Becky and Abby stayed for dinner, which I loved.  Always happy when I’ve got my Becky here with me.  And I’m especially happy that she and I had daughters together, there’s something enormously satisfying about watching my best friend’s daughter be my daughter’s best friend.

Saturday – Marc was working, and I spent the day at home.  With a zillion kids, and it was nice.  I actually sent Jessie and Glennys out for a walk down to the park, by themselves.  And panicked only a little bit.  I baked cookies, had a long chat with my friend Dahlia, put Julie down for a nap.  Sunday was Sarah’s bat mitzvah.  And on Monday, my Glenny went home, the kids went bowling and Julie took another nap.  I totally jumped on Julie’s nap as an excuse to miss bowling, and stayed home to write an article that was due today.

This morning wasn’t easy – because Julie still hates going to preschool.  Oddly enough, she doesn’t hate preschool, she’s happy and content when we pick her up, and chatters about it when she isn’t there.  But oh – my girl fights going all the time.  She usually starts the night before, begging to stay home, crying and sobbing.  And the mornings are absolutely hellish.  Especially when Jessie jumps on board and starts complaining about how much she hates school as well, and then both my girls are grumpy and/or out and out sobbing, which makes it increasingly harder for me to stay sunshiney delighted about bringing them in.   And when I inevitably lose it, because I generally do at some point (because really, I’m not a morning person, and dammit, there’s only so much drama a mama can take before I have to start hollering at them), it just goes downhill from there.

Oddly enough, Sam is almost always angelic in the mornings.  He’s either flat out losing his mind and refusing to go (which happens so rarely, it’s only when he’s late – which WILL SIMPLY NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN), or he’s fine, no problems at all.  He gets up, watching a Big Bang Theory, eats a healthy breakfast, gets dressed and goes about his day.  Jessie is the middle one – mostly she’s fine, but she can throw down with enough frequency that it’s impressive.  And Julie just sobs, the whole time, every Tuesday and Thursday.

So this morning was craptastic, and I’m already dreading Thursday.  Drop off went well, though, and I’m optimistic that it’ll get better for her as time goes on.  It has to, right?