Melissa Anne Cohen

(Julianna will be three years old at the end of the month, and I can’t believe that she’s so big.  This post (from the end of May, 2010) made me a little misty, because she was so little – and it seems like it was yesterday)

My last little baby girl is four weeks old yesterday, and hits her one month birthday tomorrow. Already, she’s grown so much, her cheeks are getting chubby, she’s smiling more and more, and she’s so gorgeous and amazing that I can’t stop admiring her. I’m a tiny bit wistful, it went by so incredibly fast, and she’s not a newborn anymore, now she’s a baby and I know that this stage will fly by too.

Julianna is still very calm, she’s a very easy baby, as long as you understand that her rightful place is in my arms. Or someone’s arms, at least. She way prefers to be held, but since I really prefer to hold her, it works out well for both of us  She’s got the same big, big eyes that Jessie and Sam have, and the same pointed little chin. She’s got a dimple in her left cheek and one in her chin. Her hair is still delightfully fluffy, she loves her bath. She gets offended if she’s in a dirty diaper, and demands a diaper change immediately. She’ll also cry if she needs to burp or be fed, but other than that, she’s a sunshiney happy baby. She’s getting so big, more and more of her clothes fit her these days, and I’m already thinking that she might be starting to outgrow some of the tinier outfits. Like those little bag type night-gowns? I’ve got a bunch of them, and loved them for night time, but then we had several really warm nights in a row and she’s been sleeping her in her onesie tucked up next to me, and I fear she might be too long for some of them now. She’s not as skinny scrawny as she was, she’s getting little fat rolls around her thighs, but her arms and legs are still stick skinny.

We worked thru our nursing issues. It took a while, including that very bad Sunday – a day that I’ll never forget. The potential loss of the nursing relationship, and in my eyes, the suggestion that she might not get the mothering love that the other two got from me as a result, was devastating and it’s taken a while for me to relax into our relationship. I’m very happy to report that Julianna loves me just as much as the others did – she calms immediately when I pick her up, or even just the touch of my hand on her face if she’s crying in the car. She’s already sleeping thru the night, which shocked me. She’ll go for a good five or six hours, waking once but not actually nursing. She just seems to want to know that I’m there, and refuses to latch on, she just likes to have her back patted and she falls back asleep. She’ll then nurse every hour or so during the day, taking one or two longer naps, in the morning and late afternoon. I’m just starting to notice some oversupply or overactive let down during the day, she has to pull off sometimes to avoid choking and I get engorged a lot because she is such a frequent nurser. She squeaks in her sleep, and when she’s awake. Very vocal (although in this family, that’s not surprising). She’s my love bug, and I can’t imagine now what life was like without her.

I’m having a delightful sort of day.  You know how some mornings, things just work?  Today was one of those days.  Both the older kids bopped out of bed cheerfully and content.  Ate their breakfast (Jessie is still keeping kosher for Passover, refused the non k for p cereal her brother was having) and I dropped them off at school nice and early.  Julie slept in, as per usual, and Marc was able to stay home long enough for me to let her sleep and not have to haul her sleeping little tushy out the door.

I came home, and Girlfriend was still asleep, which gave me time to unload the dishwasher, start another load of laundry, and realize that Jessica left her homework folder on the dining room table.  Once she got up, I got her dressed, packed an apple and a sippie cup of milk, dropped off Jessie’s homework and bopped down to Becky’s house for the day.  Spent the day in the rocking chair, watching her daughter and mine mill around the living room, alternately sharing and not, playing together and ignoring each other.  Probably the same thing that Becky and I did when we were almost three and two.

Poor Harrison was sick today, which was GREAT for me, because I was able to pick up the kids at school, drop Sarah off at home, and then take my three to Walmart.  Ahh – the joys of Walmart.  We bought new school supplies for Jessie, triscuits for Julie (because she LOVES them) and traded in Sam’s outfit that Easter Bunny got.  Sam doesn’t like the Easter Bunny’s taste AT ALL, so he got three new shirts, and is a happy, happy boy.  We also got stuff for tomorrow’s breakfast and lunch box and then made it back home.  Only to discover Marc asleep.

Once he woke up, we took all three kids out for dinner, to celebrate the end of Passover.   There’s a chemistry when all five of us are together.  Jessica, Sam, Julianna, Marc and I.  The kids bopped and played and discussed – Marc and I did the adult version of that.  It was … just lovely.  I never take it for granted – a happy family.  Kids who can talk without wanting to kill each other, parents who legitimately like each other, in addition to being an absolute unit.

I keep thinking that this time – right here, this is as good as it gets.  But really, it just keeps getting better.  More depth, more intensity.  It’s fascinating as much as it’s sort of awe inspiring for me.

Passover is over.  Well, it’s not over until tomorrow night, but for all intents and purposes, it’s over for me.  Tonight, we’re having beans and hot dogs, a hugely popular meal that doesn’t involve any bread on a non-Passover day.  We survived Easter too – it’s not a great holiday for me.  Not because of any negative associations, but just because it’s feels extraneous, if that makes sense.  Like it’s enough already with all the spring celebrations, can’t we just chill out for a day and relax?

Jessie kept kosher for Passover the whole week, with the exception of yesterday.  She asked for some cupcakes and stuffing at my mother’s house, and we discussed it and decided that it was okay to not keep kosher for Passover at Grammy’s house for Easter, because we were celebrating Easter the way that Grammy celebrated it, and that was okay.  Judgement free – that’s me.  What happens at Grammy’s, stays at Grammy’s.   Sam did pretty well, in terms of keeping kosher for Passover.  It doesn’t come as easily to him – but that’s an age thing, I think, more than anything else, and I don’t want to have him resent Passover because of the dietary restrictions, so I’m easing up on it for him.  Julie and I have been munching bagels since Saturday, so we gave up pretty early on in the process.

Rough morning today – Sam was flat out furious that he had to go back to school, and expressed himself rather loudly.  But I’m approaching his temper tantrums with a new attitude, which is that he doesn’t get a pass to lose his little mind screaming with rage and frustration.  Part of my hesitation to punish him for getting so upset was that it was motivated by anxiety or nerves on his part.  Because separation is so hard for him, it seemed ridiculous and overly harsh to compound it by punishing him for getting upset.  But it’s not helping him – it’s just teaching him that temper tantrums are a handy tool to get out of doing stuff you don’t want to do.  He can and will control himself, he just needs to know that there are negative consequences to temper tantrums.   Said negative consequences being loss of the DSI.  And once he realized that I was serious, and he was going to school regardless, he pulled it together and went happily enough.   So I feel vindicated, and actually a lot more relaxed.  Because he kissed me goodbye and bounced out the car door like a perfectly content six year old boy.

Busy day planned, with errands all over the place, and I’m really behind in my writing.  Not just this blog post (which doesn’t feel all that well-written, I apologize to anyone who’s reading it) but also my book proposal.  I’m supposed to have several partial chapters to attach to the proposal and start researching editors and agents and publishers, and I spent most of last week in a matzah induced haze, careening from Seder to Seder to party to egg decorating to Easter shopping…  so today is my catch-up day for everything.  Laundry, dishes, reading, writing and a thousand errands.  I’m brewing another pot of coffee, and hoping for the best.

It’s just not that big of a deal to me.  I think it’s because Christmas is such an important holiday for me, and one that I invest so much time and effort into celebrating.  I feel like celebrating Christmas is such a statement – it’s very purposeful and discussed and debated and agonized over.  But Easter?  Eh.

It’s obviously a HUGE Christian holiday, and because I’m not Christian, it’s not my holiday.  (Whereas I get really personally offended when someone says that because I’m Jewish, Christmas isn’t my holiday).  Sure, it’s fun, everyone talks about the Easter Bunny, and my kids love decorating eggs, but the religious aspects of it, to me, are not applicable to me.   Christmas is different – that’s a holiday like Thanksgiving to me.  A uniquely American tradition that I have loved since I was a child, and I want desperately for my kids to have that experience.

Passover is a big holiday for me.   A much more significant one for me personally, it’s the first holiday that I met Marc’s parents, the first Jewish holiday I celebrated with him.  It’s also the holiday that I miscarried my twins on, and I think of them a lot at this time of year.

As the kids have gotten older, Passover has become ever more significant.  It’s an event, starting with Passover shopping, coming up with different meal options.  We have four major holiday parties for Passover, two regular Seders, one Seder that Marc runs for a local Presbyterian church, and then our own Passover Party this weekend.  We do Passover posters, the kids sing the four questions as they wander around the house, and we discuss the Exodus story over and over again.

Easter…. just isn’t that important.   I don’t know if it’s because Christmas is SUCH a big deal that I don’t have the energy to engage in another interfaith spiritual quest.  Or if it’s because Passover is such a much more meaningful holiday within the Jewish tradition – as opposed to Hannukah, which is a much less religiously significant holiday.   Maybe it’s that I have this holiday quota – and Christmas is necessary in December.  But in the spring, Passover is so much bigger that Easter tends to sort of fade into obscurity.

That being said, I’ve got eighteen eggs to hide, and three baskets to assemble on Saturday night.  But the biggest part of the holiday, for me, is going to be making sure that the kids can celebrate Easter with my family while still observing the kosher for Passover restrictions.

It’s the background for my everything, and often I forget to notice it.  I’m good at noticing the little things about motherhood, the quiet moments when everything is so sweet that it aches, or when you’re so tired and touched out and desperate for a little alone time.  Parenting is my full time occupation – I write, I clean the house, but mostly, I take care of the kids.  And the relationship that makes it all possible has a tendency to fade into the background.

Not in a bad way.  I think it fades because it doesn’t always require that same level of attention and notice.  It’s just there.  I don’t ever doubt that Marc loves me more than anything, I don’t ever wonder what my life would be like without him.  He’s just there, constant and unwavering.  He’s my best friend, my first call.  He’s my reality check.   It’s precisely because he is so unwavering, because it’s so solid.  It’s the background only because it’s strong enough to support everything that we’ve built on top of it.

He and I together are the foundation for the whole thing.  Today I’m wishing for more time, I’m wishing for entire days when I had nothing to focus on but him, instead of the tiny amount of time we both manage to stay awake after the kids go to sleep.

I guess what I’m really saying is – anyone want to babysit?  Because I miss my husband.

It’s her favorite room in the house, and there’s nothing she likes more than to be sitting on her little potty, hanging out. She’ll spend up to a half hour in there, just hanging. Sometimes she’ll demand privacy, and won’t let anyone in with her, but more often than not, she’ll holler out for someone to come “keep her company.”

She’s been potty trained since last summer, but she still uses her little potty on the floor. I know at some point, I’ll have to transition her over to the big toilet, but for right now, she prefers the little one. I’ve got my washer and dryer in the bathroom as well, and I’m a woman who does a ridiculous amount of laundry. There’s literally always some clothes to fold in there. I’ll fold, while she chats away about events of her life. Today we touched on why sharing is so hard, and explained why we couldn’t get a slide to put in the living room. We have long involved conversations in the bathroom. We discuss what she dreamed about last night, why some people like hot sauce and other’s don’t, and why her favorite cousin, Abby-with-a-bow (to distinguish her from her other friend Abi) liked the chickens at Auntie Cathy’s house yesterday. She’ll make her older sister sit in there with her, regaling her with princess fairy tales and her brother is often forced to entertain her as well, he sings for her. She even trapped Marc in there yesterday. She was singing quietly to herself, with hand gestures, and banged her hand up against the wall. Marc went in to find out why she was crying and then had to sit there for another ten minutes while she discussed and demonstrated. Several times.

I think it’s a power thing. She’s two, there’s not a whole lot she gets control over, really. She rarely gets to eat all the chocolate she wants, she has to take naps and go to bed and get in the car and run errands. But once she says the magic words “I have to go potty,” she knows she’s got us right where she wants us. There’s nothing we can do to stop it, and there’s virtually no way to speed up the process. She seems to delight in hanging out on the potty, taking her time, not a care in the world.

I try to remember that these days won’t last forever – Jessie wouldn’t dream of calling me into the bathroom to hang with her. But sometimes I find myself wishing she’d just hurry up and go already, so we can get on with our day.

This isn’t one of those “getting ready for Passover with the cleaning and the baking and the cooking and the seders and the dishes and the cleaning and oh yeah, did I mention the cleaning” kind of posts.   Because Passover is hard for all of those reasons.  In theory, and in reality for many people I know, Passover is when your house is supposed to be completely chametz-free.   That means anything made with grain mixed with water and allowed to ferment, according to my friends at wikipedia.  It also means pretty much everything my kids eat, with the exception of meat, fruits and vegetables.  Pasta, cereal, cookies, bread, tortillas, pizza, etc.

Keeping kosher for Passover is a thing – and some people do it, some don’t.  My family does.  I don’t like doing it.  I don’t agree with the premise, I don’t like it.  I don’t like it, I don’t like it, I don’t like it.  I like keeping the version of kosher that I do keep.  I don’t mix milk with meat, because to kill an animal and then serve it with the milk that was supposed to sustain it, to me, is morally wrong.  But chicken isn’t meat, according to that definition, and I have an easier time following rules when they make sense to me.  Not mixing cheese with chicken seems like just following rules for the sake of following rules, and while I understand the theology behind it, I find that blind adherence to the rules just makes me really, really itchy.

But my kids, oh my kids.  They love keeping kosher for Passover.  They love the dietary restrictions, they love the specialness of this time of year.  They look forward to “Passover Shopping” all year, and nothing makes them  happier than when they’re making our annual Passover Plague Posters (which is a fun activity that costs me no more than $1 worth of posterboard at the dollar store and is both educational and time consuming – because they make these really detailed posters we hang up every year).  Everything they eat, they want to make sure is “kosher for Passover.”    Marc has always kept kosher for Passover, and he adores that the kids are so into it.  I don’t.

It’s very similar to what he goes thru in December, I think.  Because even though he knows that Christmas is important to me, and it’s a link between my kids and my own family history that I want to continue, even though he knows that he wants to honor my mother and it would devastate her if we gave up Christmas – intellectually, he knows all those things.  But it still is hard, and alien, and makes him feel like an outsider in his own home.

That’s how I feel about Passover.  I like the holiday, I like the seders, I’d even happily throw matzoh into the mix for a week or so.  But strict adherence to it is really, really hard for me,  because it’s not what I grew up with.   It feels strange to me, and I don’t like that there are so many arbitrary rules, like if you are one sort of Jew, you can eat rice, and if you aren’t, then you can’t.  I decided when I converted that I’d follow the most liberal guidelines, so we eat rice and corn and peanut butter.  But it all feels artificial to me, and it’s probably one of the hardest Jewish holidays for me to connect with, on a personal level.

And it’s definitely a challenge with my family – because inevitably, Easter and Passover coincide.  I decided long ago that I wasn’t going to make the kids feel bad if they wanted to participate in the Easter celebration at my mother’s house, and eat the bread or cake or cookies.  And I don’t make them feel bad, I don’t have to.  They’ve decided on their own to keep kosher for Passover, so now I make sure that we have Passover friendly treats for them there.   We’ll have macaroons and chocolate covered matzoh.

Part of the trouble I’m having right now is that I’m doing research on “mixed” marriages, and interfaith issues in general, and reading about too much of it makes me depressed.  For so many couples, this is really hard – and I just finished reading two books about interfaith marriages that were written in the 1980s and they just made me miserable.   All these interviews with kids (who are actually adults my age) who were raised by parents who tried to do it interfaith, and now the kids feel as though they aren’t tied to any particular religion and have no spiritual home at all.  I know that’s not what we’re doing – we made very deliberate decisions around their religious upbringing.  My kids know they’re Jewish, and their Jewish experience is obviously going to be very different from my own.  For me, following the rules on Passover seems arbitrary.  For them, it’s just part of the process.  Part of what makes it easier for them to understand and appreciate the history of their people.  I want that.  I want them to feel secure and validated – and so I’m googling recipes for more and ever interesting Passover food, and I’ve mostly talked my mother out of the pasta dish she was planning for next Sunday.  And I’ll do my best to keep my Passover issues to myself – and I can always sneak out for pizza and breadsticks while they’re at school 🙂

My kids all kind of look alike.  They all have my eyes, and Marc’s nose and mouth.  They all have dimples.

Sam obviously stands out, simply because he’s got a crew cut.  He looks dramatically different.  But Julianna and Jessica are virtually the same kid, appearance wise, just seven years apart.  Julie has her hair in a ponytail today and I keep getting vaguely confused when I look at her.  Because I had a two year old already WHO LOOKED JUST LIKE HER.  I was just in my bedroom, snuggling a Julie who was just waking up and looking from her little face over to Jessie’s little face, they both have big brown eyes, perfect skin, gorgeous smiles, and long brown hair, and it’s disconcerting.

Seven years ago, I was hugely pregnant with Samilicious Boy, and terrified of what having another baby would do to Jessie.  How would she react to not being my only one?  How would I ever love another child as much as I loved her?  Jessie, at two years old, almost three – it was a particularly precious time for us.  Because I was achingly aware of her, I was soaking up all of the one on one time I could get with her, because I knew it was coming to an end.  I think that’s why Julie looking so much like her is really striking to me today.  I look back on that time, I was super emotional and pregnant and worried about how I’d handle two kids and if she’d suffer because of it.  Probably not unlike every other pregnant mother of one child.

I love having three kids, and I have similar memories of Sam at the same age, but not the same fears.  I waited longer to have Julie after Sam was born, so he was about a year older, more independent.  And I wasn’t as scared when I had Julie.  I knew already that when you have more than one child, you don’t love the first any less.  It just multiplies.  The first, and the second become no less special – so I don’t remember panicking that I had ruined Sam’s life by having another baby.  But I did freak out pretty consistently during Sam’s pregnancy that Jessie’s life would be forever altered by our decision to have another baby.  Which, of course, it was.   But it’s been a wonderful change, an amazing change, and our lives are so much richer for it.

The point that I’m making here (and you know when I have to state the point that I’ve wandered fairly far off track) is that Julie, today, reminds me an awful lot of a little girl I once had.  A two year old bright eyed little munchkin, with big brown eyes, long brown hair in a ponytail, and a pretty little smile.  And I worried a lot about her.  I worried that she’d never forgive me for having another baby, I worried that she’d be miserable with a baby, that she wouldn’t be my baby anymore.

I was wrong about all of it.  When Sam was born, and she came to see me in the hospital, she came in demanding to see her baby brother, and absolutely adored him.  And she’s still my baby.  Beautiful and tall, so grown up I’m still a little baffled by it, but still, always, my baby.  And if I ever start to forget what she looked like… I’ve got Julie to remind me.

(First, as an update – both Jess and Sam seem to be doing really well, and thus far, Julie has managed to escape concussion free.  Both kids came home yesterday with headaches, but made it all day today, and both have playdates at home this afternoon)

My son Sam has some anxiety issues.  Mainly around separation, but he also gets really nervous about new things in general.  He seems incredibly shy at times, but I don’t think he actually is.  I think he’s just really a kid who thrives in his own comfort zone and moving out of it is incredibly, incredibly hard for him.

School, as you can imagine, has been hard for him.  I hadn’t forced preschool on him, so kindergarten was the first time he’d been away from home every day, and it was incredibly challenging for him.  He was on the younger side anyway – in retrospect, I probably should have done preschool when he was five and started K once he was six.  But instead he’s on his second year of kindergarten and mostly doing really well.  Academically, he’s great, although still very apprehensive and anxious about anything new, and we’re already working on plans to adjust him to first grade.

It seems like I’m constantly dealing with teachers and school adjustment counselors and administration, trying to figure out the best way to get him comfortable and secure while he’s there.  I don’t mean to exaggerate the problem, because most of the time, he’s fine.  But when he’s not, holy moly… suffice it say that teachers don’t get paid nearly enough, and my son is extremely lucky to have such caring and devoted teachers and administrators at his school.

So today, I went to pick him up at school.  I like doing pick up, not just because it’s nice to see the other parents, but also because I get to check in with his teacher and hear things that I might not get to hear otherwise.  She told him that she bumped up his reading group, and he’s still in the highest group, but very anxious about the new challenges.  And one other thing – she’s cautioned me that it’s not just Sam, it’s more a class-wide issue, but Sam and two of his little buddies have been kind of wild and rambunctious and it’s starting to be disruptive.

I was so happy.  Not happy that my boy is a behavioral issue – but for a kid who’s had SUCH a hard time feeling comfortable, for a boy who’s had to be dragged into school on more than one occasion – for him to feel secure enough to actually have so much fun with his friends – HIS FRIENDS – that they’re starting to bug everyone is such a huge relief.  To me, that makes everything seem like it’s going to be okay.  He might be anxious, he might be unsure of himself, and it’s not that any of that goes away – but he’s also comfortable enough to be himself.   To be wild and rambunctious and crazy, like every other little six year old boy, like the happy six year old boy that I see at home.  It made my whole day.

I’m drained.  Really, just flat out exhausted.  I got Samilicious Boy up this morning and thought he was just being a pain about going to school.  He doesn’t like going on a good day, but on a day when Jessie isn’t going, I know it’s going to be a battle. I had him on my lap, and he threw up out of nowhere.  My living room is, of course, an utter disaster, covered with toys and books and blankets, so I’m desperately trying to aim his little vomiting body so that he’ll puke in a spot where I can clean it up easily, while still trying to be all motherly and reassuring.

I put him to bed, clean up the mess, make Marc cancel his meeting so he can stay home with vomit boy, and take the two girls off to the pediatrician.    Get Jessie’s diagnosis confirmed, with the added bonus of having to talk the doctor out of an EKG because the computer system was down and Jessie’s heart beats funny.  She’s got PAC (premature atrial contraction).  It’s not bad, in and of itself, and since she’s otherwise healthy, it’s not a concern.  But with the system down, the doctor (who wasn’t her normal pedi) was getting concerned, and was ready to whisk her off for more testing.

Once I got Jessie home, I shipped Marc out the door.  As he was leaving, he bopped into the bedroom to kiss the boy goodbye, and Sam hollered in pain.  Because Marc kissed his head, and oh yeah, did I mention that Sam had gotten his head bonked yesterday?  No?  That’s because I was a wreck about Jessie’s concussion – AND MISSED ENTIRELY THAT SAM HAD ONE.

I was just starting to think about the bump on his head, and the vomiting… the connections are starting to come clear and Sam mentions, rather contemplatively, that my ceiling light in the bedroom keeps moving.  And by the way – did I know that my ceiling has purple splotches on it?

Five hours later and a very long ER visit later (did I mention that Sam has a tendency to go mute when strangers (like nurses) talk to him?), I had another kid with another mild concussion.  The ER docs were fabulous with him, and he really did relax and talk to them eventually.

Both kids are on restricted activities, and I’m assured that both will heal quickly with no lasting effects.  Headaches, nausea and visual disturbances are normal and to be expected and may re-occur off and on over the next couple of days, but unless they get worse, or they start passing out, getting super lethargic, etc, then they’ll heal and be none the worse for it.

But I’m exhausted, and desperate for a break.  Marc is on his way home, thank goodness, and I’m off for a very long, very hot and very alone shower.