Melissa Anne Cohen

Not really – I think my all time favorite is those first few weeks home with a new baby.  And there’s a LOT to be said for nine year olds and five year olds – Jessie and Sam are both growing up so much and each age is fascinating in it’s own right.  But the age that Julianna is at right now is kind of awesome.   She’s genuinely delighted by most things.  For example, today we went shopping.  And as per usual, we were chatting thru the store, talking about what we needed.  I had been looking for peanut butter and found it, and she hollered “YAY MAMA!” like I had just achieved this major goal.  It was awesome.  Her enthusiasm and general happiness is totally infectious.  It’s very hard to maintain a bad mood around this girl..

Okay, I love baby wearing. I do. I wore Julianna all the time when she was tiny, but now that’s she’s a toddler, it’s VERY rare that she’ll sit in a carriage, let alone sit in a sling or a backpack. So I got out of the habit of bringing the carrier with me, and when I got the brilliant brainstorm on Sunday afternoon to take the kids to the Purgatory Chasm, I didn’t even think of it.   And that was a major mistake.

We googled the directions and headed off. It was just my three kids and Marc and I – but we’re definitely going back and bringing the older girls with us.  Sam was talking about how much he wanted to bring Glennys and Sarah back – he really loved it.  In the end, it was a really great experience, for a whole bunch of reasons. The older two LOVED it. Sam is a nature boy, he’s always happiest surrounded by trees and sunshine, and Jessie was the official photographer, posing the kids and taking pictures of rocks and trees. We split duties, with Marc watching the older two and me walking along with Julianna. Julie is at that awesome age, where everything, everything is fascinating and worthy of saving. I’m talking rocks, sticks, old leaves. She couldn’t take more than a step or two without being distracted by some lovely little thing and we’d have to pause, examine and pick it up to save. She’d gravely hand me her treasure and toddle on, and I’d discreetly drop it when she wasn’t looking. 

We followed the yellow path for the most part, and somewhere along the line, we migrated over to the blue path. When we started, it was a lovely little hike on a rocky path thru the woods. Challenging for Julie to navigate, but not insurmountable. But eventually, we ended up in the actual Chasm part of Purgatory Chasm – and it was then that I realized that we had made a pretty major error in taking along a toddler with no carrier. Because you really do need to climb – and having two free arms is a necessity. 

It was completely an exercise in teamwork. Not just for Marc and I, but also for the older two kids. Because they forged on ahead, working together and climbing their way thru. Marc and I went slowly, one going first, passing the baby along to the one in front and then switching places, passing her along… it was honestly a bit scary and I kept thinking to myself that I was mostly crazy to have undertaken this endeavor. But we made it out, and while I’m not attempting it again for a couple of years with the toddler, I’m sending Marc back definitely. The older two kids LOVED it and can’t wait to go back. 

My kids don’t like summer camp. To be fair, they don’t like school either, but I make them go to that. But I can’t bring myself to do it in the summer. I like summer just the way it is. Three glorious months when I don’t have to worry about lunch boxes and which day is gym and did you remember your sneakers. I don’t have to pick out clothes for them, I don’t have to rush, rush, rush to get out the door. It’s a long relaxing period of time, filled with day trips to the beach, visits to family members we don’t see that often, and long, lazy days of just…. being. Picking dandelions and learning to ride a bike and roller skate. Climbing Mt. Monadnock and Mt. Wachusett. Strawberry picking, hiking, swimming. 

My kids don’t particularly like a lot of structure. They like to wing it. They like to hang out at home, or to visit friends. They both begged to be able to stay home this summer, and I’m counting down the weeks to summer. 

They won’t be this age again. My oldest is nine, we’re flirting ever closer to the years where she’d rather hang with her friends than me. My son is still at the gorgeous age where he adores me, and is happiest when he’s at my side. And Julianna – my little love bug is two, is there anything cuter than a two year old who worships her older siblings? I need to take advantage of this time, I want to relish every single minute of their childhood. 

So we’re not doing camp this summer. We’re going to go swimming in the ocean, we’re going to visit the White Mountains, and explore the woods around our house. We’re going to make nature journals, and take up bird watching. My oldest is planning on writing a book, my son is planning on trying to tame one of the squirrels outside. We’re going to blow bubbles and take the bus (just for the fun of it). We’re going to make weekly treks to the library, and we’re going to visit and explore and sleep late and stay up even later. We’re going to soak up every last bit of this summer, and I can’t wait. 

Sometimes, often times, for me, I make parenting decisions that make sense.  That are well thought out, carefully considered and, in the end, I still feel, are the right decision at the time.  Then I run into the obvious consequences, and feel as though I’m blindsided – like I never saw that coming.  And it throws everything into question for me, and I have to circle my way back around to the original decision, and (usually) conclude that it was the right decision, I just have to wait thru the negative parts to get to the good stuff.

Case in point – Sam’s preschool.  It was a seriously agonized over decision, to pull him out of preschool.  But he wasn’t ready.  And at four, I wasn’t ready to push him to go, and I did the research, I knew that he’d be okay academically, by the time a child hits third grade, any benefit to preschool has disappeared and you can’t tell which kids went and which ones didn’t.  What I didn’t think about was that he’d be behind in kindergarten.  Why, I don’t know – it’s right there in front of me, but still, I was shocked by it.  I haven’t fully gotten to the point where I’m forgiving myself for the original decision, because right now, things are HARD at kindergarten and there’s a huge part of me that feels enormously guilty about that.  But I think, in the end, I’m going to conclude that it was right.  He was too little to go to preschool.  Sam is a different kind of kid, and he needed that extra time at home.  And I don’t regret it, not really.  He’s so much closer to Julianna, he got that extra time home when Marc was unemployed – and, in the end, he’ll catch up.  He’s a smart kid, he’s got good genes and a good home environment, he’ll catch up.

And I’m facing a similar debate over religion.   I knew from the beginning that I wanted to raise the kids within an organized religion.  I feel really strongly that having a base, a foundation for spirituality makes it easier later for them to be able to form their own ideas.  There is no organized Church of Melissa (although if there was, I reluctantly conclude I probably wouldn’t join it, as I get itchy around organized religion) and since their father, and my husband, my partner, my buddy, is Jewish – it was an obvious conclusion.  We’ll raise them Jewish.  But you can’t just unilaterally decide to raise children as Jews if you (as a mother) are, in fact, not Jewish – so we formally converted.  And I still think that was the right decision. Theologically, Judaism is as close as you can get, really, to my own personal theology.  Plus, their dad is Jewish, they are Jewish as well.  He’s as much a part of who they are as I am, it simply doesn’t make sense that they wouldn’t be considered Jewish because he’s their dad and not their mom.

So I converted and converted the kids and am raising them Jewish.  And only just now realizing – that means they’re growing up as part of an organized religious belief system and it makes me itchy.   Because organized religion – it’s so easy to not think about it.  To just do what you’re told to do, to mindlessly go thru life without ever exploring the bigger questions.  My kids kept kosher for Passover this year, not because they had thought about it, and carefully considered the meaning behind it, but because that’s what you do when you’re Jewish.   That freaks me out.  But they’re five and nine.  That’s okay.  And I need to come to grips with that.  Their spiritual path is not going to be the same as mine.  In the end, even though Marc is Jewish as well as they are, their paths are not going to be the same as his either.  Because they are going thru a completely different type of childhood than either of us did.  And I need to ease back.  I need to stop panicking because I’m living a very “organized religion” sort of life, and remember that I chose this for a reason.   I just have this aspect of my personality that rebels against joining – and the older the kids get, the more and more pressure I feel to join the larger Jewish community.  I was able to convert because it was mine.  My spirituality, and it’s intimate and personal, and it didn’t matter that I didn’t like going to services.  I knew what was right for me.  But my kids love services, they love the ritual and the community and the rules and tradition.  I have to just grit my teeth and get thru it.  At this stage in their lives, following rules is what they do.  There will be time for independent thought, and one aspect of Judaism that I really love is that they are going to get that encouragement.  To think, to explore, to develop their own personal relationship with the Divine.

I just need to step back and know that I made the right decision.  Even if it’s hard now, it’s the right one, and I’m not going to regret it.

Finally, we are done with the copious vomiting.  It’s been days since I’ve had to clean up puke and I feel like a new woman.  Julianna Ruth is officially two years old, her birthday was on  Sunday.  Fortunately, we had a birthday party for she and Lilli the week before because her actual  birthday was lost in the puke haze.

Julianna is such a love – she’s all emotion and excitement.  She’s got the cutest little grin, with dimples and a wrinkled up nose.  She still calls Jessie “G,” Sam is still “My Boy,” and the older two girls are still “Ree” and “Rah.”  Marc is still Yaya.  But she’s got a basically unlimited vocabulary, sometimes I still struggle to decipher what she’s saying, but she’s really clear for the most part.  She’s got a bit of an issue around new clothes, won’t wear them, really.  Unless she’s had it forever, she’s not interested.  This doesn’t bode well for the future, given that she’s two and the clothes that she’ll still happily wear fit her much better at the beginning of the winter.  She’s going to keep growing, and well, she’s going to have to suck it up.  She still hates baths with a misplaced passion that just makes everything more difficult.  We’re half heartedly working on weaning.  Given that it took me close to two years to actually wean Sam, I’ve got no real hope of it happening soon, but I’m trying.   She nurses to sleep still, and would like to nurse mid morning and then again late afternoon.  I can usually talk her out of those two, but not always.

Sam  is actually doing surprisingly well.  Given that he’d been out of school for two weeks, I expected it to be a lot harder to get him back into the swing of it, but he’s been great thus far.  He did tear up a little bit this morning, saying that he just missed me so much during the day, but he pulled it together pretty fast.   Going to bed is a breeze, I’ve been reading more and more to him.  Marc had been reading his way thru the Hardy Boys with him, but I started doing easy reader books with him that he can help read.   Marc and I both still really feel strongly about sending him to first grade, instead of holding him back, but we’ve got his conference set up for the end of the week.   He’s in the play coming up – his teacher told me today that he’s got one of the main parts.  Which seems like a BAD idea, given his desire to remain “under the radar,” but she said he asked for the part and was really enthusiastic about it.  I’m hoping for the best, but a part of me is wishing  that he had a less prominent position, I’d hate for him to panic on the day of the play because everyone will be looking at him.

Jessie is thriving in third grade.  Really, I’ve got to say that this year is her best so far.  Her school conference went great – her teacher this year is wonderful.  I really got the sense that she understood Jessie.  She’s doing great in school, scores really well on standardized tests, and the only hitch is that sometimes she screws up because she’s firmly convinced she knows what she’s doing and doesn’t bother to read the directions.  She’s so much happier, overall.  She’s kind of coming into her personality, and it’s awesome to watch.  She still likes to sleep in my bed, but more and more, she’ll voluntarily go into her own.  She’s growing up so fast, getting taller and skinnier and it’s freaking me out just a little bit.  And by just a little bit, I mean a lot.

There’s something magical about nighttime parenting.  Something elemental and bare bones about it, when it’s the middle of the night, and your child is sick.  When the bed is covered in vomit, and the baby is sobbing in confusion and misery and the only thing to do, the only thing to do is be the mom, in the best and most real sense.

It was two thirty in the morning, and Day Six (or is it Seven?) of one of my kids dealing with the stomach flu.  I’ve scrubbed down the car seat more times than I can count, washed so much laundry that I legitimately fear I’ll never catch up again.  I’ve got mixing bowls strategically placed all over the house, just in case the urge to throw up hits and they can’t get to the potty quick enough.  I’ve only actually been puked on a couple of times, and  have grown inordinately proud of my five year old’s ability to run for a bucket.  But my baby, my tiny little almost two year old – she doesn’t know to reach for a bucket, and while she’s incredibly verbal, she didn’t have the words to tell me before she threw up all over the bed.  All over me.  All over her.

After a few minutes when she sobbed and retched and I rubbed her back and tried hard to keep it from getting on the king size comforter (the one too big to wash in my machine), it was over.  I stripped us both, grabbing my husband’s t-shirt and some old sweats for me, and carrying her into the living room.  I riffled thru the clean laundry basket for new jammies for her, and settled down on the couch in the dark living room.  She was still whimpering, half asleep, horrified and confused.  I snuggled her down in a blanket and nursed her.  Grateful, because at two years old, she’s still nursing and I knew that it would calm her down and she’d be able to keep breastmilk down even if she couldn’t keep down the chicken and broccoli I’d fed her for dinner.

It was just the two of us.  The birds were starting to sing outside, and the room was dark enough so I couldn’t see the clutter of toys and books on the floor.  I was able to just be for a while.  To hold my baby girl when she was sick, when the only thing in the world that would make her world right was to be right here, in my arms, with her long eyelashes casting shadows on her cheek and her big, big eyes looking up at me.  That, right there, that moment, that’s what makes me grateful for the middle of the night puke-fests of parenting.  Sure, it’s messy and today, I can’t drink enough coffee to keep my eyes all the way open – but I know that last night is a night that I’ll remember when she’s five years old and tells me I’m the worst mother in the world, and when she’s nine and rolling her eyes at me when she thinks I’m not looking.  I’ll remember when it was just she and I, a dark night, with birds chirping and big, big eyes gazing up at me.

And the puking continues…

In other news – at least the weekend is here.  Not that I’ll be doing much of anything, since kids are puking, but it’s got to be almost over, right?

The thing is, about five minutes before and after puking, the kids are actually sick.  They moan, they sit still, they aren’t feeling good.  The rest of the time, they’re running around like lunatics, totally happy and completely not sick.  But I can’t go anywhere or do anything, can’t send them to school or go grocery shopping or go visit  my mother or go to the library – because technically, they’re sick.

So I’ll be grateful for the little things.  Like a lot of buckets, and kids who mostly hit the buckets when they puke.  For Jessie who only threw up that one time.  For not having to worry about dehydration and actual illness, because other than the puking, these are healthy, happy kids. For not coming down with it myself.

All these are good.

But if you’re looking for me, I’ll be home.  Here.  Emptying buckets and doing laundry.  Like I have been for six days now.

Julie puked up everything yesterday. I didn’t really make the connection until she threw up all over the couch last night, because apparently, I’m not all that quick – either that, or I’m so used to vomit, I just don’t pick up on any kind of pattern to it anymore. She threw up in the car on the way home from dropping off the kids in the morning, then threw up on the way home from picking up the girl. On the upside – her car seat is SUPER clean, having been scrubbed thoroughly twice in one day. Finishing up with a massive throwing up extravaganza all over the couch. She then woke up at midnight and threw up the remainder of the beans/hot dogs (yum). So I’m not feeding her anymore – she can hold down breastmilk, but solid food, not so much. Which is another plug for nursing, at least I know she won’t get dehydrated, because she can definitely hold that down. The obvious downside is that it’s not a lot of fun to nurse a two year old nonstop when it’s her only source of sustenance.

Okay – I admit it, it’s a lot of posting lately.  But I’m out of books, and with sick kids, I haven’t made it down to the library to get something to read, so I have to write instead 🙂

Sam is still throwing up, and Julie threw up for the first time this morning.  For those keeping track, Jessie threw up once, Sunday morning.  Sam threw up all night Saturday night, and then again on Monday morning.  Went to school on Tuesday and threw up twice yesterday afternoon.  The weird thing is that they’re fine at all other times.  Holding food down, playing, sleeping well, no fever.  Just occasionally vomiting.  BUT I feel reassured after talking to my mother and realizing that she had the same thing and it lasted for about a week. So we should be almost done.

In other news… we’ve got a big meeting coming up on Friday to discuss Samilicious Boy and his academic future.  Am just slightly terrified – because they (his teacher – who I LOVE) want him to repeat kindergarten and I don’t want him too.  I’m really struggling with this – I feel enormously guilty about the fact that he wasn’t emotionally/academically prepared for kindergarten, because really, who else can you blame?  I thought I was doing the right thing (which is kind of what bothers me the most – I really thought about it before I decided to pull him out of preschool, and I consciously didn’t push academics on him – I wanted him to be able to play and create and imagine stuff, figured he’d have all the time in the world to learn how to read and add).  And as guilty as I feel, I still think that I might have done the right  thing.

Sam just is.  He came into the world with separation anxiety, and I did my best.  Maybe I should have forced him earlier to learn how to be on his own, but I did my best.  Bottom line (can you tell I’m talking myself into this?), I did the best I could with the information I had at the time.  Not forcing him to be without me, not sending him to preschool when it made him anxious and stressed, giving him time to play and experiment and do what he wanted seemed like the best decision.  And he’s going to be fine – he’s a bright, brilliant, sensitive and kind kid, who’s going to learn and grow on his terms.  He might not be a rock star, academically, in kindergarten.  I think ALL the other kids have had at least an extra year of preschool that he missed- plus we had the whole housing fiasco in November/December.  If you factor in the first couple of months, he was just trying to figure out that he was safe without me there, and then he was slammed with is entire home life/stability getting ripped up – he didn’t really start learning until January.  But he’s made huge advancements in the past few months, and I think he’ll thrive in first grade.

And I also have to come to grips with my own tendency to elevate everything to a high drama situation (Jessie comes by it naturally).  He’s not handicapped, there’s no cognitive problem there – he’s just a little boy who loves his mama and loves his sister and would always rather be home.  This is not really a crisis, not really.  It’s just that any sort of indication that there’s a problem with my kids (i.e. a problem with my parenting) throws me for a loop.  I feel responsible and want to fix it and make it better.  But really, what I need to do is chill and realize that kids grow on their own timetable – and that’s okay.

So I’m chilling.  Relaxing, and being grateful for healthy (although vomiting periodically) HAPPY kids.

I think we all know that mornings are not my best time.  Left to my own devices, I’d sleep until nine or ten, and then not go to bed until after midnight.  But I have kids, and school in the mornings, and thus, I adapt.  Sadly, my children are just like me.  Mornings are rarely fun, and sometimes, they’re just miserable.

Today was one such morning.

Sam started crying before he opened his eyes about having to go to school.  Which just fed into all of my anxieties around sending him to school – is it really the best thing to do, should I keep him back, should I push him ahead, should I just give in and homeschool him instead?  I calmed him down, left him with a show in my room and then went to fall apart all over Marc.   I wasn’t fully awake, and already thrown into this existential crisis over what kind of life do I want this child to have and why was he so miserable and how can (or should I) fix it.

I powered thru, got him to school, then rushed home to get Julie up and dressed.  Today was the appreciation tea for the parent volunteers, and Jessie was reading her poem so I HAD to go.  But Julie didn’t wake  up any more pleasantly than her brother did, and it was a complete battle of wills to get her dressed and out the door.  Never a good feeling than when you have to hold down your child and force clothes on her, and given that I already felt like I was a complete failure as a mother because of Sam, I was fighting tears thru the whole thing.

Maybe I’m just hormonal.  I can’t possibly be as bad at this as it seems this morning.  After all, Jessie woke up happily enough.  Got her little self dressed with a minimum of stress, ate breakfast and was sunshiney delightful. And Sam did, in the end, go to school.  Dressed well, ate some breakfast.  Julie is happy NOW, although still wearing her pajama top and mismatched pants.

I just called and made an appointment to discuss Sam with his teacher.  Bottom line, I want him in first grade.  I don’t think he’ll do any better staying back, the benefits would be washed out by the disadvantages.  He’ll hate it, I’m sure, but he’ll hate repeating kindergarten too.  I go back and forth with a dizzying regularity on this issue, and it’s reaching the point where I need to put it to rest.  My desired outcome would be to push him ahead, put him with the same teacher Jessie had, give him some additional support at home and at school.  Worst case scenario, if first grade is an utter disaster, maybe we can just drop him back to kindergarten.  But I think he’ll do better if we don’t hold him back.  I feel like either we pull him out of school  entirely or we let him advance with the rest of his peer group.

I’m sure that I’ll change my mind again, but that’s where I’m leaning towards right now.

I hate this.