Melissa Anne Cohen

Marc has two daughters from his first marriage, and we see his ex frequently at family functions.  It’s… an odd situation, because while it’s lovely and great for the kids that it’s so amicable, it’s a confusing place for me to be.  I don’t know quite where I fit in sometimes.  This has gotten better as time goes on, Marc and I have been together almost ten years now, so there’s little doubt that I’m there as his wife, but I still feel awkward and uncomfortable at parties that we both attend.

So I’ve developed some tricks to get thru it.  Number one, I always make sure to reward myself every single time.  Either the day of the function or the day afterwards, I get to take the afternoon off, no kids, and indulge myself somehow.  Sometimes it’s a pedicure, sometimes it’s a movie, sometimes it’s an ice cream cone or take out chinese and a good book.  But I always make sure to indulge myself in something just for me.  It’s gotten a lot easier over the years, but it’s never easy going anywhere where I’m primarily known as the second wife.

Number two, I’m not afraid to discreetly disappear during the party if I need some space.  Granted, it helps a lot that I’ve got an eight year old with dramatic tendencies and a slight persecution complex,  five year old who hates parties, and I’ve got a toddler who’s still a nursing girl.  I bring a book and if I need to go chill out in the car for a while, I just pick up a kid and head out.  Oddly enough, my kids love just hanging in the car, I plop them in the front seat and just relax for a bit.  Nobody questions it, and I’m able to regroup.

Number three – I fake it well.  Stick a smile on my face, and remain relentlessly pleasant.  Sometimes it’s easier than others – but mostly, I try to make it look as though I LOVE hanging out with someone who used to have sex with my husband.  Someone who’s his partner in raising children, and someone that we’ll be involved with, to one extent or another, for the rest of our lives.   Being a stepmother is complicated and hard, but on the upside, were I not a stepmother – I wouldn’t be a wife or mother either, and honestly, having my stepdaughters is well worth the awkwardness.

If you’d asked me if I wanted to have daughters or sons ten years ago, I’d have said daughters.  All the way.  I come from a super female dominated family, and I’m extremely close to my own mother.  I knew what to do with daughters – and wasn’t sure I’d know what to do with a son.  Fast forward to the day five years ago, when Marc gleefully hollered “It’s a BOY!” and I held him in my arms for the first time.

I still am baffled and confused by a lot of Sam.  Superheros, guns, firemen and zombies – all of these are things I’ve become achingly familiar with, and am stunned at how incredibly easy it is to adapt to all things boy.  He’s one of the loves of my life – and I can’t imagine my life without my precious boy.

From the beginning, Sam has awed and amazed me with his amazing strength of will and capacity to love.  His love is so pure and so sweet.  He was born with separation anxiety, from the very beginning, he knew his rightful place was in my arms and he hollered and yelled anytime he wasn’t there.  He realized when he was about six or seven months old that he had a father, that strange pair of arms that held him were attached to a really cool guy, and just fell in love.  He’s had an enormous hero attachment to his daddy ever since.

Sam is shy in many ways, very reserved and would always, always rather stay home.  Unless we’re going to Chuck E Cheese.  But trips to Grammy’s, heading to his friend’s house to play, out to Walmart – given the choice, he’d rather stay home and chill out.  He’s passionately attached to just about everything, getting rid of clothes he’s outgrown is an exercise in stealth.  He’s smart and funny and the best big brother in the world.  He’s also the best little brother.

Sometimes I thought he had a playbook of how to go about being a little brother, because he so perfectly seemed to do all of the stereotypical little brother things.  But he loves his big sisters, and is never happier than when they’re playing with him.  And Julianna simply worships him.

I’m so glad that I was wrong – that I didn’t just have daughters.  Because Sam has added so much joy and so much love – having a son is one of the biggest surprises in my life and I can’t imagine what it would be like without him.

I love you so much Sammy.   Happy, happy birthday – watching you grow up and being your mother is one of the joys that I’ll never ever take for granted.

It’s after nine o’clock, and I’m still waiting for Marc and Jessica to come home.  I know that Marc desperately needs to work out, and he still went up to Maine to rescue our little girl.  Four hours up, four hours back, that’s a LONG day driving, and he had things he really needed to do today.  But he still offered to go, and went without complaining, and I’ve been thinking today about what that must have been like for Jessie.   To turn around and suddenly see her Daddy and know that she could come home.  How happy she must have been, how safe and loved she must feel right now…

We all come into parenting with our own baggage, and God knows I have my fair share.  I didn’t have a dad who rescued me.  Maybe he wanted to – I don’t think he had bad intentions – but parenting is hard, and he bailed out.   And I had a mom who loved me, loved me, loved me, but also had to share her with three younger siblings.  I don’t ever remember being scared or feeling lost and alone and being saved by my parents.  I’m sure that my mother must have saved me a bunch of times – because she was really a great parent, but I grew up early and fast because I had to.  I would have sucked it up, I would have not wanted to make my mom feel bad because I was scared.  I felt an enormous responsibility to take some of the weight off of her shoulders.  I wouldn’t have added to it by giving into homesickness and crying.  My mother didn’t have a husband that would drop everything and drive eight hours to save me.

Lucky, lucky Jessica.  And lucky, lucky me – because my husband is amazing.

I try, I mean, I really, really do.  I parent really thoughtfully, I put a lot of effort into it.  I read the books, I carefully consider my decisions re: the kids.  Everything from where they sleep, to where they go to school, how many after school activities to enroll them in.  I have my own little philosophies, I believe in nursing on demand, extended nursing into toddlerhood.  I co-sleep, don’t mind artificial flavors or colors, I think buying organic is not necessary.  I believe in child led weaning, child led potty training and I really think that kids should not start formal preschool until possibly the year before kindergarten, and even then, only if the kid wants to go.  I believe in free range parenting, I don’t think it’s my job to entertain or amuse my kids, I try and give them as much freedom as I can.  I want them to grow up to be bold and confident and able to take care of themselves.

So, in that spirit, I shipped my daughter off for a week camping.   She’s with my extended family – but not with me or Marc.  Last year, she went for part of the week, and loved it, so I thought this week would be fine.  But it wasn’t.  I dropped her off Saturday morning, and she called Sunday night crying to come home.  Same thing Monday night and when she called this morning crying, I just gave up and sent Marc up to get her.  She was trying so hard, and I could hear it in her voice.  She wanted so badly to be brave and stick it out, but really, she just missed me and wanted to be home.

Intellectually, I can totally see the point of making her stick it out.  She’s eight years old, she’s with my family, she’s safe and loved and should be able to relax and have fun without me up there.  But bottom line, there are only so many sobbing voicemails I can hear, with her beautiful little voice trembling out “Mommy, I just miss you so much.”  I’m (well, Marc, really) rushing up to rescue her – and perhaps reinforcing a bunch of bad messages.  Teaching her that her parents will always rush to save her, that she’s only safe and secure when she’s with us… but then again, the facts are that I can only handle a couple of days of knowing that she’s up there, sad and missing me.  She’s only eight – she’s got the rest of her life to learn self reliance and how to tough it out.  For right now, we’ll rescue her – because I miss her more than anything, and can’t wait to snuggle her once she gets home 🙂

Every year, I go see the fireworks with Marc at the old courthouse.  We’ve been going since Jess was about two, so I went when I was nine months pregnant with Sam, and when Julianna was just a tiny little love bug, asleep in her pram.  This year, I think it was my all time favorite.  We just had my three (Lilli was home sick and Sarah had come for dinner, but bailed before the fireworks actually started), and Marc’s parents had come along for the first time.  I wore Miss Julianna in the carrier, and Sam brought his friend Sasha from down the street.  We had snacks and water, and the very best part was that it started pouring right as the fireworks started.  It rained for a few minutes, and then cleared away, and everyone was drenched and cheerful in the way that you are when something unexpected happens.  But it was lovely, the kids were all happy and thrilled, I was able to really just sort of relax, Sam was playing with Sasha, Jessie was munching on cheese puffs and sharing them with a very happy baby (although she was distinctly ill amused with the rain).  It was one of those moments when I looked at Marc and was exceedingly happy to be doing this with him.

And by “this,” I mean so much more than just watching fireworks in the rain.  I’ve been pondering what goes into making a happy marriage.  I think sometimes what keeps Marc and I together and happy is a combination of really high expectations and absolute commitment.  I think Marc would accept less, in terms of marriage satisfaction – he’s in it forever regardless.  Whereas I really, really won’t accept less,  I have a different perspective on marriage.  I’ve never seen a successful marriage, not really.  My grandparents (and my grandmother passed away when I was still a child).  My parents split up when I was six, all of my aunts have divorced.  Even the people I knew who were married didn’t seem all that happy about it – and even today, so many of the marriages that I see are not anything I’d want to be a part of.   Getting married, for me, was something I could get myself to do only by telling myself that if it didn’t work, I could always get a divorce.  For Marc, it was absolute, he WAS NOT getting a divorce, ever.  The combination of those two, my need for it to be a marriage unlike everyone else’s – my marriage was going to strong, or it wasn’t going to be, and Marc’s absolute and utter commitment – he’s not considering anything else, is what makes us work.

Marc and I – somehow, against all odds (because, really, you would never have put us together on paper – he was a very newly divorced Jewish guy with two kids from Worcester, I was a single very non Jewish girl with virtually no long term relationship experience who thought of Worcester as SO FAR away from everything), have built this really, really incredible relationship.  He’s my best friend, my partner, my… everything.  And I know that he feels the same way.  We’re in this together, in a way that I never imagined I could be, in a way that I didn’t know existed really.  I still don’t exactly understand how I got this lucky, but thank God every day for it.

Shipping my baby girl off to Hermit Island this week, up in Maine.  Not my baby baby, but my eight year old little love bug, my Miss Miz (short for Misery – Jessie was a toddler who really embraced her emotions).  I’m sending her off with my sister, who I love and trust more than anything.  And of course, my mother, my cousins, my aunts, etc… so she’ll be surrounded by family and I know she’ll be fine, but I’m still a little panic stricken at the thought of her being gone for an entire week.

But I am looking forward to being done getting ready for Hermit Island.  Jess is a girl who loves being prepared, and has a deep and personal attachment to many, many of her stuffed animals, and between packing her clothes, and repacking them after Julianna has unpacked (seriously – this kid adores throwing clothes all over the place) and figuring out which stuffed animal(s) should make the trip… it’s been a two day effort and she’s not leaving until Saturday.  I’ve now got all of her stuff in one laundry basket and am seriously considering just sending that up instead of a bunch of little bags.

House is still in shambles.  You’d think I’d either get used to it, or get a lot better at either forcing the kids to pick up or start picking up more often.  But nope, I just sort of do all three, I try to make them clean up after themselves, try to pick it all up myself at least twice a day, and mostly, I try to just resign myself to it.  Both Jess and Sam love to create these worlds with figurines, and while Jessie has mostly outgrown it, Sam is really just starting to get into it.  Sam is even willing to put up with Julianna crawling in the middle of it, mostly.  Jessie used to hate having Baby Sam in her stuff, and she’d happily set up in her room, but Sam doesn’t like playing alone in his room, so I’m constantly dealing with army men and trucks and monster figures scattered willy-nilly thru my house.

Julianna is still struggling with nighttime issues.  She’s okay once she’s down, for the most part, but getting her to sleep at night is now taking hours.  Literally.  I’m distinctly ill amused – and vetoed Marc attending a committee meeting tonight at the synagogue so he can handle her.  I need a break 🙂  Bedtime used to be his special time with Sam when Sam was about this age, so perhaps that’s just the transition that we need to make.  As it turns out, I’ve started reading Harry Potter to Sam at night before bed, so this might work out perfectly 🙂

There aren’t that many actual parenting rules that I live by – I think I’m pretty flexible about most things, but one thing I know for certain – it’s never a good idea to get used to anything your child does, because as soon as you do, they’ll switch it all up.  Case in point, my tiny little Esmerelda baby.  She used to be the easiest child to put to bed.  She’d even gratefully agree that it was bedtime and snuggle up next to me while I nursed her and watched Grey’s Anatomy repeats.  It was lovely… but now – now, it’s a whole different story.  She fights it, climbs all over the place and fusses.  I have to keep laying her down until she eventually gives up and just drifts off.  She’s developed an attachment to receiving blankets (after three kids, I have a ridiculous number of them) and likes to have many, many of them draped around her.  She’s got one in particular that she loves, with little fat fairies all over it.

She just woke up from her nap, she slept for almost three hours and is so cute.  She’s munching on some hot dogs and water, I tried to give her tuna fish and she was horrified.  Sam is outside playing with Glennys in the pool and eating popsicles and Jessie is out to the movies and chinese food with Marc’s mother.

All in all, a pretty perfect kind of summer day 😉

There was a thing (that’s not all that relevant, exactly, to this post) this morning and I found out about it.  It was a bad thing, or probably is, at the very least, something happened to make some people I care about pretty unhappy.  (I apologize for the cryptic nature of this, but it’s not really my story, so I’m reluctant to share details).  My point was that I found out about it first thing this morning (one of those instances where facebook is NOT your friend), and it just set my whole day off.  I’m grumpy and unpleasant – and I need to STOP.  Because the facts are that I’m fine.  My marriage is whole and healthy, my kids are happy, whole and healthy.  I need to figure out how to feel badly for other people and not have it impact every thing about my day.  Because not only am I stressed out and unhappy, but that old adage that when Mommy’s not happy, nobody is happy could have been written about me and my kids.  Jessie is cranky and fussy, Sam has thrown himself into two different screaming fits and Julianna… well,she’s sunshiny delightful, thank goodness.   There’s little that seems to throw that one off.

Anyway…

Sam has been a bit challenging as of late.  I’m slightly scared that it’s just that he’s almost five, and maybe there’s a thing where my kids go off the rails a little bit between five and eight.  When Jess turned eight, she had a real personality change, and suddenly got so much calmer and relaxed and happy.  Sam has always been my stable, simple easy child, and it occurred to me that maybe it’s just that I’m not great with kids at this age.  Infants, babies, toddlers, even preschoolers are fun for me, and I have to say, eight so far is really fun, but five, six, and seven?  Those were not my favorite years.  I’m a believer in self fulfilling prophecies, so I’m trying not to think too much about it, but really hoping that it’s just an off day or two.

Probably it is.  Because it’s more that both Jess and Sam have been spiraling into temper tantrums lately – I’m going to blame summer.  We decided to keep Jess home from summer camp this year, and while it’s wonderful – it does also mean that there’s not a lot of structure to our days anymore.  Julianna’s nap schedule is all off too.  I need to figure out a routine and start sticking to it – or I’m going to lose my mind.

As we were filling it up with air (it’s a 3 ring pool) and all the kids (Jessica, Sam, Glennys, Julianna, and our neighbor Caroline) were all clustered around, clutching onto the sides, (I had told them they had to hold it – mainly to keep them occupied, they were so happy they were vibrating with joy), Caroline said “I love the Cohens.”  I don’t know if she was talking to us, or if she was just making a general statement to the universe – but either way, I was happy to hear it :-).  Even happier to hear the shrieks and giggles and laughter coming from the backyard.  Because if you can buy happiness for $10, you should.  Every chance you get.

Julianna is so cute these days.   I don’t mean to say that she wasn’t cute before, or that she won’t continue in this cuteness pattern.  Or to insinuate that my other two cherubs are equally adorable, because they are.  But Julianna is still so recently verbal – and she’s still at that glorious point where she can really only agree with us, so she seems to be an uncommonly agreeable child.

She was outside yesterday, late afternoon, and playing with the big kids.  Jessie discovered that you can take wet sidewalk chalk and use it as a serious paint, and since we had Glennys and Caroline over, it was a painting extravaganza out there.  Everyone had fun, but Julie got disgustingly gross, and by the time Glennys carried her into me, she was coated in thick blue ooze and there was no choice but to toss her into the shower.  I’d have given her a bath, but she’s still pretty freaked out about it, so the best choice is just to get naked along with her and hold her screaming, writhing body in the shower.  After we got all cleaned up, I got her out, and put her in a diaper and t-shirt and laid her down for a nap.

I was happily assuming that’d she’d nap for 45 minutes, maybe an hour.  Julianna is an uncommonly regimented sort of kid, she put herself on a schedule very early on.  For the most part, she naps for about three hours between 10:30 and 2:00, roughly, and then goes down for the night around 7:30 or 8:00.  But occasionally, she’ll get up earlier from the first nap and require a restorative little cat nap somewhere around six or so, and then go down closer to nine or nine thirty.  But with the nice weather, and the sun being up so much later, plus it’s Sunday and there’s no real schedule at all, I didn’t realize how late it was.  She actually went down to sleep around quarter of seven and slept like a rock until close to ten.

Then she was AWAKE and just delighted with herself.  She had missed dinner entirely, and was so clearly awake, I couldn’t make her go back to sleep.  So I got her up and she, Marc and I just hung out.  She had dinner with Marc and we watched Loony Toones and built with her blocks.  She’s so adorable and so perfectly happy.  But it was after midnight before she finally wound herself back down, and I’m exhausted this morning.