Melissa Anne Cohen

I know she’s my third child, and in theory, I’ve been down the teething road before – but I feel like it’s so much harder with Julianna.  Probably because she’s my easiest baby, she’s more than content to hang out and play with her daddy or siblings, or even just the bucket of blocks on the floor.  She’s sunshiney delighted almost all of the time – unless she’s teething.  In which case, she morphs into the human koala baby.  She nurses non-stop, cries if I even contemplate putting her down or in someone’s else’s lap.  She’s completely, totally, 100% devoted to me and the only thing that calms her down, the only thing, is being on top of me. 

So I cook one handed, I plop her on the floor on the bathroom rug when I pee.  I fold laundry with her in the back pack, and I spend a lot of time watching Say Yes to the Dress (why?  because it’s on all the time, and it’s short and requires no thought whatsoever).  I sit and snuggle her for hours, dozing on the couch because she’s up all night nursing.  Motrin works a little, tylenol works a little less, and baby ambesol is useless. 

But in the end, she’ll get another little tooth poking out and her smile is so beautiful.  It’s worth it – but really frustrating when I’m in the middle of it. 

My daughter Jessica was born to a very different mother than my other two were.  Jessie was my first baby, she was born almost exactly a year after I met her dad.  I was still figuring out how to be a wife, how to be a grown up.  Being a mother was wonderous and amazing, and I loved it from the very first second.  I felt this amazing bond with Jessie, still do.  I had a hard time separating her from me, knowing where she ended and where I began.  I still do, honestly – it’s very hard for me when she’s upset.  We bounce off of each other’s moods.  I had a very hard time sharing her – I felt as though her rightful place was in my arms.  I wanted her with me 24/7.  I loved Marc, of course, but motherhood was really overwhelming for me, at first.  I couldn’t always balance out being Melissa and being Mommy. 

Jessie is definitely a product of that.  She’s a stereotypical first child and stereotypical middle child all at the same time.  She’s intense, dramatic, brilliant and always, always wonderously challenging.  She struggles with trying to be my oldest and the middle of Marc’s children.  She’s so much like me sometimes it’s scary.  I hear her echoing my speech patterns, my thought pattern.  She’s maternal, she’s all emotion and feeling with a scary smart sort of intellect.

Sam and Julianna were born to a woman in an established happy marriage.  I was very confident in my mothering skills, had a good idea on who I was and how I wanted to parent.  I’m as bonded to them as I am with Jessie, but a lot more confident about who I am.  I’m a lot better about sharing.  My parenting tends to err on the side of attachment parenting.  I co-sleep, I breastfeed until the child is done.  I don’t CIO, I do baby led solids, and I spend pretty much all my free time with them.  I’m a SAHM, so my free time is pretty minimal, but I don’t generally make plans that don’t include at least one if not all of my children. 

And you could not possibly find two children who are more different.  Sam is an extreme introvert.  He cried for the first year of his life, I swear.  Nobody would watch him, he would cry if anyone other than immediate family caught his eye and smiled at him.  Exceptionally attached to me for the first couple of years, and still very close to both Marc and I.  He’s not ready for preschool and is terrified at the thought of kindergarten.  He spends most parties hiding behind me and begging to leave.  He’s visibly uncomfortable when he’s in a setting that he’s not very familiar with, if I’ve got strangers at the house, or if he’s around a bunch of people he doesn’t know very well.   He’s exceptionally tenderhearted – he cried at the end of the Little Mermaid because he was devastated that Ariel was going to be leaving her dad and her family, that broke his heart.  He’s the sweetest, most loving little boy and I wouldn’t change a single thing about him.

BUT – I always blamed myself for Sam’s lack of social skills.  I think, as a parent, I always blame myself for pretty much anything my kids do.  I blame myself when Jessie is sobbing with so much drama and emotion.  I blamed myself for Sam’s shyness.  I’m shy, I’m not super comfortable in social settings with strangers.  I thought it was obviously my fault, I had been too nuturing, I had nursed him too long.  It was obviously poor parenting – otherwise, Sam would be more relaxed, more confident.  I always felt a twinge of guilt – if I had been better at this, life would be easier for him. 

Then I had Julianna.  And she’s just the exact opposite.  Anyone can hold Jules, total strangers have asked if they could hold her and she’s fine being in anyone’s arms.  As long as she can see either me or Marc, and we smile, she knows she’s safe and is delighted to interact with everyone.  She loves people talking to her, smiling at her.  She’s just an extreme extrovert.  She’s much more comfortable around people.  She’s a Mommy’s girl, don’t get me wrong, but there are many nights when Marc puts her to bed by rocking her and rubbing her back – whereas Sam was only ever put to sleep by me for the first three and half years.  He wouldn’t ever fall asleep without nursing.  It doesn’t occur to Julianna that the world is anything other than delightful and fun and that she’s perfectly safe all the time.  She expects people to love her, and they do.  She charms everyone she sees, big smiles and happy to play with anyone.

And you know what?  I didn’t do anything different with Julianna that I didn’t do with Sam.  I did nothing to cause his stranger anxiety, and did nothing to foster Julianna’s absolute delight in the world around her.  They just are who they are.  My job isn’t to blame myself for their personality quirks but to love them.  And I do – so much.  I love my drama queen, my antisocial lovebug and my social butterfly.  I just wish I had realized earlier that they are who they are from the very beginning and I can’t change or influence it.  I just have to love them all the time – fortunately, that’s the easy part.

The other night, Jessie and I were watching “Four Weddings.”  Strangely addicting show, especially given that I had a backyard, very simple wedding at my mother’s house.  I totally can’t relate to spending all that money on one event, but still am oddly pleased by watching it.  So we were watching the show, and out of nowhere, she said “Mommy, should I have a Jewish or a Christian wedding?” 

I paused the show, and rather logically pointed out that as we were not Christian, she’d probably be better off having a Jewish wedding.  As we are, in fact, Jewish.  She was concerned about hurting my side of the family, apparently.  I assured her that I had already fought that battle, and that she didn’t need to worry about that – that my side of the family loved her (well, the ones that talk to us, anyway) and would be thrilled to attend her wedding, regardless of it was Jewish or not. 

I talked to her for a long time about religion and spirituality and the path that I had taken to arrive at converting.  The reasons why her dad and I wanted to raise our children in the Jewish faith and why we believed the way that we did.   The belief in one God, the concept that we are obligated to constantly be trying to make the world a better place.  The concept that the world is a wonderous, magical place, and we do honor to God by recognizing and celebrating that fact.  That we are obligated to help others, that actions count more than beliefs and that we are created in God’s image.  That God is neither male nor female but so much more than both.  That we are expected to study and learn and think and to be grateful for all that we have, to not take the blessings that we have been given for granted.

And it seems odd to me to be still discussing this – because converting to Judaism was such a long, drawn out, overly analyzed and discussed process for me.  Shouldn’t she just know she’s Jewish?  I mean, we have Shabbat dinner every Friday, well, most Fridays.  We attend services, well, we used to, anyway.  And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that we had sort of fallen out of the habit of really, really making Judaism a daily part of our lives.

So we’re making more of an effort, Marc and I.  Because the kids are only going to grow up with a strong sense of their Jewish heritage if we give it to them.  I love Shabbat dinner on Fridays.  I love attending services, I love taking time during the day to thank God for all I’ve been given.  We’re going back to no television/no computer on Shabbat, we’re going to make sure that at least one parent, if not both of us, attend services on Saturday while the kids are in Hebrew class.  Things are only special if we make them so, and I’ve never regretting focusing more on Shabbat.  In fact, it’s always something I’m profoundly grateful for, when I make sure to really take the time to celebrate the way it’s meant to be celebrated.

I apologize for going so long without posting, but my beloved husband has recently discovered facebook, and thus, is monopolizing the computer poking his friends, playing odd western facebook games, and commenting on esoteric economics blogs. 

Much, much to post on…

Julianna cut her third tooth.  She cut the first two on the bottom and is getting one of her incisors on the top on.  Each tooth is a hard fought battle for her and I, involving days of screaming, endless nights of nursing and copious amounts of motrin.  For both of us.  At almost eight and a half months, she’s still not crawling.  In fact, I’ve concluded that she’s going to skip working towards that milestone and is just going to devote herself to flying.  Her new thing is to sit and flap her arms frantically whenever she gets really excited about anything.  It’s actually brilliant, when you think about it, because she’s quickly trained all of us, her siblings as well as Marc and I, that when the arms start going, we look around, figure out what she wants and deliver it to her, usually with praise and smiles because she’s so damn cute.   At this age, Sam was climbing on top of everything, and so far, Julie shows no inclination to do any of that.  To continue on in comparing my children (which I know is not a good habit for a mother of many to have), Jessica didn’t walk independently with any kind of consistency until she was close to a year and a half.  Jess was an early talker, and I’m thinking Julie will be as well.   She’s incredibly verbal already.

Sam is still my sweet little Samilicious boy.  Seriously – he’s so sweet.  If I get irritated (which has happened a lot, see first paragraph), he always comes over to me and drops a kiss on my hand.  He’s all emotion and love and tenderness.  Unless he’s interacting with Marc, in which case, he’s all violence and wrestling and fighting.  They’ve got a relationship that’s so absolutely different from mine with Sam.  He’s still adamant that he’s not attending kindergarten in the fall, and any mention of it is enough to start a torrent of tears and frantic insistence that he’s not, under any circumstances, going to be attending any kind of academic instruction at any point.  Ever.  I’m dreading September…

Speaking of school, I had a meeting today with Jessie’s teacher and the special education coordinator.  We’ve all concluded that she doesn’t have a learning disability, because the number reversals and transposing isn’t in any way affecting her ability to learn.   She tests higher than average, and it’s not affecting her reading skills or her computing skills.  She’s got the understanding of all of it, but frequently when she writes numbers down, she reverses or transposes them.  So we’re going to work on encouraging her to double check her work.  Her teacher seems to be incredibly sensitive to Jessie’s needs, well aware of her personality and quirks, and I was very impressed with the level of knowlege that the staff had, not only about Jessica’s personality and ability, but also with our whole family. 

There’s been a lot of other stuff going on – my aunt has been staying with us off and on for the past month or so (also a computer addict, so that’s another valid excuse for the lack of blogging).  My cousin had her beautiful baby girl and I couldn’t be happier for her.

New Year’s – I have a bunch of different blog topics to write about (summary of last year, hopes for this year, holiday wrap up, thoughts on religion, family topics, etc), but it’s late and I’m cold, so this is going to be a very short post.  Simply wanted to update everyone (the three people who actually read this that I know of 🙂 that we’re still here.  Marc is good, Jess is reluctantly started back to school – she’s a girl who really prefers to be on vacation, Sam is growing up so fast it’s scaring me and Julianna is so freaking cute that I can’t believe it. 

It’s finally here, the first official blizzard of 2010.  And I just shipped Marc, Jess and Sam outside to shovel, shove snow down Marc’s pants and build a snowman.  Julianna and I are happily warm, hanging in the living room.  I’ve got a turkey pot pie bubbling in the oven, Jules is playing with Sam’s blocks and Toy Story 2 is still on the television.

In the end, I had a really nice Christmas.  Although I think next year, we’ll do it differently.  Again.  I missed going to my mother’s house.  And since it didn’t work out the way that I hoped it would for her, I don’t think there’s much to be gained by staying home.  Next year, my plan is to make a big fantastic special breakfast, and then we’ll head down to Mom’s after lunch. 

Jessica got a CD player for her bedroom, as well as a bunch of CD’s.  And her life is now completely changed, as she’s suddenly a tweener, playing her music as loud as she can and wailing along with Taylor Swift about how life is when you’re fifteen.  It’s so bizzare to me, and really inspired me to reflect on the differences between mothering all of my children.

They range in age from almost eight years old to almost eight months old.  And the skills and techniques needed for one are completely different from the ones needed for the other.  And the third requires a whole other set.  Jess is becoming her own person – forming her own identity and personality and relationships independent of me.  She’s forming ideas about the kind of life she’s going to lead, really developing into her own.  Sam is still little in so many ways, but on the brink of so much more.  And Julianna… she’s in the throes of separation anxiety, almost doing everything, talking, walking, etc. 

In many ways – Sam’s the easiest for me right now.  His needs are easy to meet, he’s potty trained, sleeps on his own, feeds himself – but is still little.  He doesn’t want (or really seem to need) much more than just having Marc and I around.  He’s all love and emotion, but it’s simple stuff.  He’s becoming more aware of subleties, like if I’m irritated he’ll ask why, and he’s gaining more control over his temper tantrums.  He’s maturing, but still little.

Julianna is still a baby, and just requires so much more.  She’s eating solids and sipping water and juice, but breastfeeding still makes up at least 80% of her diet.  And it’s probably higher than that – she’s into feeding herself now, and still hasn’t completely mastered actually keeping the food in her mouth.  Marc says that while it’s not a waste of time or effort to feed her, it is a total waste of food, because almost all of it ends up piled up in her lap, under her chin and on the floor.  She’s says “Mama” now and she’s got the prettiest smile, her whole face just lights up when she sees me. 

That’s pretty much where my mind is these days.  I’ve got a sinus infection, but so far, it seems to be going away when I take a Claritin D.  The sudafed in the medication makes me all floaty and weird, but it’s not an unpleasant feeling.  Just a little disorienting.  Anyway – I’ve been floating off and on for about three days now (when I’m not floating, I’m bitchy and in pain), and I’m starting to really enjoy it. 

Plans are moving forward for my super cool Christmas celebration.  I’m doing my own thing this year for Christmas, seeing my mom and step dad on Christmas Eve instead of during the day on Christmas.  There are a couple of different reasons, it’ll make things easier all around for everyone if I’m notably absent on Christmas Day, and I also like the thought of starting my own traditions and having my own holiday celebration.  It’s a nice way to make Marc feel more a part of Christmas, if it’s something we do together as opposed to something that we do with just my side of the family.  So he’s got big plans to make some sort of alcoholic beverage, glogg, and I’ve got a 20lb turkey screaming out my name.  We’ve got friends coming over too, and I’m really excited about it.

We keep Christmas relatively low-key, gift wise.  The kids get so much stuff from Hanukkah that, to a certain extent, it’s just logical not to overload them with stuff.  Plus, I’m a big proponent of the less is more theory when it comes to kids gifts (not that you would know that from looking at my downstairs playroom – but in my defense, we’ve got big extended families and I’ve got a total inability to say no to hand me down toys).  So we got each kid a nice gift, and I’ll stuff their stockings with stuff and that’ll be that. 

In other news… let’s see.  Miss Jess danced off to school delightedly this morning – granted, it was entirely because she was toting sixty plus sugar cookies for the cookie decorating party today.  If every day could be cookie decorating day, her life would be a lot more fun.  At least in the short term.  Sam is boucing around the house, and Julianna is having a little peach yogurt with Daddy.  She’s eating solids about three times a day now.  And I can’t believe that she’s almost eight months. 

Marc and I have big plans for an official date in January.  It occurs to me that this is our first real date since last January.  That’s not good.  But honestly, Marc and I spend a lot of time together, and we really do like each other an awful lot, beyond being in love.  We may not get a lot of alone time, but I still feel like we’re as happy as we’ve ever been – and we operate with a pretty high threshold of contentment :-).  Not everyone has what we have, and I never lose sight of that.  We work hard at staying connected, maintaining our relationship, independent of being co-parents, and so far, I’d have to say that we’re wicked good at it.

It’s just awesome.  I love snuggling with that little girl at the crack of dawn.  I nursed her early this morning, around six-ish, and she’s still out cold.  I’m awake and alone right now – Jess off to school, Marc getting bloodwork done and running errands, Sam and Julie still sleeping, which is so unbelievably rare, I don’t know quite what to do with myself.  Shower?  Dishes?  Vacuum?  Vege out with coffee and GMA?  Can’t decide, so I figured I’d blog instead. 

I went thru old blog posts last night, and was amused to see that last December, I was pretty much doing exactly what I’m doing right now.  Which is really kind of cool, I like the continuity of it.  I like that every year, we struggle over celebrating Jewish or pagan traditions and how to blend it, because every year we get just a little bit better about it.  I like that I struggled with how to get the kids to bed, how Marc does it differently than I do, and coming to grips with the fact that neither of us is right or wrong, both methods are valid.  I especially love looking back and remembering my pregnancy, and how much better it is now with Julie as a roly poly seven and a half month old.  Jessie is so much more grown up, Sam is too.  Everything is changing in exactly the best ways, but staying the same in all the ways that matter :-).

I’m working on positivity this morning.  Is that a word?  I was a little grumpy this morning, the house is cold, and I’m not at my best at the crack of dawn anyway.  It seemed as though everyone was going out of their way to make my life complicated and unpleasant (which isn’t true, I know it’s irrational). So I made the conscious decision to turn it around.  I’m all sunshine and joy this morning now.  The second cup of coffee may have factored into this.   If you can, think positive thoughts my way today – I fear it may be an uphill battle to maintain this cheer. 

My husband is kind of scary about heat.  Not scary, that’s not the right word.  But he’s one of those people, you know the type, the ones that like to keep the heat as low as possible.  Like, just above the degree that it would have to be for you be able to see your breath.  He runs hot, as a rule, so I don’t think he gets cold the way normal (i.e. me) people do.  I’m walking around, all bundled up in layers and just so shivering cold, when I wandered by the thermostat and realized that it’s set at sixty degrees.  Sixty.  No wonder I’m freezing.

We’ve been together for almost nine years, and I’m just realizing this because this is the first place we’ve lived where we really controlled the heat.  We lived in Maynard with Becky for the first year and a half, then with his parents for a year or two.  Then we lived in an apartment that was so well heated by the apartment upstairs, when they’d turn up the heat, our apartment got warm because the heat ran thru the pipes.  Then our apartment on Wall Street had one of those super old fashioned heaters that never really worked that well.  Our last apartment just had radiators controlled by the apartment downstairs, so we didn’t have any say in it. 

This house is wonderful, I adore it.  But it’s got porcelain tiles thru the kitchen and living room, and hard wood floors throughout the rest of the house.  And it’s icy freaking cold all the livelong day.  At night, it’s not too bad, since we’re under the covers and mostly snuggled up together.  But I can totally see the need for me to invest in a bunch of rugs and sweatshirts to get thru the rest of the winter. 

Julianna has a touch of croup.  A touch, because she hasn’t coughed since this morning, but she woke up with that barking cough.  Jess and Sam never had it, but I recognized it right away because my nephews had it all the time when they were tiny.  She’s asleep on Marc right now, so sweet.  Sam and Harrison have been tearing thru the house for the past four and a half hours, I’m so happy they’re getting along so well.

I watched an episode of  “Lie to Me” the other day.  Granted, I’m way behind on it, so the show probably originally aired a month ago, but there was one particular line that I’ve been thinking about ever since.  The plot of the show was basically that there was this woman who had somehow been sucked into this New Age-y, create your own reality, visualize the reality you want and you can make it sort of cult.  Which isn’t really that relevant to what I’m saying – but there was this one scene where a woman was defending the thought process behind it, how it was a matter of changing your life to accept only the positive, the highest good. 

It was all sort of familiar to me, not that I have a lot of experience with cults, but the whole New Age spiritual belief system is something that I’m pretty fluent with.  I converted to Judaism after a long process of moving from Catholicism to Wicca to general paganism to a cobbled together sort of spirituality that I had made up that was sort of a combo of everything that actually correlated really nicely with Judaism.  I’m getting off track here, obviously, but the point I was making was that there was a time in my life when I believed whole heartedly with all of that.  That changing your life was essential, that in order to achieve your highest self, you had to undergo this spiritual transformation, that you had to recognize the unhealthy ties and cords connecting you to disfunctional relationships and be able to move beyond that into a higher, more evolved self.

But I realized that I don’t believe that any more.  I don’t want to change my life.  I don’t want anything more than what I have right now.  This marriage, these children, this life.  My only wish, my only hope is just for more of this.  Time to watch my kids grow, time to raise this family, time to spend with Marc, just… this.  I want exactly what I have.  Right here, right now.  I don’t want to exist in stasis, I want to move on, I want Jessie to get bigger, for Sam to start school, for Julie to start crawling.  I want to move on – but move on with all of this.  I love my life.  I love my family, my husband, my daughters, my son, my stepdaughters.  My friends, my extended family (those who are still talking to me, at least).  I love this.  Right here, right now, this is exactly what I always wanted.  And if I’m very lucky, I’ll get to have this for the rest of my life.