The Life-Changing Magic of Showers

Bathing is something we think about surprisingly often as mothers. Sponging kids down after each diaper explosion, spaghetti dinner, and marker incident. Wondering if playing in the pool for five consecutive hours counts as a bath for the day (the answer: yes). Doing the math to calculate the last time we showered ourselves (during the newborn days: don’t ask).

I think my youngest holds the record for most sponge-baths in a day: six. Four days is the longest I ever went without showering. I remember my youngest screaming from the pack and play in my master bedroom as I rushed to rinse the shampoo out of my hair but at that point I was all, “You can either have a grumpy mom with stringy, greasy hair right now or a happy mom in five minutes if you just chill and wait for this conditioner to do its work.”

Lately, I’ve been thinking about bathing even more than usual because:

1. I recently went back to showering at night.

And

2. my kids have replaced baths with showers.

They say you should write what you’re thinking about, and people, THIS is what I’ve been thinking about. Welcome to being thirty-two-years-old with three kids five and under and YES it is always this glamorous. So let’s get to it.

Read the rest over on the Twin Cities Moms Collective!

Be Astonished

“Instructions for living a life: pay attention, be astonished, tell about it.”

I keep the quote above by Mary Oliver on the corkboard at my desk. It seems as good an instruction for writing, “for living a life”, as any. Writers are supposed to be noticers: to pay attention and look around at the often mundane in life and be able to capture it in a way that rings true.

Despite having just finished an eight-week writing class - you’d think that might make it easier - my words have seemingly vanished. I’ve been working to pull up even the simplest of phrases. It’s felt like “dredging up words from the bottom of the ocean” as Jen Hatmaker once said on her podcast.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I did write a poem I’m pretty proud of. (Which came to me in the shower. It was all I could do to finish rinsing out the shampoo instead of scrambling over to my computer naked and dripping wet.) Two essays were born during that class -  I’m trying to find homes for them. And I made progress on a much larger project. But your average post or essay or even Instagram caption? Seemingly nonexistent. I began this piece you’re reading nearly a month ago; I’ve been meaning to hit that “publish” button for three straight weeks.

I’ve already written that it’s been a busy fall. As we move toward the holidays, things are only growing busier and moving faster. In a good way — this is one of my favorite times of year. But planning our Thanksgiving menu and researching Christmas gifts and finding a new couch before we host a few gatherings (because our eight-year old couch decided that NOW would be a good time to give up its back support) has taken both my brain space and lots of plain old time out of my day.

To be fair, I like these tasks; I generally enjoy them. The mental load takes its toll, but designing Christmas cards happens but once a year and I revel in it. And I sure as hell am not giving over couch shopping to anyone else. The thing is that I want, as always, to have my cake and eat it, too: I want to have the same amount of time I usually do for writing and hobbies and still have all the time in the world to wrap presents, bake Christmas cookies, and cook two batches of my great-grandma’s dressing for Thanksgiving.

Noticing much of anything has been hard in the chaos. I’m more prone to be astonished by the car who didn’t use their signal to cross over three lanes of traffic as much as anything these days. I notice how sore my fingers are after folding 800 little booklets for the Kindergarten classes in the volunteer workroom in school. (You might think I’m exaggerating with that number. I assure you, I am not.) I’ve been paying attention to the leaves which have changed color and carpeted the ground but have zero new words to say about that.

Mindfulness is a word I see a lot. I hear I should concentrate on the task at hand, I should be focused on the present moment. I can get behind this idea in theory. It sounds so practical, so grounding. It’s easier said than done when the present moment involves a flailing, sobbing preschooler or the same dishes I’ve been washing in the same spot for the past four years or when I sit down to write and my mind wanders and I get distracted by the people walking past our house or the lure of Instagram.

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Caden and Brooklyn have been obsessed with creating lately. Pages and pages of drawings and sheets full of practicing what words they know (the, a, Mommy, Brooklyn, Caden, Nolan, Daddy, and, we, cat, see, go, I). 

Brooklyn has taken to drawing what can’t be called anything other than still lifes. The pumpkins on top of the bookshelf, a bowl of apples on the table, her favorite, ancient stuffed Beanie Baby cat named Toby. All she needs is some blank paper and crayons and whatever is closest to her becomes her muse.

Caden has been writing stories using the words he knows or can find from other books and things. I found one the other day called “The Sad Train”. (Which explains why I found an old board book about an elephant obsessed with trains laying around.) (Also, spoiler alert, it’s basically a plagiarized version of “The Little Engine That Could”.) Another one, untitled, reads, “I can go on the school bus. I can go to school.”

They’ve been drawing Mario levels and making Christmas lists, drawing pictures of our family and adding to the lists of words they know.

And as I watched them the other day, I realized, they didn’t sit around just waiting for inspiration to strike. They start drawing, putting pencil and crayon to paper before they even knew what they’re making; begin creating before they even know what they want to create.

+++++

The blank page is daunting. The cursor and this machine with all it’s shiny-ness, the pristine white page awaiting its black marks, all seem to demand perfection. Or maybe that’s just me. With that inner critic in my head ready to pounce on every word choice, punctuation mark, or mistake.The delete key is only a pinky’s reach away. Though, usually, it’s starting that’s the problem.

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I’ve been trying to pay attention, though. Maybe I can reclaim those words again. I suppose that’s all Brooklyn is doing when she starts drawing - she notices the pumpkin on the shelf or the stuffed cat in her hands. She’s paying attention, and she’s telling the world about it through her drawings.

I love to cook. In theory. In reality, it’s burned me out lately, just one more thing to do in the chaos of the early evening and the holiday season. Another thing as the kids burst in the door and ask for snacks and pull papers out of their backpacks and ask for snacks as I rinse out their lunchboxes and they ask for snacks and I clear the kitchen table of its paper and crayons and they ask if they can go play with their friends in the neighborhood and also can they have a snack?

But I’ve been trying to pay attention to that, at least, in the evenings. Chopping things up evenly, the sound of the knife thwack-ing through an onion and hitting the cutting board. Maybe, by paying attention to these mundane tasks, I can reclaim some of that joy.

I don’t know how astonishing it is, another round of this soup (because I have a mild obsession) or chorizo tacos or chicken and rice. Maybe I’m not paying close enough attention to the way simple ingredients become a full meal. I’m distracted by thinking about who is going to eat what and we have to leave for gymnastics in 35 minutes and I had a genius idea for a Christmas gift yet now it’s vanished from my brain.

I try to watch, though, as the olive oil shimmers in the pan, when the chicken hits and it sizzles. I listen for the sound to change, to become more intense as the onions caramelize and I watch the batter expand as I beat eggs into butter and sugar for a batch of brownies.

The transformation of ingredients to food to fill our bellies. I suppose that’s pretty astonishing when I take a moment to pay attention to it. Maybe what’s right in front of me every single day is inspiration enough.

Life Lately

Has the “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers” line from Anne of Green Gables been over-used yet? Because that’s something my heart has been sighing pretty much all day every day. It’s as unoriginal a thought as a (white, suburban woman) person can have, so, unsurprisingly, here we are.

The kids had fall break last week, Nolan for the entire week and Caden and Brooklyn for two days. Thursday and Friday, when they were all home, felt just like falling back into our old, familiar rhythm again. As though this whole Kindergarten thing were nothing more than a momentary blip.

Of course, it was different in that I KNEW it was a blip in time. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday in some ways seemed to last forever, but in a good way, in the way that it was hard to dive back into routine and actually need to wake up to my phone alarm again on Monday morning. But unlike so many of the never-ending days of the past five years, I knew there was an end to it all, there was a slight relief to it, that I could count it down on a single hand.

Our weeks have a rhythm, more so than our days. Where most days in the past five years felt more or less the same, it’s our weeks that seem to loop now, instead of individual weekdays. Preschool on Monday, playtime on Tuesdays before I go off to a writing class and rush home to delivery pizza and dance class for all. Wednesdays it’s back to preschool and don’t forget to pick up the groceries. Thursdays are for eating lunch with Caden and Brooklyn at school before volunteering all afternoon, and Fridays equal preschool again and an afternoon movie.

Then, somehow, it’s the weekend. The weeks don’t usually feel quite so long anymore. Especially once I fit in errands (Target at least once, maybe Costco, and do I have any returns to make?), an inevitable appointment of some sort (dentist, chiropractor, optometrist), bringing a meal to a friend, writing, reading, and the cleaning and meal prep/consumption/clean-up of regular household function: the rest of my “free” hours fill up quickly. (Though ask me about that again in a few days if we continue this streak of rain, clouds, and sub-50-degree temps.)

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“When I was a baby,” is Nolan’s current favorite go-to line. Some things are factual. “When I was a baby, I could only crawl,” is more or less accurate. Others not so much.

“When I was a baby I couldn’t say ‘puppy’ so I said ‘po-pa’,” being one.

“When I was a baby I was in a tree and then I fell out of the tree and you were there and then a lion scratched me right here on my cheek,” is another.

Sometimes he even projects into the future. “When I was 10 I drove in a car and then I climbed in a tree. And I lived in my own house and it was pink.”

“But Nolan, you’ve never been 10,” you might say. You would be wrong. He was 10 at some point in the past and you’re a damn fool for thinking he wasn’t.

These statements are absolutely, positively not up for dispute. You just have to nod your head and agree with him or else you’ll realize you’ve enmeshed yourself in a debate with a three-year old void of all reason, facts, or logic, over whether said three-year old ate hot dogs with ketchup when he was a baby or not.

+++++

Some thought-provoking reads from around the Internets:

This article on the privilege of obtaining an elite degree…and the pitfalls.
This one on why it’s not just about the cooking.
This post from Emily P. Freeman.
This beautiful poem from a fellow Exhale creativity member.

+++++

“We have homework,” Caden announced the second week of school. He strode into the house, plopped his backpack on the ground, and rummaged through his folder for the orange math worksheet, “Mrs. Hawes said we HAVE to do it. It needs to be done in pencil and you need to sign it when I’m done and I need to do it right now and I need a pencil.”

He sat expectantly at the counter while I rummaged in the drawer for a pencil. He and Brooklyn sat down and completed their simple worksheets in a minute or two, working seriously the whole time. And that’s more or less how the school year has gone. They’ve adapted to kindergarten like fish to water; I think they would sleep in their classroom if it were allowed.

At back-to-school night, the second or third week of school, they couldn’t contain their enthusiasm. “We’ll show you where everything is!” they told us, giddy with excitement. They showed us around the school, showed us how to go through the lunch line, which table they sat at. They explained the rules and showed us the different classrooms with all the importance of freshmen.

“No sloppy-poppy!” Brooklyn says while she’s coloring. “That’s what Mrs. Hawes says.”

And “There’s no scribbles in elementary school!”

And “Name on your paper - first thing!”

And more. Almost every day they come home with another tidbit of information about their teacher which means that by the end of the year I expect to know Mrs. Hawes more intimately than I know some of my closest friends, despite only seeing her a handful of times myself.

DEAR KINDERGARTEN TEACHERS: THANK YOU. You are doing the Lord’s work. These kids hero-worship you. And I hope they talk about us at school even half as much as they talk about you at home.

+++++

+++++

Believe all the five-star reviews. This soup is perfect, even more so with a loaf of crusty, homemade bread. My only quibble with the recipe as it’s written is that it absolutely should be doubled.

I’ve already made this applesauce cake twice this fall. And I’ll probably make it at least once more. All of Deb’s recipes are fantastic but this one has become tradition.

This blueberry oatmeal is my favorite. Topped with a little dark brown sugar and some chia seeds when I can find them in the pantry: yum.

+++++

The more I think about it, the more I realize just how much the weeks continue to blur by. I’ve said yes to some things, things I wouldn’t have said yes to with three kids under five at home. I’m taking a writing class (it’s giving me LIFE), volunteering at school, doing some design work here and there, heading up a committee at church. Somehow the time and space I thought I might have with two kids gone all day and another a few mornings a week has never quite materialized.

Especially as we rush into the end of the year. Halloween blurs right into Thanksgiving and then into Christmas (and did you see how LATE Thanksgiving is this year??) which means my mind is already crammed with all the shopping, meal planning, parties, gifts, etc. (I possibly had a meltdown to Tyson about ALL THE THINGS in the next several months that need to be done in addition to ALL THE REGULAR LIFE THINGS last night. It’s fine.) Basically, I’m living this meme:

Of course, to the kids, Christmas is still a lifetime away. Two months is an eternity in their eyes. Heck, Halloween is in less than a week and that’s unbearable enough. (“Is it Halloween yet? Do we get to wear our costumes today? Is it trick-or-treating tonight? Can we eat candy?” MAKE IT STOP.) I remember, as a kid, just how long the time felt between each break, to get from one holiday to the next. I empathize with them, even as my brain feels scrambled with all the to-dos.

Hang in there, everyone. Buckle up during this last mad rush of the year. Enjoy the colorful leaves if you can, a mug of something warm in the afternoon, and bake up that applesauce cake SOON. This time of year might fly by, but it also doesn’t keep.

It Actually Goes So Fast

The park was quiet except for my three. They ran around, chasing and yelling at one another while I sat on a nearby bench with a book and a water bottle. It was a perfect cloudy day. Not too hot, but comfortable.

I watched them play for awhile, smiling at their antics, when I saw another mom — topknot, sunglasses, leggings — pushing a stroller. Baby was old enough to sit up in the stroller but too young to play at the park. I watched them walk past as baby’s big blue eyes took everything in. Then a thought hit me like a punch to the gut:

I was her just yesterday.

And it startled me.

+++++

“Enjoy every moment! It goes by so fast!” is the phrase young moms love to hate. This phrase always seems to be tossed out so casually. We roll our bleary eyes because we’re on our eighth straight month of not sleeping through the night; which is a method of actual torture. We try to hide our spit-up stained clothing and unwashed hair, to herd our feral children through the grocery aisles with some semblance of dignity. 

These older people don’t remember, we tell ourselves to cope. They don’t remember how hard it is every day to change all these diapers, breastfeed until it hurts, to sing “Wheels on the Bus” over and over and over.

We slog through the day having woken up at 5:04AM, reheating our coffee in the microwave three times too many. The hours from 3:00-5:30PM crawl by as we’ve exhausted all of our ideas for the day, and collapse on the couch in absolute despair while children scream and throw toys around us. We wonder, as we hit the buttons on the microwave or put a throw pillow over our heads one more time, just how much more can we take?

+++++

I still consider myself a “young” mom, with two five-year-olds and a three-year-old. My parenting journey is still at the beginning. Yet I’m sure that day at the park, it looked like I was living the life to that stroller mom: book, water, sitting, kids playing while I paid half-attention. I used to watch those moms at the park and envy them as I chased after twin 15-month olds dashing off in opposite directions. Sitting at the park on a bench with a book? That was #goals.

I wondered if I looked like I had everything figured out. I still often feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. I wanted to tell her that even these moments of respite don’t last, that I would likely be interrupted by a fight, or an injury, or a request for a snack soon enough.

“I was just you!” I wanted to rush over and tell her. “I know I look like an ‘old mom’ but I swear I’m not. Everyone was right, it goes by fast.”

Read the rest over on Kindred Mom.

Read, Watched, Listened

I love reading just about everything (okay, you won't see any mystery or sci-fi picks on here), watching things that make me think and especially if they make me laugh, and wholeheartedly embrace the podcast. I also enjoy hearing about what other people are reading, watching, and listening. Here's my two cents worth.

READ
Women’s Work: A Reckoning with Work and Home
A memoir and exploration of childbirth, mothering, work, and balancing it all. While the author, Megan K. Stack, writes from her experience as a white woman raising children in China and India, much of it still resonated with me. The most interesting characters are her live-in help, who run the cooking, cleaning, and childcare of the household. My only complaint is that this book never quite “got there” for me. While she grapples with the idea of being white and privileged (with the advantage of being able to hire housework and childcare out), I felt she missed an opportunity to dive in deeper, particularly in discussing the patriarchy. (And I hope her husband is better in real life than the way he came across in this book.)

The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and “Women’s Work”
This is a quick but potent read. You can read it in an evening. I loved her poetic reflections on the mundane tasks in life - particularly as they relate to the home and mothering. Her opening scene, where she is struck by the priest “doing the dishes” the first time she was in a Catholic church, is a scene that has stuck with me.

Gone With the Wind (re-re-read)
I love this book. I KNOW it’s problematic in its view of slavery and Reconstruction and the Civil War. I KNOW. Yet I still love it. Has there ever been a more nuanced character in all of literature than Scarlett O’Hara? LOVE. HER.

The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe
I borrowed the e-book from the library but I really need to buy it because I could have underlined just about every page. Richard Rohr packs so much power into his sentences that I often have to read them over again to get the full meaning of his words. If you’re tired of the church’s whole “we’re in and they’re out” message then this book is for you. Everybody’s in, baby.

Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive
This book was already on my library holds list and then I saw it on Obama’s list of summer reads; I was so ready for it. And it’s good. It’s gut-wrenchingly good at points. Yet similar to Women’s Work I didn’t think it quite got there on the whole privilege front (Stephanie Land may have been poor but she is white, after all). She’s a very phenomenal essayist - the scenes she evoked were so powerful - and yet I felt the book completely lacked introspection. Short version: worth the read; please think critically about what you’ve read.

An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith
I can’t believe this was only my first Barbara Brown Taylor book. She’s lovely. I mean, I don’t know her in person, but I’m pretty sure she’s lovely. She discusses the acts of worship in our every day - hanging up laundry, walking, etc. - and I was endeared to her immediately when she confessed to struggling with her prayer life (what prayer life?). Her idea that prayer is so much more than speaking directly to God with words - that prayer is in our emotions, and our actions, and even our very being - has stuck with me.

A Wrinkle in Time (re-read)
I needed a light read from the library, and this happened to be available. I haven’t read it since I was a child…late elementary school? Middle school maybe? I find it so fun to revisit these books as an adult. You don’t need me to tell you about it. This book is a delight. (Though did anyone see the movie? I saw that it’s on Netflix now. I mean, Oprah is in it. But is it worth it?)

Commonwealth
My favorite types of novels are family dramas, full stop. That’s exactly what this is. The beginning was slightly confusing to me (I struggled to understand who everyone was and where we were in the timeline as it shifted) but I caught on eventually. I love the characters, I love who emerged from the pack, and I love the mysterious details that become revealed to us over the course of the novel. I’m the dissenting voice that often finds Ann Patchett’s voice insufferable (I know). I went in not knowing anything about this book and emerged realizing it was just exactly what I wanted to read.

I Miss You When I Blink: Dispatches From a Relatively Ordinary Life
This is another one I need to buy because holy shit I could have done a lot of underlining. These essays on, well, basically everything in life are by turns funny, serious, relatable, and just the best. I don’t even have the words to describe this book because she took them all. Basically, I want to write like Mary Laura Philpott when I grow up.

WATCHED
Aziz Ansari: Right Now
I was skeptical going into this one but left feeling moved. That he tackles his sexual misconduct at all is heartening. While I think there were parts he could have handled better, my overall impression was positive. He had a whole section where he talked about growth and change as a person; that if we’re the same person we were 10 years ago, we’re doing it wrong, that he hopes he looks back in 10 years to himself right now and thinks, “What was I thinking?” I’ve taken that with me and have been ruminating on it for weeks now.

Jim Gaffigan: Quality Time
I adore Jim Gaffigan. I love this special. I have no big words to say about it. Go watch it. You’ll laugh. That is all.

Icarus
This documentary blew my mind. While the filmmaker began this documentary to study up on doping and how it affects performance in sports, it quickly turned into something he didn’t expect: exposing the Russian doping scandal in the Olympics. I had to keep reminding myself that this was not a movie and all these things actually happened in real life. To say I was on the edge of my seat is less a cliche than the honest-to-God truth.

Period. End of Sentence.
Women + empowerment + ending shame surrounding menstruation (specifically in India) = this documentary. It’s a quick, riveting, uplifting watch. (Also it won the Oscar, and if a movie about menstruation can win the Oscar, you know it’s good.)

Wanda Sykes: Not Normal
I honestly didn’t (and still don’t) know that much about Wanda Sykes, but since we’re suckers for comedy specials we went for it. We liked it -she’s funny, sharp, and relevant. She did spend a LOT of time talking about President Trump at the beginning and while on the one hand, it was funny, I also kind of wish we could just talk (and joke) about something (ANYTHING) else.

The 2000s
We love docuseries. This one was full of ALL THE NOSTALGIA. It’s hard to pinpoint a favorite episode: the television ones (episodes 1 and 2) are epic, the one about the 2016 election and the 9/11 episode brought all the feels, and the music one was the absolute best way to round out and finish the entire series.

LISTENED
The Daily
As far as I know I’ve never included The Daily here before. I’ve been listening to it off-and-on for awhile but recently it’s become an important piece in my morning routine. The impeachment-related episodes have been fascinating (even if I have to pause or re-listen to sections to fully digest what’s going on). For older, but still relevant episodes, I loved this one on the Democratic primary and this one about Parliament vs. Boris Johnson.

Note: any links to Amazon in this post are affiliate links.