Goodbye Daniel Tiger

"No. I hate Daniel Tiger,” my six-year-old son mumbled in protest to his twin sister’s screen time selection.

“No you don’t!” I insisted to him in surprise.

“Yes I do,” he muttered back.

I have a soft spot for Daniel Tiger. It’s one of the kid’s shows I not only tolerate but enjoy. I’ve found myself significantly invested in the character’s storylines. I’ve come up with my own theories about the characters. (FYI Katerina Kittycat and Prince Wednesday are totally hooking up in the future.) And, when you can get beyond the unbelievable and compulsive patience of Mom Tiger, you discover there are lessons to be found as a parent, as well. 

There’s also the fact that Daniel Tiger was the first show the twins ever cared to watch consistently, when they were smaller, when I was desperate for just a few moments to myself. 

Caden and Brooklyn were 15 months old when I discovered I was pregnant again. Morning sickness never comes for me, but enormous and all-consuming amounts of fatigue do. Despite almost never using the TV before, I began to force it on them. I tried in vain to get them to watch something—anything—so I could lay on our microfiber couch and pretend to parent.

They weren’t interested. All my “no screentime before two” zeal seemed to have backfired.

Within a few months of expecting our third baby in two years, we were also moving. And my husband worked out-of-state. He didn’t live with us for any stretch longer than four days for four straight months, with our move planted firmly in the middle of that timeline. I needed backup any way I could get it.

I don’t remember how I came across Daniel Tiger, but I do remember realizing the twins were paying attention to it. Their usually active bodies stilled, their eyes glowed. My breath, though not all at one, began to release. First they were taken in by the songs, then drawn into the storyline for minutes at a time. Little by little, their interest grew. This is when they learned to embrace Daniel Tiger, half an episode at a time that fall, while my belly grew with their sibling and I learned to pack up our apartment in twelve-minute spurts.

Read the rest of this piece over on Coffee+Crumbs.

Finding Rest...Not Just Sleep

“But my body doesn’t feel tired,” my daughter says, her bright eyes looking up at me from her pillow, just barely visible in the dark room she shares with her twin brother. She wiggles around; he’s been asleep for awhile now.

“Okay,” I whisper, “But it’s still time for bed. Remember what I’ve told you about falling asleep. Make your body as still as a statue, close your eyes, and think about breathing in...and out. And in...and out. Before you know it you’ll be asleep.”

She closes her eyes, though she seems unconvinced, and I creep out of the room, closing the door quietly behind me.

It’s 7:16 pm and as I silently walk down the hall to my own room to finish putting laundry away, I wonder how long it’s been since my body has truly felt not tired. What would it be like, I wonder, to lay down in bed and not immediately surrender to my pillow and, ultimately, sleep?

Because I do sleep now. Five years ago, with infant twins who woke us consistently every hour or two, when having at least one uninterrupted stretch of 120 minutes was the benchmark for a “good” night’s sleep, when they didn’t sleep through the night until they were well over a year old, I thought this day would never come. Back then, rocking first one baby and then another, I thought such incredibly broken sleep would be my entire life, both then and forevermore. People told me they would grow out of it and figure out how to sleep eventually, but my own sleep-deprived brain, still fully in the thick of it, didn’t believe them.

Though even now it’s not always uninterrupted. Many nights a kid or two steal in to find my husband and me, blessedly asleep in our own bed, because they need to use the bathroom, because they need more water, because they’ve had a bad dream. Occasionally, with three kids, we’ll have a night where I swear they’ve made a deal with each other to wake up at perfectly spaced two-hour intervals, and it feels like the horror of those newborn days all over again.

Still. Those people were right. Most nights, I get the sleep experts say I’m supposed to—the 7 or 8 hours recommended for an adult my age to feel my best. This was the holy grail five years ago, when virtually all I could think about was the next time I would get to sleep, when sleep came in nothing more than stolen fragments in my day. I’ve made it.

So then why am I still so tired?

Read the rest over on the Twin Cities Mom Collective.

Week Three

I’ve been writing things down since here and there since the coronavirus really started to impact our lives. I’ve shared some of this as snippets on Instagram but if you’re interested in reading more, feel free to read through these lightly-edited words. As this essay says, I’m craving to see what people are thinking/doing/feeling through all of this. Maybe it’s helpful to use my own still, small voice to give some words to what we’re all going through at this moment in time. You can find Week One here and Week Two here.

Sunday, March 29th
Some recipes:

This focaccia. (Freeze in pieces and warm at 300 degrees for 10ish minutes.)
This granola. (No coconut chips, please. Use roasted, salted pistachios and pumpkin seeds and cut the amount of salt to 1-2 teaspoons.)
Any pasta but especially this one because I’m obsessed.
Brownies. From a box. Because they’re the best and we can only do so much.

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Monday, March 30th
A friend asked me how I was feeling with Brooklyn fracturing her wrists. I can’t remember her exact wording, but something along the lines of whether it felt like more work or more chaos or if I felt exhausted.

You’d think it would, right? In some ways it does. She needs help dressing and undressing and bathing and all sorts of things she’s been able to do herself for years now.

But honestly? I said no. In the midst of the world being turned upside down, Brooklyn’s broken wrists actually feel incredibly manageable. There’s a PROCESS for all this.

I knew which clinic to go to. They knew to take X-rays and how to bandage her arms. That we needed to return in a few days to get casts and that we’ll go back in three more weeks to have them removed. They know that by then her wrists will have healed, that in a healthy 6-year old girl, three weeks is the extent of all this. 

It’s actually incredibly comforting, in the midst of so many unknowns, that there’s a timeline here. We don’t know exactly how long schools will be closed or when restaurants will reopen; we don’t know when everyone can return to work or if the kids will play baseball this summer. But we know that in three weeks, her wrists will be fixed.

Certainty, right now, is in short supply. I’ll take what I can get.

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Guys, we don’t know how to leave the house any more. I took the kids to a drive-thru for lunch. (Which has traditionally been a treat after preschool conferences: we had Nolan’s by phone this morning.) (P.s. He’s doing FANTASTIC!) Of course, we couldn’t go inside. Still, it took a solid 10 minutes longer than it usually does for us to get in the car.

Yes, you need shoes. Yes, you need a jacket if you feel cold. No, you can’t bring 18 toys. After you get your shoes on you need to physically move your body out of the mudroom and go sit in the car. And then buckle yourself in. No, that’s not your seat. Yes, you can unbuckle and go back in the house to go potty. 

We’re broken, is what I’m saying. We don’t even know how to leave the house for the most basic of excursions anymore. Lord help us.

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I was messaging a friend back and forth. She said she’s quiet right now, that she doesn’t have any words and is just trying to process things. I thought it was so interesting because this friend and I are basically the same person, yet I feel like I have nothing BUT words right now. I’m posting things more than ever. Even right here, right now, I come back to this document labeled “Coronavirus” in my Google Docs almost every day. It’s not Shakespeare, but it’s words. Lots of them.

I realized I used to have more words when the kids were younger. When they were home basically all day every day, I felt like I had more words, in a way. Absent adult conversation, writing was a way for me to get adult thoughts and feelings out of my head after being surrounded by small children all day. 

And this time feels SO MUCH like that all over again. Especially with distance learning. I’m physically and mentally with the kids so much right now as we tackle schoolwork and everything else throughout the day And, for the most part, they love it! But it takes a lot out of me. To some extent, I enjoy it. But it’s also incredibly draining in the same way three kids under three was draining; just their mere physical presence is a lot.

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Tuesday, March 31st
Our Pastor sent out an email today with 10 self-care strategies shared with him by a Director of Pastoral Care from his seminary. Strategy 5 reads “Do less. We can focus on 50-70% of the stuff we did before the crisis hit.” That sounds about right to me. In fact, that sounds too high. I think it falls down to 30-50% if you have small children.

Jen Hatmaker says she’s aiming for 55% with homeschooling her children. THIS IS ALL WE CAN DO.

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Wednesday, April 1st
(A Lighthearted) List of Quarantine Winners and Losers

Winners:
Homeschool moms: Just take a bow.

Beans: Your time was already coming. This accelerated it.

Athleisure: Leggings and joggers are proof he Lord loves us and wants us to be happy.

Delivery Services: Praise the Lord.

Netflix: Obviously.

Losers:
Jeans: And anything else with buttons and zippers.

Days of the Week, Names of Months, etc.: Time doesn’t matter.

Cars: I usually fill up the van once a week. Now the last time I got gas was 3 1/2 weeks ago.

Carole Baskin: Not sure how she even relates to Coronavirus but it seems like she should be on this list.

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Friday, April 3rd
Caden sent a video to his teacher today of us baking banana muffins (Because: measuring! They’re learning about measuring! Look at us being all math-y!) and the dysfunction was REAL. 

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Yesterday was mostly fine—good, even—and today feels like a shitshow. It’s all too hard and I’m sick of these kids and also it’s gross outside and why. Let’s start over again tomorrow. 

Tomorrow’s a new day, right?

I don’t know. Is tomorrow a new day? It kind of feels like the same day all over again. Like a stupid, scarier, all-of-humanity version of Groundhog’s Day.

It’s just one more up and down on the rollercoaster of feelings. I seem to roll with a cycle of “this isn’t so bad” to a big ol’ “meh” where I just exist without feelings before plummeting to “everything is terrible let’s burn down the house and just start over”. But we’ve been riding this coaster for three weeks now and I’m sure I’ll begin the cycle over again. Also we watched more Tiger King last night and after watching those people, that show makes me feel like I don’t have a single problem in the whole entire world.

So it’s fine! I’m fine. Everything is fine. And I’m seriously considering buying this t-shirt as my new daily uniform.

Week Two

I’ve been writing things down since here and there since the coronavirus really started to impact our lives. I’ve shared some of this as snippets on Instagram but if you’re interested in reading more, feel free to read through these lightly-edited words. As this essay says, I’m craving to see what people are thinking/doing/feeling through all of this. Maybe it’s helpful to use my own still, small voice to give some words to what we’re all going through at this moment in time. You can find Week One here.

Sunday, March 22nd
“If I’m going to be successful at homeschooling I need paperclips,” is a thing I say now.

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Monday, March 23rd
We started homeschooling today. Technically the governor has excused kids from school through this week, but we couldn’t go another week without a schedule. “Are we doing school today?” Brooklyn asked every single day last week.

We sat at the kitchen table and Nolan actually got really into the letter and number worksheets I found for him and Caden and Brooklyn enjoyed having their attention diverted into creating their own little stories with sight words and working though math worksheets. Those two thrive on that sort of stuff. So we did school for a few hours. Science was a booklet about the solar system. Then we watched the StoryBots episode about planets, so. And library, which would have been their “special” of the day, was listening to the Story Pirates podcast while they played, which basically meant they just played because not a single one of us had any clue what we just listened to when it was all done. It was fine.

I’m tired. It’s frustrating to see all the memes about how “bored” people are. I mean, a lot of them are really funny (this sock puppet eating cars and this marble race that I became significantly invested in gave me LIFE) but also, I would LOVE to be bored right now. I would love the time and the space to sit with a book, or with my knitting, or with nothing at all but myself to figure out how I really am feeling about all this. 

As it is, I feel like I’m go-go-going just as much as usual, if not more, with three kids now home all day. They still wake up at the same time (read: far too early) and need meals at regular intervals (And snacks! So may snacks!) and need supervision and they bicker and they talk so much (the talking make it stop) and I just spent part of my evening printing out some more math activities for tomorrow and it’s fine! It’s going to make tomorrow run so much smoother! This is all exhaustingly fine.

And because we’re living the epitome of both/and right now, I’m both exhausted by having children around and so absolutely glad they are here. They bring a sense of normalcy and schedule and routine and silliness to the day that helps so much right now. If I could choose between having this happen with children around or without I would still emphatically choose with.

But also I wish I could drink a glass of wine or three and sit and take some time to myself.

+++++

Tuesday, March 24th
I’m tired of seeing things to the effect of “maximize your quarantine”. Can we just...not? Even leisure seems to have been co-opted into this big thing to DO. Are you binge watching/learning how to knit/baking sourdough/sewing masks/recording a new podcast? Simultaneously? 

In a similar vein, I’m tired of all the “Isn’t it great that we’re not racing all over and bringing our kids to activities and things all the time?”

Well, no. My kids LOVE their activities. To be fair, my kids are still fairly young. I understand that parents with older kids might be glad to not be running somewhere every. single. night. But we had activities just twice a week: dance on Tuesdays and gymnastics on Thursdays. My kids love those things. And baseball was supposed to start up within the next month. Caden and Brooklyn have been counting down the days until they’re back on the field and Nolan is so looking forward to his own first year of t-ball. Will they even have a season this year? Will the activities I’ve signed them up for over the summer even...ever...happen? Will they have a dance recital?

Of course, I don’t have any answers. I’m out a solid $700 (which I’m sure we would be reimbursed) for activities I don’t know that we’ll ever get to do.

I didn’t see their activities as a burden. They brought us so much joy.

To build off the both/and of yesterday, I’m both sad they don’t have their activities right now AND we’re enjoying being home. It is nice to not have to rush in the morning or eat dinner at 4:30 so we get to gymnastics on time. Our evenings are completely free now but so are the rest of our days.

Still, if I could choose, I’d prefer activities.

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Wednesday, March 25th
Today was maybe the hardest one since it all began. It’s rainy and gloomy and the third day in a row of doing school with the kids and I don’t know, I can’t exactly put my finger on what it was about today, but it’s just exhausting.

Though, as I texted to my friends, just wait a day or an hour and I know I’ll feel differently. The emotional roller coaster is real.

It’s exhausting in a way that having three kids under three—or, to be more honest, having two three-year-olds and a one-year-old because that was so much harder—was exhausting. There’s no time or space to think and it’s loud and there are so many needs to be met and it’s loud and I just want space to think, to be and also, it’s loud. It reminds me so much of that time, before Kindergarten, before even Preschool, when we were all together under one roof and it seemed like there was no escape. At least then we could go to the park.

Beth on the Pantsuit Politics nightly nuance last night said something about how her daughter came in the room just to tell her she had a papercut, and then walked out of the room. How just that one little interruption cost her like five minutes of thought process and productivity. And I nodded in solidarity and thought, yes, it’s just like that. About 37 times a day.

To be fair, the kids have been fantastic through this all. They’re more or less their regular selves: sometimes whine-y, sometimes needy, sometimes loving, sometimes disruptive, sometimes cooperative. They miss school but haven’t complained hardly at all about their activities being cancelled, that their days are different, that our life now looks almost nothing like what it did two weeks ago.

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Caden and Brooklyn’s school sent out a video of three of the teachers singing a parody of “Some Things Never Change” to the kids today and I cried.

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Friday, March 27th
Brooklyn broke her wrists yesterday. Both of them. She was swinging and then pulled her arms in through the ropes and fell straight forward onto her arms.

“Why did you do that?” I asked her. She’s jumped off the swing before but this sounded different. I actually didn’t see it. I’d kicked all the kids outside because they were driving me insane. It wasn’t five minutes before I heard Tyson call, from his upstairs office window, “Oh my gosh are you okay?”

“I was showing Caden something dangerous,” she replied.

Beyond the initial pain (“I think it’s a 10” she told me, when I tried to explain the pain scale at the orthopedic walk-in clinic) she’s been perfectly fine. (“It’s a 1 now,” she said, immediately after getting splints on.)

It’s a strange time to be injured, though. Thank goodness for the walk-in clinic. I knew I didn’t want to go anywhere close to an ER. Also her follow-up appointment has been cancelled because of the governor’s stay-at-home order, though we can go back to the walk-in clinic anytime on Tuesday for her to get casts put on.

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Doesn’t “stay-at-home” sound so much nicer than “shelter in place”? A little less ominous, at least?

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I’m totally and completely worn out this week, just in the same way I used to be at the end of week when the kids were much younger. I don’t want to do anything or talk to anyone. I didn’t get a single thing done today besides the feeding and schooling and caring for children. I know that’s important and that’s “doing” something, too. I know. Still. I’ve been used to some time and space carved out during my weeks and that’s gone now. We’re all going to have to adjust accordingly.

But it was sunny and 60 today and we spent the entire afternoon outside and that made all the difference.

And That's Okay

Brooklyn went through a spurt, a couple of months ago, where she told me several days in a row, ”I care about everybody. Even people in different worlds than us. I care about everyone.”

(First off, lest you think she’s talking about other planets or that we know something about extraterrestrial life that you don’t, you should know my kids use the word “worlds” for “countries”, which I think is fantastic and adorable and I am 1000% committed to NOT correcting them.)

I cannot convey just how seriously she says this. Her voice grows low and quiet and she meets my eyes dead on and delivers this statement with all the seriousness of a person giving a speech to the UN.

I love this about her. I told her that. I gave her a hug each time and told her, “I love that about you. I care about people everywhere, too. That’s an important thing we get to do, is love other people and care about them even if we don’t know them.”

Her teacher, at conferences, also said this is her favorite thing about Brooklyn. That she goes out of her way to help and stick up for everyone in the classroom. If, for example, a student is having trouble sitting still on the carpet and gets moved to sit in a chair, Brooklyn will pipe up to say, “And that’s okay! Because they can still learn in the chair! That’s what’s best for their body right now.” 

And it’s one of those moments where you realize that they’re listening. Because that’s exactly the type of language we use at home.

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Home has not exactly been a haven these days. It’s cluttered and messy and I’m not sure you can actually walk in Caden and Brooklyn’s bedroom right now. Every time I tackle one space I think three more become overwhelmed with papers and LEGOs and stray socks. (Seriously, where do they come from?)

There’s no winning here.

Tyson has been busy with transitions at work and also working on another project in the evenings. Our February was chaotic, a month in a series of chaotic months. I’ve been busy with writing and volunteering and attempting to stay on top of appointments and keeping Nolan occupied with things other than “watching every episode of Ninjago” and “eating literal spoonfuls of sugar from the canister on the counter”.

Last week, Tyson and I had that conversation of “Hi, I’m really busy, can you do more?” “Hi, I’m really busy, can you do more?”

The house is supposed to be our shared responsibility and yet it’s been easy to fall into the trap of self-pity and frustration lately. It’s been easy to think I’m doing more than my fair share, that if he helped more it wouldn’t be this way, that if I just literally never sat down I could get on top of it.

Of course, none of these things are true.

There’s definitely no winning there.

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“And that’s okay!” is basically Brooklyn’s catchphrase.

“This boy at school likes to wear pink. And that’s okay! Because pink is just a color,” she’ll say.

“Caden likes to put his snowpants and boots and jacket on in a different order than me. And that’s okay! That’s what works best for him.”

“I don’t like cucumbers. And that’s okay! Because I like other foods.”

”It sounds like your friend had trouble controlling their body,” I’ll say, after she tells me about a friend who was removed from the classroom, “You and Caden have a pretty easy time controlling your bodies, and it sounds like your friend has lots of energy and has a harder time sitting still than you do.””And that’s okay!” she’ll say. 

And it is.

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“And that’s okay!” is a pretty great mantra to live by. You’d think I would know this already since I’m the one who gave the phrase to her.

I was originally writing this with a different ending in mind. Though let me assure you the endings to the essays I write frequently surprise me. Rarely do my drafts get written so clearly and predictably that they travel from A to B to C in such a logical, unsurprising order.

I thought I was going to end by talking about how I often want to read instead of tackling one of the 34 tasks swirling in my head or to get takeout instead of making dinner because even though I love to cook doing it every. single. night often seems like just a bit much, and how sometimes I just need a moment but you don’t often get that moment with small children and so you react in ways you wish you hadn’t just a second later. And I was going to tie it back to how our house is a disaster but we’ll figure it out because that’s what we do. And that’s okay! Because we all do these things and that’s okay. We’re human and we can embrace our humanity. This is all true.

However. I’m not finishing this piece at the same time I started it. I jotted that opening paragraph as a note in my phone a few months ago and that feels like a different time entirely. And also I wrote that paragraph about our house being a disaster last week and it already doesn’t seem quite so important anymore so it’s going to sit up there like a loose end. (And that’s okay!) Instead, I’m writing these very words right now in light of coronavirus and what feels like a very uncertain, bizarre, weird time. Just when I think we’ve hit peak crazy something else happens and here we are, finishing an intense week in a series of intense weeks, cluttered houses and all.

So instead I’ll end with this:

Sometimes we need to sit with our feelings and emotions, particularly when they’re confusing and conflicting. And that’s okay.

Sometimes we scroll longer than we should through social media and read six articles too many about the same damn thing. And that’s okay.

Sometimes we have to mourn the loss of things, like predictable schedules, events we were looking forward to but are no longer, trips and travel plans being no more, our daily routines being upended in ways we didn’t expect. And that’s okay.

Sometimes we despair the clutter in the corner or the crumbs on the counter even when there are much bigger things going on in the world. And that’s okay.

Sometimes we forget that our anxiety can be quelled with things as simple as “taking deep breaths” or “making a fresh cup of coffee”. And that’s okay.

Sometimes all we can do is take care of the present moment. And that’s okay.

Sometimes it takes a six-year-old, using the words you’ve given her, to remind you that we need to take care of people in different communities, in different demographics, in different “worlds” than us. And that’s okay.

Sometimes we need to just be and rest and exist without putting pressure on ourselves to produce or perform. Especially when it feels as if the whole world has lost its mind. And that’s really, really, really okay.