The Heartbeat Check

For about a year now, I have been reading a blog by an amazing mother and writer (www.handsfreemama.com) who made a conscious decision to go "hands-free". She put down her phone, stepped away from the computer, stopped over-committing herself to others, and opened her eyes to really see her children. What followed was an inspiring blog about getting to know her children and appreciating them for who they are. Her house might always be messy, her email inbox might be full, but she is making memories and savoring every moment of it. As a side note, I contacted her on Facebook while we were getting ready to move and things were hectic. It took a day or two, but she took the time to respond, at length, with supportive words of how "quality time" means so much more than "quantity time".

In one post, she discussed her nightly "Heartbeat Check" ritual (you can read it here). She put her head down on her daughter's chest and just listened to her heartbeat for a few moments. Something very special about the physical contact and the quiet of the moment led to her daughter to open up about so many things that were on her little mind. And it was there that they connected, Mother with Daughter, and a new nighttime ritual was born. 

In my house, we've recently started this and I've been amazed at how often all three of them come back for more...nighttime, daytime, anytime. 

Usually it goes like this:

SON #1: Listen to my heartbeat, Mommy. What's it saying?

ME: It's saying that you __________ (are very proud of your math test grade, had a fun day playing with your friends, etc.)

SON #2: Now do me!

SON #3: No! It's my turn! Do me!

But last night, after tucking Keegan in bed and doing his heartbeat check HE wanted to tell ME what his heart was saying....

"My heart is beating happy because I love you, Mama"

Minutes later, as I finished tucking Gavin in bed, he wanted to do the same thing (a strange coincidence since that's not usually how the little ritual goes and they are all sticklers for their nighttime routines).

"My heart is beating proud because I know you're proud of me for reading the biggest book I've ever read and I'm proud of me too"

Moving on to Logical almost 9-year-old Logan's room, I decided to give him the same opportunity to reverse the rules and tell ME what his heart is saying.

"I don't know, Mom. YOU always tell ME that. That's how that goes. Now can I have a hug? Because that's what's next."

Melting my heart in different ways, those three never cease to amaze me and never stop teaching me how to love this little life of ours.

Playing catch up

I'm catching up slowly, but surely. Have you noticed, all you faithful reader(s) out there (Hi, mom!)? I've been trying to do 1 post per day, which will hopefully get me all caught up by the time school is out. So anticipate up-to-date play-by-plays of our summer adventures. 1 month and counting!!!!! We can't wait!

vaccination room of TERROR!

We recently took (read: forced) the kids to get their H1N1 vaccine. I know this is a hot topic of conversation, with many parents taking a firm stance in not getting this vaccine for their little ones. However, having recently had my MONTH long bout with swine flu followed by pneumonia, and knowing just how sick it made me, I really can't imagine any of my sweet babies suffering in this way.

So, the whole family trucked down to the Health Department right after school to stand in line and get our shots. Initially, the process ran smoothly. We entered the building, filled out paperwork, received a number, and waited patiently until we were called. But that's where the sanity and logical reasoning ended.

Once our number was called, we were shuttled like herds of cattle to various rooms within the building. In the second room, we met as a family in a private room with one of the nurses. She slowly and methodically explained the vaccine itself and asked various questions about our individual allergies and medical histories. We were then shuttled into a third room to wait again before being called in to what we now refer to as the Vaccination Room of TERROR (V.R.T.). As our children peered into the V.R.T. and witnessed the children inside receiving their vaccines, a look of pure shock and horror washed over their otherwise brave faces. It is important to note here that my boys take great pride in possessing bravery (and manliness!) while in doctor's offices, particularly while receiving their immunizations. For this reason, I guess I didn't register the potential impact this observation might have on them. A minute later, we entered the V.R.T. where we continued to observe a multitude of screaming, panic-stricken, traumatized small children receiving their shots. I did my best to assure the boys that these children weren't brave like them...they were scared and the shot wouldn't hurt any more than a mosquito bite.

Now it's our turn....Keegan cried as soon as it was over - still too young to understand what was going on. Logan fought back tears and seemed uneasy, but acted courageously.

Then it was Gavin's turn........
He was having NONE of it! Gavin completely freaked out and was in rare form. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen him that uncontrollable. His faced turned beet red and each time he screamed, you could see a vein sticking out of his neck. Behind me, a mom stood in the doorway with her child and I heard her comforting him by saying, "He's just not as brave as you. Don't worry. It won't hurt a bit". It took the help of three adults (one was Daddy), but Gavin was vaccinated a minute later.

When we finally escaped to the car, Gavin said, "I was just acting. That was just for pretend", and we just went along with it.

Now what I want to know is who's the genius that had the bright idea of putting these poor children in the individual rooms for consultation and the mass room for receiving the vaccination!?!?!?!??

kiss your babies

Over the past week or so, I have been involved in helping our students cope with a tragic bus accident in which many children were injured and one little girl, unfortunately, did not make it. I received a call last Friday afternoon as I was leaving for the weekend and headed over to the crash site to assist with reuniting the uninjured children with their parents. Monday morning, I reported to the affected school to break the news to the children and assist in any other way I could. This would have been a tragedy anywhere, but in a town as small as Tallahassee, it hits especially close to home. After two exhausting days of helping the children work through their grief, I went for a run to let off a little of my own stress. I hadn't realized my own need to process little Ronshay's death and work through my own emotions. I'm certain that Ronshay is in a better place, free from pain, but my thoughts keep drifting to the 26 other children that have witnessed such a tragedy. I'll never forget their stories and illustrations -- some so detailed that I continue to have dreams about them a week later and find it difficult to get them off my mind. I'll never forget going into Ronshay's classroom, seeing her name written on the board, and having to break the news to her class.

So, I apologize for the sad post as I usually try to keep things upbeat on here. Even psychologists need to decompress sometimes and mine came to me in the form of a good run and a blog post. The point is: Ronshay's mother kissed her goodbye, sent her to school, and then never got to hold her child again. I cannot imagine a pain that deep. So, stop reading this and kiss your babies and show them how much you love them today!

For my psychologist friends:

We all hope this is never something we have to deal with, but it happens. Fortunately, not very frequently. For most of the other psychologists I work with, this the first we've had to deal with something of this magnitude (a teacher died of cancer at one of my high schools last year). We had the weekend to think about how to handle it, but that might not always be the case. If you find yourself in this situation, NASP online has a wealth of information including activities for the children, suggestions of how to handle the media (and boy were they out in droves), memorial ideas, and information for parents to help their children cope. They also have information on how to address suicides. I think it was well-handled by our district and the school's principal and would be happy to share in the unlikely event you find yourself in a similar situation. You know how to reach me.

all good things must come to an end

Keegan's first day away from Mommy. He hardly noticed the difference as long as the milk was there, he didn't seem to care what form it was in.

Well, the day finally arrived...the end of summer, the end of my maternity leave, and the end of sleeping in late! Now, it's back to early mornings, back to battling traffic and the seemingly endless Tallahassee road construction, and back to reality.

My emotions about returning to work are mixed and depend on the time of day. My favorite time to be home is early in the morning. It's then that I appreciate the children and this time I have with them the most. I start by nursing Keegan, quietly observing him, in all his beauty and innocence, enjoying his morning snack. After singing a couple of lullabies and getting up a good burp, I place him back in his crib where I can nearly guarantee that he'll sleep for the next two to three hours. On a good day, the boys are still asleep and I get some time all to myself to drink my coffee, surf the web, and (only after I have procrastinated to the extent that I have nothing interesting left to read online) finally hit the treadmill. It's about this time that Logan will wake up and keep me company, incessantly asking question after question about this world we live in (Why did God make so much stuff? When can we get to see heaven? Why do you still have a big tummy, Mommy? How did Keegan get in there anyway? Why do we have telephone poles? And the list goes on and on). Eventually, we wake up Sleeping Beauty (Gavin) and snuggle up on the couch together to watch the Disney Channel. This is, without a doubt, one of my favorites times of day, and the thing I'm missing the most.


Fast forward to lunch time. As I attempt to make lunch with my left hand while juggling Keegan in my right, the boys practice their newfound Kung Fu Panda moves...on each other. This inevitably results in crying, fighting, and sustained injuries. Couple this with the fact that all three children are now hungry and tired, and one can certainly understand why I've been looking forward to the start of the new school year.

So, we are slowly getting back into our routines as well as finding some new ones. Last week, during teacher planning, I had to work, but the kids were still off. We have a new nanny, but she was still in Destin finishing up an internship, so I had no idea what I was going to do. Thankfully, the mother of the family I used to nanny for as a college student offered to help out. And boy how the tables have turned! Her five children seem all grown up. So much so that I hardly recognize them! When I started working for her, the youngest was just a baby and the oldest was 11 or 12. Now, that "baby" is a fifth grader and her oldest son is a 20-year-old college student. How's that for making me feel old!?!? Anita has done a wonderful job of raising her kids to be kind, generous, and polite young adults and it was so nice to be able to leave for work knowing the boys would be loved and cared for.

wish I'd have thought of this

The smartest woman (it must have been a woman) invented this: the bumbo. It's this little rubber seat thingy that lets baby sit up before he can sit up on his own. Now Keegan can see the world around him (and watch and learn how to be a knucklehead like his big brothers)! Worth every penny. Actually it was free though. Thanks Steph!

Finding normal

Keegan is six weeks old today. He fits right in with our family and somehow it seems like he's always been around. And a good night's sleep seems like something I haven't known in a very long time.

A six-week maternity leave is kind of the norm in America...unpaid, and yes, you can use your sick leave. After that time, the woman is expected to jump right back on her feet as if nothing happened. As if life as you knew it hadn't just been completely turned upside-down. Of course, in other countries, a woman might get 12-16 weeks off...paid! In some areas, the government even assigns a nanny to help for the first several weeks. She cares for the baby and does laundry too!

I've never understood how an American woman can just pick up and head back to work, on the rebound from a life-altering, exhausting, exhilarating six-week "vacation". I certainly couldn't do it. Hence, the disproportionate number of babies being born to teachers (or school psychologist, in my case) during the months of April, May, and June. The philosophy: If you're very fertile (obviously, we are...well, we were...took care of that!), and if you do your math just right (we do), you can time your baby so that you work the majority of the school year and then have the entire summer off to bond together (and recover).

But mentally, my six-weeks are up. Six weeks...42 days...is kind of the magic number in OB/GYN land. You can work out again, have sex again, and...according to America...go back to work again. So, I have to say goodbye to days spent holding the baby on the couch watching Real World marathons (and Denise Richards, and Living Lohan, and My Super Sweet Sixteen...) and hello to diet, exercise, and moving on with life.

Fortunately, Keegan's a great baby. And so, through a week of trial and error, I've realized that if I get up early in the morning with Jay and feed Keegan, he'll go back to sleep for a glorious two hours. If I'm lucky, the boys will sleep for at least one of those hours, allowing me to drink coffee, blog, sort laundry, run the dishwasher, and work out! I have then accomplished a days worth of work all before 7:30am.

Of course, it doesn't always work out that way. This morning, I ran on the treadmill while watching Little Einsteins and taking short breaks to heat up mini-waffles or break up a fight over who had the matchbox car first. But at least we're finding something resembling normal again.

I'm that lady...

...that can't control her kids in public. Everyone stares at me and shakes their heads. "Boy, you sure have your hands full", they say. "And your having ANOTHER one????" Yeah, what gave you that idea? So, that's what happened to me this weekend. I think the boys know Mommy's too fat and exhausted to chase them, so they just run around like the crazies they are. And I waddle after them and threaten to take away everything fun they own. But the best part is that I'm too swollen (read: fat) to wear my wedding rings anymore, so I look like an unwed-pregnant-for-the-third-time-stressed-out-mom who can't control her kids.

I took the boys to the FSU circus this weekend while Jay attended a surprise party for a friend. All in all, it was a good time, but why is it that everything I try to take the boys to is three hours long? I mean, shouldn't the circus/parade/movie/show geared towards children be under two hours? The average attention span of a kindergartner is only 15-20 minutes, so what should we expect from a two- and three- year old hyped up on cotton candy? And couldn't the balloon lady have made them something safer than swords???




But our seats were great and it brought back memories of my time spent as a Spanish Web-erina during my Freshman year of college (I'm embarrassed to say I'm a drop-out though because they wanted me to practice at un-Godly hours of the morning...like 10am!). We actually had a really good time overall. If you live in Tallahassee and haven't seen it, you really should check it out. They're very talented.

http://circus.fsu.edu/