Tucked!!!

I have lost 10 lbs.  This is all a part of my "Fabulous by Forty" plan.  I'd like to lose 3 more before 40 so I can be at my pre-pregnancy weight.  But I am excited about the 10.  It feels good.  I feel good.  I feel sex-ay.

And, holy mother of God, but for the first time since Sam was born I actually wore a shirt tucked in today.  It was covered by the silhouette of an open cardigan sweater.  But still.  Girlfriend tucked in her shirt.  Never thought I'd see the day again.

Shame

I am very, very sad about the CA Supreme Court's decision today upholding Prop 8, which says that marriage only exists between a man and a woman.  Part of me feels angry, but mostly I just feel sad and disappointed.  

When Prop 8 first passed, I was baffled, absolutely baffled, that the majority of people in CA could vote for a law that was so hateful.  But someone explained to me that it wasn't about hate.  It's not that people who voted for 8 are against gay people, per se, it's just that they believe marriage should only be for men and women.  

I remember learning about this argument in history before Brown v Board of Education.  It wasn't that white people were against black people, per se, it's just that they believed their schools, restaurants, water fountains, clubs, etc should only be for white people.  

How sad that we think we've come so far and yet, here we are.  Again.

Life With Boys

Left the boys home with Dad and went to gardening store.  This is what my photo wall looked like when I got home. 

I am thinking of publishing a coffee table book called "Life with Boys."  This would be one of the photos.  

You cannot make this stuff up.

If anyone needs a good laugh today, head on over to my beloved pal J's blog and read "Mothering a Naked Two Year Old."  

Parenting.  You cannot make this stuff up.

Conversation between Jack and Aaron

At Baskin Robbins, this afternoon.  It was a totally serious conversation.  Jack was not kidding.

Jack:  Dad, for your birthday I'm going to get you a toy vagina.

Aaron:  Where the heck did you hear that?

Jack:  At "coolinary" school.

I am as baffled as you.

Good news

They were calling to tell me the lump is "consistent with benign findings."  For Christ's sake, people, if you are a dr's office calling with good news, say so in the message you leave.  

Time to get back to breathing.  

3 hours later

I just called the OB's office again.  The person that called me is gone for the day.  The Medical Assistant that answered the phone had no idea why the doctor called.  She said she would track down the doctor and call me back.  JFC, you can't call someone, tell them to call you back and then not be there.  

I am starting to think that maybe this is nothing, just some silly medical office mistake.  Oy vey.

Lump in throat

Why hasn't my doctor called back yet, for fuck's sake.

What she said

Just reading some of my favorite blogs and came across this one, which beautifully describes how I am feeling as my babies grow up and my role as their mother changes.

http://houseofprince.blogspot.com/

The Balance of Self

How much of a mother's work goes by unnoticed, unheralded? Ninety percent, or more? The reward, of course, is the happy, healthy child, whether or not he can say "Thanks, Mom." When a woman sacrifices so much of herself, unknowingly, even, is it so wrong for her to want that? 

This tangle of self and mother and the inevitable blending of the two is a topic never far from my mind. Unlike many of my peers, it seems, I have not yet assumed the mantle completely. I see online profiles and short biographies of women who identify themselves as "wife, mother, friend, _______" and in the blank you can insert some snarky moniker. Those are the ones with which I identify. If God faced me now and said "Who are you?" as in that classic story, I would not know what to say.

I am the only mother I know who yearned for time away from her children on Mother's Day, despite the cautionary disasters happening all around me in which parents have lost their children forever. The restorative quiet will not come again soon. I suspect I will regret it years from now, when the boys yearn for time away from me. But preventive closeness will not carry me then, I fear. The absence of a person is not soothed by memories alone. I have never been able to say "I miss him, but I remember him, and so I am fine." No, I would opt to have the missing person with me, if given the choice.

The babies that my boys were once are already gone, and I miss them. I cannot trade the current models in for those younger ones, for that would mean the children they are would be missing. Their growth is a continuous replacement of the children they were yesterday, and the day before. One day, with all good fortune, they will be adults, and so slower the growth that changes who they were and takes them farther from me.

I look at their faces when they are still: asleep, or chewing, or entranced by books or television. I search out traces of their baby features. I find them but I know they will soon be gone, and with them, my identity as a mother of babies. The thought brings me relief and dread at the same time. Yes, I hold them tighter, take hundreds of pictures, save their earnest scrawls and artwork, fortifying the treasure chest for when they are older, and gone.

Who will I be, then? If I hold on to that non-mother part of me through these stormy years of childhood and adolescence, if I pet her and soothe her and tell her "You will be able to come out again, someday," will she flourish again when the time is right? She is restive, only momentarily calmed by restorative quiet, finding her outlet here. We ebb and flow, these parts of me, but neither side ever gets 100% daylight. Constantly shifting, looking for balance. I willhave been a mother of babies, and therefore forever changed. Mother and self, we are, in fact, one.

Shit

6 months ago, I asked my OB for "permission" to have my first mammogram before I turned 40 to have as a baseline.  Cancer runs in my family, my grandmother had breast cancer, I just thought it was wise.  My OB agreed.  I had my first mammogram.  It was not nearly as bad as I expected.  Bizarre, yes.  Painful, not really.

They told me everything was fine and I left the Radiology Department having passed through another of a woman's rites of passage.  

A few days later I got a call back from my OB's assistant.  Upon further review, the radiologist wanted me to come back in.  Apparently there was a small lump in my left breast that they wanted to take a closer look at.  

I rolled my eyes at the message left on my answering machine.  Another example of doctors covering their asses by encouraging higher level tests "just to be sure."  

Sure enough, when I went in the next week, the radiologist confirmed that the lump was benign, just a regular irregularity found in many women.  They asked me to come back in 6 months to be sure the lump wasn't changing.  I never gave it another thought.

A few weeks ago, I got the reminder post card that I needed to schedule my 6 month follow-up.  I went in last week, had the mammogram, the radiologist said there was no change and I could resume a regular schedule of annual mammograms.

Earlier this morning, I got a message from my OB's office.  "Sandie, this is Dr. Clawson.  Would you please call me at my office when you get a chance?"  That's it.  No reassuring words, no explanation.  Just call.

So here I sit, waiting for her to call back.  The doctor herself has never called before.  It's always been an assistant.  I don't like this.

Mother's Day '09

What does is say about me/my life that when my hubs asked what I wanted for mother's day I told him I wanted him to take the kids so I could clean out the garage?  Honest to God, time to myself to organize, label and clean = bliss.

Wondering

What can I do about the abused women and children in Darfur?

Because I don't have time to finish

So many things I don't ever start because I know I won't have time to finish.  But I decided today to not let that prevent me from starting.  

Thoughts on things I hope to change in my life:

- Family dinner Saturday and Sunday where we all eat the same thing

- Having my kids eat more "regular" food and less "kid" food

- More cooking, less heating up

- Floss more

Interesting that 3 of the 4 have to do with food and all have to do with my mouth.

Speaking of, I think I might get braces again.  AGAIN!

Baby

I held a 7 month old baby girl today.  She chewed on the zipper of my sweatshirt.  She babbled.  She nibbled on her own toes.  It was bliss.  I'm done biologically.  But am I done?  

Hi again

"There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. Yet that will be the beginning."

My friend (Pam) has inspired me to start blogging again.  I'm thinking this blog will take a different form now.  Maybe more short posts.  More snippets of what I am thinking and feeling.  Twitter-ish?  I'm not going to try to be as entertaining.  We shall see how it evolves.

Pam posted this quote to her blog today.  Lately, I have been looking at my kids and thinking about how old they are.  I know it's relative.  Pam's kids are in high school and college and they seem old to her.  But my oldest just turned 8 and I am feeling like time is slipping through my fingers.   I remember his first days at home - rocking him in the rocker, 24/7, nursing him, staring at him, breathing him in.  It seems like a blink ago but also somehow far away.  The memories are there, but they are a little foggy.  If I reach out for them, I can almost touch them.  But not quite.  I am terrified that the next 8 years will go by as quickly.

Underneath the feelings I have watching my children grow, is the underlying question of who I am.  Before I became a mom, I knew the answer to that question.  But I'm not that person any more.  I don't know the answer anymore.  And so as my children grow, there are endings, which are also beginnings.