Almost Four

 Dear Finny,

You’re almost four.  Four in four days.  And today after lunch you told me you wanted to be five.

“No, no, no…” I shook my head at you.

“Why not five?”

“Not yet.  That’s too fast,” I said, “For now, you’re just going to be four.  And you’re still three.”

Three, almost four.  I remember this age from when I was there.  I remember that when I was six, I told people I was four.  Still wanted to be four, because in my mind, four was the last age that the grown-ups thought you were cute.  It was the last age you could be before they would ship you off to school every day.  Four meant being home with Mommy.  Sitting on laps.  Soft, cute, little.  Something after four seemed to mean that you were no longer cute, you were no longer a baby—you were a kid and things would be expected of you.  Unconditionally loved, but no longer unconditionally adorable.

And now here I am, about to be the mom of a four-year-old and I find myself in a familiar place, but on the other side.

As I tucked you in for nap today, I asked you, as I always do if you wanted me to lay with you, and for the first time in a year and a half, you said, “No.”

“You don’t?” I asked, trying to hide my surprise, as I slid off my shoes.

“No, Mommy.  I’m going to be four soon and so I should learn to go to sleep by myself,” I heard myself echoed back to me in tiny resoluteness. 

“Okay, you’re right,” I said.  Relieved because I could sneak off and get something done without having all energy drained from me.  Sad because I love laying beside you, snuggled up with my baby as you pester me with nose kisses and plans for playing Tarzan after nap.

As I started to walk out the door, you called your own bluff.  “No, I want you to lay with me.”

And I did and you kissed my nose and planned out the Tarzan game while I gently told you to close your eyes…and your mouth.

And since you actually fell asleep today, now I get to sit down and record this for you, so that you remember who you were at three, almost four, and who I am right now as your mommy.

Finny, you talk incessantly, almost without stopping, which is why, despite what the child psychologists say, we sometimes watch shows.  It gives us a break while you refuel your imagination with more “games” to play.

And you are a Master Gamemaker.  “Mommy, I have a new game for you.  It’s called Lion Eats the Mouse.  Mommy, I have a new game for you.  It’s called Tornado Verses Volcano.  Mommy, I have a new game for you.  It’s called Baby Charlie.  I’ll be Baby Charlie and you be Baby Charlie’s Mommy.”

You name it, we’ve played it:  Rapunzel, Tarzan, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, Peter Pan, Jungle Book, Finding Nemo, Aladdin, Snow White, Pinocchio, Mona and Ruby (the names of our neighbor girls), Clifford, Wordgirl, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Superheroes, Lady and the Tramp, Berenstain Bears.  Etc, etc, etc.

Any book we check out at the library, any movie or show that ever flashes across the screen, for you, Finn, immediately becomes a game we’re going to play, characters we’re going to be.

It’s a good thing I picked up that acting minor in college.  Being your mom has truly been the greatest role of my career.  I have never had so many opportunities to play dog, cat, princess and volcano all in one day.  You’ve landed me the best roles, right beside you.

Your imagination is bright and colorful and brilliant and fun, but it takes you dark places too.  To bad dreams and worries and tales of how you’re going to drop off all your friends in the dark, dark wood or drop them in the deep, deep sea or how you think we should leave Charlie outside for the wolf.

I’m discovering that three, almost four = feelings and emotions.  You get angry now in a way I never saw before, and you’re not quite sure what to do about it.  So we talk about it.  We work on it.  We try to find a language for it that doesn’t involve saying “hate” and “kill.”  You’re a sweet boy.  Sweet boys should sound sweet.  I’m fighting hard against a violent culture to keep the violent culture out.

And most of the time, you are the sweetest. 

When we were walking to the park the other day after the library, to show your appreciation for a trip to the park, you said, “Thank you, Mommy!  Mommy, I think I’m falling in love with you.”

The best.

I am delighted by how you and Charlie laugh and giggle and speak the unspoken language of brothers.  Charlie lives to entertain you.  And I love that when all the attention is on Charlie as it tends to be when a one and a half year old is around being all cute and little, you are rarely jealous.  You just join in on the laughs, encouraging him to be funny, egging him on.

I can’t capture all that you are to me right now in a letter.  Your cute, boney knees.  Your contagious laugh.  Your sweet, practical matter-of-fact way of negotiating the plan for the afternoon right down to the apple juice, the cheese and crackers and the route we will take to the park.

But I can tell you, I love this time with you.  There are of course days when the whining and the chatting and the roughhousing and the no-napping send me straight through the roof or the Pinot Noir Cabinet.  But most days, I love just being with you.  Eating breakfast, lunch and dinner beside you.  Watching you play in the sand by the lake.  Hanging from the bar above the slide.  Finding new playground equipment you are brave enough and big enough to climb.  I love watching you slide the library books under the scanner all-by-yourself.  When you grab the pen off the kitchen counter and declare that you are going to write your name as you scribble circles round and round.  When you tell me you and Charlie are playing naked, as I walk in and find your butt in the air and Charlie’s arm out of one sleeve.  When you negotiate the number of yogurt pretzels you’d like.  When you tell me you want to walk.  When you kneel beside me at night and thank God for the day and ask Him to help you listen.  When you show up in our bed at 4 a.m., even though we have a sticker chart to try to keep you out.  When you ask me to sing Baby Mine and hold you like a baby.

And I hope you know, Finn, that that’s what you are.  Always will be.  Three or four or five or thirty-five.  My baby.  Tell your wife I’m sorry.  Still my baby.

Precious.  Precocious.  Perfect.  Finny…three, almost four.

I love you, Finn.

Love,

Mommy

The Sleep Won't Come

I cling to it with white knuckles.  I grip it hard and wrestle with it.  I snake charm it into submission.  I beg for it in hard, fist-clenching, head-pressed-to knuckle prayer. 

The nap.

For a tired mom of little ones, the coffee and cookie in a quiet house at nap time is life-blood.  It’s survival.

And now, after three days of no nap, I sigh, sad, grieving, fearful—Is the nap gone? 

Every time I brag to another momma about my almost four-year-old son who still naps, I look for wood to knock on.  Three hours.  I say.  Three hours!  Every day.  And I watch a sad, distant memory cross their faces as they remember a lover they have lost. 

I don’t really mean to brag, of course.  It’s more like a counting of the blessings.  But I still like to watch their faces to remember how lucky I’ve been.  Finny still naps.  Alleluia.

I’ve been called militant.  I’ve been told I run a tight ship.  But the nap, I sink my teeth into it every afternoon and let its sweet, quiet nectar run down my face.  I snuggle in deep and let its salvation fill me up.  I.  Love.  It.

I drink coffee.  I read a book.  I write.  I pay bills.  I answer emails.  I prep dinner.  I clean…occasionally.  I sleep.  But most of all, I think complete, uninterrupted thoughts for a couple hours every day, and find that by the end, I am ready to adore my children once again.

So for three days now, I’ve witnessed first-hand, the tell-tale signs of the nap fighting back.  Finny still awake in his room after an hour, an hour and a half.  And I contemplate how long I can make him stay in his room and try, try, try hard to fall asleep before it’s just not nice anymore.

“Mommy, I’m AWAKE!”

“Mommy, can I get out now?”

“Mommy, the sleep won’t come.”

On a couple of the no-nap days, he’s come downstairs and we do a puzzle together and have a snack or we read a book or he just kind of plays while I work at paying some bills or checking some email.  And he’s older now, so it’s kind of fun.  He’s almost four now, so we can start to sort-of hang-out together like human beings.  Last Wednesday, he helped me shuck corn on the back porch and we talked about all the parts.  The silks.  The husk.  The corn.  The kernels.  We talked about popcorn and syrup and…I’m no farmer so that’s about as far as we got.  And he’s no great shucker so I did most of the work.  But still, we had time for a little lesson, just he and I, no interruptions from Charlie.  And it was nice to just sit and be with him.

But it’s also been nice to lay with him all these sweet and tender baby, toddler, preschool years, to watch his chest go up and down, to just have a quiet moment to stare in wonder at him.  At his cheeks.  His eyelashes.  His little red lips.  Heaven-sent.

But alas, if the sleep won’t come, then the sleep won’t come.  And I can’t hold her here against her will when she has other places to be, other heads to fill with slumber.

And as much as I beg and plead with it, as much as I wrestle and sing and lullaby it, I have no spells strong enough to stop my little boy from growing up.

And so, I begin the work of trying to embrace it.  This change.  The altering of the entire day we’ve known for four years.  My Finny who takes long naps.  My Finny who snuggles down deep, who cozy-wozies, who succumbs easily to a hand brushed across his forehead, a good back-scratching, a soft lullaby.  My Finny who gave away his Tissa and still held onto his long, afternoon snooze.  My Finny who naps tells me now that the sleep won’t come.  And he’s awake.  And what will we do with even more hours in the day?

We’ll grow.  Together.  Him, filling his brain with more and more new and fun things to learn with extra hours in his afternoon.  And me, filling my bag of tricks with more new and fun things to teach him.

So rather than grieve over the lost nap, I’ll embrace the extra hours I’ll have with him.  In three short years, someone else will be his teacher all day long.  For now, the privilege is mine.

That being said, that being decided, that I will glass-half-full it when the nap has officially made her exit, I still do have some fight left in me.

Which is why I sit here now.  He fought and kicked and cried in his bed this afternoon, but I pressed on with the forehead rub, with the back scratch, with the lullaby.  The sleep would come today.  I knew it with every tear of protest that streamed down his face.  She would come today.  Not yesterday.  Maybe not tomorrow.  But today we’ll all have rest and I’ll drink it down with a cookie on the porch and a breeze and a quiet, quiet house, full of napping babies, big and small.

Mama Berenstain

Every morning, usually before I’ve even had a sip of coffee, I’m given my role for the day and then I’m promptly notified if and when that role changes.

“Mommy,” says Finny as he carefully descends the stairs into the kitchen, blankie in one hand, teddy in the other, and hair pointing in fifteen different directions, “You be Kitty Softpaws, I be Puss, and Charlie bees Humpty, okay?”

And we’re off.  He’s a strict director too.  If I start to sound too much like Mommy and not enough like Kitty, he is quick to yell CUT!  “No, Mommy, I thought you were Kitty Softpaws?”

And we try again. 

“Mommy, you better get Humpty off the couch.  He’s jumping around and he might crack.”

When David comes home, we usually switch gears to Jungle Book because David specializes in Baloo the Bear and he calls Finny “Little Britches,” or “Little B,” which always makes him smile.

“Mommy, I be Mowgli, you be Shanti, Daddy bees Baloo and Charlie bees Ranjan.”  We don’t play Jungle Book I.  We play Jungle Book II.  We’re sophisticated like that.

Today, I have already been Puss, Shanti, and now after an episode of Clifford the Big Red Dog before lunch, I am Emily Elizabeth.  I had to wipe my face when I left his room at nap time after being licked three times.  I promised him a bone for snack.

But I have to say that lately my favorite role is that of Mama Bear from The Berenstain Bears.

I be Mama Bear, Finny bees Brother Bear, Daddy bees Papa Bear, and Charlie bees Honey Bear, and we live in a tree house in Bear Country. 

And it’s such a lovely place to be that I find myself seeking out more ways to spend time in Bear Country.  We got books from the library and the bookstore, and I’ve just reserved some of the cartoons, and every day at naptime and bedtime, I practically beg Finny to let me read him another Berenstain Bear book.

So, I started to wonder why.  Why do I look forward to reading these simple little stories about this stereotypical family of bears?

And now I think I know. 

It’s Mama.  I love her.  She’s my girl.  I wish she lived next door and I could run over and borrow a pot of honey and we could talk bear-to-bear about the trouble with chores and too much TV and the scary babysitter, Miss Grizz.  We could commiserate over how our little bears aren’t sleeping because of bad dreams and being afraid of the dark.  We could sip coffee and share common values.  She’s a sista I could count on.

She could also probably use a little time with me too.  The turquoise polka-dotted nightgown and nightcap she wears all day, everyday could use a good trip to the Salvation Army, and I could probably pull her away from flower arranging and quilting club to really let loose with a half-price bottle of wine somewhere.  But beyond those minor, little…oh, delays in her evolution…, I think she and I actually have a lot in common:  we want our children (and our husbands) to behave and help out.

Don’t get me wrong, David is not exactly Papa Bear, who all too often gets lumped in with the kids when they’re not doing what they should.  David is a great help to me and our family and he would not be caught dead in those Jordache overalls, nor would he ever use a push reel lawnmower.  But, I can relate to the idea that Papa Bear, can never completely understand what it’s like to be Mama, and I must admit that I enjoy the fact that the stories always end with the WHOLE bear family realizing that Mama is, in fact, right…about everything…no exceptions.

I guess these books are outdated, I guess they do a poor job of depicting the “modern family,” and there is no doubt they are overly stereotypical in their definition of what it is to be a Mama, a Papa, a Brother, a Sister, a Baby.

But I find comfort in their simplicity, I like what they are teaching my son, and I can relate to all the little troubles, worries, and concerns that affect their little bear world.

I might still be Emily Elizabeth at bed time, but I hope Finny lets me read The Berenstain Bears Show Some Respect.  Looks like someone in the bear family has really ruffled her nightcap in that one and I can't wait to see how she gets all her cubs in line.

Yu-Cky

That’s what I thought when we first turned the key to the new, old house.  Eww.  Uh-oh.  What have we done?  A thick layer of dirt and dust everywhere I looked.  The floors, the blinds, the cabinets, the stairs, the porch.  Dirty.  And I guess I did not do a great job of concealing my disgust.

“This is a yucky house, Mommy.”

“No, no, Finn.  It just needs a little cleaning,” I said.  Cleaning that should have been done before I got here, I thought.  “Let’s go down to the basement.”

“This basement is poison, Mommy.”

“Posion, huh?” I said, but I did not disagree with him.  The cement walls and floor chipping away, dark rooms, old junk, rusty pipes, a toilet caked in…something…brown.  Poison was a real possibility.

But the kids found the fun.  Big, empty house with lots of doorways, lots of stairs, lots of room to run and chase and laugh after a long car ride.  So they laughed as I cringed at the dust cloud that formed when they banged on the blinds, at the many wooden stairs they would now have access to and would no doubt be tumbling down head-first, at the hive of yellow jackets between the window panes in Finny’s room.

When we went out to the front yard, the yard of weeds and a rotting old stump, I laid it on thick in my discussion of the street.

“Finny, you must never, never, never go into this street.  The cars will come very fast.  And we must always watch Charlie and if you ever see him going into the street, you call to Mommy and you bring him back.  Do you understand?”

And he did understand because he repeated this to me at least eight times over the next four days.

When we got back into the car, I bit my lip to keep from crying and told David to call the movers to move it back a day, so that I could clean, clean, clean.

And then I had to pull it together because they read me like a book, especially Finny, paying attention to every last worry that crosses my face and recording every last word I try to utter in confidence.  My fears easily became his fears.

And the newness was frightening to him too.  The first few nights, he trembled and screamed in his bed at what he imagined was a bug moving around in a spot on the wall where the window frame was pulling away from the wall.  Bugs for Finny were suddenly everywhere he looked.  Crumbs, fuzzers, spots in the hardwood.  Bugs attacking him from all angles.

But we adjusted.  We moved in.  I wiped down the floors and cabinets and dusted the radiators, David filled in the hole where the window was pulling away from the wall, and my mom dusted every blind she could in the short time she was here.  Slowly, but surely we are making it our home.  We are putting things away and hanging things up and finding our favorite spots to sip coffee and eat Cheerios and build towers out of blocks and put together puzzles.  Even the poison basement, with a carpet runner, a big Windex wipe down, and the door shut tight on the yucky old toilet, is not so poisonous after all.

The house, it turns out, is actually quite lovely.  Stained glass windows, beautiful woodwork, big front porch, a view of Lake Calhoun from Finny’s bedroom window.  Now that we’ve cleared away the dust, the charm is shining through, and our rented house on Irving Avenue is actually a pretty cool place to settle in for a while.  Even despite a few new fears and worries.

A couple days ago before my mom left town, she noticed we had an ant problem in the dining room.  After dropping her off at the airport, our big adventure for the day was to find a Home Depot and buy some bug spray.  When we successfully found the Home Depot after a few detours, Finny told me I had won ten gold doubloons and we went home to put them in our team treasure chest.

But a few minutes later, Charlie wandered into the kitchen with a new word in tow.  “Yu-Cky. 

Yu-Cky.  Yu-Cky,” he kept repeating as he backed into the kitchen away from the dining room.

“What’s yucky, Charlie?”  And he led me to a spot on the dining room floor where an innocent old brownie crumb was hanging out.  When I picked it up and put it my hand, he ran away from me in tears, “Yu-Cky!  Yu-Cky!” 

I laughed out loud.  Charlie who drinks toilet water, Charlie who eats bird poop, Charlie who sticks his tongue in any dog bowl he happens upon is now grossed out by a brownie crumb?

We are teaching these little boys a lot of things and fear is one of the trickiest lessons.  We have to get it just right.  I want them to get over their fear of bugs, but not their fear of the street.  I want them to learn to use the toilet, but not drink from it.  I want them to be afraid of the water, but I want them to learn to swim.  I don’t want them to fear the jungle gym, but I do want them fear the gaping holes at the top that they are not yet big enough to maneuver.

I want them to be full of fear…and then I want them to learn to overcome it.

And the best way to learn this is by trying something new. 

By moving to Minneapolis. 

By finding what’s yucky and scary and different…

and making it clean and fun and our own.

The Napping House

In a tiny stretch of walkway from the family room to the living room, I realized just now as I flung the blanket off my lap from my nap time tradition of coffee and good book, that this is really the last day in my Cincinnati home with my three-year-old and my one-year-old fast asleep in their bedrooms.

Tomorrow, as everything we own gets packed up, we will be on our way to the next chapter.  New routines, new traditions, new city, new house, new life.

In two years, we will come back to this old place as new people.  A five-year-old, a three-year-old.  And who will be napping?  Maybe someone new?

Two years.  Not so long.  But long enough that I feel the ache of nostalgia as I wave goodbye.  Because it’s not really the house that is missed, but the life that is lived here right now, at this moment in time, when I am surrounded by the soft cheeks of my two little boys, who are growing, growing, growing, fast, fast, fast.

But it’s just a twinge.  And it will pass.  Only a moment to think while everyone is quiet.  When the noise begins again, there will be no time to be sad about the end, only full throttle concentration on what’s happening and what’s beginning.

Screams in the Night

At 1:30 a.m. last night, I heard children screaming and playing outside.  It was hard to hear above the fast whir of the ceiling fan and the attic fan in the hallway rumbling through the house, so I kept on snoozing, not really paying attention to why they were out so late in the street.  And then as I came to a bit more, I recognized that what I thought was playful screaming, sounded more like frantic cries for help coming from the street below.  There were children outside who needed help, and it finally occurred to me that I needed to help them.  I bolted out of bed and started heading down the hallway for the stairs when I realized that the child who was screaming frantically in need of help was in my house at the end of the hall.  When I threw open his door, there was Finny lying in bed, kicking at his sheets, screaming and panicked.

“There’s a snake in my bed!  THERE’S A SNAKE IN MY BEEEEEEDDD!”

When I scooped him up, he was shaking from head to toe.  I turned on the lights and I flipped back his sheets.  No snakes.  I got down on all fours and I flipped up the bedskirt.  No snakes.

“It was just a bad dream, Finn.  No snakes can get into our house.”

But as we walked down the hall hand-in-hand to our bedroom dragging his blankie and teddy, he said, “I hope that snake doesn’t get my baby.”

And despite the fact that I know rationally and reasonably that he had had a bad dream, that there had never been a snake, I still had terrifying visions of finding Charlie in the morning strangled in black coils.

Imagination.

Finny’s imagination is one of the greatest pleasures of my day.  It is constant and delightful and it takes us places everyday that bring us out of the confines of our brick and mortar.

I have been Kitty Softpaws (the heroine of Puss in Boots) for three days in a row now.  If I ever fail to address Finny as Puss, he gently and sometimes not so gently reminds me that he is Puss and that we are still playing the game.  On Wednesday morning, I opened the door to his room to get him up and there he was kneeling on his bed in the dark, whispering, “Kitty Softpaws, come here.  I have something in my hand.”

As I approached, he held out his clenched fist and said, “Open it.”

When I opened his little fingers, he looked deep into my eyes and with a gleam and a smile, purred, “It’s the magic beans.”  And so our day began.  I knew my role.  I had gotten my cue.  And we were off in search of the perfect spot to plant our beanstalk.

Charlie had been assigned the role of Humpty Alexander Dumpty, and after breakfast when I was yelling at Charlie to get down off the kitchen table, which he is now fond of climbing up on, Finny’s concern for Charlie was clear, “Yes, Kitty, get Humpty down, or else he might crack.”

Some days I’m Serabi from The Lion King.  Other days I’m Shanti from The Jungle Book and David is Baloo the Bear. 

Mommy, today we are playing Fire-Breathing Dragons.  Mommy, today we are playing Hippopotamuses Eat Mice.  Mommy, today we are playing Octopuses Eat Jellyfish.

Finny’s imagination is captivating and I enjoy the days he has planned for us.  Two sticks at the park become boyfriend and girlfriend.  The playground is a pirate ship.  His bread crust is a bridge for an army of grapes.  And at any moment, his fingers can become spider legs and crawl across the table.

His narrative is always writing new chapters so I should not be surprised when it follows him into his dreams and awakens there looking real and terrifying in the shape of a cobra in his bed.

All I can do is be there for him to remind him of what’s real and what’s imagined when the nightmares come. 

And then say a prayer and convince myself that I’m right.  That snakes can’t get into our house…not even through the air ducts…nope, not possible…

Up, up, up

You paw my face through the blue tunnel while your brother throws his elephant down the slide, slides down, retrieves it, climbs back up and launches it again.

You crawl back and forth through the blue tunnel over and over again, each time delighted and surprised by my face peeking in the hole in the side looking at you.  And each time, you stick your fat, little hand out and swat at me.  You do this for at least ten minutes, the same repetitive motion.  You learn the way and feel of the tunnel.  You figure out what your little body is capable of doing, climbing in, climbing out, climbing in, climbing out.

And I take my time just taking you in.  My seventeen-month-old, Charlie.  Climbing, climbing, climbing up on chairs, up on benches, up on the fireplace hearth, the ottoman, the couch, constantly discovering new things to hoist yourself up on and the beam of pride that follows each new little surface you conquer.  And the mischievous grin when I tell you to sit down as you repeat, “Sit dow!” like it’s the name of the game we’re playing.  And the scream and thrash of frustration when I pull you down from something far too high and unsteady for you to be sitting or standing on.

And the fear that you will fall.  Like the day at the park a week ago when I saw that you had managed to climb up to the really tall tower.  I had been too busy talking to notice that you could make it up that high.  And the sight of your legs about to dangle over the edge.  And my heart leaping out of my chest.

At seventeen months old you want a taste of everything.  A taste of the highest view, a taste of the dirt in the pots, a taste of the toilet water, a taste of the deep end of the swimming pool.  And I am always there to pull you back. 

Swat at my face all you want, bite my hand that grips yours tight, kick me when I pull you down, but I won’t let go.  Not yet.  You’re dangerous, Maverick.  And you’re also pretty gross.  So, until you start refining your tastes and growing sturdier limbs, I’m clipping your wings, little one.  You’ll fly beneath mine.