Detective Mom: Do You Monitor What Your Kids Read?

While teaching honors biology to 9th graders, I discovered several of my female students were reading graphic fiction books about young women who had s.e.x.ual encounters on a serious, scary side: violence, abuse, underage rape, etc. My students admitted they liked reading about violent s.e.x.

This moment froze in time for me: How does a teacher, a writer, a parent relate to today's teens?

This discovery came before I had children, before I had two daughters, soon to be three. The discovery stills hurts my heart today for many reasons: Why did these girls like this type of book? Why were their parents in the dark? What if I need to be a super sleuth to discover what my daughters are secretly reading?

I don't relish the idea of being a Detective Mom.

At the moment, mysteries need to be solved...

        Is that puppy pee or little girl pee? Does it matter?

       Why is there a third of the fish tank water on the floor and rug?

       Why are all of your clothes out of your dresser drawers, again?

       Who is it running down the hallway to my bedroom at 3a.m.?

       Where is your other shoe? It's time to leave.

I don't envision such simple mysteries to be solved in my future.
The mysteries will deepen in complexity, both emotionally and mentally.

Being the bookworm that I am, I know every single book on my daughters' bookshelves. I should, I bought almost all 900 of them.

But maybe I won't know every single book they read when they are teenagers. They'll go to the library without me. Their friends will loan them books at sleepovers. And maybe I will find myself leaning more on the side of trusting them, than prying through their bookcases and under their mattresses and inside their school bags.

I do know I don't want my daughters to read the kinds of books that my students were glued to.
I do know I would not allow it.

But I don't think I will be strict and demand to know every single title my daughters' choose to read. I'll probably have other worries about them on my mind, than what books they are reading. Because, honestly, who would ever think that a young teenage girl would want to read a book like the ones my students were reading.

But now I know that it is a possibility.
At least I have ten years to go, maybe less, until I have to begin worrying about that.
Right?

Maybe if I am Detective Mom one day in the distant future my superhero-loving daughters will just laugh and say, "Mom, it's alright. We're making the right choices. Don't worry."

If you are reading this daughters (the year is probably 2021), please know I do trust you and I love you so much, but please reassure me that you are making the right choices. 

Love, Mama (that's what you called me when you were 4 and 2)

Dance of the Labyrinth

My daughter running through a corn maze in British Columbia

As a new, overwhelmed mom to a colicky baby I spent most days in the dark, running through what felt like a labyrinth without a beginning nor an end.

Why was my daughter screaming and crying all day and all night?
How did I not lose myself entirely in being a mother?
Why was I my own Goblin King?

Four years later and I am safely outside of that maze, no longer lost in the labyrinth of being a new mom.

My high-spirited four-year-old enters labyrinths of her own as she tries to understand rules, discipline, the tides of emotions, the absence of her deployed father, friendships at preschool, and the tug-o-war between independence and wanting mommy.

Unlike the innocence encapsulated inside my daughter's labyrinths, we adults may feel the Goblin King breathing down our unshielded necks at various points of our lives.

Most of the time the Goblin King isn't David Bowie, but ourselves.

I push myself to keep the day on schedule: shoes on before we leave the door, potty flushed, nap time rigid, TV as limited as possible, sugar off limits, outdoor time maximized, bed time as soon as possible, night time stories kept to three...

But who am I kidding?
What is the labyrinth I am trying to solve?
Why do I put pressure on myself?

Our days are actually far from a kept schedule. We go to the car barefoot, we flush when there's a brown deposit, naps may occur in the car, an entire movie may be watched while consuming not one, but two Dum Dums, we blow bubbles in the backyard for only a few minutes before my daughters want to go back inside, my girls watch an episode of Blues Clues with me while eating popcorn and staying up a half hour later, I read an extra book, I tell one more story...

But my day still feels like a maze at times.
Trying to navigate the uncharted waters of my oldest as her emotions sway to the extremes within the hour.
Being "on" 24/7 during this deployment.
Reminding myself that my time with my girls is our time, even if I am longing to sit in my writing chair and write.
Wondering how I'll gain back my confidence in my body one day.
Working towards living more simply with less "things" in our lives.

Perhaps our labyrinths evolve over time, a new one always dancing before us just as we exit the last one, eager to infold us in its walls.

Do you walk through labyrinths every day? What mazes are your children trying to solve?

The MotherShip

Long ago my husband deployed.
(Six months is a long time in the land of a pregnant mommy chasing after her four- and two-year-old daughters)

After I lost sight of his ship on the horizon, I came home and plugged myself into blogging.

Blogging became my lifesaver, keeping me afloat through the highs and lows of this deployment by having an outlet at the end of the day when I struggled to stay sane. 

Blogging is a therapeutic form of medicine, especially for a pregnant mama missing her husband.

So here I sit, anticipating the first speck of my husband's ship on the horizon in a handful of weeks and finding myself wondering where will I go with my blog...

I can no longer see my toes, as our third daughter will make her grand entrance at the end of November.

I can no longer keep up with our other two daughters as they bolt up the stairs and run around naked before bath time.

I can no longer sit in my writing chair for more than 10 minutes before my 10 little toes become swollen piggies.

Sigh.

My creative juices are spent.
My body is conserving all of its energy to sustain me until my husband gets home.

During this deployment I realized that "I can do this," and more importantly, that the only thing I am looking forward to with the end of this deployment is being with my husband.

Honestly, the thoughts of "good, now he can take over" or "finally, someone else to wash the dishes and pick up toys" or "it's my turn to sleep in" have not crossed my mind. Abigail Green of Abby Off the Record recently hosted me on her blog for two days about being a temporary single mom, and one of her readers made a comment that really hit home.

Malia Jacobson wrote, "Owning the difficulties of parenting (along with the good times) without needing him to rescue me has freed me from a lot of resentment."

And this is so true for me. I just want my husband home to hear his laughter, to feel his warmth, to see him play Tutti Frutti with our daughters, to feel the house fill up with his presence.

And this is why I question what will become of my blog.

I may take off a week, a month, or longer from blogging. Or maybe I won't. Maybe I will feel the creative juices start to flow again. Maybe I will feel inspired by the birth of our third little girl. Maybe I will receive an acceptance letter for a manuscript or a notice that one of my short stories won in a contest and I'll want to share my news on my blog...

But as I sit here, feeling like I've got a case of the blogging blaahgs because of being utterly exhausted, I know one thing: when I step on board my husband's ship in one month (after waddling up the bridge) I will melt into my husband's arms and I will no longer need a lifesaver to stay afloat.

I will want to be with him instead of in front of my computer writing on my blog.

So I just wanted to write this post in case any of my readers have been feeling let down that I have not been coming to your blog and commenting as much as I used to. I sincerely love your blogs as much as I love my blog. My blog means a great deal to me as it is a place for me to explore my thoughts and feelings. And I am so grateful to all of you for keeping me afloat during my husband's deployment.

I hope this message doesn't appear as if I am abandoning you. I won't be, I just may not be present as often as I have been.

I'm going to continue writing on my blog and reading your blogs, but I just don't know when and how often, so I thought it best to share with you the reasons behind my absence.

Blogging has been a mothership in a way for the past several months, but my true source of inspiration is soon to be rekindled: being with my husband and daughters, all together.

Crossing the Fence

Not so long along I began to realize that my blog could do more for me than serve as a place to write and explore my thoughts.

It can inspire me to reach out to others, both online and offline.

I've just begun taking small steps to do so, but I can report now that I am becoming closer to our neighbors!
Just awhile back I wrote about neighbors and how fenced off we are from one another. So I baked a pie.

I had the excuse of our stolen pot of carrots, which our neighbor helped get back for me when he saw a bunch of crazy youngsters stealing my daughters' pot of carrots off our front porch. At 3a.m. our neighbor from across the street witnessed the thieves taking our pot and he came out of his house to confront them and got our pot of carrots back.

He is a hero in my daughters' eyes.

So I wanted to thank him for helping us, but I had been wanting to thank him for some time for always asking how we are doing during my husband's deployment. And to be honest, I wanted to teach my girls a lesson: that bringing a peach pie and a tub of ice cream over to a neighbor is a common practice.

So we baked a pie after dinner one night. The three of us then walked across the street, my oldest wearing her nightgown and my youngest wearing a tutu (it was almost 8p.m. by the time the peach pie was done). And we gave our neighbors the peach pie and ice cream. This was something so frequently done among neighbors when I was a little girl, but my girls have never experienced this.

And it made my daughters so happy! To give, to share, to relate to our neighbors. My four-year-old was relieved, however, that I saved a peach for her back at home.

And then today, our neighbors (the mom and daughter) came over with a bromeliad plant and my pie dish full of nectarines for us!

But what made it even better was that we talked and talked (in Spanish), and I felt great getting to know our neighbors. I had to translate it all for my daughters, and my youngest one tried to show off her Spanish by shouting "Dora" over and over.

Even though my girls couldn't participate in the conversation, they got it. They understood that neighbors are friends, not just people we wave hi to or peek at through the gaps in a fence!

So I want to say thank you to all of my readers who comment on my blog, especially the post "Us and Them: A Backyard Divided," because you encouraged and inspired me to step outside of my shell, and my fenced in yard!

Abandoning Her Family

What if you're not cut out to be a mom?

Sure there are many of us who struggle with the challenges of being a mom, feeling like we aren't enough, like we can't do it, but we stick with it.

But not every mom does. Some walk away.

I recently wrote a very rough draft of a 200 word flash fiction story, titled The Abbreviated Woman, to try and capture a moment on the surface of a mom who leaves her family.

The summer before starting graduate school, I came back from the rainforest to earn some money to buy furniture and rent an apartment in St. Louis. I took on a job at a daycare, working with the 5 and 6 year old children.

One day I discovered a little girl from my class who couldn't go poop. It frightened her. She wouldn't talk about it. She actually didn't talk much at all. That day at pick-up I approached her father and mentioned it to him. I didn't expect the response he gave me:

"She's been having some issues since her mother left us."

I was a very naive 22-year-old and couldn't wrap my mind around the fact that a mother could leave her husband and child. I simply thought there was something wrong with the mother. Who could do that?

I had heard stories of husbands abandoning families, but women, no.

I have often thought of that father and daughter, hoping they found happiness and peace together.

But I have thought more about the mother, especially since becoming a mother myself. Yes, the fear of losing my children is present daily, but not consuming my entire mind and spirit. But I've never feared I couldn't handle being a mother.

How does a mother who abandons her family feel?
What is she going through in her mind when she decides to leave?

I can't imagine it is easy for any mother to make the decision to leave.

Perhaps she is unhappy and believes her children and husband would be better off without her in the picture. Maybe she wants a life living alone, to pursue what she wants in a manner she wants.
It's possible she wants to start her life over.

Why am I absorbed enough with this question to have written a flash fiction story and this post about it?

I don't really know, except that I know I never want to be apart from my children and husband. I love them more than anything in this world.

Maybe the mothers who abandon their families love their husbands and children as well.
Maybe they are following some intuition that leads them down that path.

It is a question I will never know the answer to though as I will never abandon my family.

Sleep Child of Mine

This child.

That child.

Your child.

My child.

Alex, Age 9, Brazil

Every single child is so precious, so full of life. 

The innocence of a child's life rings of fragility. 

James Mollison's project "Where Children Sleep" grips my heart. It is in print; however, you can view it digitally online to see the images of children around the world and where they sleep.

As I began to look at each photo, my heart felt that flutter moms feel when we want to reach out and help a child in need.

Then I began questioning myself:

Maybe the child is happy in his or her environment? 
Maybe the child receives the same unconditional love my children receive, just in a different setting?
Maybe the child's parents would view my daughters' bedroom as less than optimal?

Who determines what is best for a child when it comes to the child's rights?

"Where Children Sleep" is a production to bring awareness to the rights of children.

And I felt myself not only wanting to reach out to these children, but also judging:

Was the lavishness of one child's room creating a child who will not be conscious of her footprint later in life?
Why did the seven-year-old girl have to work in a quarry?
How can a child's mind and soul grow in such a barren environment?

And then I hated myself for judging. It might have been instinctual to judge because it's the Mama Bear in me, or it might have been my own upbringing, my own view on top of a pedestal that made me begin to think I knew what was best for the child.

It's easy for me to make the assumption that my daughters have one of the best chances at living a healthy, safe life by living in the U.S.

But I've always wondered since the day my first daughter was born:
What if we lived in a different country? 
What if my child fell asleep at night with a different view of the moon?

It is certain I wouldn't love my child any less.
However...
How might my child's life be different? 
What if a mom from the U.S. viewed my child's bedroom and judged me? 
What if 'others' felt my child's rights were endangered?

James Mollison's project has made me aware of both the rights of children, but also the rights of parents. From where we stand we all may have a different opinion on a child's rights.

But perhaps we can all agree on one universal truth: A child's life is the only one the child has.

The Hand Off

To get in and out of the rainforest where I once lived I had to hike for about two hours up a mountain to catch the bus. I always appeared a sweaty mess, and stood baffled beside the locals who were not only sweat-free, but mud-free and clad in wrinkle-free clothes and polished shoes.

To this day it remains a mystery how they managed to look so fresh after a journey up the mountain.

On one particular day I had to travel to the city of San Jose to visit the doctor (I could no longer hear the birds sing). I stood in line for the bus, anticipating the 4 1/2 hour bus ride that involved passing cars in no passing lanes around mountain curves and breathing in exhaust that made the street signs in the city literally black.

To my surprise, my friend Maria showed up with her three-month-old baby. They were traveling in my direction on the bus. I was thrilled to not be alone for part of the trip, and I offered to hold her baby. Maria gladly handed her over to me.

I held the baby girl in front of me, making silly faces and googley eyes, when the baby suddenly threw up all over me.

Maria, laughed whole-heartedly, and took her baby back, offering me a piece of cloth in exchange.

I smiled, genuinely appreciating Maria's laughter to take my mind away from the mess.

I could not return to my hut. I had to get my hearing fixed. Without being able to hear the birds I could not be a naturalist and a guide to those who came to the rainforest in search of manakins, motmots, and quetzals.

So I wiped myself off as best as possible, bordered the bus, and opened the window as much as possible.

I imagine I smelled when I arrived at the doctor's office, but it was mixed with sweat and dirt, and I had given up being embarrassed by it.

The thing is in Costa Rica, where I lived at least in a small valley with only 20 some families, hygiene is very very important. If I skipped a morning shower, the local women who came to cook breakfast at the research station where I worked would ask me: "Kimberly, why is your hair not cleaned?" And on the days when I did shower (trust me, taking a shower in the mountains with frigid mountain water is not the ideal way to wake up at 5a.m., even in the tropics), the women all nodded their heads in approval and touched my wet curly locks.

Nevertheless, the doctor did not say a word. He gave me medicine in my ears, and we waited and waited and waited. Then he flushed my ears out. An entire tablespoon of earwax came out of each ear. Both the doctor and I were so disgusted, so shocked that in that moment I forgot about my throw up/sweat/dirt-stained attire.

And I realized, there was background music playing in the examination room I was sitting in! I could hear!!

When I returned late that evening the rainforest was screeching and roaring with life that I had not been able to hear for weeks.

I washed my clothes and took an icy shower. I pulled on my wool socks and fleece sweater. I checked my bed for scorpions and tarantulas. And I hunkered down into my bed, smelling fresh and clean.

As I closed my eyes, I smiled remembering Maria's laughter over her baby throwing up all over me.

And I remember this now, after spending seven days inside my home with both of my daughters throwing up all over me and me throwing up as well. I desperately felt the desire to hand over my girls to a friend.

Like Maria, I didn't want my girls to throw up on a friend. I just needed a break. I'm glad I took Maria's baby all those years ago. I'm glad Maria didn't have to travel with a baby and throw up. I know now that being clean is a small matter compared to being strong enough to keep going when the day never ends.

Yin Yang: Part Two

From the time our first daughter arrived we have been told the same thing over and over: 

"She is a mini-me of your husband!"

And four years later it is still true. Her face, her expressions, and most of all, her personality.

The presence of my oldest daughter makes it feel as if my husband is still here every day with me, despite the thousands of miles that separate us during his deployment.

So one would assume that since I love and understand my husband, raising his mini-me would be a piece of cake.

But I am finding myself more and more encircled in the yin yang relationship with her.

Maybe it is just her age. Maybe it is the effect of her father's absence on her. Or maybe it's me?

Whatever the matter, my heart and mind struggle with understanding her, with knowing what method of discipline will work with her, with comprehending what is best for my high-spirited daughter. And because of this struggle, my heart aches, wanting her to know that I love her so incredibly much even if it doesn't seem like I do when we are at odds.

While I try to engage her in raising caterpillars or playing in a water puddle, 

my daughter is seeking the thrill of pretending to be Spiderman or wanting to watch more TV or imagining riding a rollercoaster.

While I seek silence and a calm moment, 

my daughter races around, pretending to be a musketeer or a superhero.

While I cave under attention, 

my daughter shouts, "Look at Me!" all day long.

We aren't opposites, but we do compliment each other. My actions and words feed her, replenishing her spirit. And in the same moment, she does the same for me.

I love my daughter for who she is. I love that she knows all of the superheros by name and wants to build a pedal car from scratch with her daddy once he gets back home. I love that she dreams of being a volcanologist to experience the thrill of being inside a volcano. I love that she is fascinated by motion and thrills and excitement.

I love that she has dreams of her own.

And I believe that I know and understand her, but it doesn't always seem easy to do so.

With my own mini-me, our second daughter who is two, it's really easy to get inside her mind and know what's going on.  And maybe that makes it that much more challenging to get inside my oldest daughter's mind?

I don't always get it right with her. I don't always give her enough hugs or attention. And I don't always have enough patience to watch her try to blow up a balloon over and over while she says, "Mommy, watch this," and follows me around the house, wanting me to watch her do it for the 1,000th time. 

At the end of the day, especially if it's a day where I've had to be hard on her, I just want my daughter to know one thing: that I love her with all of my heart, and I'm trying to understand her.

Relation Ship

My grandparents met in a hospital. My grandfather was sick and quarantined, and my grandmother, his nurse, kept bringing him books to read. As she told the story, she was frustrated by him, because each book he read had to be thrown away as it might have been contaminated.

Months later she saw his photo in the local newspaper. He was stationed overseas, fighting in the war. My grandmother picked up a pen and wrote him a letter. Thus, began their correspondence that eventually led to marriage for almost 60 years and six children, my mom being their fourth child.


I think about my grandparents often these days, wondering how my grandmother held it all together to raise six children when my grandfather was assigned to go back to war. This is my first time experiencing a deployment with children, and it is very different than the previous deployments.

Unlike my grandparents, who had only pen and paper, we are lucky to have so many ways to communicate. It is hard, however, when we get off the phone. The house is hollow and empty despite the presence of my daughters and puppy. And after I've read an email from my husband, I long to read more of his words.  At night, when I am all alone, I ache with loneliness and boredom.

I am learning what it means to not only be a military wife, but a mother to children whose father is in the military. The military, the ship, the crew, the crew's families... it is all an extension of our family. Our relations stretch across the bodies of water, connecting vessels floating on top of the ocean to vessels carrying hearts homesick for our sailors.

I am grateful to the ship and her crew for keeping my husband safe, for keeping everyone safe, and for keeping the fight for freedom alive.

Us and Them: A Backyard Divided

My girls have never lived in a neighborhood where the houses have a continual run of open backyards.

That fence, it's an impenetrable wall as tall and long as the Great Wall of China, in the eyes of my girls.

They have tried to scale stone walls to peek into the neighbor's yard. They talk to the neighbor's children through the open slats of the wooden fence. They stand on their toes on the porch to see if their bubbles can blow into the neighbor's apple tree.

But they have never run barefoot across yard after yard of neighboring houses, joining in with neighborhood children in a game of freeze tag in the dying rays of the summer sun. And I don't know if they ever will. 

Neighborhoods are not the only things divided these days. So is our country. Our country has become so divided we can't even talk over the fence anymore.

I frequently hear the team names being thrown around: "us" and "them," "wrong" and "right," "Republican" and "Democrat," "in" and "out."

My oldest daughter speaks through the wooden fence and asks the two children on the other side to join us at the playground. We all throw the Frisbee, getting other children at the playground to join in.

If only it were that simple for the men and women playing ball in D.C.

But are we truly united in our neighborhoods despite the fences that pigeon-hole us in our backyards?

Sure, we may say hi and remember our neighbors' names. We may bring a casserole over to the newbie on the block. But how many of us sit on the front porch of a neighbor's house, talking and watching our children play together? How many of us plow our neighbor's driveway? How many of us join hands to stop crime on our street?

I don't. I wish I did. But beyond the simple five-minute conversations we have in our driveways as we cross paths, I don't know much more about my neighbors. I know more about my readers here on my blog.

Why are we becoming a nation more divided than ever before? Is the root of the problem based on how we are isolating ourselves as individuals within our neighborhoods?

How do you keep up with your neighbors these days?

The Inside Bully

My girls were frolicking around in the neighborhood pool today with me. One Mama Eye tracked my two-year-old, suspended by floaties. The other Mama Eye hovered on my four-year-old, swimming towards me like a seal, sans floaties.

But my inner Mama Eye, the one our mothers referred to as the eyes in the back of their heads, well, that one watched a boy.

A boy, obese and eating a bag of Fritos right at the edge of the pool. His sister came and stole the bag of Fritos from him. His mother, also obese, floated in the pool's deep end. The boy shrieked and took off chasing his sister. He began to bawl. He cried out, "Give me back my chips!"

His sister laughed. "Hey Mom, he's exercising."
His mother teased. "Can't get your Fritos!"

This went on an on, until finally the boy, who appeared to be no older than six, sunk his body into the pool and inched his way around the pool wall to his mother. He was sobbing. Uncontrollably.

And his mother, his sister... they were laughing.

I felt like crying, and probably would have if my two girls were not giggling at each other as they splashed one another, completely oblivious to the boy's traumatic moment.

Bullies are found in hallways, bathrooms, the back of the bus. But they are also found inside families.

I failed to see the humor in the Frito chase today. Perhaps I'm just a humorless person.

Instead, I did see the boy's future. Because of his weight, this boy will probably get teased and taunted at school. His family may be the only place where he can relax. But I'm not sure if he will feel safe to let his guard down even then.

Perhaps this was just a one time thing. Maybe the mom and sister had the boy's best interest in mind and only wanted him to raise his heart rate. It could be they just did not want him to eat any more Fritos and did not know how to get him to stop without raising a fuss in a public place.

I don't know their circumstances. I only saw the surface of what went on around me. But what I did see didn't make me laugh.

The Greens

My favorite color used to be blue.

Then, I became a mother. And green became my new favorite color.

Why did my favorite hue turn to green? I've never tried to figure out why until now...

1

Mother Nature 

From pregnancy to nursing to nourishing a child's spirit, I've never experienced Mother Nature quite like this. Between the sea and the sky, blue dominates our planet, but green is what grows and flourishes.

2

Nature's green is gold,  

  Her hardest hue to hold. 

Robert Frost may not have had motherhood in mind when he wrote this in 1923, but as I watch my children grow from babies to toddlers to little girls in the blink of an eye, I realize how 'golden' these earlier years are and how fleeting they seem to be.

3

Seedlings

My daughters are fascinated by the miniature buds of life: cotyledons. The fragile green little leaves hold so much potential, so much promise, it makes me want to hold my breath in anticipation of what they will become.

4 

Green Slime

My four-year-old daughter is fascinated by the idea of green slime. She begs me to tell her stories about it ALL DAY LONG. Yes, it gets old, inventing new stories about princesses, superheroes, and GREEN SLIME, but her passion for it makes me love green even more.

5 
Unseen Secrets

The amazing talent of a seven-year-old child, Quinn Whitlow. Children amaze me with the way they capture our world in words.

6
Metamorphosis

Motherhood is an experience of metamorphosis. I've gone from being a new mom roaming the house like a caterpillar to a mom undergoing change inside a protective case to a more confident mom, exposing my wings and letting go.

7

Green Mom

My home does not radiate Organic, Handmade, Chemical-free, Eco-friendly, but it does harbor a good sense of nature. We have more TV, computer, toys and "stuff" than I ever wanted, but I try to balance it with a love and appreciation of nature by growing vegetables and flowers, raising butterflies, checking out library books about animals, and playing outside as often as possible. I find the amount of information out there about being a Green Mom overwhelming, but one site in particular is the best one I've found for me: Nature Moms.

8

Watermelon Babies

My baby belly sticks way out every time I'm pregnant. I'm not kidding. Here I am swollen like a watermelon and no, I'm not carrying twins.

9

Henry Graham Green

"There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets in the future."

The Power and the Glory (1940)

Every time I read this quote, every moment I think of it, I get covered in goose bumps, thinking about how precious childhood is and what an incredible blessing it is to be a mother and to witness the moment a door opens in my childrens' lives.

10

Green Eggs and Ham

Because mothers will go to any degree to get their child to eat, even if it means adding green food coloring to eggs as a final attempt to get her daughter to eat eggs.


Link up your list of "10 Green" at The Good Life's Monday Listicles:

Mama Global, Baby Local

I'm not the kind of mother who has roots to one home, one community, one town. I love the experience of living in different states, and even better, different countries. But is this a good thing when it comes to my children?

Sure, I can say, we can't help it, we're military. But if we tried hard enough, we could probably stay in one location more than a year or two. Are children better off developing roots? Are children happier having the same friends throughout childhood? Are children healthier living in the same area and not being as exposed to international bugs? Are my children going to miss out on forming relationships with cousins by living so far away?

I don't have roots, and never really did. We moved to several different states during my childhood, and as a result I have the travel bug, the restless bug if I've lived in an area for more than a couple of years.

As much as I'd like to say that yes, moving frequently made me more 'worldly' it also left me without a lot of friends, without the desire to make deep, lasting friendships, and without a place to call home. My family is my definition of home, but I don't really have a place to show my children one day "this is where your mommy grew up."

I loved my grandparents home: 50 Mauck Lane, a two-story white home with a screened in front porch and irises growing outside in a rural town of Illinois. My mother spent her childhood there. I went there on the weekends during college and graduate school. It became, in a way, my home. I miss it. I miss my grandparents.


Our children can connect with individuals across the globe in ways we never could when we were young. This connection added to the frequent moves in my daughters' lives may make it impossible for them to one day establish roots and be satisfied living in one place. Will they know the building blocks of how to do it? I don't even know if I will be able to do it one day, the day my husband retires from the Navy.

I think deep down inside of me, there is an ember of longing, to one day have a place to call home.

Are You There God? It's Me, Mama.

My four-year-old daughter points to my baby belly and asks, "Mama, did God make the baby?"

And I think, here we go.

The topic of how babies are made physically is no longer a difficult one compared to the new topic my daughter loves to bring up: God and Jesus.

Since this is my blog, I guess I can blog about anything. Right?

Normally I don't write about my spiritual, religious or political beliefs.
The reason: I just like to write about motherhood and writing more than the Bible and the state of our government.

But now two lines have crossed: motherhood and God, so here I go...

My daughter attends the preschool at our church. She comes home singing songs about Jesus. She tells me about her weekly trip to chapel. She asks me to read stories to her from her children's Bible. And I love that she is so taken with the story of God and Jesus, but...

But when she says that God made us, flashing lights go off in my head:

Should I just listen for now?

Should I tell her what I believe? 

(That God is a universal spirit encompassing all life, present and past, and that the Big Bang did occur, that evolution is a process of life, and that God is part of it all.)

Should I tell her that I still don't know after all these years what I believe about Jesus? 

Is it true what the Bible says about him? 

Did heaven not exist before Jesus? 

Should I project my belief about heaven and hell on her?

(That heaven exists for everyone, 

even if it is just a small piece of goodness from someone's soul that is in heaven. 

And that hell does not exist.)

Should I teach her about all religions and their god(s)?

Do I let her find her own way, her own beliefs?

I am still trying to figure out what I believe, but she is my daughter. I attended a church service once and watched the nods of heads accepting everything the priest said: "abortion is wrong, a woman's place should be submissive, sinners never go to heaven unless they confess and even then maybe not."

In that moment it became clear to me: I never want to accept someone's words on blind faith. It just doesn't mesh well with my scientific mind that is constantly searching for the truth.

So instead of preaching to my child, I teach. I ask questions. I listen. I guide her. I wait for her to explore answers in her mind.

She's only four.

Someday I will delve into it more deeply. I am passionate about life, its creation, its miracle, and its evolution.

But it is more important to me now that my daughter is given a chance to think, to learn how to observe and question the world around her.

Return to Sender

I said good-bye to my high school students in Virginia, and moved to British Columbia, pregnant, and wondering where my life was going. In the next five months I began to dig into my childhood hobby: writing.

What did I expect when I was expecting my first child? I expected I should be able to write children's books. I churned out a dozen or so manuscripts and sent them off all before my daughter was born. (I didn't go at it completely blind, I did take the writing course offered through the Institute of Children's Literature, which was  pretty fantastic!)

It's no surprise that I got rejected. But it did surprise me. And as a novice, rejections were rough. I don't regret sending those manuscripts out (secretly I pray the individuals who read them have since forgotten my name). But I do wish I had just slapped a big stamp across the envelope that read: RETURN TO SENDER. Just sending a manuscript out in the mail is a rush. Getting a rejection letter isn't.

Now, after four years, I've worked my way around age groups and genres and I've finally found my niche: short stories. I don't stop there as I like writing essays and the novel I'm working on, but writing a short story is fulfilling enough without having to send it out to a publisher.

My daughters and I have been sending my husband many care packages since he deployed. Recently, after a hard day where my daughter taught me about unconditional love, it dawned on me: I need a care package. One sent by me, marked Return to Sender. My husband's care packages for me and our girls are absolutely wonderful and unique and truly touching.

But what would I send myself?

A Back Massage  
 Twizzlers 
A beautiful new journal    
Maternity PJs 
My Hubby (to handle our 4a.m. riser)   
Lots and Lots of Lindt Hazelnut Chocolates  
A Snuggle Pillow 
A Head Massage

A Foot Massage   

A Sense of Humor 

My Hubby (to spoon with me)  

Cozy socks

The Dog Whisperer (so my puppy could be trained better)   

A Week's Worth of my Mom's Homemade Meals  

A Plane Ticket (to go visit my hubby) 
My Hubby (to lean on)


Yes, that's my Return to Sender care package!! I'm sure it would work. Now, if only I could make it last for the rest of this deployment...

What would be in your Return to Sender care package?

The Halves of Hearts

How often do the hearts of mamas get torn in two?

Letting go of your child's bike sans training wheels for the first time, but wanting to chase after it the entire time.


Dropping off your child a preschool and looking forward to the break even though you really just want to keep your child home with you, safe in your arms.


Finally breaking the co-sleeping habit with your baby as you fall asleep in your room listening to the monitor all night long as your baby sleeps in a crib down the hall.

These moments halve our hearts. 

Our children pull on the strings of our hearts, because that's what being a parent is all about.

*

It was a crazy night. My oldest woke up from a bad dream and crawled in bed with me at 2:30a.m. My youngest screamed at 3:45a.m. for me, because she was ready to start her day.

By 3:50 I was snuggled in between my two girls in my bed.

Half of my heart loved the warmth of their bodies, the sound of their breathing out of sync with one another.

But the other half of me (the pregnant half) wanted the bed all to myself. By some miracle I dozed for an hour before everyone woke up, ready to go downstairs and start the day.

What are the halves of your heart? Do your children pull on your heartstrings all day long?

Conversations With . . .

Two girls, soon to be three. My girls.

Soon after hearing the news that I am going to have a third daughter, like on the drive home from the ultrasound office, a question popped up in front of me as I watched two teenage girls walk down the sidewalk in barely there clothing: How do I prepare my daughters for their future?

How many times in a day are we as women bombarded with how we should look and act and feel? So many that I've lost count. I'm grateful we don't have cable; it means my daughters aren't exposed to this form of media.

But it's all there, waiting for them: the billboards, the fashion magazines, the ads, the Internet, their peers... Of course, we can't live in a bubble.

My mom taught me from early on the value of looking someone in the eye during a conversation. From this, I learned the importance of the conversation: the kind of conversation - the realistic kind.

So during my drive home and feeling overwhelmed by the responsibility of raising three daughters in today's world, I realized conversations can start early. I'm not talking about serious conversations that unsettle a four-year-old and two-year-old, but conversations nevertheless to help them as they grow up in today's world.

I've always parented from the style of 'learning as we go along.' But this time, I decided I didn't want to get it wrong, so I bought a parenting book: Five Conversations You Must Have With Your Daughter, by Vicki Courtney. Vicki Courtney's book, Five Conversations You Must Have With Your Daughter, captured me from the beginning.

(I've only read one parenting book prior to now: Raising Your Spirited Child, by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, when my husband and I were seeking answers to why our colicky daughter transformed into a high-spirited little girl with amazing talents who keeps us on our toes. And it was a tremendous help! But since then, I haven't picked up another parenting book.)



When images like this pop up in the media:

my first reaction is to laugh.

These beautiful women have been Photoshopped so obviously that it looks so unreal, so fake it is laughable. But then the serious side of me kicks in and the sunny side fades way into a somber mood.

My girls, many girls, don't know that images are skewed, changed, altered, airbrushed, chopped, and chiseled. What they see is, in their minds, real.

Society and the media keep us in a vicious cycle of wanting and teasing and disappointing and searching. But a mom is not helpless, we are quite powerful actually. My mom is a role model for this.

Sure I grew up wishing I had straight hair instead of corkscrew curls, size A or even B instead of a C, an hourglass shape instead of a rectangle, and of course, a smaller nose. But I didn't lose sleep over my wishes, I didn't have an eating disorder thankfully, and I didn't go the route of changing my appearance to make myself into the ideal female body projected by the media. And I thank my mother for keeping me on course. She taught me what was important: my self, my inner me, my character.

She made me strong.
She gave me a gift, the power of belief in oneself.

And it all came about through conversations. The power of words astounds me.

So for my next five posts I am doing a series on five conversations I have with my own daughters. Five conversations that stem from Vicki Courtney's book and how even conversations with my little ones may help guide them on the right path.

The Signs

How did my parents ever survive my stages of two and three?

I have long chuckled sheepishly at the horror stories they tell about me. Somewhere in the back of my mind I would ask myself "Why didn't my sisters act like that?" But then I'd shrug it off. Yea, I was difficult. Yea, I felt uncomfortable in my own skin. And yea, I am the black sheep in the family, so it all makes sense, but it was long, long ago...

And then I became a mom to a mini-me, my second baby girl, G.


My ray of sunshine daughter recently turned two,

and I swear she awoke the next morning and said "Hey, I'm two! I'd better start acting like one."

She is still almost always a ray of sunshine, full of smiles and kisses, but I am seeing me as a two-year-old coming to the surface inside of her. And not just any two-year-old, but the one my parents jokingly hoped I would have one day: payback.

So the signs have been there all along that she is my mini-me: the curly golden hair (mine eventually turned brown), her chubby cheeks, her insatiable appetite, and her cute button nose.

But then the signs became stronger when she turned two...

The first sign of it was the word "no."

My first daughter never said the word "no" until she was three years old, but my mini-me knows it and uses it and ignores it, upon her choosing.

The second sign, stubbornness. One would think that since I am the queen of stubbornness that I would know how to handle my own daughter's stubbornness. That's not the case. My discipline tactics have no effect on her. And I have to play the bad cop and good cop with my husband being deployed, so if I can't hold the upper hand with her, well, all is lost.

The third sign, her ability to cry for L.O.N.G. periods of time (due to her stubbornness). I watch her, mouth agape, when she throws herself to the ground and cries. Or walks around the house, crying, for minutes, swatting away my efforts to calm her down.

The fourth sign, her very very strong sense of independence. There's a reason I like being alone so much, the freedom, the independence, and my little girl shows this in every way.

And the fifth sign, she's a ball of fire. While I see my high-spirited oldest as a firecracker, my second one is like the sun, burning bright all day long. She is serious yet cheerful, compassionate yet headstrong. She is up by 4a.m. ready to start her day and ends it by running around naked and shouting while I run the bathtub water.

I love my little one so much; she is still my ray of sunshine that runs up to me to kiss me whenever I drop something, who wiggles her little hand inside my shirt sleeve when I'm holding her, and who patiently watches her older sister while waiting her turn.

But when my parents tell me stories, I shudder to think "this is going to be me, wait it is me already." Like when I threw myself down in the aisle by the front pew of our church shouting to the entire congregation "I want gum!" until my parents dragged me outside, throwing a major tantrum the entire time.

Different setting, different ingredient, but yes, that's happened already.

And so I struggle to find the words, the actions that will connect with my daughter. But then, from my parents, I know that nothing ever really worked until I simply grew out of it, sort of.

Despite all of this, I am loving it. My two daughters are so different from one another, and so amazingly beautiful inside and out. My heart swells with love for them every moment of every day. I can only imagine how much bigger my heart will get when our third daughter is born.

Wishes Do Come True

Since I became a mother almost four years ago I've had several moments where I've crossed parallels into the other universe, the one where I am not a mother, the one where I am single, working in the Peace Corps or living in the rainforest, the one I thought I was destined to live because my dream of falling in love with the right man and having a family seemed not possible for someone like me.

Today my oldest daughter found an old journal of mine from Costa Rica. Using the blank pages near the back of it she drew this

a portrait of my husband in his Navy uniform.

I got hit with a double whammy of shocks. The first, to see that my soon-to-be four-year-old could draw something so well. The second, that it was done on a piece of paper that I've held on to for over 10 years, paper from a journal that I wrote in when I was single and dreaming my big dream and crying at night because I was so lonely, so alone, and feeling hopeless that maybe my 'somewhere out there' wasn't really there.

It's happened many times, looking through the glass to the other universe... my daughters stepping into my old heals from college, my oldest tracing her finger over a leaf print I made of a Hasseltia tree that stood outside my casita in Costa Rica, my youngest pulling my 'going out dancing' shirt from college and asking me to wear it (even though I am four months, looking six months pregnant), my daughters trying on a hat my first boyfriend from Nicaragua gave me 11 years ago, my oldest putting a Bouganvilla flower from our backyard behind her ear like I used to do with mine when I was in my 20's...

In each of these miniscule moments I travel back in time in a flash. I never knew when I put on those heals that someday I'd have little girls wanting to wear them. When my fingers took a leaf from my favorite tree and made a rubbing of it, I never knew someday I'd have a beautiful daughter whose heart is as big as her fathers who would outline the veins of the leaf under her fingertips. And I never knew a flower behind a little girls' ear could connect me to her beyond time and space.

I want to tell my daughters to dare to dream those big and impossible dreams, no matter how you see yourself, no matter what people think of you, no matter if you are the loner, thinker, philosopher one in a sea of girls who appear more at ease with themselves.

I'm glad I never stopped dreaming that I'd fall in love and have children. But it's these little moments, like my daughter drawing a picture on a piece of paper, a piece of paper that long ago had no such destiny, that makes goose bumps race across my arms and my heart to skip a beat.

My Two New Skills

Motherhood has taught me, or greatly enhanced, two life skills: instincts and patience.

From the time my first daughter started crawling, I learned the instinctual "three-second process of prediction." What was she going to get into in three seconds? What is she reaching for that she could get to before me?

Then she started walking (for a month) and then running (all the time). My three-second instinct narrowed to two seconds. Is she headed for the street? Is she going to pull all the library books off the shelf again? My two second instinct allowed me to be one step ahead of her. It was a survival game.

But then her street smarts chimed in, and ever since I've been able to be five feet apart from my daughter and not worry, too much. She understands not to run away. She knows what isn't safe to do. I'm lucky.

And thank goodness for my skill of instincts, because I'm relying on them so much now with my two-year-old who loves to distance herself from me without any worry.

With two young girls my second skill, patience, is definitely front and center in my daily life. I focus on this

a flower my girls have been waiting and waiting for since the Easter bunny left them this egg. And yesterday it finally bloomed. The outside shell is covered with fuzzy white mold, but my daughters could care less. Their patience for a flower is mastery; however, their patience for dinner when I am cooking it isn't quite up to par. But they are children, I remind myself.

It is my patience that I need to work on. Patience has been creeping in since I became a mom. From waiting for my daughters to put on a sock to watching them look at themselves in the bathroom mirror (making faces and singing) until they remember 'oh yea, I have to brush my teeth' and to letting my older daughter do her carseat buckle all by herself. They insist upon independence and self-reliance. I want this for them, but only patience keeps me from jumping in and doing it myself. (I'm not a saint, some days I do jump in and do the seatbelt buckle or brush their teeth.)

But I can safely say that I feel like I have two new (or improved) life skills tucked inside my tool belt now: that of instincts and patience. And I'm sure one day they will come in handy when a job resume asks me for my skills and qualifications.