Monsoon Season

It is a warm, wet night. It is monsoon season here in the hills of Western Massachusetts. Every day it rains heavily for a time, and the leaves and grass are heavy with moisture. When the sun comes out, the earth steams. It is so deliciously warm, and I've lived this soggy New England summer enough times to love the dampness in the air. It feels okay to me to toss my clothes in the dryer for a while after line-drying them, and to know that I must paper-clip closed the Cheerios bag or else feed them to the chickens. I feel enveloped by warmth and I am happy.

Happy now, that is, comfortably seated on my soft, luxurious couch, which is of course decorated by several different shades of magic marker and various food stains. The children are nestled in their beds, fans in the window blowing moist air into their rooms while they sleep. The night stretches long before me. Maeve and Fiona sleep all night long now, they do. I am safe until at least five a.m. every day to sleep uninterrupted. There are exceptions, of course, and now that I have written this I am certain tonight will be a doozy. But after more than three years of staggered sleep to be able to sleep six or seven hours in a row for perhaps five out of seven nights feels like heaven. So I know I will sleep tonight, and that makes me feel glad. Glad because I no longer have to fear the night.

It's the days I fear right now. One day, when we were basking in the bliss of the babies being six months old and nearly two, I said to Greg: two babies isn't what will be hard for us. Do you realize that some day we will have a two year old and a three-and-a-half year old? That will kick our ass.
And so it has.
Fiona really escaped everything but sweet, adorable, compliant kindness until recently, when her role-model and sidekick Maeve began to model the typical behavior of the emotional, invested, independent, passionate two year old. It was almost as if something clicked in Fiona's brain that said, hey! I forgot to do that! So together this little team of small girls has may just destroy my sanity.

This is how it feels at my low moments. The monsoons kept us in all day today, and so there were many moments. Maeve and Fiona are still so little and they demand such an incredible amount of my attention. Hugging, kissing, refereeing, feeding, toileting, dressing, playing, there is little that can be done independently. As I scurry around attending to their every need and desire (within reason) I see my rational, interesting, creative older children and I yearn to attend to them. I want to quietly quilt with them, or listen to an audio book with them while knitting. I want to play board games ad nauseum and do interesting messy art projects. I want to invest myself in parenting these older, interesting, reliable people who still adore me and love my company. When the girls have a moment of happy play, or seem to be resting in the afternoon, I try to engage my older children in some of this. They always seem gratefully delighted, and so am I.

Enter the destroyers! The board games are scattered, quilt pieces torn from one another, needles tugged out of sewing projects. As hard as I try, it seems they always wiggle into the midst of all my efforts to creatively parent Liam and Aoife. And in those moments, Maeve and Fiona are also adorable, smiling, giggiling, devilish and sweet. Sometimes we just laugh, and fall onto the floor all together in a big laughing heap. Sometimes it turns into a tickle party or a big game of hide-and-go-seek. But sometimes it turns into me screaming at my children and then feeling really, really awful. I am tugged in two directions all the time: between the two sets of children, the toddlers and the "big kids", and also as a mother. I want the little girls to stay little, because I can't envision my life without a baby in it, but I also feel desperate for some relief from the chaos.

Will the sun shine tomorrow? It will when those girls wake up at the ass-crack of dawn. They will wake up joyful, as they always do, delighted to see us, eager for some books and some breakfast. Then the bigger kids will come down, pleased to see the little ones, and there will be a few minutes of happy, joyful family reunion. Every day here gets off to a great start. It's just keeping that going....

Last weekend, we successfully negotiated our first weekend of camping, all six of us. It was a delightful graduation of sorts, and while there were deep breaths and compromises, it felt deliciously thrilling to be doing something all together.
The campground is one of pristine beauty just twenty minutes from our house-- gorgeous pine and deciduous forest surrounding a small mountain lake. The campsites are wooded and private, situated along a mostly paved driveway which is perfect for kids and bikes. There is a private beach for the campers and, best of all, it's twenty minutes from our house. Did I mention it's only twenty minutes away? This relieves us of all concern that the camping trip will be a bust. Because if, at any point, any individual seems ill-suited to camping, she can be buckled into the car and delivered home in twenty minutes. This can happen at 7 PM, 11 PM, or even 2 AM.
Initially, I had intended to send Greg and the older kids up on Friday night and stay home with the little girls until they awoke on Saturday morning-- which would put me at the campsite at about 6:30 AM at the latest. It seemed worth missing the excitement of Friday to ensure the good sleep that would happen at home. Friday morning was dreary and rainy, and I even questioned if perhaps all of us might delay until Saturday. But then the sun came out, and steam began rising from the grass and trees. The afternoon became a beauty and suddenly I didn't want to miss out on even one minute of the trip, even in exchange for sleep. So at 4 PM on Friday, just an hour before our girls were "scheduled" to eat dinner and go straight to sleep, we began to frantically throw things into our two cars (yes, we brought both-- only ten miles away!) to send six people camping for two nights.
The best thing about car camping ten miles from your house is that you can bring whatever you want. Things from the cupboard were chucked into milk crates and sweaters and fleeces were stuffed into grocery sacks and a few bags were packed. Sleeping bags and air mattresses and pillows took up one whole back seat. Fiona's entire mattress from her little bed went into the trunk. I called the cafe along the way and ordered two pizzas for us to bring up to the park. At 5:30 we were off, and by 6 we were at our picnic table in our campsite eating gourmet, wood fired pizza while crickets chirped and birds sang overhead.
And now, for the best, best part. There were eight other families we knew coming up for the night, all with kids our kids' ages. Oh, the joy! The running, the biking, the shrieking. Our family had both the eldest and youngest children of the crew. Everybody's huge car-camping tent became the fort, every fire was game for another s'more. The alcohol prohibition at the campground was strictly ignored. Wine was poured, marshmallows were roasted, and the babies stayed up until 9:30. It felt so incredibly liberating. No bath, no books, no stories, no songs. The routine had been abandoned. It felt amazing.
The next morning the girls slept until 5:15, which felt like a major victory. Sunrise now is just past five, which puts first light at just past four, which was when I was planning to wake up. So I was pleased at this "late" sleep, and our morning at the campsite was relaxed, lazy, and quiet. Maeve pushed her doll around over the roots in her stroller and we ate Cheerios and bananas and brewed coffee and it was quite a joy. At 7 AM the campground came alive (quiet hours over) as the kids began flying between campsites. The coffee clatches began and pancakes were shared.
By 10 we were at the beach for what ended up being a rather windy, chilly morning, but children being children they enjoyed every minute. Between the families there were a canoe and kayak, which the children delighted in. I delighted in the company of so many other amazing women friends and loved watching my children just basking in their element-- hoards of other kids having fun. We returned to the campsite at around noon for lunch which was followed by a group-ish hike up to a fire tower with 360 degree views. We could see five states. It was so amazing. Fiona hiked over two miles on her own and Maeve nearly a mile.
That night we were able to get the girls down somewhat earlier, around 8, and the bedtime was much simpler due to their extreme exhaustion. There was one moment of panic in the night when Maeve awoke, hysterical, at midnight and carried on for four or five minutes. I thought I might have to take her home... but suddenly she quieted. We all lay there for a while, listening to a pair of Barred Owls hooting back and forth, and drifted back to sleep until a quarter past six the next morning. I awoke feeling absolutely victorious-- two nights in a tent with my whole family, with no white noise. We had done it.
Predictably, that morning was consumed with packing up all the things we'd hastily thrown into the cars two days earlier. Fortunately our children were extremely well entertained by all the other kids. There was a pack of six-year old girls desperate to be responsible for Maeve and Fiona, which felt just dandy to me. They were thrilled and I could actually organize our things so the chaos was slightly diminished when we arrived home. At just past noon, we left. She-who-never-sleeps-in-the-car fell asleep immediately and remained asleep in our driveway for an hour and a half after we arrived home. It was cloudy and overcast and we let the older three collapse on the couch in front of a movie about leprechauns. We sorted the things into thirteen loads of laundry and began washing.
It was a beautiful weekend.
And now, tomorrow, the last day of school. My first and third graders will become second and fourth graders. These tiny children, these little babies of mine are growing so fast.

Tonight is the night-- the first night in seriously I can't remember where I finished the jobs and it was still light out and the kids were in bed and I thought, "What should I do?"
Lately there has just been an endless list of tasks-- thank you letters for donations given to Empty Arms, sewing projects for nieces and sisters, birthdays to organize, meetings to run, choruses to sing in, summer clothes to pull up from the basement and the endless task of making room for them in the drawers, laundry, laundry, laundry.....
But tonight, I really didn't have anything hanging that made me cringe. So I wandered outside and I weeded my garden, and I talked on the phone to my sister about her newborn baby girl, and I felt swimmingly happy. I poured black, wet mulch on the spots I'd weeded and my garden, which has been untended for two summers now, began to take shape. I smiled in the semi-dark as I emptied my weed bucket and said goodnight to that project. And now, I write.
Aoife had a small bout of mono earlier this month which was very sad, she was just flat on the couch and devoid of energy. It felt so sad to see her little body so weary and sick, hot with fever, day after day after day. I spent lots of time with her but with the girls underfoot it never felt like quite the quality of time one might want to spend with one's sick daughter. A few times I was lucky enough to farm the little ones out and that made for some nice, long hours tucked in bed with her reading. She is making a good recovery but still feels tired almost every afternoon. We only have 10 school days left and I'm happy that she will soon be able to sleep until 8 every day (which she loves to do, unlike my other early birds).
Liam is just joy, joy, joy. The boy is always happy, no matter what. He never complains, he is rarely rude to his sisters, he's always nice to me. He loves all the kids he meets. He plays street hockey by himself because I'm too busy to play with him and he doesn't mind. It breaks my heart, but he's happy. I need two of me. It's hard having big kids and little kids.
The girls are a whirlwind. Having a baby and a toddler is hard, but having two toddlers is just exhausting. They are playing together so adorably-- from puttering on the driveway together in twin Cozy Cou.pes to pushing dollies in the swings to cuddling up under the covers of every bed they can find they are just so darn cute. That being said, Fiona doesn't nap anymore and there is always a moment sometime after five. You know, a moment. She has been such an easy girl we've pretty much avoided moments until now, but we seem to be getting them more and more. Alas, but oh, well, carry on. Maeve's coasting with the very clear exception that every time we get in and out of the car she pitches a royal temper tantrum wanting to do up the buckles of her car seat (without her in the seat). Despite the fact that I now religiously NEVER let her do this, she screams and carries on every time. I need a dummy car seat for inside the house to satiate her.
Here's where I am at. Not fine writing, but just something for me to remember tonight by.

Maeve Eloise is two years old. She rushed into the world so quickly my memory of her birthday is one of surprise, of a day where one minute I wondered if I was in labor and the next I pushed a tiny, wet newborn girl into my husband's waiting hands. And suddenly, it was as if she had always been with us.

Maeve is a girl who could have not come, had we decided three was enough. Three could have been enough. It was lovely, and I adored doting on Fiona as my very-little girl with the other two self sustaining in their own four and six year old ways. But I knew,  somehow, that a spirit was waiting. That three was not quite finished.

Maeve ran to us from the heavens in a hurry, as if she had been tapping her fingers, biding time for her moment to come into our family. She was conceived in a heartbeat and was born in an hour. Today, she ran in circles around our backyard while Greg played the guitar, laughing with her squinty eyed smile and singing at the top of her lungs. Her icy blue eyes glinted in the early summer sunshine and the squeals of our friends surrounded her. Our yard was full of children, our friends young and old who gathered to eat barely-risen vegan cupcakes with peanut buttery frosting. We laughed together and sang to this delicious soul, this little Maeve who brings absolute, pure, unbridled joy into every minute of our life.

I am so lucky to have this daughter.

Today is the birthday of the child who is not here.

"Well, you know how in Sleeping Beauty? The witch kills her, but there are always handsome princes who can come and kiss Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White, and she gets alive. Maybe a prince can come next time and kiss Charlotte and she can come back!"

This is Fiona's take on the situation. She cannot understand death. Nor can I.

We all stayed home today, all day. A family day. For the 6/7 of our family available to enjoy it together.   I am incredibly grateful that our pizza pie now has such a small piece missing, as opposed to a year ago, when we had 1/3 missing. But the void feels enormous.

Happy Tenth Birthday, my dear Charlotte.

There is a bounce house in our backyard. I paid exactly $249 for it, including set up and delivery, and I feel that I have never spent better money. I rented it for the day on Saturday, but the company delivered it early Friday morning and probably won't fetch it until tomorrow. It hums in my backyard, it's red pillars and stretched yellow sides reflecting the sunshine of this Mother's Day. This morning we all climbed into it and played for an hour or more. The parts of the plastic that were in the sunshine felt warm under my skin.
I rented the bounce house for yesterday. We invited six families who have held us gently for years to come to our house and sit with us in joy and good company while we mused quietly on the ten years that have passed since Charlotte's birth. In my mind, it was a party for her birthday, but there was no cake, song, or even champagne toast. If the rain hadn't poured from the sky for the middle hour, re-distributing the party from driveway and backyard to porch, living, and bedrooms, perhaps we would have toasted. But what we needed was simply friendship, just the company and love of good friends. There were perhaps fifteen children, in my attempt to make this party as fun and effortless as possible I never counted exactly how many people, we just bought ample beer and wine and asked people to bring food to contribute and it was a glorious and ample potluck spread.
I am grateful that I did that, and that we had our friends with us to hold our hands and sit on the porch while it rained and we thought about the ten years that divided us from the space where all was well and good in the world and the now, where something will always be missing and there is always the possibility of loss.
And for now, I'll go and fetch the baby, whose very short nap is over, and I'll take her out to the bounce house and we'll sing "Jump Jim Joe" and bounce around in circles and laugh, her sticky warm mouth on my cheek with big wet kisses.

With my head deeply in the sand, foot plunged so deeply into my mouth, words eaten ten times over, I have opted not to write for several (almost three?) months following my last post. Three days cannot change anything. Maeve, after that last nap, screamed herself hoarse for an hour for six days straight. Her nighttime sleep got worse. I abandoned the program. I now nurse her to sleep for every nap, which ranges from 30-60 minutes. Greg tends to her in the night. We will ride this train for as long as we can. Why do I ever think I know anything about anything?

Our family is happy. We have four very, very happy children. I am so grateful for this. They are all helpful at times, joyful most of the time, and it makes my heart sing when the four of them race off to play at something, all of them together. They have each other, all the time, and there is literally never a dull moment. I don't think I have ever once heard anybody say they are bored. It simply isn't possible to be bored when there are always so many options.

This being said, there is also an incredible amount to organize. It is a lot of work to have four children. I feel isolated in my parenting because I don't know very many people who even have three children. Almost everyone I know has two children. I realize that every single family fills every minute of every day with tasks and responsibilities. My friends with two children do not have untold amounts of leisure time. My friends with one child do not consider themselves liberated from the clutches of motherhood. But during the April school vacation, when Greg was home, I could have been a rich woman for every person who told me I was so lucky Greg was home. Finally I just wanted to snap, shouting, "For what! So we can finally reduce our ratio to 2:1, which is what you have anyway?" Four children take a lot of work. It is work I am so grateful to be able to do. But I feel sometimes like I need a space to shout it out: when you have more children, there is simply more going on. I have lived with one, two, three children. Four is more. If there exists a reader with four children, chime in. You agree.

And, not only this, but there is the fifth. That child whose birthday looms. Ten years ago I was on the cusp of motherhood, only six days from my due date. Everything was ready. She kicked and rolled. I glowed. I had no idea. This child is not here, but it is work to parent her. Sometimes, in fact, I wonder if I have ever worked as hard parenting a child as I have to parent her. The work of missing somebody is tremendous. So there is, of course, the fifth.