…where a brave and beautiful bunch gather every week to find out what comes out when we all spend five minutes writing on the same topic and then sharing ‘em over here.

Go:

“Let go of your sister’s neck. Do not pick her up by her arms.”

“Stop talking so loud. Please be quiet and let me think for one minute.“

“If you yell at the table one more time you are going to time out. You shout. You’re out.”

“That’s it. I’ve had enough bickering for the evening. Everyone in bed. Now.”

“You need to go say you are sorry too. It doesn’t matter if she started it.”

“We all help clean up because we are a family and we help each other.”

“You can either help match the clean socks or go play by yourself.”

“Stop telling on your sister and focus on what you need to do.”

“Go. To. Bed. And no more getting up.”

“If you get up again you will need to tuck yourself back in.”

“No you can’t sleep in here. It will wake the baby, baby. Please go back to your bed. I love you.”

“If you aren’t going to eat your peas than there will be no dessert. That’s your choice.”

“You cannot wear the itchy dress to school. Your skin is too dry right now. It does not matter if Aliviah is dressing up. Your Momma said no and we don’t do things just because ‘everyone’ else is. We’ve talked about this”

“You go to school tomorrow. Not today. Put your backpack down please and finish your Cheerios.”

“Asked and Answered.”

 Again and again I hear words come out of my mouth and they feel unkind in that heart of the moment. These children, they push and push and push. That perseverance, that confidence, that determination, it will serve them well as adults. In the meantime, it’s this hard parenting work that ties my stomach in knots and drains the energy right out of my tired head each day.

Did I just break their spirit or teach them a valuable lesson that was really as necessary as my voice insisted it was?

No, she isn’t thanking me now when she pops out of bed for the 6^th time insistent she has to tell me again why she needs to wear the shiny pink dress to school for the egg hunt all the while scratching at the itchy patch on her belly.

No, she doesn’t sound grateful at all as she is hauled out of the kitchen hollering her teacher’s name, her insistent fist tightly wrapped around her Dora backpack on a Wednesday morning before the sun has even come up.

No, the baby is quite certain we are wrong and she should be back up climbing the bed frame and toppling over our tired selves rather than staying put in her pack-n-play and sleeping for more than a 3-4 hour stretch at a time.

It breaks me, this firmness. This need to hold fast to the routines and rules. It breaks them when we give in to their whims. It’s not the free-range, light-hearted, happy-go-lucky parent I envisioned when I saw that first positive test. Their tears bring my own when I turn around.

Of course, I hadn’t actually met my children at that point either…

Stop.

…where a brave and beautiful bunch gather every week to find out what comes out when we all spend five minutes writing on the same topic and then sharing ‘em over here.

Go:
Sometimes I confuse house and home and I have to stop and mentally remind myself one is not the other. And in the end one matters so much more.

I find myself coveting a different….house. We chose ours a decade ago when its quirkiness felt just right to remind us who we had been- that becoming home-owners didn’t mean we were growing away from ourselves.

Its’ wood-framed windows that swell in the heat and refuse to open. The glass doorknobs that come just a bit looser with each and every turn. The peeling paint and plaster that spiders its way across the rooms. The wild and tangled yard that blocks us from the too-busy street connecting us to town. The upstairs that we assumed we would one day remodel. It all fell together in a charming gabled angle long before we had three little birds feathering our nest.

With these little ones under foot I find myself mentally rearranging and remodeling. Shoving and scraping at the windows to make sure they will open. A screwdriver stored in the green pantry hutch to tighten those pesky doorknobs over and over. A new coat of paint to cover the “old cracks” that the six-year-old cheerily points out in case we hadn’t noticed them. Adding a fence to separate little strong-willed heads from the bustling cars and roaming dogs. Dreaming of lifting the whole kit and caboodle “Up” style to a road that lets us walk and wagon and tricycle our way to a park. I feel overwhelmed some nights with the restlessness of our things as they push and stack against each other cluttering each room as we grow and grow and I click all the more feverishly through the websites that showcase better and bigger and just plain different thinking, maybe this one…

And then just when I’m at my most claustrophobic, the afternoon sun shines through the white wooden window panes and catches the red highlight of a little ponytail bouncing behind the dolly stroller around the corner. The noise of the doorknob thudding to the carpet is quickly followed by the rascaling giggles of sisters hiding and seeking. The warm yellow paint of the dining room glows around my face as I peer in to the churning bread dough that will rise steamily to become our daily bread. Their bubble and popsicle-coated feet splash in and out of the yellow plastic pool as the nearby bbq smokes the potatoes and chicken under the warm summer sun. The pile of coloring and story books topple off the tiny corner table revealing the latest sentence the six year old has written in her tentative crayoned scrawl: “I love you. Do you love me?”
And I think…home as I shut down my computer screen.

Stop