my wish for you Archives

Now You Are Four

June 13, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

Dear Connor,

Today you turn four.

You came into our room at 5:00 this morning asking for a cuddle. Normally when it’s that early we try to get you back into your own bed, but I wanted a cuddle too so I let you stay. You fell asleep promptly, your warm little self pressed against me, and slept until 8.

The first thing you did upon waking up was run around the other side of the bed to hug your dad and thank him for your birthday cake. You knew he was making one because you had helped him bake it and, while you had no idea what it turned out like or just how cool a cake it was, that one action says so much about the boy you are becoming.

The cake and your appreciation for it

Every day you do something like that and I am reminded again of how much love a mother can have for her child. I was consumed by that today – just full of awe about how much you’ve changed my world. I understand now why my mother always reminisces on our birthdays about how and when we are born. It’s my birthday, I remember thinking. Why is it such a big deal to you?

But it is a big deal because it’s life changing for a mother, in even more profound ways than for the child I think.

In the last couple of days I’ve spent so much time thinking about when you were born. How we tried the day before to get the OB to turn you around, but how you stayed stubbornly breech. How we left the hospital knowing we were coming back very early the next morning to bring you into the world. How I called my mom and we went out for dinner and ate huge bowls of pasta because I hadn’t eaten all day while we’d been waiting to see if the external version was going to go ahead. I remember my mom sitting at that table with us. I remember how she looked at us and how she was excited knowing she would meet her first grandchild the next day. What I didn’t know at the time was just how much she knew about what was about to happen to us and how little I did.

Because, truly, I had no idea.

One of your first snow days

Since that day, so much seems to have blurred together as I try to navigate my way through a world that includes you. How you have taken lately to letting out high-pitched shrieks that threaten to deafen the lot of us. How you use the couch as a tumbling mat despite us asking you repeatedly not to. How often you tell either your dad or I that you “didn’t listen” today (which, by the way, we’re well aware of). How you want to do everything yourself whether it’s appropriate or not and how you can have the granddaddy of all meltdowns if we say no. How, after four years, you still don’t reliably sleep through the night.

Those are the little things about life with you that become big things, and sometimes those big little things overshadow the other stuff. And then you spontaneously say or do something that reminds me of just how big a heart you have and what an incredible soul you really are, and I am again filled with gratitude.

You’re missing your friends from home lately and my heart breaks at the thought that we’ve moved you away from these small people you’ve known all your life and who have helped shape the person you are. You miss Grandma and Grandpa, and while I hate that too I feel blessed that you have in my parents the grandparents I would have wished for you.

Lounging with Grandma

I worry that you’re bored and that we should be doing more to stimulate you. I want to encourage you to do the things you love to do, like painting, playing with Lego, and cooking and baking, because in those moments I see how your mind works and how the world becomes meaningful to you and full of potential. And yet I feel stuck a little bit, trapped between your smartness and short attention span and my overwhelming lack of energy right now.

Your bacon moustache

But I know this period in our life is short, and getting shorter by the day. In the fall you’ll have a new little brother – “my baby” you call him, and you’re so excited to meet him (even though you still sometimes think he’s a girl). This baby has always been “your” baby and in those words I see the big brother you’re going to be. Some days I wish we’d had another child sooner so you’d have a playmate like some of your friends do, but that’s not how it worked out. And maybe that’s for the best. You’ve had four years as the centre of our lives and you’re more than ready to take on your new role.

But for the next few months you’re still my baby, and I imagine — little brother or not — that is what you will always be.

I will love you always and forever,

Mama xx

Filed Under: Happy things, Letters to Connor, Motherhood, Pregnancy · Tagged With: family, gratitude, moments, my wish for you, sleep

Puzzling Imperfection

April 10, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

In the dark of his room, after much wiggling and whirring, he gets quiet. Then there’s a small voice in the darkness next to me.

“Do you know what Ryan said?”

“What?” I ask.

He is quiet for a while.

Then, “He said I was a dumb puzzle maker.”

This is not what I expected him to say.

I’m overwhelmed by so many emotions – surprise, anger, but mostly sadness. Why does this have to start so early?

He lamented shortly after starting at this new preschool last month that he didn’t have any friends. We had a good talk about that and he has overcome it and I think he feels he has some friends there now. Evidently Ryan isn’t one of them.

He has described this puzzle to me – it’s a new one, featuring crocodiles and snakes and a striped tortoise. He quite likes it.

“Why did he say that to you?” I ask, as my brain jumps ahead to an appropriately motherly response to this confession.

“Because I didn’t know where all the pieces went.”

He’s three. And he’s actually quite good at puzzles. (And here’s where I attempt to repress my inappropriately motherly comment about how apparently he’s not good enough by Ryan’s standards.)

We talk about it. Yes, it hurt his feelings. No, he didn’t say anything in response. He was nervous. It made him sad.

It makes me sad too.

Image credit: Alfonsina Blyde on Flickr

I offer suggestions about how he can deal with this type of situation. Remind him he’s good at lots of things and he can remember that even when someone else says something mean. Offer over-his-head suggestions about why people say things like that to others.

It all sounds hollow. Insufficient. A stretch.

What I really want to say is, “It breaks my heart to know that someone said something to you that made you sad. I want to protect you from that so you never have to feel that way again.”

But I can’t, so I don’t.

“Can we keep talking about this?” he asks. His voice is small.

Of course we can, I tell him.

Even though I don’t know what else to say.

Filed Under: Conversations with Connor, Hard things, Motherhood · Tagged With: mom's instinct, my wish for you

Toddler is My Co-Pilot

January 15, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

Having an extremely observant 3-year-old is not necessarily always a good thing.

I had promised Connor an adventure yesterday, so we hopped in the car and headed to a park nearby where, if you’re lucky, you can see porcupines. Big ones. The problem was I wasn’t sure exactly how to get there.

Connor noticed, and the conversation went something like this:

“Mommy, why are we turning around?”

“Because I turned the wrong way. The park is in the other direction.”

He’s quiet for a moment, then comes out with this:

“Mommy, we shouldn’t drive without Daddy because he knows the way.”

Oh ye of little faith.

We drive a little longer.

“Hmm,” I muse aloud.

“What?” he asks.

I’m starting to regret telling him he should admire the view instead of having a book on my iPhone.

“Mommy’s just not that good at finding the way in new places.”

“Do you have a map?”

“Yes, I have one on my phone.”

“Well let’s use it.”

As if it were the most logical suggestion in the world. Which it is.

Stubbornly, I drive a few more blocks.

“C’mon, let’s use the map,” he says again.

Fine.

“I’ll keep an eye on Finley,” Connor says, as though we’re going to get stranded and the dog in the back is going to need comforting.

Meanwhile I get the map to tell us how to get there—I was close, ha ha, as long as you ignore the fact that I’m going in circles—and we continue on, much to Connor’s relief (and the dog’s too, I’m sure).

I really, really hope he gets his dad’s sense of direction.

PS We did get there.

Filed Under: Conversations with Connor · Tagged With: my wish for you, photos, toddlers are weird, weekends

To Make an End is to Make a Beginning

December 30, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.”

~T.S. Eliot

Happy New Year. Wishing you all good things in 2012.

Thank you for being with me this year.

R xo

Filed Under: Better world, Happy things · Tagged With: expectations, hope, my wish for you

10 Days of Mama

November 8, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

It’s been 10 days. 11, I guess. Today is the 11th day.

He had the flu about a week and a half ago – 11 days ago, I guess – and we did all the usual things through a day or so with a sick little boy. I wore my Mama Who Has Been Barfed On badge again with pride and enjoyed the cuddles – warm and soft and in the normal range of worrisome. Which is to say not terribly.

Then the abdominal pain started and by 4 am a week ago Sunday we were in the ER. No parents want to learn their child’s appendix has burst the hard way.

The ER was quiet that morning. No one else in the pediatric area but us. Waybuloo is only slightly less weird at four in the morning; those Brits were definitely on something.

No appendectomy required. A bit dehydrated, even though he drinks Pedialyte like it’s juice, and home we went.

That was only the second in a series of sleepless nights.

Tonight will be the 11th night. We have pushed through a brief road trip (if a very long drive – there and back in six days – can be considered brief), a house purchase, and a few quick visits.

We are home, but he is not better. He has been, off and on. Enough that we felt it was okay to make the trip. Enough that he played in the snow on Friday. Enough that he went to school yesterday.

But he is not better, and the morning at school was apparently weepy with repeated requests for Mama. When Grandma and Grandpa picked him up, he went home with them and slept. For more than an hour. (Very unusual.) Daddy had to go and pick him up.

Mama came home, and the pieces of velcro connected again. We have been this way – attached – for 10 days. Or 11 now, I guess. He wants me and stays close, his soft hair tickling my chin and his small fingers rubbing my wrist.

This is what I know:

His toddler tummy fits right in the palm of my hand.

It is warm and soft and it soothes me.

Rubbing his tummy only sometimes soothes him.

He has a spot – a specific place he likes to be. Between my chin and collarbone, shoulder tucked under my right arm as it wraps around him.

This has been his place for months now. It’s where he comes when he wants a cuddle. It’s where he sleeps when he’s sick. It’s where he fits.

Except he doesn’t. He’s getting tall, and his gangly limbs struggle to find a place to land. His head bumps against my chin as he looks for his spot, refusing to acknowledge that he doesn’t fit the same way as before.

He wants me to fix him, except I can’t. He’s blocked, I think, so nothing terribly worrisome now either except that my baby’s in pain. We’ve tried the usual remedies – applesauce, prune juice, warm baths. We’ve tried worse, and had it work, except not fully. And now, on the 11th day, he doesn’t want any of that.

He just wants Mama.

Tomorrow Daddy will take him to the doctor to see if she can help. Mama will go to work, again, and turn on the bright lights, again, in hopes they will keep her awake. She will take ibuprofen for her shoulder – the one that loves holding her boy but is tired, and is sending waves of stabbing pain running up and down her neck between her ears and her shoulder in protest.

Tomorrow is day 12. He might still want Mama, but hopefully, for everyone’s sake, he won’t need her quite so much.

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