How my 4 year old makes my ears bleed, and other warm and fuzzy things.

I stood in my front doorway screaming at the top of my lungs like a banshee. It was glorious. Why did I do it? because my 4 year old does all.the.time. I wanted to find out what was so great about it. Why she has left me in fear of having the police called on me every time I do "Anna hair" instead of "Elsa hair", when I laugh because she has peanut butter on her forehead and when I won't let her launch her 1 year old sister down the slide on a scooter. So, about 9 times a day I think someone is going to make a call about the horrible screams coming from my home and my little girl will be taken away because I dared to ask her if she needed to go pee pee in front of her much older, and much cooler 6 year old friends.

I'm no longer wondering why she does it. My throat hurts, but like every good, jerk parent, the joy I felt as I watched my kids horrified faces when I let loose, was a deep and beautiful experience. We walked in the door after having just gotten ice cream. I told the princess that I could not watch another episode of Pokemon or my eyes were going to melt and my brain was going to self implode. The boys were fighting over who got to sit closest to the TV, the baby was painting herself with butter and yogurt she had fished out of the trash with lightening speed, and then staring me in the face, the princess let loose a scream that would make a valociraptor weep. I have gentle parented the heck out of the scream before. I have begged. I have threatened. I have negotiated. I have hugged. I have closed myself on the other side of two doors. But, the scream just keeps coming.

This. This was going to be my day of triumph. The day that would go down as the day I made small children laugh, cower in fear, cry, and stand in horrified silence all in the same moment. I let out a mighty screech that shamed hers. A scream that was the release of every 4 am wake up, every full breakfast plate thrown on the floor, the play dough I stepped in this morning, and the 3 day old muffin I stepped in 2 years ago, the crayon on my walls, and gum in my washing machine. I screamed a scream that sent a hush over my tiny army of tormentors.It was a thing of beauty. I no longer question why she does it. It's a cry of angst and frustration being released. We connected, her and I. She didn't say that, but I could tell by the way she handed me her lollipop so I would stop. They are now sitting silently on the couch, and I expect the police any moment.

My Mother's Hands

I grew up in the kitchen and with sewing needles in my hands. My mom was one of those that knew how to do a bit of everything. She made soup from scratch, and it's one of the proudest skills I picked up from her. I can mess up mac n' cheese, but I can feed an army with a batch of scratch soup that will leave you drooling on a cold winter day (despite common belief we do actually get a couple of those here in AZ). We canned fruit every Christmas time. She sat patiently with me when I was just barely big enough to be behind a sewing machine, while I learned to sew, jerking my hands back in fear of the fast moving parts, pressing to hard, too soft, not quite right on the pedal. It was a green Singer. The kind that folds out of a table. She held my hand in hers while I learned how to mix ingredients without flinging them out of the bowl, and crack eggs without having to eat shell. She drilled into me that crosstitch wasn't done right, unless the back of your work looks just like the front.

What I didn't realize then, is that in every lesson, big hand over little, corrected mistake there were voices of generations of women. I get remarks often about the skills I have in my home. I'm always very thankful for the compliments, but I really want to tell them "It was all my mom." I hope that the day comes when my children will feel the same way. I hope they remember pancake batter spilled on counter tops, watching muffins rise, cutting vegetables for soup, feeling yarn slip through their fingers as they watch me crochet, my hands over theirs as the needle flies up and down on my sewing machine, lessons on how to embroider, the smell of soil in our garden, and boxes coming out of the closet, full of quilt squares made by generations of women.

When I was 16, my mother suffered a stroke, 4 days before Christmas. It took her a long time to recover. She had taught my sisters and I well, and we were able to finish cookie trays and gift baskets, navigate the crazy mall traffic and finish shopping, while staying in budget, and keep Christmas as normal as possible. She came home the day before Christmas Eve, and still has no memory of anything until about the following February. I remember in the earliest days after it happened, being terrified of so much, but what kept playing over and over in my head was "who's going to help me when I don't know how to do something." Many years down the line, I can say I don't need her help anymore. Not that I don't still enjoy her company in the kitchen, or sitting and crocheting together, but the thought occurred to me while I sat making a blanket for my first baby, that she had taught me everything. Which is the way it should be. I make as much of holiday meals as she does now. I can pack my family for a trip without forgetting too much. I can feed a large family without breaking the bank. I think that more than anything, she taught me a love for learning new things. When I learned to knit a couple of years ago (the one and only fiber craft she had never mastered), everything felt like it had come full circle. I had something new I could show her. It's just some yarn and knitting needles, but it represents generations of women passing something down from one child to the next. I hear my mom, and my grandmother every time I try to talk to one of my children as they hold my needles in their hands and watch the yarn move. Brief and rare as these encounters are now while they are all so little, they are the beginning of my own traditions with my children. We eat pancakes that may have egg shell in them, I miss a stitch here or there because a tiny voice wants to ask about what I'm doing, a sewing project takes longer because somebody is in my lap.

I feel like something magic happens when mothers take tiny hands in theirs, and teach them something. There's this tiny seed that gets planted when you hold a story book together, sounding out words, hands join each other in a dish tub, you go over a packing list together for a family trip,you talk about shopping sensibly,little fingers hold knots for bows tied on cookie packages, or the smell of sewing machine oil fills the air as a peddle goes too fast on an old green Singer.

What's in a name??

You are probably asking yourself what reason I have for naming a blog something so indelicate. Here's the deal. I have this awesome little girl. The tiniest Heiny, Phoebe, is the smilliest baby on the face of the planet. In addition to blessing us with sweet smiles from the moment she left the womb, she's been blessing me with her reflux since the same time. We are lucky that it has been mild reflux, and it hasn't caused her discomfort or problems with weight gain. It does create this problem though, where she spits up fairly often. "Here's a spit rag, I just fed her. Don't breathe wrong or she'll spit up on you."

In addition to this amazing baby, I have all these amazing friends. It's not uncommon for me to be talking to one of them when Phoebe makes her lunch reappear like some disturbing magic trick. One day while chatting with a group of them online, Phoebe let loose right into my shoe. I almost exclusively wear Birks.(If you've never had spit up between your leather sandal clad toes, you've never lived). I typed something along the lines of "oh, awesome, now I have barf in my Birkenstocks." To which one of them replied "That would be an awesome name for a crunchy mom blog." I said I'd never do it, because I'm super lame at keeping up on a blog, but with such a fabulous name, I've finally given in to the temptation after a few months of thought on it. So there you have it. Pukey baby. Awesome friends. blog.