Siblings

Inspired by this really great post, I thought I'd share a little about my kids and their relationship. I tend to write about one of them or the other, but rarely do I write about them as a unit.



Because they often function as a unit. This wouldn't be so surprising to me if they were twins, or both girls or both boys, but they're not. Susie is 22 months older than Alex.

Even though she was only 13 months old when I got pregnant with Alex, we decided to talk to her about the upcoming arrival. I'm sure she had no clue what we were talking about, but we kept on talking about it throughout the pregnancy. When we decided what his name would be, she pronounced it as best she could, and from then on, her version of his name became the name for my belly. It also became our son's nickname (still is).

I need to scan some pictures for something I'm planning to do for Susie's birthday, and many of those pictures would be perfect illustrations of this post.

The day Alex was born, my mom was taking care of Susie, and she and Susie came to the hospital to greet the new baby. They were both in the room when I was wheeled in, on the gurney. The baby was wheeled in separately in an isolette. Susie immediately wanted to be with me on my bed, and she patted my belly ("Gently!") and said her brother's name. I looked into her sweet, nearly-two-year-old face and said, "Not anymore. Here he is." And we put the baby on the bed too. The expression on her face told me that she understood. This was her baby brother, and she must love him and protect him and help to raise him. (A big responsibility for a toddler, but I firmly believe she was up to the task, and she's never proven me wrong.) We got their first kiss on video and on film. It's one of my favorite pictures.

Over the next few months, Susie demonstrated an amazing aptitude for big sistering. Whenever "her" baby cried, she ran to me, telling me, "Baby is crying. Nurse baby! Nurse baby!" She seemed to understand when I was busy tending to the baby and couldn't hold her or play with her at the moment. She loved to touch him and kiss him and talk to him.

And here's the moment. The moment that defines the two of them as brother and sister, a unit of two, not mediated or moderated by Craig or me. It's July 4 weekend. Baby is three months old. Susie is 25 months old. He's still in a rear-facing car seat, buckled in the middle of the back seat. She's in a forward-facing car seat, which means they're facing each other and their faces are around two feet apart (maybe even less). So he's looking at her, she's looking at him, and she's making her favorite joke, which consists of saying "PBJ Otter" over and over (it was her favorite TV show at the time). She's cracking up, and then we hear this strange sound from the baby. It sounds like he's choking. Wheezing. I turn around to check him and see him doing something he's never done. He's laughing. He's laughing so very hard, with his whole body. Laughing at his sister's joke.

Their next couple of years were at home (Craig and I worked different shifts, so one of us was always home), and are well-documented. They dressed up, they made forts out of the dining room chairs, they ran around the house naked, they made beds for themselves with towels. They invented bizarre games that made no sense to our adult minds. They sang songs and watched the same television programs.

And school didn't make a dent in that growing relationship. When Susie began preschool, two days a week, Alex was a little annoyed at first. He missed her. She went to school on the days I worked, so Craig and he had five hours together those days. Fortunately Craig is a great dad and created adventures for them. But when I brought her back from school, she got the hug before I did most days. When he started preschool the next year, he was always so excited if he ran into his sister in the hall.

Years later, and they're still each other's biggest fan. But we're having some growing pains, and it shows me that everything is so fleeting. The beginnings of adolescence are causing Susie to crave more privacy and more time to herself. Her friends, too, are less tolerant of a little brother hanging around and tagging along. He's not there yet, so it's hard for him to understand how his life's companion would suddenly not want to spend every waking minute with him.



They had a hard night a few nights ago. He wanted more time together, and she didn't. I sat in his room and talked to him (Gently, gently!) about how hard it was that his sister wanted to be by herself. He was so deeply sad. So hurt. And it would have been easy for me to cajole her into spending just a bit more time with him.

But that wouldn't be fair to her. I went to her room next and spoke with her (Gently, gently!). I reminded her that her brother is not going through the same changes she is, and that he really doesn't understand her need for privacy and solitude. I asked her to be gentle and patient with him while they worked out their relationship. I also requested that she try to spend a little more time with him in the afternoons so he didn't feel excluded. She understood, but protested a bit: "I already do spend a lot of time with him. Too much time!"

And they're both right. They're just in different places, developmentally. He'll catch up in a few years, and the balance will be restored. And I bet I'm right when I predict they'll be best friends again.

Wherein I tiptoe around a difficult subject

There's a local media frenzy these days about a doctor. I know the family, not terribly well, and I'm just plain sad about it all. I wish the media would stop drooling and frothing at the mouth. This guy has a wife and three wonderful children who don't deserve all this.

I'm going to dance around the subject, but let's just say that I've been on the phone a lot because of this situation. And most of my phone time is during dinner preparation. And last night, Susie was helping with dinner. (Aside: that girl is getting to be very helpful in the kitchen....if any of you readers have 9-year-old girls that aren't helping in the kitchen, you're missing out! Seriously. Chica can cook!)

Which means my daughter got an earful last night, and then I sort of explained the situation (and my very minimal, non-media-worthy involvement) in age-appropriate terms. We talked about how these kinds of things effect kids and families and other people, and we talked about the local news and how they behave (or not).

As our soup was simmering, we headed to the living room, snuggled in a chair, and watched the news. (She's an interesting kid....during the last presidential primaries, she insisted on watching the Democrat candidate debates....at age 6!) We talked about the stories, sometimes pausing the tv (hooray for TIVO!) to discuss a little before watching the next story.

And then the teaser for the local news comes on, and guess what??? This guy is the first story. So we watch while the reporter goes to where he works, then goes to his house (golly gee, nobody's home...imagine that!). And the reporter is foaming at the mouth. And when the story is over, Susie sums it up perfectly: "What a mess."

Yes. It's a mess.

So if you're reading this and you pray, please say a prayer for this family.

the Haiku Email Project

I'm trying to start something.

Yesterday I wrote an email to a friend and realized that the first paragraph made a haiku. So I made an intentional effort and composed the entire email in haiku form.

Found this, thought of you.
Maybe you'll be interested.
Hey, it's a haiku!

Wouldn't it be great
If all our emails could be
Written as haikus?

Sorry...it's been a
Long day and now I'm silly.
Hope you're doing well.

She was amused, though did not attempt to respond in kind.

But I continued today:

Don't sell yourself short
You, too, can write in haiku
Just count syllables.

(I know it's absurd
To continue this discourse
But now I'm obsessed.)

So play along, kids. Maybe limericks? Iambic pentameter? Let's make our emails poetic this week.

BlogHer - travel

I've definitely, definitely decided to go to BlogHer.

Now I need to firmly decide how to get there and how to get home.

Yesterday, I was 99% sure I had it figured out. But Sarah thought it was awfully complicated, and the more I thought about it, the more I had to agree.

Thank goodness for my daughter. Because she is generally the voice of reason, pragmatic little soul that she is. (Do you want examples? Okay...when we moved from midtown to downtown, we gave the kids the choice to stay in their beloved Peabody Elementary, which we all adored beyond reason, or to change to a school closer to our new house. My at-the-time-seven-year-old girl simply said, "It doesn't make any sense at all to drive all the way from downtown to midtown to take us to school, then drive back home, then drive there again to pick us up and drive back home again. We'll change schools." I foresee a career in logistics for that one.)

So, back to the travel plans. I mentioned the possibilities of our mode of travel to my darling, practical daughter this morning, telling her that we would either fly home or maybe take the train. I mostly thought we'd fly because the kids LOVE LOVE LOVE to fly. (I really don't.) Turns out that the train lit up her eyes even more..."I've never been on a real train before."

But the clincher is this: the Memphis train station is like, um, a mile from our house, and my brother and his hot blonde girlfriend both work a few blocks from the Chicago train station, whereas the affordable way to fly includes driving to Nashville, which would take a little more than three hours, and would mean flying from an airport convenient to nothing. And the price difference? $71. Which is about how much we'd spend on gas driving to and from Nashville. So the actual price difference? None. And we get to keep our shoes on and not worry about if our shampoo bottle will fit in a ziplock bag.

So is it time to go yet?

Life lessons

This week's CHBM carnival topic is "What do you wish you were taught growing up?"

I wrote a long post about toxic people and fitting in and being yourself, but I really don't like it. Maybe I'll work on it later, but for now, it's just not working. Sorry if you wanted more depth. There's only so much I can do, folks.

So I give you two superficial things that I didn't learn as a kid but have kind of learned as an adult.

I wish someone had taught me how to draw. Our hippie-dippy art teachers of the 1970's never seemed interested in actually teaching us drawing technique. Rather, they spent a lot of time encouraging us to experiment and try new materials and blah blah blah. By the time I got to college, I was quite convinced that I could not draw. And my required drawing class was the most difficult thing I ever did. I'm still by no means great at drawing, but I'm much better than I ever thought I'd be. Because someone actually taught me. Finally.

I also wish I'd learned more about gardening. My grandmother can name any plant she sees, but I never learned anything about it. I've learned a lot on my own, with the help of some kind ladies in the Memphis Garden Club, but it's not something I learned growing up.

Okay...I'll give you a hint about my angst-ridden post that I'm not posting. There's this sentence: "Those people are a$$holes and they don't deserve the time it takes for you to be upset about them." Important lesson that I didn't learn growing up. Because my mom doesn't talk like that.