It was a pretty afternoon (every other hour it didn’t rain today) and it started like this:

And as any parent might expect, it ended like this:

Pardon this post for posterity, but I had to capture just a few of the lines that have been handed to me by the boys recently.

Little P (who is still 4)

Getting ready to leave for the pool:

LP: “I want a tan. I don’t want to put any sunblock on so I can get a tan.”

Me: “You have to wear sunblock to protect your skin. You’ll still get a tan.”

LP: “Not as tan as A.”

Jay (his 6 y.o. brother): “Duh! You’re not going to get tan. You can’t be brown like A. It’s how you’re born.”

The next day…

LP: “I still want a tan. I don’t have to wear sunblock today, right.”

Me: “You still need to.”

LP: “No! I won’t get tan.”

Out on the boat watching whales:

Gramma Gramma: “LP, want to come over here and see the whales?”

LP: “No. They are very big and I am very small.”

Jay (age 6)


Being ripped away from his brother’s wrestling game on the PSP (which I DID NOT buy):

Me: “You know I don’t like you to play that game.”

Jay: “Girls just don’t get sweat and blood.”

Laying in bed last night:

Jay: “I love you mom. I’ll love you even when you’re old and dead.”

Big A (who just turned 12)

*eye roll* “sigh” *eye roll* “sigh”

I learned through my sons.

Okay. Not really.

I mean I WAS the first girl in my hometown to play little league–information my boys find difficult to wrap their heads around and not because they don’t play with girls now (they do) but because they don’t seem to think it’s possible that I know how to catch or throw (despite evidence to the contrary).

Baseball is all that is lived and breathed in my house. When my guys aren’t out on the ballfield, they’re playing it in my front yard or on the Playstation or watching it on TV.

They certainly know a lot about the game, its players, major events in baseball history, etc., but I have a sneaking suspicion that some of their facts may be questionable.

Case in point, our conversation over dinner last night:

Eldest Boy: Hey do you know what Jason Varitek* does when he’s in a slump?

Middle Boy: What?? (he has a HUGE boy crush on Jason Varitek)

Eldest Boy: He wears a hot pink thong under his uniform.

And I’m thinking to myself, ouch! he’s a catcher that can’t be comfortable with all that up and down.

Husband: I thought that was Giambi* and it was a gold thong.

Eldest Boy: No, Giambi puts on a fake mustache. Haven’t you ever seen how all of the sudden he has a mustache? It’s not real. He keeps it on his nightstand.

Note to self: Explain shaving to eldest son.

*With my sincere apologies to the Jasons Varitek and Giambi. Trust me when I say my boys are big fans and at this very moment are probably considering sending me out to buy pink and gold thongs–and fake mustaches. Do you know where I can get some?

The Febreeze was left out after a nap-time accident.

Stupid parents.

Mr. 6 sprays Mr. 4 in the eye with the Febreeze–because what six year-old can resist a spray bottle?

So here’s what I hear first:

Mr. 6: I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

One brother apologizing to the other? The sure sign something is wrong.

Mr. 4: Ow.

Mr. 4: He sprayed me in the eye.

Mr. 6 runs away.

Me: Mr. 4, you okay?

Mr. 4: My eye is wet (I’m guessing that’s better than “it burns like a m-ther f-ckng jalapeno mom.”).

Mr. 6: (from the other room) Well Mr. 4. at least your eye will smell good.

Do you know how hard it is not to laugh while you’re trying to punish your child?

You’re the one “graduating” from sixth grade today, and yet I’m the one who is up early with a touch of the butterflies.

I have been your parent for eight years, but right now–right at this very moment–I know that I am and always will be your mom.

I love you buddy–with or without your curls of fury–and I couldn’t be more proud of you.

There are days when your kitchen sink develops a clog and it’s a holiday weekend and 35 people are coming to your house so you run back and forth to use the guest bathroom sink while preparing the food for said guests–ignoring the fact that you will have no way to clean up after them when they leave at 3:00 a.m.

There are days when you read her and you almost wet your pants because holy crap is she funny, but then you secretly plot to steal her brain because you know you’ll never be that funny, but then you secretly thank the goddess of discount designer shoes that she walks this planet at the same time you do.

There are days when your six year-old mumbles the word “evaporate” as he’s drifting off to sleep so he can commit the new word to memory and your heart just explodes with pride, but then you remember five minutes earlier he was telling you about the “masagna” he had for dinner and you decide that he might not get that Nobel after all.

There are days when you don’t think your blogging is ever going to amount to much and then you get invited to this super-swanky, invite-only reception for the premiere of a new movie and you decide that you might not abandon your blog after all, until you get to the super-swanky, invite-only party and they play Kung Fu Fighting over and over and over again for two hours straight and there is no alcohol, so you decide that the party was secretly a punishment and you were invited because your blog sucks big black licorice-flavored turds.

There are days when your friend complains over email about all the traveling they must do over the summer and your inner bitch can be silenced no more so she sends a snide reply suggesting that the person have a terrific summer and contact her when they actually want to talk, but then your bitch rethinks her rudeness and cancels the reply before it’s sent. Still feeling pissy after the original reply is discarded, the bitch decides to send one anyway–just a bit snarkier this time–only to realize once that one is gone that they were both sent and now you just look like an idiot.

There are days when you can feel the scream begin deep in your stomach and as it rises you know that if you don’t figure out soon what your purpose in life is there is no way you’re going to prevent that scream from deafening those around you so you decide to tell your husband about it and he suggests you quash it by getting up earlier in the morning to make your children pancakes.

There are days you don’t kill your husband.

There are days when you are little and you think it would be cool to have a retainer or a cast or something neato like that and then you grow up and you trip on the sidewalk because apparently a single step down can be dicey terrain to negotiate and you break your ankle and you get a cast and then the cast comes off and your ankle still doesn’t heal and then you want to remove your leg at the knee and use the separated appendage to knock your orthopedist silly until he fixes you enough so that you can wear flip flops again, because damn it’s finally flip flop weather.

Yep. There are days.

Check it out.

The mommies are on the loose and they’re talking about sex.

You know you wanna know what we have to say.

It’s okay. Go ahead. Click.

It’s 9:00 p.m. and I just heard a trumpet played from my son’s room.

What part of getting ready for bed this is I’m not sure.

Today is Mother’s Day, and I had a wonderful day.

There are a number of reasons why I would be just as likely to be sitting here reporting the exacty opposite, but I’m not.

The last few days my head has been so quiet and I’ve felt more at ease and able to just be than has been possible in…well honestly I can’t remember.

Today I gardened in the rain. Today my ankle continued to hurt. Today my house was still messy. And today I still hadn’t lost the weight I’d like to.

But today I was able to enjoy each minute for what it was and for that I’d personally like to french kiss my psychiatrist.

Modern medicine is an amazing thing!

A diagnosis of depression years and years ago was the jump start I needed to take back control of my ever-racing, self-insulting brain. Therapy and medication did wonders to lift the yoke I had been carrying–carrying for so long at that point that I felt positively weightless once it was removed.

Then marriage and children and life continued and I became convinced that I could handle it all and I didn’t need to manage the depression anymore.

You can stop laughing now. Really. No, seriously it’s getting annoying.

A brief stint back on the meds after giving birth, justified as the baby blues (read ridiculous PPD that I couldn’t bring myself to name) and then heh heh heh I was fine. I would just wean myself right off that medication.

But darn if those years of therapy didn’t actually come in handy.

I started to notice the signs. And much to my disbelief, I stood up for myself. I marched my ass right to the aforementioned doc and demanded something new. Okay it took me three years to do it, but I did.

A few dosage adjustments and a couple of months later and I freaking enjoyed a dreary Mother’s Day because I was able to enjoy the single moments that made it up.

Now back to the bedtime, trumpet playing son.

We made the decision this year to treat his recently diagnosed ADHD with medication. My story should make it clear why I’m comfortable with this approach (along with close medical supervision, of course).

After just a few days, we had a son we could sit down and talk to. School came easier again and the sweet boy we had known had returned.

It was fairly miraculous. But I was familiar with this.

Now he’s still very much a pre-teen boy, and I would have stopped the medicine immediately if he was anything but. But once again, I’ve been applying chapstick and hoarding the Binaca getting ready to maul his doc.

So why the trumpet playing?

Oh, because today he didn’t take the wonder drug. And today, he spent most of the day picking at his brothers, talking back, not doing what was asked of him and bouncing off the walls–in other words, being reprimanded ALL day.

So tonight, this Mother’s Day evening, I want to thank the mothers of the scientists who conducted the research and invented the drugs who make our lives better–not just those that improve our mental health, but our physical well-being too. Thank you for raising such brilliant people–and I promise I won’t try to french kiss all of them.

Because of you, I enjoyed today and my son won’t have to suffer many more days like he did today.

Thank you.

So there we were with all of our outlets properly protected.

We were living in a two-bedroom townhouse and our itty bitty guest room was taken up mostly by a queen-sized bed. That first week I would stand in the doorway after our new roommate had fallen asleep and my heart would clench at the sight of that tiny little guy in that huge bed.

I had so many mixed emotions. He was so little and so beautiful and he looked so damn adorable sleeping so soundly surrounded by that big mattress, and yet my heart would break that he was having to sleep in a bed that wasn’t his.

And boy was I pissed at my sister.

How the hell could she put this amazing little boy in this position–ripped from his routine, living far away from home and with people who weren’t his parents?!

He came to live with us in the middle of the NCAA basketball tournament. How do I remember? Because we took him to the bar with us to watch the games.

What?? That was our life then.

It was a local joint. We didn’t drag him along to a club. It even had a restaurant attached. We set the kid up at the bar with a plate of chicken tenders and french fries and some orange juice to wash it down as we sipped our Miller Lites with the rest of the gang.

Chicken nuggets and orange juice were the staple of his diet at that point. Along with hotdogs and ham, he ate very little else. He was allergic to milk so that ruled out a number of foods. As a baby, he had been a picky eater never wanting to eat baby food from a jar. We had to mix it in with his formula to get vegetables in him. That combined with my sister’s eating habits, he hadn’t developed a very broad palette.

It was probably a good thing too. Just getting used to the responsibilty of having to have dinner ready for someone was tough.

The thing about kids is that they can’t take care of things by themselves, so we were forced to start building a routine. I mean somone had to cook for him, someone had to give him a bath, someone had to read him a story, someone had to help him get his pajamas on and someone had to tuck him in. Or at least he had us convinced of this.

A week after he arrived I turned 30. The hubs had planned a big party–probably to rub in the fact that I was turning 30 before him (thirty-three whole days before him). The night before my party (my actual birthday) I got a call from my parents. I assumed they were calling to wish me many happy returns.

But it was just my dad on the phone. He was calling because he had news.

Mom wasn’t there with him because she had dropped everything and flown up to be with my aunt–her only sister and my second mother. It had fallen to him to tell me that my aunt had been diagnosed with liver cancer.

I took the news with some tears, assured my dad that I wasn’t upset that he had to tell my on my birthday, hung up the phone and the three of us went out to meet some friends for dinner.

These friends–K & P–would figure prominently in our ability to manage our plunge into parenthood. I told them calmly about my aunt’s illness. They listened, probably not understanding how devastated I was because on the outside I appeared fine. They talked and played with our little guy at the table and patiently endured the cheesy restaurant where we met because I thought it would be kid friendly.

I went home that night and sobbed.

Sure our three year-old nephew had just moved in. Okay, I had just started a new job doing something completely different. So what I was turning 30. But the news of my aunt’s cancer?

It was just enough to push me over the edge.

I can say now that the following months would mostly be a blur, and the parts I do remember? Let’s just say I wish I didn’t.

If you missed the first installment, you can find it here.

“Your sister’s in jail and you need to come get him.”

I was at work–in my new office. I took a deep breath and thought for a moment.

I have to tell the hubs. He’s NOT going to believe this. How could she be so stupid?I just started this job two weeks ago. How do I explain that I need
to take a day off already? How much do I share with my boss? How do I
explain that I’m going to be a parent?

My new firm was small. They appeared to be a family, but who ever really knows in those circumstances. I decided that laying it out there was my best approach. I knew there were going to be tons of adjustments and they needed to understand what was going on.

But were they going to be okay with this? I mean seriously
I just started this job.

Thankfully, my boss was amazing. Turns out he had a brother who was a bit of a “challenge” himself and he completely understood my situation.

Honestly, what happened next is a blur to this day. I don’t remember packing or going to the airport or even the plane ride home. I just remember getting off the plane and seeing him.

He was so little. He was so adorable. He had no idea what was going on.

The hubs and I had started dating the same year he was born, so he knew us both well. I was his god mother and we spent all the time we could with him whenever we were at my parents. We knew he’d be okay with us, but how were we going to explain that he was getting on a plane and coming to live with us–for how long we had no idea.

With my sister’s MS, my nephew was accustomed to her being hospitalized from time to time. We decided that the best approach for now was to tell him that she was sick and couldn’t take care of him so he was coming to stay with us for a while.

In reality, we had no idea what was going to happen. We didn’t have a lot of details about her arrest, about the process of hearings, about sentencing. Honestly, we didn’t have much experience with this, though enough that my parents had finally reached their breaking point and refused to post bail (and I was completely behind their decision). We just had no idea how long he’d be living with us. Three years? Five years? Her attorney thought it would be in that neighborhood.

The hubs had stayed behind to get things ready for our little guy’s arrival. I didn’t know what to tell him we’d need. My mom was getting his clothes and some favorite books and toys together. But what did we need at our house? I left it to my husband to figure it out.

When I came home Sunday evening I brought with me one huge bag and one little guy. What had the hubs gotten to get our house ready? A super-sized box of outlet covers.

Oh yeah, we were prepared.

Part III