Costly Kids?

A friend of mine shared the heartbreaking news that she chose an abortion over having her second child and the justification was that they couldn't afford a second child.  

My first reaction was that I was appalled, children aren't that costly.  My next reaction was one of sadness for all of my friends that have the means to raise a child, yet are unable to get pregnant. 

We have been coming head to head with our debt this year and the realization is this, we have amassed precisely the amount of childcare expenses that we spent this year as our new debt.  Meaning, we have made up for the expenses of one child and with the new child, we have gone exactly another $20,ooo into debt.  I guess they are that expensive.  

Knowing the second child and the amount of joy that she brings, I can't imagine choosing otherwise.  Tell your creditors that though.  In our currently conservative moralistic society, pleading that you chose to have a child and go further into debt, still doesn't sit well.  You can't call your bank and ask them to lower your interest rates because you don't choose abortion.  It is a moral conundrum. 

 In a mere two years, both girls will be eligible for the public school system and yet now, we are just irresponsible credit consumers.  We live in a confusing society where we contribute to public education for years before our children are actually eligible for it and when they are, we are just taking advantage of the system. 

In the Buddhist tradition, abortion means that at some point in your life you have to commit your life to care taking another human for the rest of your life.  It is a serious karmic offense which requires a deep commitment for reparation.

In the American system, it is a way out of your credit default.  

Reflections

My older daughter seems so needy sometimes.  It makes me want to jump out of my skin.  I know I should love being needed, but sometimes I just want to be left alone.  My whole life, I can't think of anyone that I wanted to spend a 14 hour day with.  Not even myself.  Today I realize that it is the mirror of my own interior world and neediness that drives me crazy.  I am as clingy and needy as she is.  If I could, I would cling to my husband's leg and plead with him to carry me if I could.  This is precisely  what drives me nuts about my daughter.   It is the reflective nature of having children that makes them so tedious.  Not their needs but what needs of your own that they reflect upon you. 

My Birthday

I hate my birthday. It doesn't help that it happens to be on Christmas Eve.  In my family,as a child, it was challenging to say the least. My parents decided to make a traditional birthday cake for me every year.  I think it is indicative of all of the later issues with my birthday, an quite frankly, of a lot of my issues. Steamed English Plum Pudding.  It usually had this soupy vanilla cream sauce with it, that wasn't really whipped cream, and a few times my parents soaked it in Rum and tried to light it.  

Everyone gets their favorite cake on their birthday, my dad gets German Chocolate.  Somehow I am supposed to keep up the  pretense that I love Plum Duff. 

 Just about the time I admitted that I didn't like Plum Duff, my  parents started a new tradition.   Every birthday morning breakfast, my dad would start in on me. How I have been unfocused in my life, and basically how I've failed. To make it worse, they still made my cake, but then refuse to say "Happy Birthday"  until; the hour I was born, which is right before midnight.   So I would cry all morning then think everyone had forgotten my birthday.  I would lie in bed feeling like a complete failure and then my parents would come in my room with silly hats on and sing happy birthday.  Then I would have to eat Plum Duff and pretend that I liked it. 

To this day, as my birthday approaches, I catalog all of my failures and sink into depression until...midnight.  Then I feel so guilty by the time I get the happy birthday call that I am dumbstruck.  I am willing to eat some crappy British food as my hairshirt and then when they finally wish me a happy birthday, I can't even begin to say what I really want for my birthday because I feel grateful that at least someone remembered on Christmas Eve that it was also my birthday..

Karma

We hear so much, "It's his karma". 

 How simple. How complicated. Depends on if you want to blame them or you.  I have such bad self esteem that it is hard not to blame the bad karma on me and the good on others.  

Where do you draw the line between oh well it's karma and I had better take responsibility for this?

My colleague  shared with me yesterday that his three month old grandchild never cries.  

How cool.   His mom has some great karma.  

My daughter cried for four months straight.  It must be her karma, because I didn't deserve that.  

My friend's three year old has never thrown a tantrum.  Whose karma?  Hers I am sure. My daughter throws two hour inconsolable screaming fits?  Whose karma?  Hers? Mine.  

The baby is generally happy.  My karma.  Sometimes she is a fighter and screams really loud.  Her karma. 

My favorite colleague was downsized.   Her karma.  

I was retained.   My karma?  

Not bad.   I think I like this view.

I know that karma is supposed to be an accumulation of your actions good and bad.  It's hard to give credit where it is due. 

It should be the get out of jail free and collect $200 dollar card at the same time.

I want to believe in karma, it's just that it is so convenient to use it for your own good.

More on this to come.

Fear can lead to nothing good.

I am afraid of love. I am not just afraid to be loved, which, after 13 years with my husband is evident in my fear of expressing my love to him. 

He and Irina spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Michigan with his extended family and he remarked upon the reaction that she had to her super loving Aunt Sue. It is the first grandma type that she has been around who is not emotionally guarded. Not only are her grandmas emotionally guarded, so is her mother. 

Kevin described how long it took him to get used to my emotional distance. He who comes from a family where his mother still wants to chat with me about the current events and I feel like every time I talk to her is the first time.
I am afraid to love. Why?  I am afraid that if anyone gets to know me, they will be truly disappointed.  Because my standards for my self are so high, not so for everyone else, just for me.  to me, I am ugly, fat, unaccomplished and a big loser.  

Now I know that that is the image that I will pass along to my daughters.  I certainly don't want them to feel that way.  

It is about time I empowered myself.  That I show love for my amazing husband for my beautiful daughters and for my family in-laws and blood relatives.  If I do not, it will be too late for all of us and my impossibly high standards will cripple us all.

THE SLAP

I haven't done it yet.
A friend of mine confessed to me that she has spanked her children a few times. She has parenting skills that I respect a lot. She is accomplished and has very well behaved children. She is also a stay at home mom, so it kind of goes with the territory. I can see how it would get to the point every so often of so much frustration that it manifests physically.
Irina was throwing one of her notorious tantrums after school and I embarrassingly looked at my babysitter who has an eight year old and asked if her daughter eventually got over that stuff to become a poised young woman. She assured me that it never happened because once, when her daughter was two she gave her THE SLAP and she never misbehaved again.
Another friend who has wonderful grown children said she attributes their great behavior to THE SLAP and recalled for me the incident with each of her three children. I remember THE SLAP for each of us children, but we were fairly old and I think we talked back. I hate to think that it is so simple as THE SLAP. I also hate to think of the day that I am so frustrated that the only solution that I can come up with is THE SLAP.
Here is a story told to me by one of the parents that I worked with.
One of the memorable stories from teaching parenting skills to inner city parents came from a Dominican dad who told the story of his conflict with child welfare services. He came from a family who, although they didn't beat their children, they did use spanking when necessary. His son was attending school in New York and had gone through the awareness raising seminars that Child Welfare conducts in the schools. His son had told him that if he ever raised a hand against him that he would land in jail. His son proceeded to cut school, engage in illicit activities and fully compromise his dad who was forced to bail him out in school repeatedly and feel that there was no way to really discipline his child.

Things had gotten way out of hand and the father's hands were tied, his son was out of control and he felt there was no more talking that would change the way things were going. They planned a trip to the Dominican Republic together for spring break and the moment they landed on Dominican soil, the father lashed out at the boy and gave him a 'spanking he would never forget'.

Am I the Only Bad Mom in the Room?

When is the last time someone was describing a root canal and it's excruciating pain to you, when they stopped in mid-sentence and said, "oh, but it's so great'!?
That is what it is like to try to have a candid conversation with a mom. They start talking about tantrums or bossiness that is driving them to exhaustion and then they stop and say "Oh, but it is so great"! Just when we are getting to a point of really sharing about the challenges of child rearing, they derail it with a comment like that. It is as if they aren't allowed to have other feelings about motherhood than the eternal bliss that goes hand in hand with three year olds' tantrums.
Give me a break, it is challenging, yes it is rewarding, but how are you ever going to get through all of this if you are in denial? Okay, when you push them through the birth canal, you are making a lifelong commitment to love them, but still...you bring your own stuff to the equation. It's okay to occasionally be irritated or disappointed. It's as if somehow saying that it is challenging, you are negating the child.
I attribute it to the thinking mom, attachment parenting model, where we are trying to undo our parent's damage. Somehow you are supposed to be supermom who overrides all of these mixed feelings about parenting. To be fair, upon reflection, they are really great, but that is something to tell them, not another parent who is struggling with parenting and wants to have a heart to heart. whatever happened to the village that was going to help me raise my child, did they all somehow move into the exurbs and leave me alone to parent with all of its' challenges?

The Moment of Truth

Eckhart Tolle tells of his moment of enlightenment.  He was depressed and he wanted to kill himself.  He had the thought, I just can't live with myself anymore.  That was when he realized that the "I" and "myself" were two different people.  That is when he began his journey of "I".  Understanding that he was indeed an observer and the observed.  

When we were going through the bedtime routine tonight and there was much stalling around the brushing of teeth after I finally got the baby to sleep, my daughter said to me, "Mommy, why are you not happy"?  

I stopped in my tracks.  Was this an existential quiz?  Would I be required to answer candidly?  This moment was suspended in silence as I struggled to answer my lifelong question for a three year old.  Where should I start? With my own loss of innocence? With all of the troubles that have befallen us of late?  With the impending downsize and possible bankruptcy of a company that I have worked for for 10 years in a shrinking industry? With my desire for a better standard of living?  

Then I realized, that she was just echoing what I had said in frustration of the attempted 'cry-it-put with the baby that ended in failure, or the fact that every time I  asked her to do something she talked back to me, saying "No, I don't want to".  That I had just expressed frustration that once again bedtime had dragged out to an hour long process that wasn't because we were having fun, but it was just me nagging her and I said, "I am not happy"..

I had my Eckhart Tolle moment.  I realized that I am not happy because of my lack of boundaries or limitations.  I realized that in every aspect of my life, I allow the others around me to walk all over me and  THAT is the root of my unhappiness.  She is the simple illustration of that very deep discovery.  I don't have strong boundaries about bedtime, just desires, and she walks all over me.  That is what makes me unhappy.  

Spiritual Parenting

Originally all of these posts were supposed to take the path of spiritual parenting.  The thread is still there somewhere.  In spite of all the tongue in cheek complaining that I do, I haven't lost the mission that I set forth with.  

The definition of spiritual progress always includes the process of waking up.  Waking up is not the most glamorous stage in the process. I have never witnessed anyone at their best when they are waking up.  It is the moment when you are practicing on your mat or cushion or during a temper tantrum that you realize that you have built your reality around a lot of false ideas.  It is that moment during a day long meditation that you follow anger or jealousy for several hours and then feel that jolt when you realize that you just spent half of your practice wallowing in self pity. Those are the moments when you have the true chance of clarity.  That is when the real work begins.  

With children sometimes, you just want to stay in that mind-numbing place where all of your false ideas are not necessarily comforting or useful, but they keep you from feeling the raw feelings that have been pushed down your whole life.  

Parenting as a spiritual practice is allowing those ugly moments of waking up to be what transforms your future behavior.  Rudi used to say that you have to get to a point in your life when you are so disgusted with who you have been up to that point that you have to truly embrace that and move through and beyond it.  It is those aspects of your life that force you awake and prevent sleep, that will make a true spiritual transformation take place in your life.

Children have an amazing talent for forcing you to look yourself in the eye and either closing your eyes in despair or meeting those eyes and challenging transformation. 

Old dudes, young mothers

A few months ago, I had this epiphany about relationships, especially October May relationships.

 A friend of mine told me that her prenatal teacher trainer said that some of the best pre-natal yoga teachers are not mothers.

I believe it.  There is this certain mystique around being pregnant and all of the hope that we put into our baby to be.  This time should be sacred and unmarred by the actual reality of raising children.  

Thus the October May marriages.  It makes sense that men stay caught up in the mystique far longer than mothers.  They don't suffer the same kind of hormonal havoc on the body, the loss of all privacy and sleep.  

Men experience the birth of their first, second, tenth child with the same kind of reverence each time.  

The woman changes.  The woman harbors all of these mixed feelings, loss of self, of lost time, of image.  The man just biologically stresses out to provide for each one.  When the two split up, he is somewhat shocked, as he did his best to provide and his wife just seemed to get angry and distant.  When he looks to re-marry, he wants that mystique again and what better place to find it than in a young woman free of motherhood, of body scarring, and of exhaustion. 

 It makes perfect sense to me.  Better that the new mother has never experienced the bitter fruit of raising a child.  Marriage is hard work, it is even harder with the dynamic of children.  Better luck second time around. 

Obamanos

I remember when I was working in East Harlem and broke up a fight between kids that were using racial slurs against each other.  When I said to Travis, "it would be like you calling me some nasty word that had to do with being white".  He looked at me very seriously and said, "you ain't white, are you"?   I was flabbergasted.  "What do you mean Travis"?  "Well, white people wouldn't be as nice as you or spend so much time doing things to help us".  Someone had taught him that white was a blanket attitude towards others and I didn't fit the description. At the time, I thought this was both horrifying and vindicating.

This election is one of those events that everyone has to write about.  I wish that my grandmother was alive to see this.  Partly because she hated Dubya so much but partly because she told amazing stories about the racism that she experienced in her life.  She was living in Memphis when Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot.  The stories she tells are amazing about how she and my mother's black nanny hid in the back of a liquor store during the riots, both too afraid to go home.  I wish my grandfather could see it too, just so I could watch him squirm over having a black man as his president. 

I cried on election night, I cried during Obama's acceptance speech.  I actually cried when he was elected Senator, because he was so eloquent.  As he was speaking, I said, "he gave us our flag back".  The three days following the election, I worked in Harlem.  I noticed that every black man in Harlem was walking straight with their shoulders back and chests open.  A myth had been dispelled.  I know it is not so simple as that, but for some time let us bask in Americans polarizing and shedding Travis' myth about people's attitudes based on skin color.

Finally, I wasn't a white girl walking into these schools having to prove myself, but rather, an ally.  I had nothing to prove, I had cast my vote in faith of an intelligent thinking man as our president.  People looked me in the eye straight away.  I wish that I had been in every elementary school the day after the election to hear the principals addressing their children with incredible inspiration.

Many of the mothers that I talked to this week said "Now I can tell my children that truly they can aspire to be anything".  

I feel like I can tell my children the same thing, that it is a good thing right now to be a part of a majority of voters and that it is okay to be an American. I know that the road ahead will be a difficult one, but I feel like making sacrifices when there is hope for change. 

The New Bed

We finally outgrew the bottle.  The three year old that is. The baby gave it up at sixth months,  I don't think the parents will ever give it up.  Diapers are another issue.  All in due time I suppose.

Today we just put together a toddler bed for the older one.  She is beside herself. I struggled with buying it for a month.  Children's furniture, like appliances have the caveat that the smaller the space they occupy, the more expensive they are.   Some things  provide a kind of peace of mind that is without monetary value.  The powerful baby monitor that allows us to go upon the roof is priceless. The princess sippy cup that replaced the bottle, priceless. Now, the toddler bed. 

The toddler bed has created a face-cracking smile on Iri's face that will allow us to move past one more baby related stage and into big-girl hood.  

As we finished reading "The Big Sister" and I kissed Iri good-night, she said, did you buy this bed for me?  Not for Roxy?  Yes, it is just for you, my very own happy little, funny little girl.  She cracked her smile even grander and asked me to turn out the light so that she could go to sleep.

Humbling Readings

My husband and I still can't seem to come to an agreement on discipline.  I read a very disturbing article however that was all about tantrums.  

Basically it linked the uptight parent and their hurried agenda to the biggest cause of tantrums.  Natch. That's me.  I know that.  Usually, it's me who is being uptight.  I have all of these goals like getting the kids into bed by 8 or getting them off to school by 8, and mostly I just get uptight when the clock is ticking and we have more and more time outs.

The articles said something like, get a hold of your emotions before you start handling your children.  I just don't know how to stop.  No one is standing there judging me about what time my children go to bed or get to school, just me.  Well, the guard at school gives us a hard time for bringing the kids late, but my take on this is that they get more than my post-tax salary for taking care of my children so I don't really care what they think. 

 It's all of my self-imposed limitations that make me uptight about school and bedtime.  I know all about finding your limitations and superceding them from yoga practice.  I just can't seem to apply it to parenting.

This afternoon my husband and I were fighting and Iri had us both put out our hands so that she could draw smiley faces on them.  We weren't wearing smiley faces, so she tried to draw them on us.  We were so busy fighting that her small gesture was lost on us.  We've been fighting about everything under the sun.  What a surprise that she had several meltdowns throughout the day.  Wouldn't it be brilliant when we are having a disagreement if we could just put our arms around each other and say, here, let me draw a smiley face on you and it would all be better.  Maybe change does come in small gestures.

Responsibility

I just left my husband upstairs with our three year old.  She was trying to bargain her way out of bedtime and it was his turn to read books.  He fell asleep and I just left them upstairs together. I shut the door and walked out.  I suppose she could wreak havoc on the bedroom and mess it up a bit, but honestly, with two young children around, the bedroom is a complete disaster anyway.  What else might go wrong?  She might draw all over him with the markers or stay up another hour or two, but what do I care, I am downstairs, alone, writing and blissfully uninvolved.  

We keep talking about how we need to be on the same page with discipline, but, sometimes you just have to throw in the towel.  

What better lesson to teach than wearing yourself out and then putting yourself to bed.  Usually our bargaining chip every night is that if she behaves and stops whining an goes to sleep, mommy will come in the room for a while.  I am angling for something else.  If you misbehave long enough, I will shut you in the room with daddy and he will fall asleep and you can learn self-control enough to get bored and put yourself to bed. 

Tonight it is working brilliantly.

The only catch? I just locked myself out of the house in the cold!

Amendment.  Don't let sleeping dogs lie.  They wake up incoherent, come downstairs looking for a pen cap or some other nutty thing and don't have enough wits about them to just brush teeth and go to bed.  An hour long, over-tired screaming, whining fest ensues, little sister is awoken and one hour later all of our nerves are shot.

Why we hate our mothers.

I am embarrassed to say that I am not a very good mom.  I thought I was better equipped to handle all of this, but I'm really not.

Before I had children, I had set out to answer one of the most disturbing conundrums.  Why do we, especially American women, hate our mothers? Now that I have two girls, I wonder why is it that our mother's don't hate us, an why are they not more insane?  Somehow I know this experience should make me respect what my mother did, an I do but there is too much baggage built up to not be resentful.  I cannot imagine staying home with my children all day.  David Sedaris tells a story about how they would get home from school and his mother would tell them to go outside and play, she would lock the door and lay on the couch smoking and reading books and not let them inside until dinner time.  When I read that, I thought, wow, poor,crazy woman.  Now I think, my hero!!  That sounds like utter bliss.  

It is one of the most nerve wracking jobs that I have ever encountered.  Repeatedly, I go through these  days where my children drive me to the brink of insanity with crying, tantrums, manipulation, sugar highs, sugar lows, not enough sleep.  I am talking about them but could just as easily be describing myself, functioning at a sub-par rate.  If anyone knows the secret for getting through all of this, please let me know.

Fantasy vs. Reality

I went to pick up my daughter early from school.  I know how excited she will be to see me since she is usually the last child to be picked up.  She runs into my arms with a big smile and says "Mommy, I love you"!  It is bliss and I am transformed by the wonderful reaction by this three year old.  We fall into each others arms planting kisses and talking in our secret language.  What bliss it is to be a mom.   

Reality check.  I arrive 30 minutes early and my daughter hisses at me.  She continues to play in the loft with her friends, one by one their mothers come and they embrace them  and leave.  

Finally it is me, my daughter, Kyle and teacher Jasmine.  I make light conversation with her teacher and Kyle's mom shows up.  She takes pity on me and gives me a sticker to entice my daughter away.  My daughter shoves me.  

Kyle's mom offers me a lollipop to entice my daughter.  My daughter says adamantly "NO"! I try to hide the tears that start to fall involuntarily.  

I tell her that everyone is leaving and that they will turn off the lights and leave her there alone.  She says, "OKAY"!  

Oh god, my daughter would rather stay in the school with no one here, than go with me.  

Eventually, we are forced to leave as her teacher drags the trash in one hand and holds my daughter's hand with the other.  

I know somehow I am supposed to be pleased that she likes school so much, but I feel incredibly useless, let-down.  It is time for some serious behavior modification.  I'm not sure if it is hers or mine.

Ha, Ha Ha! Take That King of Disco, I Will Be Long Gone!

I thought that it would be a good idea to try for two children in order for them to have each other, since we are older parents. I didn't realize how important this would be until we had two children. It is so challenging sometimes to have two that I don't think we will make it 15 years.

Our neighbor and friend is Randy Jones, the cowboy from the Village people. He is married to a man, approaching 60 and never having children. He looks incredible, somewhere between 30 and King of Disco.  He looks, well, fabulous.  We saw him on the street the other day and he asked how it was going with two kids, he was sort of laughing at the absurdity of it all. Mind you, he's known me since my cool punk rocker twenties and I look, well, haggard, now.  

He then asked how old we will be when the girls hit the fun age of eighteen.  Kevin and I looked at each other and replied, "We will be dead"!  

It is no wonder parents are crazy, or alcoholic or hated by their children.    

Frankly, we don't know how we are going to survive the first five years, much less 15.

PS. Randy, We have bequeathed the girls to you!

How to Talk to Your Mom

I always wanted to have important conversations with my mother. The problem was that by the time she had me she was only 23 and hadn't had much time for self-reflection. She was always in some sort of survival mode. I don't think she had given much thought to her role as a mother or as the important female role model in the lives of two young women. I don't think she ever rehearsed any of the conversations she might have with her daughters about the essential transitions in their lives. I, on the other hand, rehearsed those conversations with her hundreds of times. I spent hours figuring out how to ask her to take me to buy my first bra or make-up, when I could wear deodorant, and what to say to boys that I liked.
Mind you all of these conversations were with my mirror.
I tried out conversations that were succinct, to the point. "Mom, I think it is time I started to wear deodorant."
Or pathetic, "Mom, all of the other girls are wearing make-up and bras, could you please let me do it too"?
Or sympathetic, "Mom, there is this boy in my math class that I think is cute and he won't give me the time of day, you dated a lot of boys, how can I be attractive to them"?
I never actually had any of these conversations, I never seemed to have any one-on-one time with her and I could never find the entree into the conversation. I ended up going bra shopping with my older brother, who teased me mercilessly about it. I used the old make-up and deodorant that she threw away and muddled through hairstyling by observing my older sister.
I talk to my mother almost every day now, but I still don't feel like I can broach any subjects that are personal or difficult. I certainly can't talk to her about her alcoholism or her inability to really express how she feels or her lack of self-esteem.
A friend of mine just finished the prenatal course with Gurumukh. She had so much to tell about babies and birthing and mothering. One really important piece of advice she had was, work out the idiosyncrasies that you can before you are a mother. I worked out a lot of things. Or maybe, better said, I became aware of a lot of my habits and qualities that will make being a mother challenging. I tend to be aloof and have a convoluted way of relating to others. I know how to make someone angry at me so that I can blame myself for them not liking me. I know how to turn any feelings of pain or being left out into me just being crazy and paranoid. I know that these are qualities that I inherited from my mother. I wish I could talk to her about them. I know that I inherited these habits.

I now have two girls and I want them to be able to have these conversations freely with me when the time comes. I could never really talk to my mother about anything important. I want my daughters to feel that they can talk to me about anything. Perhaps having rehearsed all of the angles of conversation, I will be able to start these discussions with them before they start to really wonder about these essential qualities of girlhood. It may be simply that I need to make the space for those one-on-one conversations now, when their questions revolve around finding their place in the world and understanding why the sky is blue and what makes the seasons, so that we can broach the far more complicated questions that will come later.

Do you want to play with me?

I had a particularly emotional weekend when my best friend came to New York for a concert.  My life theme seems to be one of being left out.  I have all sorts of issues with this and have had to try to come to terms with it in all sorts of weird ways.  This issue runs deep in the fabric of my life and I won't go into to much detail.

Suffice it to say, we had a misunderstanding and I thought I was being left out of an opportunity to revel in debauchery with my friends one night when she was visiting.  I spent the next day waiting to be included and post-partum depression makes me cry.  I cried all day.  When Iri saw me crying and asked why I was so sad, I explained that it was like when you see a whole bunch of friends playing and you want to join them but you don't know how, you feel left out.

She looked at me with a sad little look and  took my hand.  she looked at me and said "mommy, do you want to play with me"? Now that is compassion.  And I did.  It helped me to stop crying.

Rutabagas and Turnips (this is the punchline).

Rutabagas or "begies" as Grandma Mim calls them are one of the most ridiculous sounding vegetables in existence.  Turnips aren't any more sophisticated.

Sometimes I forget that the great thing about having children is having fun with them. I wrote a parenting curriculum for a company that wanted to teach Peace to young children and their parents.  The CEO of the company reminded me that when I wrote the curriculum, I needed to remember to encourage parents to have fun with their children.  

I was an amazing after-school director, the children thought I was so fun and funny and I brought a breath of fresh air to their troubled East Harlem lives.

As a parent, I had put such pressure on myself to raise a well-behaved child, that I had forgotten that a sense of humor is one of the most valuable qualities of a self-composed person.

By the time Edie was about 9 months old, "fun" was not in my vocabulary.  I had endured 4 months of colic, 9 months of sleep training a very determined  baby with  a babysitter who undermined every step of our progress, and teething that brought about hours of inconsolable crying.  

I had lost the thread until my friend Sparka came to visit us around this time and she got such joy out of little Edie, that she reminded me of this sage advice.  Children are fun and you should enjoy them, because the times that are fun will be very short.  

I was raised in a household of funny people, and although I think of myself as humorous, I am often so uptight, that there is nothing funny about me.  I have been described as intense, dry, serious, focused, but not usually as "fun".  

Every time I try to tell a joke, my audience is left scratching their heads while I chuckle to myself.  

Recently, my husband has been trying to help me with the set-up.  The beauty of children is that they don't generally require the set-up.  I think that is always why I made such a charming caregiver.  Children always found my crazy punchlines to be so crazy that it made them laugh. 

We had such a difficult couple of tense days, the children and I, that it was a joy to finally sit down and read Happy Baby Words together.  This is one of those object identification DK books that my daughter is past, so in order to make it fun to read, we just replace random words with either Rutabaga or Turnip.  Then we laugh ourselves into hilarity. 

There, I did it, I started out with the punchline and you had no idea where this post was going, but in the end, seeing a little girl in a book playing with rutabagas instead of blocks or a child 'turninping' instead of crawling, can lighten the night of tension between a three year old and her mom.  Who cares about the set-up.  

I Want to be a Daddy

For a few charming weeks it was, "we are both mommies" after our week from hell, it is now, "I am a daddy".
Gender awareness is creeping in.  Edie talks a lot about her imaginary brother.  She has dreams about being a boy and making daddy cry.  (Not sure what that's about).  She is becoming acutely aware of gender differences in spite of our post-feminist world.  Even though mommy and daddy both work, there are some obvious differences.  For one, Daddy is ALWAYS working.  He is all full of fun and laughs for a half hour and then, "Sweetie, I have to work".  

Edie is always pulling out her computer or e-mailing people from "Keviemetal Corf", saying "I have to work".

He gets the short end of the stick most of the time, he gets kicked out of the room, he doesn't get to read stories.  He can't nurse the little one and mommy is the preferred word in the middle of an emotional crisis.  It isn't exactly ego-inflating to be the Daddy.  

They say that moms do 20% more work regardless of who brings home the tempeh bacon.  I don't knock my husband, because he works EXCESSIVELY to keep us afloat, but if I were a child seeing that mommy gets to do the laundry and the dishes and she is the short-tempered one who puts me to bed every night, I'd want to be a daddy too.

I Scream, You Scream, We all scream for Caffeine!

Every empire usually falls because of some vice.  The financial institutions  fell because of greed.  Corporate America, the same.  My fall this week was because of the greed over one lousy cup of coffee.  For Edie, it was a fascination with public potties and souvenier pennies.   

Friday was the culmination of a week of screaming.  After three days of non-stop screaming, I thought it would be nice to drive to the house during nap time on Friday.  I thought we might be over the hump.  

At school all week, they have been talking about being 'big kids' and learning to use the potty, saying good-bye to pacifiers and bottles and such.  Edie had so many potty accidents that they changed her clothes and shoes at least three times every day.  Apparently one of the other children was so traumatized by the Go, Potty, Go video that she cried all through her nap.  

I should have known better than to be sweet talked into picking her up from school before nap.

Every thing was jolly and fun in the car, until Edie announced in the middle of a huge traffic jam on the Major Deegan that she had to use the potty.  The next bathroom is at 233rd street after all of the traffic at the GWB exit.  I figured she would end up going in her diaper, but the video had such a profound affect on her, that she held it.

We finally got to 233rd street and she 'made a big one' in the potty at the gas station.  Thus begins the fascination with public restrooms.  No sooner were we on the highway again that she needed to go to the potty at the coffeeshop.  I was exhausted and longed for a coffee myself. Lately Edie has been pretending to be a mommy, "mommies drink lots of coffee"

We stopped at the next rest stop and used their potty.  We watched a little boy make a smooshed penny in the machine and against my better judgement, I plunked down 51 cents to make a Statue of Liberty id.  After all, we had been reading all of these books about New York and I thought it would be educational.  Admiring our new penny, I ordered my coffee and hoped to hit the road again, nap time had now come and gone.  She asked for another penny, and I said no. She started screaming at the top of her lungs threw herself on the floor.  I carried her out of the rest stop kicking and screaming with Roxy hanging off of the other arm, everyone staring at us with their lofty opinions on parenting.

She had time-out in the car and screamed for another 20 minutes.  Even though she wasn't done, I decided it was time to go.  Not I, nor any strongman,  could have gotten that howling Banshee into her car seat.  I got so mad that  I decided to drive off with her standing in the back seat.  I peeled away so loudly that we turned the head of just the strongman I could have used to help me.

My judgement got the best of me as I jerked to a stop 100 feet later and as I was getting out of the car I saw my beautiful soy latte splash down the side of the car and onto the street.  Damn the caffeine and public potty vice!

Structure? What Structure?

I had a reallly challenging week this week.  It was my daughter's first full week of school after having most of the summer off.  We had our apartment re-done and are essentially camping out on the floor with a few beds, no toys, no computer and no furniture.  Kevin stayed at the house upstate to meet some deadlines, so I was at home with the girls alone.  Three year old's need structure. Everyone tells me that our daughter in particular needs structure.  

Our lives are the definition of un-structured.  Kevin is a free-lancer, which means that he usually gets a call at 4 o'clock with some impossible deadline which takes him out of commission for days and nights.  We make plans to do all sorts of things then have to cancel at the last minute.  My job is different every day and I have to be flexible to meet my deadlines.  I get countless calls at the last minute, demanding my presence at a school and I have to jump.  Kevin and I handle all of this with relish and flow.  After all, the alternative is, well, an 8 to 6 job in an office.  

A three year old handles this by screaming and pushing us away.  When we arrived home from the swings on Thursday, my daughter began screaming at the top of her lungs.  I put her in the time out chair and she screamed and kicked even louder.  When she screams, the little one starts screaming.  When the little one screams, she screams even louder.  If your apartment has no rugs or furniture, screams can be heard all the way on the first floor.  

I am not proud of the effect that three nights of three hours of screaming had on me.  On the third night, I broke down and cried, sobbing, air gulping cries, sitting on the floor, while my daughter looked on in awe.  She asked me why I was crying and I said, I just don't know what to do when someone screams at me.  When I finally calmed down, she said that she didn't want me to cry anymore and we laid down to read books and got silly and kissed each other.  After she went to sleep, I cried some more and called my parents a very candid parent friend. After a good cry with them, I was ready to face the world again the next day.

The Bad Seed

One of my favorite horror movies is the Bad Seed. It was obviously written by a mother who has a daughter similar to mine. The reports from school are that they wish every one of the children was as great as our daughter. "You are such a nice mommy, you are the best mommy" They have never seen a tantrum or any other kind of bad or questionable behavior from our child. "You are such a nice mommy, so pretty, you are the best mommy". She never throws a tantrum, she always puts everything away when asked. "You are such a nice mommy, you are the best mommy in the whole world". When I pick her up, it's a different story. She will begin to scream at the top of her lungs if I do any thing wrong. Whenever I try to express how much difficulty I am having with the tantrums, no one can believe me. "You are such a nice mommy, so pretty, you are the best mother". I ask for advice on how to help me deal with the issues I have with my daughter and they say, she is an angel, they wish all of the children could be like her. "You are such a nice mommy". When they find me floating in a pool, it will be obvious that it must have been because I am so unstable and delusional.

Out of the Frying Pan, In to Parenting

One of my favorite yogi stories is the one about the sage who goes to meditate in a cave for 15 years in order to abolish anger.  After he feels that he has successfully abolished anger, he triumphantly takes a walk to the village market.  After a few minutes of being yelled at by the hawkers, and jostled by hurried shoppers, he explodes with anger and indignation.  They say that the best place to learn a yoga practice is in the city in a householder's life.   I will amend that by saying that one of the best places to learn a yoga practice is as a mother.

Everyone gets the lessons they need in order to evolve.  For some, it is simply finding a work/family balance in their lives.  Others have repressed a great deal more and need more extreme lessons.  Obviously, I am in need of some extreme lessons.  

I always thought of myself being fairly even-tempered.  Stressed, okay, sensitive, maybe, but calm in most states of crisis.  After all, I counseled people with abuse issues without reacting to some of the incredibly difficult things they shared with me.  

I imagined that as a Mom, I would be a total cucumber, able to deal with a lot of stress, and still be loving and understanding.  

When our first daughter was born, she had colic, crying uncontrollably, not just for a few hours in the evenings like the books talk about, but screaming all the time she was awake, for four and a half months.  We had a fabulous babysitter named Rana who would come over for a few hours every afternoon.  Despite being only 19, she would sit with my inconsolable daughter on her lap and coo "Pretty blue eyes don't cry"!  She had a magical effect on my daughter and her being there had a magical effect on me, because I was able to leave the house for a few hours and have my own time.  

I thought the colic had steeled me for any challenges that would be presented to me. I was wrong.   My daughter and I are so similar in so many ways, so sensitive and needy that I am pushed to my limits almost daily.  The challenge with a sensitive child is whenever my nerves are split, she reacts by acting up even more.  If I were indeed calm and collected, she would stay calm herself.  

I am not calm and collected.  I was childless for 37 years, I could do whatever I wanted to do and whatever I needed to do, whenever I wanted.  I could sleep in, I could go for days without eating or taking care of anyone, I could take ten day meditation retreats. I could abolish anger in the little cave of my existence.  If someone made me angry, I could just break up with them or stop calling them.  You can't do that with your children if you want to grow spiritually.

 The problem with wanting to grow spiritually, is that you ask for the most extreme circumstances in life to help you to grow.  You can't just react to difficult situations and say, "oh well, we just don't get along".  You actually have to observe, analyze and make changes.  

When you get pregnant, the midwife does not sit you down and tell you that now you are entering the marketplace and that every little bit of your evolution will be put to test.  To credit my midwife, she did tell me this in the hospital before we took our daughter home.  

My daughters have strong personalities, they offer to me every day the most extreme circumstances to help me work on myself.  They make it clear that I am now responsible for the spiritual, emotional and physical growth of all three of us.

As much as I embrace the journey, I long for that cave of ignorance where I lacked responsibility.  The main character in Eat, Pray, Love  and countless parents have walked away from this, either physically or psychologically.  I am, however, bound to my practice and the sankalpa which goes with giving birth.  If I don't evolve, my daughters will find themselves carrying on my samskaras and the liberation they assumed in being born into a yogi family will be in vain.  

Undoing Fear and Loathing

When I found out that I was pregnant with a girl, I cried.  
I didn't want to have a girl.  Girls hate their mothers.  
I wouldn't be able to screw up a boy.  Girls are so complicated.  
They hate their mothers and are embarrassed by them when they become teenagers.  What would I do with a girl?  I don't know anything about being a girl, much less how to talk to a girl about being a girl.  Now I have two.  I have tried to get to the root of the mother issue and I have not quite figured it out.   The root is fear and it is a rotten one. 

Once I was an adult, my mother told me  that she was afraid of me when I was a child.  She was 23 when I was born, she was poor and living in the dreary city of Boston and she said she just didn't know what to do with me, so she kind of left me alone.  I can't really get much more out of her than that.  Our family doesn't talk favorably to each others' faces.  They just pass along cryptic messages, like telling my husband that they knew I was special and unique.  They didn't really show me those feelings. 

I am deducing that my daughters are 'special' in the same way.  There is nothing scarier than looking at someone and seeing your own reflection.

I am also afraid of my daughters.  I am afraid that we will not be close, that I will screw them up and that they will have the same hollowness that I feel about femininity and love and accomplishment.  I am afraid that I won't respond in a loving way to the clinging they feel towards me.  I am afraid that I won't be there for them and that they won't know how much I love them.  I am afraid that they won't be able to handle life and one will become despondent or addicted or broken.  I am afraid that these years will slip away because of all of these fears.  

It is all of this fear that will be their un-doing.  

I know from my yoga practice that fear is essentially not knowing your own limitations.  Not knowing your limitless nature from an experiential level.  

I want to be perfect somehow and give my daughters what I  did not have.  I put a lot of pressure on myself, and often cannot distinguish between the necessary lessons for growth and the absolute fun of being in a family.   That is not knowing my limitless nature.  I operate under the misperception that I do not have enough love to go around. 

My daughters feel my tension.  As all children feel tension.  Whenever I am strained at the thought of not being enough or of following some rule, or afraid or responding to one and making the other one feel less special, they act out.  I see myself re-creating the tension.  I don't have clear boundaries.  The real key is to know and establish the limitations of time and space and be free with your love.  

My new experience of unconditional love is that I have married someone who, although also sometimes afraid of me, will work with me to grow. I am allowed to push the limits of love and work with him to feel complete. I want to be able to directly model this way of being to my daughters, but  that requires letting go of fear and accepting the truth that it is inevitable, you will make mistakes, but if you do it with love and humor, you will triumph.  

My daughters will have a safe space to triumph over fear, that is my commitment. 

One step forward, two steps back

Forget everything I said about sleep training and potty training.  

When they are teething, all bets are off with the sleep training.

When they are potty training, accidents happen, sometimes five times a day.

Thank god for Orajel and washing machines.

All I can do is hold it together is say, "it's okay, honey, accidents happen to everyone".

Utopia in the time out chair

We like to impose limitations on ourselves.  When I was in college, I was taking a course on utopias.  What I found most interesting about utopias was that people don't really want utopias as much as they think.  A society starts out as a utopia, then a governing body forms, rules are put into motion.  The original ideals around which  the utopia was formed blur and it becomes a society not dissimilar to the society they were trying to escape.  They want to be told what to do.  They want to know the lines between right and wrong.  The idea of complete freedom from authority is ultimately too scary. 

 I went to school in Spain and studied and wrote all about anarchy.  I read Marx and Lenin and the anarchist manifestos that came out of the Spanish Civil War.  After all, anarchy was successful briefly in Barcelona.  

As we began to impose the timeout chair, something very interesting occurred, Edie will sit in timeout, as though physically bound, screaming and crying, without moving out of her chair.  There is no safety belt or other apparatus to keep her in her chair, yet she doesn't move out of it.  This phenomena serves to reinforce not only my philosophical college belief that people want rules, but it tells me that children want boundaries.  They want someone to define right and wrong for them.   It is as painful for parents as any other training can be.  But with each of these things, the promise of a self-composed person who can make good choices for themselves and their interactions with others makes it work.  As I watch the emotions appear in the little god filled beings that we call two year olds, I understand how scary it must be.  We always de-brief after an out of control emotional outburst and each timeout gets briefer and briefer. 

There is still the utopian stronghold that fantasizes that the undeveloped mind with raging emotions can somehow make the right choices without any guidelines.  I have witnessed those children, pouring paint on sofas, drawing all over their toys,  hitting and biting, and creating little Lord of the Flies communities inside of their households. Anarchy only works if it is self-rule for one little self.

The Common Enemy

Everyone has to make a 9/11 homage post.  A lot of children were created that night all over the world.  A lot of children lost their parents. 

In America, we were so focused on our personal enemies previous to an attack on our home soil.  After 9/11, the enemies remained the same. When you have children, the question of enemies becomes so much more palpable.  We teach our children about compassion and pain and fear. But how do we put into words our common enemies?   When I taught yoga classes in September of 2001, I felt like all of the teachings were being questioned.  I wasn't sure if talking about the war in the Bhagavad Gita was even useful to those who were feeling the direct effects of the war against people they knew.  I kept asking myself the same question. 

Who is the enemy?

In Buddhism, we are taught that life is suffering.  Suffering leads people to do all sorts of grotesque stuff.  There are heinous acts of violence every day in so many countries. 

Who is the common enemy?  Mother Nature? The hurricanes and monsoons and tsunamis?  Al Quaida?  Robert Mugabi? The child sex trade?   Food that is heated over 110 degrees and no longer alive?  Mosquitoes? The Patriot Act?  Politicians?  Fundamentalist religions?  Self-deprecation? Cancer? Alcoholism? When we would ask our meditation teacher what to do about this seemingly out of control world, he would say, "Do your inner work".

 A friend of mine adopted a young girl from an orphanage in Cambodia.  

this little girl had seen so many awful things in the first two years of her life.  She has been living in the US with her new parents for three years now and has turned the focus of her suffering to her own life.  She is now obsessed, as many five year-old girls,  with the right shoes and pants that she wants to wear every day.  What can her parents teach her from the ashes that she arose from?  Do your inner work.  They cannot force upon her the memories  of her life and suffering.  Her suffering is immediate and as superficial as it may seem, it is real.  It is not only a function of the society she lives in, but of the inner human struggle.  

When I was traveling in college I changed my major from art to education, because I wanted to directly affect the lives of others.  When I threw myself into saving abused children and their families, I learned this;  I can't save anyone,  I can only show them the tools and how to use them.   They have to take the steps out of their own suffering.  It is possible that art could have been just as effective as education. 

There is a way out of suffering. 

Our biggest enemy is our inability to move out of our own suffering and see the real power that we have to elicit change in the world.

With each freedom comes more responsibility

I always tell new yoga students, "you really shouldn't start this practice, your life is going to get so difficult as you look your shit straight in the face, remaining in the bliss of ignorance is inviting.  But there really  is no other choice, you can't turn back, and it is the most liberating hell that you will ever find yourself in".

We are potty training and sleep training at the same time.  

The sleep training is essentially getting your child to learn how to sleep without your assistance.  It is wrought with controversy amongst all parents.  

There are countless books about to train or not to train and most of these books spend the forward taking pot shots at the other's methods.  

They say things like, "some people think that a baby is just an inconvenience and should be trained in a cruel way like a puppy through crying it out until becoming emotionally insecure for the rest of their lives".  

The other side says "some people think that a baby should be carried around and coddled until they cannot do anything without the parent around, until becoming emotionally insecure for the rest of their lives."

 I met a couple in our neighborhood and mentioned that we had an eight month old,  they said, "oh, we've heard her screaming"  I said that we were sleep training her.  The woman looked at me and smugly said, "you mean you are trying to put her on a schedule and make her sleep at specific times".   I said, "No, I am teaching her how to fall asleep without my intervention".  The man looked wistfully from his wife to his two kids and said, "Wow, maybe WE should have done that".  I guess we won't be fast friends.

We know couples who never sleep without their children, who are getting up all night until their children are well into their elementary years and have no time away from them.  My husband stays up all night almost every night, but he does it to draw.  If he could nurse the baby, I would let her stay up all night with him.  

There is no right answer, but as someone who needs to function on a fairly articulate level during the day, I need to sleep at night and I need a few hours away from my children during weekend nap time.  My children have not proven to be easy cases.  I will tell the story of the older one some other time.

When you sleep train, the horrible screaming is enough to make you want to give up the promised freedom of a good night's sleep and everything that comes with it.  Roxy went from 27 minutes of gut wrenching cries three times a day to 1 minute in the course of two weeks.  With that new freedom of her sleeping alone comes the responsibility of doing something constructive with that time.  

On the potty training side, there is no controversy around to train or not to train. Potty trained means no more driving straight through from city to country as diapers are gleefully soiled.  It means illegal freeway pit stops within 500 feet of the last rest stop.   It means now that book time, which always lasts waayy too long, now ends with, "I have to go to the potty"  Inevitably there are songs to compose and toilet paper to be examined and overall stalling in the bathroom.  

But having two independent girls as they face the world, priceless.

Shaucha-Cleanliness or how not to trip all over toys

Before I became a parent, I had a lot of ideas about what I didn't want for our children.  My biggest pet peeve?  Toys all over the house.  Now I may be lumped with all of the fifties moms but I loved the horror story one of my friends told about how her mom would throw away any toys that they left lying about when they went to bed.  For her it was traumatic, for me, it sounded therapeutic.  There is nothing like the silent pain of a small wheel jamming your tender foot in the middle of the night.  If I become sleep deprived enough, I will be an insomniac who rents a big dumpster and just keeps throwing things away. 

 One of my favorite how to parenting books is called "Confessions of a Slacker Mom"  In the book, she tells tender stories of her very practical mom who only saved a few things from her children and kept them in her bathroom drawer.   

 Now, I am very sentimental about the few things that I still have from when I was little, each year we made Christmas ornaments and my mom saved them for us, I have the baby clothes that were just mine, not hand-me downs,  and I put my daughters in them, I have the cool cardboard box haunted house that I made, and I haul out my childhood easter decorations every year, but there are only a few very special things.  They mean a lot to me.  

There are so few toys that remain current and so many children have too many toys.  Having a room, or worse, a house full of toys just doesn't work for me.  

As the little one outgrows things, I give them away.   The nagging question for me however, is how do we maintain the special nature of toys without being overly attached.  For my friend whose mother threw things out, and I, who had mostly hand-me-downs, I think that the lack of new things created a hoarding tendency in us.  I shamefully collect all sorts of things and try to fill my psychological 'not enough' with a physical 'enough'.  

 Recently when we were trying to get our older daughter to share with the baby she declared, "But I don't have enough toys to share."  Where did she get this idea?  

How do I teach my children that what we have is enough?  I want them to equate that being enough is having enough.  As we start to give toys away, I am trying to build a direct relationship to giving a lot as a way of being enough.  

Some friends of mine have close relationships with orphanages all over the world.  As we dedicate toys for those children, so we dedicate space in our own hearts and on our toy shelves.  A clear toy shelf makes a clear heart.

F-bombs, or, what comes out of the mouths of babes

When Edie was just beginning to speak a lot, around eighteen months, her stroller fell over and she uttered a very cute, "Damn it"!  A few months later something happened and she said "Jesus"!  Every little nuance of your speech is parroted by the little darlings.  

When I was growing up we had a big doggy bank and every time someone in the house cursed, they had to put a quarter in the bank.  Well, children go through a stage when they delight in finding everything wrong that others do and pointing it our.  My parents were eventually emptying out their pockets in an effort to keep up with the rules they made about cursing and they were paying for it-big time. 

 Their biggest mistake was that the "curse jar" was also the vacation fund.  We ended up taking an amazing family vacation to Hawaii.  

After that, we were nearing the teenage years and managed to get a rise out of our parents as often as possible and once again, they were emptying out their pockets.  The next time we emptied out the doggy bank and came up with a big fund,  my parents took a trip to Europe with the money-without us.  So much for Pavlovian doggy banks.

Mantra

Mantra literally means calming the mind.  A mantra is generally used to re-direct the thoughts from disturbing to higher minded thoughts.  

Here are some tantrum inducing mantras that my two year old has started with.  "Mommy, say 'you don't know what to do with me'!"  Tonight's was the most disturbing yet.  "Mommy, say 'what is wrong with me'."  Oh no, what is wrong with you?  Nothing, dear, you are perfect.  "No, say, 'what is wrong with me'!"  She broke down in tears over this one, because she wanted me to say it and I just couldn't do it consciously. 

I must be saying it to her, but I can't think of when.  I am racking my brains while she is hysterical over what is wrong with her and I can't think of when I have said this to her.  Then she shoves Roxy and Roxy almost falls over onto her head and I said it, "What is wrong with you"?  My mantra that I got from my parents was, "You need to do more".  "We need to get something done".  "there isn't time for doing anything fun, we have so much on our list that needs to get done".  

My parents were visiting recently for over two weeks and we kept trying to take them out to do something enjoyable.  They kept saying that we have too much to get done.  I am trying to erase my old mantras with things like, "I Love You"!  "You are amazing"!  There is a lot of un-doing to be done.  

What is wrong with me?

70 square feet and a mule

When the slaves were freed, they got 40 acres and a mule.  When we were freed of the tyranny of suburbia, we each got 70 square feet and a 9 square foot work area.  

We just had our apartment painted.  The apartment that I moved into 22 years ago as a single punk rocker in Manhattan.  It has gone though many permutations.  Now we are four.  Our entire living space is less than 300 square feet, and even double that space sounds like luxury living.  

Sometimes I think, "oh God, we have so much stuff".  For four people in a tiny space we are doing pretty well.  We took out all of the furniture and now I don't want to move anything back. I fantasize about getting a HUGE 700 square foot apartment.  

When we went to visit some of our New Yorker friends who moved to a large victorian in Raleigh/Durham, Todd would introduce several of the huge empty rooms by saying,  'we're not sure what to do with this room yet'.  In my brother's house, they have a "bonus room" that is over 700 square feet.  There are two dining rooms, a living room for adults and one for children.    

My brother's family each have 1600 square feet to call their own if they divide their house up between the four of them.  When his children came to visit, I had planned a hilarious routine in which I would open the door from the bedroom to the living room and say 'this is our den.', then open the door to the bedroom again and say, 'this is our other bedroom.', I would repeat this routine several times and thought I would get a big laugh out of them, needless to say they were unimpressed.  In spite of the fact that they each have space which is equal to more than 5 of our apartments, his children didn't even notice or comment on our amazing ability to crowd into our tiny space. 

I suppose the lesson isn't in the non-coveting of space, but rather the non-coveting of my attachment to our lack of space.

War Stories

Recently I talked to someone who invited everyone in her family to the birth, I mean to the actual birth in the birthing room.  

Like, brothers and father in-laws, and ...?  When I read Spiritual Midwifery, there were countless warnings that if anyone made you feel slightly uncomfortable, don't invite them.  Okay, as long as my husband didn't look "down there" he could be in the room, but brother and father in-law, no way!!!!!!!  

I had heard the story of a yogi that was completely silent during her labor,  I was determined to try something like this for my second birth experience.  After all, I am a yogi, I should be able to endure in silence.  

I shared this story with my midwife after enduring 3 hours of excruciating back labor (I had a bruise on my sacrum after).  She said that the only silent labor she attended was eerie and the woman had previously given birth in foxholes during the Vietnam War.  After that, I let loose... I was using very colorful language with each contraction, then I remembered the story Ram Das told about his stroke.  He had spent over thirty years chanting mantras and at the crucial moment, when he could have been dying, he said "oh shit"! 

 The yogis say that your last thought as you pass from one world to the next becomes the theme of your existence.  I certainly didn't want my daughter to become obsessed with the word I was uttering.  I changed to a really long FuOoooooMMMMMM.   At least my daughter will now be capable of changing in mid-stream from F@*# to OMMMMM     

Where's the guidebook?

Years ago, before I had children, I taught parenting.  Essentially my premise was: step back and take a moment, don't be influenced by what others think and go with your gut, there is no guidebook.  Now, ten years later, I wonder, where is the guidebook?

Like the sannyasi who meditates in the cave all alone to abolish anger, then goes down to the marketplace and finds himself immediately angered by the other people, I am away from my two and a half year old for a week and think I am ready to deal with her.  I am almost immediately impatient with her being on another time zone.  I find myself getting irritated, making her tense, and making her tantrums last twice as long.  

HELP! What happened to all of my yogic patience?  I want to say that it is because I am trying to teach her how to act in front of her grandparents, but the reality is that whenever I have my own agenda, ie., getting to the park with enough time between now and nap to really enjoy the swings, I get uptight.  

Wow! That says a lot about me, I thought it was just when I wanted to get everyone off to school or I didn't want to dawdle on six flights of stairs.  Even when it's time to have fun, I am totally uptight.  I have years of yoga practice to do in order to learn how to be present and to not be so uptight.  The problem is that somehow I have to accomplish all of this within a few months so that I don't continue to adversely affect my daughters.  

Om Mane Padme Hum.  The jewel is in the lotus.  Out of the mud grows a beautiful and pristine flower.

Two under two

I see now why families have a separation between children of either two years or less, or of four or more years.  Dealing with the tantrums of a two year old, teaching them self control and handling all of the dramatics that go with the age bracket, lulls you out of the wonder of the under-two child love affair.  Having another who has an inability to express themselves at the same time, just makes your life a concert of wailing.  Sometimes, I just have to start laughing at the absurdity.  

We try to make it to our country house on the weekends in the requisite two hour time frame.  Inevitably, it ends up being more in the time frame of a cross-country road trip.  We hit the road around 6:00 and sometime around midnight after countless pit-stops and lessons in self-control, we arrive.  Tonight as we hit traffic on the Major Deegan, the offense came as Daddy took a banana that was somehow intended exclusively for Irina.  A wailing ensued, "I want that banana", inaudible through tears and snot and kicking and screaming.  We countered with, "just ask without crying", it got louder and worse with each calm encouragement that we made.  Then the little one started wailing.  All I could do was laugh at the ridiculous nature of it all.  We were stuck in traffic, both were wailing, one wanting a particular banana, one realizing that she was hungry and asking the only way she could to be fed, and us helpless in the front seat trying to teach a lesson.  The crying and screaming increased in volume and tenor and all I could do was laugh.  One day they will both be articulate and ask for food without screaming at the top of their lungs. 

 I offer this advice, they are so cute and egoless at 18 months, you want to have dozens at that age.  I bought into it, that's when I got pregnant with number two.   Just wait until they make it past the terrible twos and the "there isn't a catchy name, but it is just as bad, maybe worse, threes" and then think about having the second one.  

My cousin told me when the second one was born, "the next three years are going to be the hardest you'll encounter, but fast forward four years from now, and the following is the scenario; your children prod you awake at some un-godly hour and you say, go play,  four hours later, you slowly roll out of bed to check on them and they are still happily playing".  I think of this blissful moment in the future (how un-buddhist of me, the future) and I make it through the present moment with a small smile cracking my lips.

Have them three years apart, really.

First Post

This blog is my challenge to myself to finish a project that started germination with my first pregnancy, became the offer to submit an essay for a book when my second daughter was born and is now just fragments.  At some point I expect this will become the entire documentary of becoming conscious, of becoming a parent and hopefully for my daughters and others, a reminder that this process, like any spiritual practice is one fraught with frustration, self-doubt, inspiration, practice, love and hopefully, enlightenment.