The 18-month-through-3-year phase (the “No NO NO!” era) is getting funnier. Butter has been saying “no” a lot since 9 months, but it’s the most popular choice in his limited vocabulary. (Thank goodness for ASL.) It would be easy to get irritated with our little throw-everything, scream-in-frustration, answer-every-single-statement-or-question-with-NO Butterbean, but it’s just too funny to predict his every answer. Sad, for him, that powerlessness and frustration. But funny for us. (Sorry Butternut. I know it’s wrong to laugh at your tiny personhood, as real and important as it is to you. But if I take everything as seriously as I should, I’d go bloomin’ insane.)

***

Me: Isn’t this a good lunch, Butter?
B: [shoveling down the food; nods]
Me: Yup, this is lunch. “Lunch” is what we call it when we eat in the middle of the day.
B: NO!

It’s almost as though he’s a member of Congress, albeit a little more straightforward when he just barks “NO!” every time someone talks.

***

Me: Thanks for peeing in the potty, Butterbug. Now Mommy has to pee.
B: No!
M: Yes. I need to pee.
B: No-o!
M: [proceeding with the necessary steps] Buttercookie, I have to listen to my body, and my body says time to pee.
B: No! NO!
M: Honey, I’m right here. You can see me, you can hug me. I need to pee.
B: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! [throws himself to the floor a few feet from me, intentionally bangs head on tile, twice, and cries a bit harder]

This won’t last. He’ll get more words, he’ll decide that some things should get a “yes,” and he’ll learn that nothing is permanent except our love for him.

Plus, he’ll get to the Age of “No. Wait, Yes! Wait, No! Wait! YES! NOOOOO! [sobs]“

But dang, it’s a laugh-until-you-cry kind of world, life with a toddler. If an intense and highly spirited Three Year Old hadn’t killed my memory, coping skills, and patience reserves, maybe I would have remembered how much fun Two really can be, as long I can spare some respect and empathy for the Two-er.

Which I, thankfully, can. Right Butterbutt?

Wait. Don’t answer that.

Watching the SOPA funeral feels like the first time I’ve helped create success since my teaching days. As a writing professor I worked hard on critical thinking lessons, and enjoyed watching students have breakthroughs learning to identify logical fallacies. That was nice. Dead SOPA is nice, too. Better, really, since teaching has limited results until they let me teach everyone on the planet.

Now can we get everyone who blacked out for SOPA to protest the U.S. ag/food policy, toxic chemicals, child abuse, overfishing, and croutons, please?

So go read this striking post (to which I hopped after being almost forced by She Suggests) over at Mom 101 about how the grass is definitely way greener. Definitely.

And this post at Momastery about how ignoring tantrums in Target will get you arrested (and how thoughtful parents always save the day). And how, when someone tells her to enjoy every minute of her children, she tells them, “I can’t even carpe fifteen minutes in a row, so a whole diem is out of the question.”

Or this article, a personal favorite, about how academics need to play even more than children need to play. Oh, dang, I misread the headline. It says kids need to play more than they need academics. Stupid Twitter got me all excited that I get to play a bit more. But this is just more about playing instead of studying? I knew that. But now it seems I’m back to thinking I should homeschool. Damn.

Okay, I’m way too responsible and uptight to run away from home, but I negotiated a LOT of free time so Spouse could hang out with the boys. (See how I am now choosing to see that? Good for me! Good for them! Bonding time, not escaping time. Win-win-win-win.)

I got up before dawn with my little tornadoes, frolicked, cooked, attended, and mediated battles big and small for a couple of hours until Spouse tumbled out of bed. Then I left. I walked, I wrote, I surfed the Internet, and I had grownup food.

I came home after four hours alone and had a date with almost-six-year-old Peanut while Spouse and almost-two-year-old Butter slept. My sweet, highly spirited boy and I did some science, some art, some reading, and some side-by-side napping. More importantly, we smiled, we laughed, we cuddled.

When the little guy woke up from his nap I heard him, but Spouse played with him for almost an hour before they discovered us. Eight hours after I kissed them goodbye.

Eight hours. I was so giddy with freedom I danced and skipped (yes, literally) through dinner and bathtime.

(NB: I observed that no amount of battery recharge can make dinnertime with my particular small children easy. Nice to know it’s not the end of my patience-reserves that makes dinner so vision-dimmingly fraught. Quite simply, the nightly, two-hour adrenaline-pumping-fest that is dinner, bath, and bed, is spread heavily across the fragile skeleton of their utterly depleted, frenetic little bodies. So: witching hour is their fault. I did not know that before. I had continually criticized myself for not finding joy in hours 11-13 of my all-child-all-the-time days. Now I’m just going to drink through them, since I’m not the problem.)

(Kidding.)

(No, I’m totally not kidding.)

But back to my colossal Saturday of Joy break…

Oh, Interwebz, how I love operating at my own speed, to my rhythms, in whatever directions I want to go. Good Gravy, freedom feels like warm salted caramel sauce on chocolate and marshmallow ice cream. Why did I not know this? Why have I not worked harder to get this? Is the sweetness relative to the preceeding batshit insane-iness?

And how delightful, delicious, and delectable my adorable and silly children are when I am not running on fumes. My, but I enjoyed my time with Peanut, my reunion with Butter, my gratitude toward Spouse. Amazing, yummy creatures, my guys are.

I hope all parents, working inside and outside the home, get a chance to experience the glory that is solitude. After we get running water to all the world and health care to everyone and stability to the world’s violent regions and food and safety to children and adults alike, maybe we could get all humankind some breathing room and a vegan reuben.

This day has been a long time coming. And I so enjoyed the peace, quiet, and space to complete my own thoughts while doing a novel thing called blinking, that I am willing to proclaim my Saturday break intoxicating.

Drunk on mental health day awesomeness! Woo-hoo! Get yourself some of this!

Cheers!

***

December was a month in which I made list upon list of priorities and goals and dreams so that I could begin 2012 realigned, making choices I could fee good about and avoiding the detritus I had been mired in for too long.

Because I chose to stay home to raise my kids, my life got shoved into a closet, where it sat unused, unexamined, and devalued. Each time we moved, my hopes, dreams, goals, and interests got pushed further and further into the dark, cobwebby spots of our lives. Any time the old me called out from the dank recesses of the attic, the utilitarian me shouted her down.

“QUIET back there! You have no right to raise your voice to me! You chose this, so you have to do it really, really well 100% of the time!”

I wasn’t allowing myself time or space for my mind or body because I harbored this secret belief that, if I decided to do my best to raise my kids, there was absolutely no room for doing what I wanted. My job, 24 hours a day, is my little boys. Putting myself first, even for an hour, meant compromising and giving them less.

And it was driving me mad. Seriously. Both the insane and angry connotations applied. I have been losing it and just barely hanging on for almost six years. But this winter has been hard core. I’ve been climbing out of my skin, wasting time berating myself for every poor decision I made pre-kids because now I have nothing to show for my life. Oh, sure, those, but they’ll leave me and hate me and tell their therapist about how I was an empty shell of a zombie Mom. Or, rather, and empty shell of a zombie Mom who’s trying strenuously hard yet seemed to be failing miserably at just about everything, from personhood to motherhood.

So I reevaluated. I decided to find a sitter for the toddler a few hours a week so I could blink. I finished some client work and turned down new projects to focus on my own work. I convinced Spouse to be with the kids at 6am so I could start running again. I made manageable lists of short and long term goals with small steps to get to each one. I put one foot in front of the other. And I ditched facebook.

So far so good. On paper.

But I didn’t find the sitter. I checked out a few home-based daycare centers and read ads for sitters and remembered why we didn’t have anyone stay with Peanut (except my parents, and only a few times a year) until he was 4: I don’t want someone else raising my children. Until the boys can speak for themselves and express their needs and feelings, I don’t think someone else can do the best job with my itty bitty people. That’s just me, but it’s how I feel. Yes, I want to be with them because I want to see and hear everything in their day. Yes, I don’t always sound as though I do want to be with them. Yes, I think being a full time parent is important but I also feel it’s necessary to prove I’m not a freeloader absconding from my other jobs to do this job. I’ve already mentioned, I believe, my borderline insanity and obvious tendencies toward perfectionism that are ill-suited to my current role as Court Jester of Chaos, right? Okay then. Now I can mention that I don’t think I deserve to hire help when this is my job. The battle of the boxed goals and the utilitarian judgement are at it again, deeming who is worthy and who doesn’t deserve.

Good times.

So I’ve been whining about how hard it is to have a toddler and a kindergartener and a Spouse who works long hours. How very, very difficult it is to not blink for 13 hours straight. Boo hoo, big deal, people seem to parent with debilitating diseases and in the midst of trauma and major depressions, so I can take my withering hopes and dreams and shove them up my unfulfilled goals, right?

And someone offered to help me. Sweet Mary, Mother of my Cousins, someone offered to help me.

Normal people might sigh with relief and take a friend up on a sweet offer of help.

Ah, but I’m not normal. Instead, I felt chagrined that I’d complained so loudly. I vowed to start a gratitude journal and practice saying thank you for all the great things in my life. I promised myself I would focus on hopes and dreams and goals in my spare time but would refocus on my current, unpaid, disrespected, thankless, maddening, amazing, exhausting, important job.

And I heard this interview on KQED’s Forum, in which Chip Conley explained that more important than having what you want (oh, how I want and want and want) is wanting what you have. Appreciating all that is rather than longing for what might be.

So I spent the day being present and mindful and grateful. And by 7 p.m. I was in tears because I still don’t like being with my kids all day every day forever and ever amen without cease or break or freaking showers. I don’t want to make or serve or clean up food ever again. Ever. Ever ever ever again.

So I’m torn. I want to be happy with what I have. But I need. I have hopes and dreams and goals that are not well suited to tightly wrapped boxes in the back of the closet.

How do you balance being grateful for your life and still want desperately to change at least 12 things right now?

Blerg.

http://www.kqed.org/assets/flash/kqedplayer.swf

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