By: Wendy Rhein

My 7-year-old is more mature than I am. Maybe it is because he hasn’t been hurt or jaded or twisted as I have become in my 43 years. Maybe he is just a better person than I.

I have long suspected that he is an old soul who has more kindness and generosity of spirit than most children his age and certainly more than many adults I know. His intensity and sensitivity continue to amaze me.

The latest evidence of this was found in his announcement that he wants to write a letter to his father.

Following on my comments last week about keeping the door open to their relationship, I think he’s decided to give that door a hearty knock.

They have not seen each other since Nate was a toddler. Nate understands and accepts that his father lives in another state and is not part of our family but the questions have been coming more frequently lately about who this man is, what is he like, and would he like me. The last one is a gut twister.

He says he’s been thinking about it and the first line of the letter will be “hi dad, this is Nathan. I’m seven years old now.” He wants to tell him about his school, his friends, and what he wants to be when he grows up. He wants to tell him about how he loves to build things and how he is training to be a ninja. He wants to say that he hopes his dad will write him back so they can be pen pals and maybe someday they could meet.

I support the letter and yet had to warn him that his dad may not respond, and that if that happens it will be ok to be sad. He rolled his eyes and said he knew that, he just wants to try it and see what happens because even if he doesn’t write back, his dad would probably read the letter and know more about him. (See, this is the wisdom I’m talking about – he can’t control the response, only what he puts out there, and that’s ok.) When I wondered aloud why he was choosing to do this now, he said that he’s seven now and he knows a hundred people, but not his own dad.

Good point.

My immediate reaction was to panic. He’ll be disappointed. He’ll be hurt. He will take it personally when his father ignores the letter. He will be crushed, then resentful, then angry. He will decide that men abandon people who love them and are not trustworthy. (And let’s all say it together: PROJECTION!) But maybe I will be pleasantly surprised. Maybe Nate’s optimism can override my pessimism. I can hope for the better response instead of planning for the worst. Being pen pals with his dad will fill the need he so rightly has for a close connection with a man who should be not just his father but his dad.

I have always said that the door is open for them to connect. I have purposefully kept in limited contact with his biological father and have long encouraged a connection between them but the adult in their relationship has chosen otherwise. I cajoled, I yelled, I threatened, I disappeared, I cried, I flippantly dismissed. I always said that some day, Some Day, he was going to open the door to see this tall, lanky young man with beautiful brown eyes standing on the other side of the screen demanding to know where the hell he has been his whole life. And he would have to answer for his absence. I never thought that would happen this quickly. Or with this kind of love and compassion of a young child, just wanting to know if his dad liked to build stuff out of Legos too.

One of my greatest fears is that as Nate gets older he will choose this man over me as the person he loves more than his cherished poster of all the US presidents. I could close the door, I know. I could destroy his image of this man who would be his dad with my own tainted memories. But I need to be the parent and make decisions that I believe are in his best interest, even if it means that one or both of us gets hurt, again, along the way. He deserves that from his parent.

By: Holly Vanderhaar

This is going to be a brief update, because Gracie’s having surgery in a few days to remove a questionable cyst from her wrist, and with all the tests and doctor appointments —and Isabelle being sick from a nasty respiratory infection— I don’t know which way is up. For what it’s worth, the doctors don’t think the cyst is anything to worry about, necessarily; it’s just that they can’t tell exactly WHAT it is, and they had the choice of putting her under for a deep MRI, or performing an excisional biopsy. And since they would be putting her under either way, they advised the latter option. And because I just want it to be over already, I agreed. And I’m trying not to think about my (probably irrational) fear of general anesthesia. And trying to figure out how to get Isabelle to school when I have to be at the hospital with Gracie at 5:30 in the morning.

But, anyway.

Since my last post about taking them to see The Hunger Games, it has become All Katniss All the Time in our house. We went to see it a second time. They’re spending their allowance on trading cards. And Isabelle told me that it was her favorite movie. Now, this surprised me, because they’re passionate about a lot of movies, including Cars and Bolt and all of the Harry Potter films. So I asked her why? Why The Hunger Games, when it’s scary and violent and sometimes —for a nine-year-old—confusing? And she said, “Because it’s about a girl.”
From time to time, in literary circles, there’s a dust-up after some (usually male) author makes some disparaging statement about female authors. There’s some back and forth about institutionalized sexism and “chick lit” and income disparities. And often, people who argue that women are all a bunch of whiny babies will point to J. K. Rowling as a success story. Hers is a great rags-to-riches tale, to be sure. But if we’re past the need for feminism, and everyone is judged on his or her own merits rather than on gender, then why did her publisher insist that she use her initials, rather than her first name, saying that boys wouldn’t read a book that was written by a woman?

My point is that if anyone tells you that it doesn’t matter, that the important thing is a “good story” and a “compelling protagonist,” that it’s only left-wing academic types who notice or care about the notion of a gender disparity—among protagonists or among authors—and they’re just creating a problem where none really exists…I’m here to tell you that (in our family, at least) it does matter. Kids do notice. Girls are hungry for heroines. And, if box office numbers are any indication, boys will go and see a movie about a girl, and they’ll even read a book by an author who uses her real first name.

By: Ann Brown

The thing about being pregnant for the first time is that as far as you know, it’s all about labor. The fact that an actual baby arrives at the end of it, and then you have to raise it forever, well, that part is just so unimaginable that it doesn’t exist.

Labor. Contractions. Breathing. Hee hee hoo. Hoo hoo hee. Find your focus spot. Yeah, yeah, whatev. I figured I’d get through it or die trying and either way, it was all all cool. Plus, for fuck’s sake, the Queen Mum had babies and she seems way detached from her lady parts so if she could do it, I could do it.

So, yeah. Contractions. I didn’t obsess too much over them when I was pregnant. For me, it was all about the pushing part of the deal.

Because of, well, you know. Hemorrhoids.

In my family, the word “hemorrhoids” is spoken in the same hushed tones as the words, “Holocaust” or “pork”. Hemmorhoids are feared and revered –the ultimate proof that Our People Suffer. And they are the Purple Heart of pregnancy, for sure. How much do you love your baby? Enough to have a prehensile tail of blood vessels hanging out of your ass for the rest of your life, that’s how much. Now give Mommy a big kiss and go to grad school.

Years before I got pregnant, years before I got my period, I knew that pregnancy brings hemorrhoids. I might not even have been sure at that point that pregnancy brings a baby, but through generations of ancestral knowledge I knew not to push.

My mom said, “It’s a conundrum. They tell you to push the baby out, and you want to, but you have to think about hemorrhoids and be careful.”

Sophie’s choice.

As my due date drew near and the baby’s room was readied and the birth plan was written (my first piece of fiction, come to think of it), I practiced my fakeout pushing. Never mind that no woman in the history of EVER has been able to fake push out a baby; no woman ever had the fear of hemorrhoids put in her like I did.

Remind me next time you see me to show you my fake, hemorrhoid fooling, ooh ooh I’m pushing the baby out face. All scrunched from the neck up; below the waist I am as loose as a bowl of overcooked linguine. Luckily my years of faking orgasms gave me a strong foundation in this ruse.

So, the big day arrives. I am in the labor room. It’s time to push. I know what to do.

But there’s an unforeseen problem. No one told me that it’s not that you HAVE to push, like someone is forcing you; it’s that you MUST push, like your body won’t take no for an answer. If you have never had a baby, the only thing I can tell you it’s like is when you get a dozen fresh bagels from the bakery and you have to climb into the back seat (where you put them, you know, to discourage eating them before you get home) during a red light and tear open the bag. And eat them all.

Which, coincidentally, was what I had eaten that morning before I realized I was in labor.

And so when I gave in to my primal urge that afternoon and pushed, pushed hard while Robin held my hand and gave me encouraging words that, frankly, aggravated the fuck out of me (“I couldn’t care less if you love me right now. Just get this baby out of me or go home and clean the house”), I knew that nothing – not even the dreaded hemorrhoids – could keep me from helping my baby be born. So I pushed with everything I had. I pushed so hard that all it took was, like, three good pushes and it was out.

“Boy or girl?” I asked Robin. Before he could answer me, I added, “and you know what? Pushing is not that hard. I don’t know what everyone complains about. I guess I am even more awesome than I realized.”

Robin looked at me with that kinda bemused, kinda disgusted at me face, the face he makes when I say shit like, “I actually look thinner when I gain weight because of, you know, the way my clothes fit me.” Only this look was less bemused and more disgusted.

“Well? Boy or girl? What is it? And why isn’t it crying?” Uh-oh.

“Well,” Robin said, “Because it’s a poop.”

What?

“You pooped. When you pushed so hard just now, you pooped. That’s what’s on the delivery table. A POOP.”

Really? Hunh.

“You still have to push the baby out.”

Really? Hunh.

So I did. And it was fine. No big whoop. And no you-know-whats.

The gift that does NOT keep on giving. Best Mother’s Day gift a child could ever give a mother.

By: Meika Rouda

I have been doing some research on a book I am writing and heard an interview with Nancy Verrier, the author of the seminal book “The Primal Wound” which made a huge impact in the adoption community when it was published in the 1990′s. I haven’t read the whole book, just parts, but my understanding is that all adoptees suffer from a primal wound since they were taken from their mothers at birth. This wound lasts a lifetime and manifests in many ways, like people feeling sad all the time because innately they are missing their biological mother. Or that adoptees have various personality disorders because they don’t know who they really are and spend their lifetimes seeking an identity. Often, according to her theory, adoptees have trouble committing to things like jobs or relationships and don’t have concrete opinions or likes and dislikes because they have no true sense of self. The adoptee will suffer from loss and grief their entire life.

This is pretty sad I have to say. But thankfully as an adoptee I don’t feel that way. What I wonder about her thesis is how the adoptee compares to those born to biological families. I know many kids born to biological parents who have no sense of self, tons of identity issues, lots of abandonment fears, and can’t commit to anything. So how are these traits solely attached to adoptees?

For the many adoptees who have difficulty processing their adoption and feel this primal wound, I am glad this book has helped them. And truthfully, I worry that although I don’t feel this way, my children may. I can’t protect them from feeling this, I can only help them accept who they are and show love and compassion and understanding for how they feel. When I read adoption books, there always seems like there is something broken about being adopted. Like what Nancy Verrier is saying, that unless you know where you come from, you can really never know yourself. You spend a lifetime trying to figure it out. Perhaps. But even when you do know where you came from, it is still a journey figuring out who you are. It seems that from the start, adoptees are at a disadvantage because they had the trauma of being separated from their birth mom. It breaks my heart to think of my children, quietly suffering everyday with this primal wound. I have often asked myself if there is a wound I am not accepting about myself, that I may be in denial about my primal wound but I don’t think that is the case.

Will my kids be the same as me or will they spend their lives longing for their birthmothers? This I don’t know yet and it worries me to think they will have a lifetime of suffering. But as humans we are wired in many ways; yes things that happen to us as a baby or child affect us and that doesn’t have to be negative, it can be part of our strength too. I am not convinced that biological families are always best for people. While it may seem pollyanna-ish, I believe in the spirit’s ability to heal and in human resolve. That love and understanding is a powerful antidote to any wound, primal or not.

By: Shannon Ralph

She is always hungry. Always. She is never tired. Or so she says. You know that is not true, however. When she gets tired, she gets these deep dark black circles under her eyes. So dark, in fact, that she looks like she’s been punched in the face. And she gets cranky when she is tired. Even more so when she is sick. You don’t want to be around her when she is sick. She will follow you from room to room loudly lamenting the unfairness of her lot in life. As a matter of fact, she is always the first one to point out any unfairness she comes across in life—actual or made up in her ever-working little brain.

She is beautiful. Perhaps I am biased, but I don’t believe so. She has a smile that lights up her entire face. She may be selective with who she will share that smile with, but when she gives you the gift of one of her gorgeous grins you sense that you have been given a true treasure. She has a giggle that comes from her toes. She also has a screech that can easily pierce eardrums from across the room. She is loud. Loud like no child I have ever met.

She is also shy. Painfully shy. She is unsure of herself in social situations. You want to reach out and grab her and hold and shield her from any scrutiny she might receive, real or imagined. But you don’t grab her and hold her. You know she needs to do this on her own. She needs to face these fears. She has to learn to be comfortable in her own skin. Really, that’s all you want for her. To be comfortable being the extraordinary child you see. The child she might hide from the rest of the world, but the child you are blessed enough to know intimately.

She is smart. Quick. She doesn’t think she is as smart as her twin brother because he is a better reader. Better at math. Better at picking up on things quickly. Sophie takes her time. She studies situations. She approaches a problem with a thoughtful diligence that you can only admire. She is careful. Mindful. You wish she would not compare herself to her brother. She has an amazing intellect. She has always had a way with words—a propensity for language—that is beyond her years. She devours books just like you did as a girl. You wish you had more time to read to her.

She is a cuddler. A lover. Even at five years old, she likes nothing better than to cuddle up on in your lap. She wants hugs. And kisses. And back rubs. She wants to put a cover over your head and make the world cease to exist except for a giggly little girl and her momma in a “tent”.

She is this amazing girl who is both 100% tomboy and an absolute princess at the same time. She is a phenomenon to behold. You are infinitely thankful that you are one of her inner circle. One of the few she allows to have intimate knowledge of everything she is. Everything she can be.

She is a wonder.

By: Tanya Ward Goodman

I woke up on Mother’s Day to find a note on my pillow. It read “Have fun!” and told me to go to my son’s room to find the next clue. I followed directions and found another note that advised “the love is ithin you. Find the missing letter.” I headed to my daughter’s room for the final clue. As soon as I popped my head through the door, she sat up in bed and shouted, “Get out!” I backed away quickly, but not before I heard the sound of paper being shredded. The last clue was no more. Today, love was going to say “ithin.”

While my husband tried to stage manage this current drama, I went downstairs where my son was engrossed in Minecraft on the Xbox. I’m pretty sure he gave a grunt that could be construed as a Mother’s Day greeting.

I have to admit to feeling a bit let down, but this lasted about three seconds and then I thought about how I could take advantage of the hysteria upstairs and the screen-related zombification downstairs and actually enjoy my morning. I poured myself a cup of coffee and opened the newspaper. After nearly ten years, I think I might actually be getting the hang of this parenting thing.

In what was a nearly unprecedented bout of alone time, I got through the entire New York Times Magazine, the Style section and most of the Week in Review before everyone turned up in a slightly better mood. My daughter brought down a box of cards and letters and signs and drawings that she’d been working on for the better part of a month. On every page were hearts and flowers and sweet words. My son put down his controller long enough to give me a potted plant and a great, big hug and then he came down with a fever and went back to bed.

This year, Mother’s Day for me included a lot of mothering. I mothered my feverish son and my daughter who was angry and loving in turns. But I also went to a yoga class and returned to a wonderful brunch cooked by my loving husband. I looked after my family and felt them return the favor. The love was not “ithin,” it was all around.

By: Kelly Rummelhart

Here I am. My first Mother’s Day as a single mom. So far, so good. Yesterday the kids and I went with my surro-best friend and her family to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom and today we are hanging out at the house until we join another friend and her family for an impromptu swim party.

All of my children made me a sweet Mother’s Day Card and the two youngest brought home items they created for me at school. My oldest was concerned about getting me something, so I told her I’d buy myself something that I wanted and she could say it was from her. She loved the idea- and I love the new hat she got me. I loved all my cards and gifts from the kids, just like every year. But more so, I love the TIME I have with my children.

One of the things I have learned in my new reality of single mom who has to share custody is not to take my kids for granted. For years I have had control and have been able to be with my children everyday. Now, with my ex deciding to leave our family, I am limited to the time I have with them. It has really made me change my thought process: quality, not quantity. In the last five months I have tried to make sure the time the kids are with me is not wasted. Knowing that I won’t have them on Wednesdays and Thursdays and every other weekend has really made me change the way I spend time with them. It’s actually a positive that has come out of this whole ordeal.

I love my children with all my heart and being.  A mother has been the most challenging and rewarding job I’ve ever had- I wouldn’t trade it for the world. With all this being said, I guess I should stop blogging and go hang out with my kiddos! So Happy Mother’s Day to all.

By: John Jericiau

It’s been twenty-four hours and my ears are still ringing. I have a headache and I feel like my body has been through extreme boot camp. Did I just complete a triathlon? Nope! Did I just climb Mount Whitney?  No, I just survived another birthday party.

Devin and Dylan are in two separate preschool classes, each with 20 or so classmates. Throw in a sibling or two for each of those classmates, and you’re looking at a birthday party every weekend! And that’s exactly what we’ve been doing! Private homes, public parks, indoor gyms, outdoor venues, movie theaters, and bowling alleys – you name it and we’ve been there.

Don’t get me wrong – most of the birthday parties are valiant attempts at a good time. The hosts of the party are the haggard, stressed-out looking adults with smiles on their faces that quickly go south at the first fight, spill, or injury. They’ve tried their best to have a range of activities, food, and prizes for the kids, while keeping the adults in the party comfortable, fed, and feeling stress-free for at least these two short hours of their day. Best-case scenario would be for the parents to be there physically but able to detach mentally. You want to make the parents who are present happy, because you are fully aware that at some point in the year they will be trying their best to make you happy too. As you look around a party you see some parents enjoying each other’s company as if they’re at a cocktail party munching on hors d’ouevres, while others are alone in a quiet corner curled up in a ball, trying to regain some sanity before their kid becomes their responsibility again.

Yesterday’s party was another good attempt at a fun time, but it was not for me. Even I was excited to go since it was at a place we’d never been, hosted by parents I really like, and celebrating the birthday of one of Devin’s closest friends as well as his younger sister, who Dylan really likes. I knew almost everyone there, it required very little travel time, and I was hungry by the 11:30am start time. The boys were in really good moods, and they looked sharp in their outfits.

Within the first half hour of the party I found myself making a mental note of the things I don’t like about kids’ birthday celebrations, since this one happened to have most of them. In no particular order, these include:

THE NOISE
I have never stepped foot in an insane asylum, but if I did, I’m pretty sure it would sound like this party. How can little mouths produce such big noises? You don’t realize just how loud the rumble is inside the place until you try to talk to someone next to you, use the phone, or call out to your child who has selective hearing anyway. The loudness of the children is only momentarily taken over by the shriek of a parent yelling across the room for their child to stop pummeling their classmate. You’re almost startled by the silence when you escape inside the restroom.

THE FIGHTING
Do these kids actually get along at school? Are they really friends? Most of them are not playing – they’re surviving! Fists are flown and toys are thrown. No one wants to share the mini roller coaster, and the box full of plastic balls – the one that’s meant for them to sink into like quicksand – becomes ground zero for an epic battle of the boys. Parents just naturally rotate at officiating these battles, depending on who is the closest. The curled up parents get a pass.

THE FOOD
I’ve learned that the only thing kids eat is gooey pizza from wherever delivers, and the only thing they drink is juice from an envelope that each parent must learn to pierce with a sharp straw that can also be used as a weapon in the fighting described above. Yes, most hosts provide sliced and diced fruit to fill in the spaces on the table around the pizza and drinks, but most of the fruit ends up on the plates of the adults, since it feels so good to eat fruit without having to prepare it ourselves. Besides the fruit, the parents find themselves eating things we never ever eat outside of birthday parties, such as circular pita bread sandwiches or cold cut croissants. Of course, most of us get our calories from finishing the slice of pizza abandoned by our child. We just can’t let food go to waste, no matter how bad it is…

THE PIÑATA
I’m not sure who made this a staple of the birthday party, but it’s a bad idea. More often than not the child swinging the weapon (I mean stick) trying to chop in half their favorite action figure or Nickelodeon character (and then will go home and mimic this with their younger sibling) has no clue how dangerously close they are getting to the face of the spectating children. More often than not a child will wander in the path of the swinging stick, while the parents freeze in fear and cringe until the inevitable happens. Finally the piñata will mercifully split, and out pours thousands of pieces of amphetamines and uppers (I mean candy and chocolate) that will never be divided evenly and will evoke more of the above-mentioned fighting and noise.

Don’t even get me started on the goodie bag, the cake, or the bacteria-laden cesspool of toys. I’m going to refrain from talking about the condition of the available restroom. Anyway, I really don’t have the time. I’ve got to get the invitations out for Devin’s birthday party.

By: Kerrie Olejarz

During our pregnancy we had people tell us that they would “help” us when we got home, that we would indeed need help.  I took this personally, as in “you are not carrying the baby so how can you care for it?”  Maybe taking it personally was my own insecurities and emotional challenges, but, regardless, I was quite fed up of being told we would most definitely need help.  I could understand these comments if we were expecting multiples, but we had a singleton pregnancy!  As we did it all on our own, with our simpleton minds and lack of uterine ability, in India we were proud and enjoyed every moment of it…then we came home. Despite the fact that we had spent four weeks alone in India and brought home a healthy and unscathed baby, we were still considered by some unable to do the task.  It was infuriating to me, and I know all new parents get unwanted advice, but for me, I waited and suffered 15 years, watching all my friends rear and raise perfectly healthy and normal children; therefore, I could do it.  The onslaught was like a machine gun, firing at full throttle.  It was emotionally exhausting, and to this day I am angry that I had been treated like a preteen mom who could not grasp the common sense of caring for a newborn.  Of course I have wonderful friends who I could lean on for advice, or to swap experiences with, and these are the friends that did not bombard me with advice -harsh “you must do this” advice.  The worst of it came from Mark’s side of the family, and at some point I assumed it was a cultural thing, and after many times addressing it and being ignored I threw in the towel.  I think in their minds they were doing it for the good of us and Cailyn, yet my emotionally damaged brain and heart were in complete and utter chaos.  How do you politely tell someone to stay the fuck out of your business when it comes to your child?  Thankfully this phase is over and we are on to a whole new phase, but this one is easier to deal with.  I think as new parents we should all have the right to do what we think is best for our baby, our child.  Before we had Cailyn, I never told people what to do with their children, and I would never bombard them with a flurry of “you are doing this wrong” crap!  If a parent chooses to discuss child raising issues with me, I feel this is an opportunity to have a civilized conversation and hopefully spitball some ideas and most importantly, walk away having learned something, or at least understanding where s/he is coming from.   I hope that our parenting skills have proven that we are indeed capable of doing this, despite having a faulty uterus.  I guess when baby number two comes along we will find out!  And to answer the title of this post; for DAMN sure we are!

By: Brandy Black

The wondrous age of four in which imagination runs wild and the world is a place where anything can happen.  Our daughter plans on sprouting wings, learning to fly, and becoming a fairy when she grows up.  She flits around the house with a new perspective as the days pass.  She believes that there is a tiny person named Siri in my phone that tells me what to do and where to go when my nails are getting sharp and it’s time for a manicure.

We got a robot last week, the Roomba. I knew this would be fun for her.  It rolls around sucking the dust off the ground, it might be my favorite toy yet.  Sophia named him Plex.  She asks about Plex each morning, where he is, what he’s doing, when he’s coming out to clean the house.  She follows him from room to room laughing and telling me when he gets stuck or bumps into walls.  I envy her innocence.

Some things in life require less innocence and rather an open heart.  Lately I’ve been noticing the kids add two moms or two dads into their game of house at school; a mom from Sophia’s preschool was telling me how nice it is that it doesn’t faze her children that their friends have same sex parents.  Why, even our President has decided to stand up for our right to wed.

The other day on the way home from school Sophia announced that she and her best friend Stacey are getting married and that their friends Johnny and Larry are getting married to each other too.  She told me that boys couldn’t have babies so she and Stacey will be having one for them.  I then did possibly the worst job explaining why their plan is slightly flawed.

“Well two girls, I mean women, can’t have a baby either. It takes a man and a woman.”

Right about now I was wishing Susan were there to fuck this up with me.

“What?” Sophia says with wide eyes.

Pause.

“You and Mom had babies.”

“Yes I know but we had a donor.”

“What?”

“Well it takes a sperm and an egg to have a baby and the little sperm meets the egg and they create a baby. A man has sperm and a woman has an egg.”

“Oh. So we need another girl to have a baby?  Three girls.”

“No, you need a man and a woman.  So if you and Stacey want to get married and Larry and Johnny want to get married, the best way to execute your plan would be to get sperm from Johnny or Larry and use either yours or Stacey’s eggs and than you can make a baby.”

Oh my God Oh my God, was I still talking?   What a mess.  I looked back at her to see if she was following and she said:

“Mama?  You know what I’m thinking about?”

“What?”

“Plex.”

“Of course.”

*I have changed the names of the children in this blog