Home of The Brave

I got home late from a Yoga class, but when I peeked in on Little One, She was still up.
She was pretending to read. But really, She was sulking.
I asked Her what was up.  She was upset because the school Basketball Game and Party was that night, and She was missing it.  And J and I didn't even CARE!
I had heard something about this event at some point in time and that's about all I could relate to this issue.
A hard part about Little One's new school being so far away, is that I am hardly ever there. I pick Her up at the bus stop, on this side of town, so I don't have much opportunity to interact with the staff or other parents, and gave up months ago on the PTA, so I'm pretty disconnected from the school as a microcosm.  The fliers She gets almost never come home on time, if at all.  They get colored on or torn up in games on the bus, or they sit in Her cubby before She remembers to pack them.  Sometimes I forget to check Her backpack.
I feel terrible about all this of course, so the Mama guilt kicked in right away.
I immediately checked my phone for the email about this event, and to our mutual relief, it was actually happening the next night.  I was reading the notice out loud.  They also still needed bake sale items and someone to sing to National Anthem at the big parents vs teachers basketball game.
Little One, who believe it or not has struggled with massive stage fright for a long time now, shocked me by saying, "Well maybe I could do that". 
"You would like to sing the Anthem for your school? For everyone?"
"Yeah....you know, mom.  I have some bad stage fright.  But...but I think...I think if I just go up there, and just give it a big try and like, go for it, you know...I think I could do it."  
I was so surprised, and so excited to hear this inkling of confidence from the Little One who somewhere around 6 hit the massive brick wall of realization that She cared what other people think of Her, that I instantly replied "Of course you could! That's just great! I'll see if they still need a singer".  And I sent that email right off.
*THEN I bothered to ask if She knew the song.*
How is it possible that the public school system, her family and friends, and J and I, have all so epically failed at teaching this kid the Star Spangled Banner?! Doesn't everyone know that song? I mean, the kid is American.  It should just BE in there somewhere.  Right?!
Nope.  She had never even heard of it.
So imagine my predicament, when I got an email the next morning, after I'd packed Her off on the bus, saying how happy the organizers were to have a singer, and to meet them at 6:15 sharp by the stage to get Her set up with the microphone.
Hmm.  I thought this over.  Sure, the reasonable thing would have been to politely withdraw the offer, seeing as how it would be hard for Little One to sing a whole song She'd never even heard.  But have we ever known me to be a reasonable person?  Nope.
This was an Opportunity.  I could hear it.  It was totally knocking.  And we also all know how I feel about those.  So here is the crazy thing I did.
I emailed the school, and said that Little One had "an appointment", and I'd be there to pick Her up.  In 30 minutes.  And then I did; I took Her out of school in the middle of the day.  She had an appointment all right.  With destiny, guys.
Ok, well.  With me.  An appointment with me, in the basement.
Little One and I spent the whole afternoon learning and practicing the Star Spangled Banner.  We listened to it on repeat during dinner, and all the way to the school.
We brought the music we'd printed at home, and shyly approached the MC.  He showed Her the microphone, and asked Her to say "testing".
She was horrified. She couldn't even look at it. Like a toddler, She hid Her face in my shirt, and wouldn't even speak.  The guy looked at me with the fear in his eyes of a man realizing he had made a terribly rash decision.  I smiled at him.  "We'll be fine.  Come get us when it's time, k?"  And I pulled Her outside.  She sang it for me twice, with all the right notes and words.  We went in and waited.
Finally She was called over, and we sat together at the front of the gym, while the bleachers filled and the players were announced.  She hummed nervously and every 10 seconds or so made a funny squeaking noise and pressed Her face into my neck whimpering "I can't! I just can't! I can't ever do this! Oh no. I can't do it!" 
"Whatever happens, just be confident.  Get up there and have fun with your great new song. You can do it." 
Her name was announced and She squeezed my hand tight.
"Oh no!"
She was frozen.  I picked Her up and set Her on Her feet.
She turned to run!
I put a hand on Her shoulder and looked as calm as humanly possible.  I was like a freaked out teenager trying to be cool. Heeey man.  No big deal. Nooo big deal.
I looked Her right in the eyes.  "Go for it." 
She looked right back at me. Took a deep breath.  And stepped up to the mic.
She looked at the many dozens of people in the stands.  Her teacher, Her fiends, strangers.  She looked at Her music.
And She sang.
She sang the first line beautifully.  After that, She got the words right, and sort of marched to the beat of Her own drummer with the melody.  But She never faltered or paused; She stood there and She sang it out.
The fans cheered.  She smiled.  She ran off to watch the game with Her friends.
On the way home, I told Her how I was so proud of Her.

"Really, mom? Even though...I got all the notes wrong." 

"But you told me that you were scared to do it.  You said you had 'stage fright'.  And still, you worked hard to learn this new song, and then you didn't let yourself down.  You got up there and you did it.  I always tell you to be brave.  Brave doesn't mean to never feel nervous or afraid, brave is to do what you have to do, what is right, and what you love and want to do, even when you ARE scared. Tonight you were brave. I am proud of you."

I am kind of amazed by Her.  I would not have been the least bit upset if She'd backed out at any moment.  But She never did.  How many of us would be willing to put ourselves out there like that? I'll be honest.  She's braver than I am.
It's true, pulling a kid out of school to teach them a song isn't exactly on the list of allowable excused absences.
But, I argue, learning Her national anthem is an educational activity.  And besides that, today She also learned how to overcome a fear.  How to work hard for something and not give up on it, how to do something She cared about without being stymied by what others might think of Her; how to be brave.  How to hear an opportunity knocking, and open up the door. Pretty good for a day's work, if you ask me.
Good work, my little American cutie pie.  You belong right here, in the land of the free.  Home of the brave.

Little One Turns SEVEN

Today my Little One is seven.  Seven.
It has been a wild year, full of challenges.  She moved to a new state/town/home/school.  She weathered Her father disappearing into residency and Her mother going back to work.  She had three health emergencies at school, including on picture day and Her birthday.  She lost three great-grandparents, a grandfather, and Her dog.   She switched schools again.  She started riding the bus, 2 hours a day.  She found out that when the year is over, She will switch again, and oh- also be moving across the world.  (More about that later).  She adopted a fish, took on gymnastics, piano, and swimming, and had a sweet baby brother morph into a 25 pound wrecking ball.  And she lost a bunch of teeth.
 Little One has dealt with all of these things in the Little-One-est way possible; with grace, resilience, and cheerfulness.  Little One, surrounded by challenges, peers out onto a horizon of endless mountains and sees a grand adventure in each one.  Her first instinct on facing any steep terrain in life is to find a foothold and start climbing.
As my little girl begins truly to grow up, Her innate drive to Try Hard is something I find so beautiful and inspiring in Her.  It's this adventurous, open-hearted spirit and willingness to go through the struggle of something new that has brought Her through to being a seven-year old who seems to excel at everything She tries.  It's because She tries, and tries, and tries again until She gets it.  I might want to be like Her when I grow up.  In the last year, Little One has covered a lot of ground.  She has:

- Done well in school, and been accepted into the accelerated STEM program at the magnet school that is practically in Siberia it's such an long bus ride from Her mother.  Ahem.

-Become a self-described "book addicted person", consuming books like a flame.  In the last year she has read the entire magic treehouse series, fairy series (good riddance), and most of encyclopedia brown, in addition to stacks and stacks of others.  She usually gets about 20 from the library each week, and burns right through them.

- Started gymnastics for fun and was invited to team-track.  Last week She completed a gym right-of-passage and climbed 20 feet of rope to stick Her name tag on the ceiling!

- Become super interested in robotics, and for Her birthday asked for "small motors, lithium batteries, and lots of scotch tape".

-Begun cooking meals and baking all by Herself.

- Gotten pretty good on Her bike, though not yet ready to let go of training wheels.

-Managed to keep in touch with friends from Her old school, and also make great new friends on the bus and at Her new school.

-Moved forward in swimming and with Her grandad's coaching learned to dive.

-Been a flower girl in both Her aunts' lovely weddings!

-Taught Her brother the alphabet song, and also how to Cha Cha slide.

-Grown tall enough to ride some of the rides at a theme park

-Taken good care of Her fish.

-Eaten probably several metric tons of sushi.  (should I not have put those last two in a row?)

-Realized that Her parents are not perfect (that one stings a little)

-Loved us anyways (at least so far).

-Loved all of us, actually.  All of of us in the immediate and extended family, neighborhood, and basically the world.  She loves the whole world.  She wants to take care of all the everyone.

Her Loves and Not-Loves:

Loves:
Sushi
Seaweed in any form
Japanese food in general
Hot Dogs/Tofu Dogs/anything called dog that gets ketchup on it
Home made bread and honey
French Onion soup
Ethiopian food
Brussel sprouts
Sugar.

Reading
Robotics
Pokeman (because the bus kids play)
Anything that ends with Her covered in mud
Traveling/visiting new places
Learning about Anything
Making Mister Laugh
Art projects and pretend with Missy
Chasing the boys
Riding the bus
Dancing
Cooking (French Onion soup is Her specialty)
Vegan Baking (Brownie Pie is Her top recipe)
Riding Her bike
Being altogether silly
Pigtails
Headbands
Sparkles/ruffles/fancy shiny anything
Sleeping/snuggling with Her sister

Not So Much
Mushrooms
Bell Peppers
The idea of cheese or eggs.  The look and smell and existence of them.
Sitting at the Peanut-free table at school
Missing Her dog
When Little siblings don't get the memo about Her being In Charge
The "frog" stretch at gymnastics
Playing with dolls/barbies
Scary movies or stories
Lights Out at bedtime (She would read until midnight)
Sleeping/snuggling with Her sister

Little One at seven alternates between being curled up reading, practically in a coma She's so still and  quiet and unaware of the rest of the world, and being a whirling top, cartwheeling through the living room, dancing in the kitchen, creating utopian worlds in the backyard with Missy, constructing 4-foot cardboard robots all over the basement, and asking ALL. the. questions.  About ALL the things.

She's at a fragile stage of growing up, wondering aloud if there's really such a thing as a tooth fairy, but not daring to think about applying the same logic to Santa.  She wants the freedom to wear Her crazy mis-matched outfits and to ride Her bike beyond our line of sight, but still wants cuddles and lullabies before bed.  She's beyond wanting us to read to Her, but still likes to read right beside us.  She thinks She should watch these movies Her friends talk about, like Star Wars and Jurassic Park, but hides behind me when Bambi's forrest catches fire.  Sometimes in gymnastics I watch Her, steadily stepping along the high-beam, and it feels familiar.  She's walking the line between a Little Kid and a Big Kid.

Knowing how close that era of Her life (and ours) is now, it's impossible not to look ahead, as a mom, and go breathless with the wonders and worries of the more complex years ahead.  But being around Little One helps me to keep from panicking.  Hanging out and chatting with Her, it's hard to imagine She could ever not be sweet, fun, and fantastic.  When I'm with Her, I see all those challenges ahead in the Big Kid years for what they are through the Little One lens- adventures waiting to be taken on and made into successes.  Mountains waiting to be climbed.

Seven on the Seventh.  A golden birthday! Happy, happy birthday Little One, my golden little girl.  We love you so much, and love going through all your grand adventures with you.  May you always climb with such strength.   

The Story of E

When J and I decided to adopt a friend for X, we wanted an older dog.  We searched and looked all over.  On our way out of the city shelter in Baltimore, there was a racket coming from a dark little side room.  The shelter volunteer let me go in and open the door of a medium-sized airline crate, jam-packed with puppies crawling all over one another, saturated in mud and waste.  Those poor little things.  Maybe I could just hold them a little?
The volunteer shrugged and led us to a visiting room, and dumped the lot out onto the floor.  J and I  played with them tried to comfort them, and then we went home.  We continued our search throughout just about every shelter and adoption event in the state.  Somehow we never found the right furry friend.  And somehow, we kept talking about those puppies.  Somehow, even though we had agreed not to choose a puppy- we ended up back in the same room, with the same puppies- the four left now that they had been made available for adoption.
They were all cute and full of personality.
Except one.
One didn't play and yip and nip and wiggle.  It didn't chase a toy or tackle our faces or chew our toes. It just cowered. It wasn't cute, either.  The runt of the litter, it was all black and had a body too small for it's head, which was too small for its ears, leaving it looking more like a bat than a canine.  It was painfully skinny and bony, mangy and scraggly with goopy eyes.  It had little scars and bald patches from being picked on by it's brothers and sisters.
It shivered by the door as J and I wrestled the tumbling roly-poly rest of them, and then slowly, quietly, so we didn't even notice, crept up, crawled into my lap, curled up, and sighed.
Oh my goodness.  J could tell by my face in that instant that resistance was futile.  She crawled into my heart the same time she crept into my lap.
E ended up in the shelter because her litter had been a "welfare seizure"- meaning they were forcibly removed from their first owner due to abuse.  Between that and being the bullied runt, she came with all kinds of problems.  Medical problems (mange, worms, mites, infections).  And psychological problems- terror at loud sounds, strangers, or long objects (brooms, mops, spatulas).

Refusing to go either up or down

The vacuum cleaner was the actual devil as far as she was concerned.  She would yelp and hightail it to what became her bunker- the exact center spot under our bed.  A passing motorcycle could send her there for the rest of the day.
She was hard to train because she couldn't stand raised voices or crates.   And you try getting a stubborn dog out from under a queen sized bed- it's like wrestling a rabid chimp while spelunking in a cave tunnel.
She had food issues to the extreme.  If I set out a full bag of dog food, she'd have eaten her way to the bottom until she actually exploded. We know this because she has eaten herself into violent illness every chance she's ever had. She'd inhale, engulf her food.  And she would eat anything.  We'd let her out to pee and find her tunneling into the compost pile, refusing to give up a half-rotten banana peel.
This got her sick all the time.  E throwing up became as normal as a colicky baby's spit-up- there was always something.  Once a neighbor threw chicken bones to her over the fence.
That ended in a week-long veterinary hospital vacay to the tune of a couple thousand dollars.
She got car sick. She hated to get wet.  She was afraid of dogs, squirrels, big rocks, steep hills, puddles, and everything else ever.
As she grew older, she drove us to insanity by growling at everyone who entered/walked by/drove by/made any audible sound from any distance.  At 45 pounds, looking like a sleek black german shepherd, she scared the bejeezus out of I don't know how many people.  Once she followed my grandpa around the house nipping his heels.  She always waited until no one was looking.  Poor guy had some dementia by then, and no one believed him for days until she got caught.

"Look at me I'm all friendly and harmless. Those feet look tasty though."

She developed a strange habit of picking out the weakest looking kid on the playground or person in a group, waiting until their back was turned, then racing over, nipping them in the butt, and darting away.  She was so stealthy, people sometimes would look around and think they had imagined it.
We sent her away to a trainer for weeks.  Not much changed, except our bank account.
But we loved her all the same.

As a puppy, neurotic and skittish as she was, she was so sweet, so affectionate.  She loved for me to rock her like a baby, to carry her around.  Even nearing 50lb, she always thought she was a lap dog at worst, a furry baby human at best.
Though we wanted a companion for X, he turned out to hate the idea.  The first thing he did when he met E was to bite her soundly on the nose.  Despite that, she adored him so constantly and gently that he finally gave in, and the dog who hates dogs would curl up to her to sleep at night.
E surprised us by becoming the quintessential loyal companion to all of our littles.  She'd fiercely guard and protect them from all real and imaginary threats.  She'd plays with them tirelessly, and was always, always there to snuggle. Ever since Little One was small, I'd look over in the yard and see Her draped over E like a blanket, suffocating her probably. Singing.  E would just lie there like it was the best day of her life, wagging her tail.


She's raised her hocks at every stranger, but never growled or snapped at our babies, no matter what.  She's patiently let them climb on her, dress her up, "wash" her, lead her around, tug on her ears, brush her, wrestle her, and take her toys.  I once was two steps too far away to stop Mister as He went up to her during her dinner, and curiously reached his arm inside her mouth- while she was chewing- and pulled out some of her food.  She just looked at Him, licked His hand, and went on with her kibble. 
She would never run away.  When we'd walk she kept her pace just at my heel.  She would do anything asked of her as long as she understood.  After nine years of being loved by us (even if she did drive J and I crazy half the time), she settled into being a really sweet, loyal dog.  To us.  To extended family, she finally got friendly, too.  To strangers, She would threaten death until J or I told her to back off.  Which frankly I was ok with. No one was going to abduct my Littles from the backyard while I get the laundry.   And she never, ever stopped loving to curl up in my lap.  It was her most favorite thing.  Except food.
Which is how we knew something was wrong.
It was actually Little One who knew first.
"Mom, sompin's not right with E.  Her tail's not right and her ears are all down.  I think she's sick." 
Little One and E have been best friends since day one.  They've spent the summer playing pirates digging for treasure together, being explorers racing around the yard, thieves stealing J's tomatoes for snacks, fairies learning how to fly.  (In fact I took her to the vet covered in glitter.)
Little One knows E like no one else.
After Little One's tip, I watched E closely.  She was acting droopy.  And, despite the fact that she'd been getting fat and the Littles had been getting scolded for feeding the dogs a lot when they weren't supposed to- she wasn't really eating much of anything.  X was eating her leftovers, and she hardly touched her bowl.
The more I thought about it, the more she didn't look fat, just weirdly heavy in the belly.  When my mom came, she agreed.  She urged me to take her in.  Knowing E, I assumed she'd eaten something she shouldn't have.  The Sisters came with me, and I joked,  "how much will it cost us to fix you up this time, silly girl?"  But it wasn't that.
It was a tumor.  The size of a small watermelon.  It was taking up her entire abdomen, squeezing her organs aside.  It was so big, it took a radiology specialist to ultrasound around it and find out where it was even coming from.  It was her spleen.  Apparently that happens, in dogs.  Sometimes.

All that white fuzzy stuff is her tumor

We were told there was about a 50/50 chance that it was either a madly aggressive and lethal cancer, which would kill her in short order no matter what, or a totally benign growth that could be cured by just taking it out. But if we didn't take it out, it would eventually explode.  Which would be a sudden, scary, awful thing.
We couldn't know whether she'd make it through surgery, or whether it would really help her in the end.  But I feel pretty confident, that if there were some different kind of emergency, and it came down to life or death for me or my family and E could decide?  She'd defend us with all she had.
So we sent her in.  Her heart wasn't beating properly, and medicine didn't help it.  But we decided to go ahead anyways.  Amazingly, she made it through.  A ten pound tumor was removed, she spent the afternoon recovering with her IV, and though she was wasted on whatever was in that cocktail, she drunkenly walked out of the hospital, and we brought her home.
She seemed to be getting better. She wasn't eating, but she drank some water, cuddled and nuzzled us, and refused to pee anywherebut the greenbelt down the street.  So we walked.
Missy drew her a "most specialist pictuh evah ba-cuase I love her to im-PIN-ity- and that's the muchest".  Little One read stories and sang to her.  Even Mister understood she wasn't well, and pet her gently, calling her name softly.
J came home from a night shift, and I'd just taken E on a trip down the street and back.  He was laying with her while I cooked.  The Sisters went to play at a neighbors house.  I've never let them do that before.  But today they were gone, just at the time J came running out of the bedroom, calling me.  There wasn't time to even dial the vet.  She started to breathe quickly, she kind of spaced out, and then...she stopped breathing altogether.
And now she's gone.
I'm so awfully sorry that she didn't have a chance to recover and feel better, even for a day.  That she was drugged up and had staples from her chest to her tail and never understood why we did that to her.  As her Person, I feel responsible for everything that lead to that moment, and for everything I could have done better for her in the last 9 years.
I think it's cruelty of fate for a little girl to lose Her dog two days before starting a new school.  I'm sorry for X who will miss his friend.  I miss the security of letting the Sisters play in the yard while I work, knowing E would be kind to them and alert me if any danger came near.  I miss the certainty of a cuddle and a greeting every time I looked her way.
But I'm glad that it wasn't as painful as it could have been.  I'm glad she was home, with her People right beside her.  I like to think that confused as she must have been, perhaps she knew we were trying to help, and that we loved her.
Which we did.



And we do.

Meeting Little One the day She came home

Best friends from Day One

Helping LO learn to crawl

Helping Her learn to walk

Meeting Little Miss the day She came home

 

Partners in crime

 She loooooved snow

All 3 too happy to get in trouble

Living The Dream

There's a thing about my job with this charity.  It's amplified, I think, by every heartbeat with which I truly believe in what I am doing, in who I am working for.  It's this inability to keep work and life separate, at all, because the two things live together in my heart.  They share real estate, so there isn't such a thing as moving from one to the other at the end of the day.
There's not such a thing as leaving anything at the office, because for one thing my office is my house, so I'm literally always in it.  But for another, the work isn't about place, it's about what's taking up space in my thoughts, in my heart.  I have a photo above my desk of the AFC kids when they were small.  It's tacked up with the little handmade cards and pictures they've given me over the years.  So that when things get hard, I can look up and be forced to remember why.
I read something lately about this "do what you love, love what you do" mantra.  I believe in that concept in a sense.  But it sounds so breezy, like doing what you love means you're just hanging out riding on endorphins all the livelong day.   That would be some strong kool-aid.
This past weekend we had a big fundraiser in Los Angeles, and there were so many wonderful things about it.  I had the chance to work with some really good people, to share a story and cause I wholeheartedly believe in.  The team there did a good job and people came and understood the mission and supported and that was great.
I also missed a lot of sleep, missed my kids, missed the only weekend J has off this month.  As happens in life, there were also glitches and issues and problems, and in the end I'm home still dealing with those things and I'm entirely exhausted.  I'm feeling a little defeated, discouraged, overwhelmed.  In all honesty?  I feel like quitting.  I want to pack up and go be a hermit on a mountain somewhere and stuff my fingers in my ears and sing "LALALA!" to just completely drown out the world.  I would bring a lot of chocolate.
Haven't we all had those days? Maybe not the hermit thing.  But days when it feels like your best is not enough? Like there's never going to be an end in sight where it will be enough? When we feel like quitting.
I feel about this job much the way I feel about parenting.  I love it.  I love it.  I love it deep down to my core, out my fingertips and toes and through the atoms of each cell in me.  I want to be here.  I asked for this, and I jumped for joy when it happened, and I feel it is my great privilege and honor and joy to get to do this with my one life.  I. Love. What. I. Do.
But that is the easy part.
The hard part is not the loving.  It's the doing.  It's the part where even when I feel like quitting, I just... don't.  It's the part where I'm so tired, in my body, in my heart, that I can't get out of bed in the morning.  But- for the things I love- I do.  It is rehashing the same issue with the same people on the phone for hours and hours when I was supposed to be at dinner with my family.  It's staying up all night going over the books and the math again and again.  It's telling my son for 500th time to please sit down in the bath tub.  It's cleaning the pee off the floor.  It's enforcing the rules when I'm too tired to talk, and wondering what I'm doing wrong that I really have to explain again why we don't jump on the trampoline with pencils in our hands.  It's laying down finally at one am and popping right back up to soothe a nightmare. It's stopping what I'm doing- even if it's something very important to me- to ooh and ahh over the leaf She found with the orange spots, because that's something that is important to Her.  The hard part is doing what I love.
No matter how big and how sincere my Love is, for my work, for my kids, for the people and things I care about, there are times I fail them.  There are times I feel like I have no business doing anything for anyone, and times I really think the hermit thing with the chocolate has got to be the way to go.  Things are hard sometimes. Even the ones I love. Maybe especially those.
I won't do everything right or take everything in stride, and I certainly don't expect to be kicking back with my kool-aid riding those perpetual endorphins anytime soon.  I'm tired and I have heartburn and someone else's snot is in my hair and I've been yelled at a lot today.  But when my alarm clock goes off in the morning, I'll will get up, and just start moving.
Because I love what I do, I do what I love. 

Birthday

Yep.  I had one.  

It was kind of hard to tell, at first.  Since J worked like 12 hours that day, and I spent it cleaning bathrooms and organizing the basement and covering my ears and rocking back and forth signing REALLY LOUDLY to drown out all the WHINING from the kids who were stuck in the house due to a mosquito invasion of apocalyptic proportions, and neglected due to the bathroom scrubbing and basement cleaning.  

As a special treat there was the insurance adjuster who came to assess my birthday present this year, which will be a new car door, seeing as how I smashed the other one into a wall.  Tricky, those walls! He knew it was my birthday, so he brought me a back-scratcher shaped like a bear claw.  Er.  Thanks..

He also tried to give me the gift of "hey, you're not that old" by giving me his number, and repeatedly telling me to call and text him, but not to tell my husband.  Or to tell him about the back-scratcher either.  And if he were my man, he wouldn't be mad at me for wrecking the car.  ('Don't tell your husband I said that').  And then after he left, he sent a few text messages and then came back, texting me from the driveway to ask if he could come in and borrow some duct tape.  Really? At which point I directed him to the furthest hardware store and went back to the basement, where it was less creepy.

The Sisters wanted to throw me a "party", which means they got out every piece of everything and flung it around the room, draping beads and scarves and, ahem, my bras ("they're so fancy!") from the furniture and lamps and taping stuff to the walls.  

Then, while I tried to wrestle a two-ton angry crocodile (or maybe it was Mister, hard to tell which was what that day) into a nap, Sisters decided to bake me a cake.  I guess the floor in there was white anyways, so whats a bunch of flour and sugar and stuff? Right?!

The whole gang of them wanted in on decorating it, too, so we got out- the sprinkles. Which, all the moms who shuddered upon reading that know, are almost as bad as glitter.  

J had offered to bring a birthday dinner home, but he got stuck at work until after bedtime, and couldn't text me until the children were already gnawing on their own elbows they were so hungry.  So it was microwaved tofu-dogs and freezer peas for dinner.  And wine.  For me. 

I re-wrestled the crocodile into bed, and stopped at the door to chuckle.  

Because I mean.  

This day.

This day guys! 

Then, guess what?

I walked back to the dining room, where I'd left the sisters finishing their dinners, and there they were. Grinning. With such a beautiful chocolate brownie cake, a banner that said "happy birthday mommy we love you so so so so much", a stack of handmade cards, and two gloriously decorated boxes.  

They sang to me.  

We had cake, and I opened the boxes, which they had apparently been hiding under their beds for weeks.  They were filled with little treasures.  

We chatted and laughed and I was showered in hugs and kisses.  

It was the best birthday ever.  

It was the first time that my children, all on their own, threw me a birthday celebration.  They worked hard and they did it because they love me.  

I realize that as I've aged and grown another year, so have they.  There has begun a great tectonic shift beneath the surface of our relationship, a change by which now, and more and more from now until forever, I not only take care of my children, but they take care of me, too.  

My children have always saved me, taught me, and brought me joy.  But now, they do it on purpose. 

On my birthday I realized, there is certainly a gift in that.  

Always

C: "Little One, can you turn on the light?" 

LO: "Um, sure, I think so mom."

She reaches, it's too far.  

She hops.  She jumps.  

Again and again, throwing Herself up the wall with Her fingers stretched waaaaaay up, trying to hit the switch.  

She's six, but She's little.  She's still so little, and the light switch is just too high.  

I watch Her a few more times, then offer, 

"Little One, would you like a little help with it?" 

She doesn't slow down.  She's jumping with all Her might now, running out of breath.  

"Just-a, few-more, times, mama-"

"Ok, love, no hurry.  Just let me know."

I look on as She jumps again.  Five times, ten. Twenty? I don't know how many.  

Then-  

She gets it.  

The light flashes on.  

She stops, panting, Her hands on Her hips, beaming as bright as the bulbs.  

I'm grinning too.  

"You did it!!"

Little One smiles, She wiggles Her hips in a little victory dance and chants, 

"Always believe in your self."

This is  one of the most beautiful things about being a parent.  Getting to witness these little moments, these trivial things, that are not little or trivial at all.  

Mary Had A Little Lamb

Mary had a little lamb. But Missy has a little dog.
Well.  Not that little, really, at 50 pounds, but Her dog seems to have other things in common with Mary's lamb.  Like being soft and fuzzy.  And wanting to follow his mistress to school.
We are lucky enough to live within walking distance of both Sister's schools.  Today Miss and I had dropped Little One off and were heading to preschool, when we were surprised at being charged by a big brown dog.  Who happened to be ours.
I told him to go home, at which he looked surprised, but turned to obey.  I watched him run across a green space and up a hill, where he made a valiant effort to get back into our yard through the hole he had dug under the fence.  He tried, but could't wriggle in.
So he just looked at me helplessly, a little guiltily, until I sighed.  "Ok then, X.  Come on."
He bounded over like he had just won christmas.
Little Miss, who had been complaining of the cold, of her feet being tired, of "please-carry-me-I-need-be-unner-yoh-ja-cket" was suddenly and miraculously cured of Her ills.
We backtracked a block to pick up his leash, and then he followed us to school.

X has never been a runner.  He is the dog who, as a puppy, stayed in our front courtyard during the day.  One day, a parcel deliveryman left the front gate open while J and I were at work- all day. When we finally got home, there was X, wagging his tail on the doormat.

There have been times he has jumped fenced before.  Always to get to the front door, where he waits expectantly to be invited inside, where he knows he belongs.

Until he developed a serious grouchiness with other dogs in his middle age, we never even bothered walking him on a leash.  He likes to be near his people.

The great tragedy of X's life was Little One's asthma.  Little One is allergic to dogs (of course).  A lick in the face gives Her a swollen eye that could compete with a bar fight injury.  She does pet and cuddle Her doggies, but always at the price of sneezing, wheezing, itching, and hives.  Dog time is always followed by wash time.
When She was three, She began to have serious trouble with asthma.  It was the dogs.
Numerous doctors have told us, in no uncertain terms, to "get rid of them".  But we couldn't.  Just couldn't.  So we tried everything; we restricted them to one part of the house, away from Little One's room.  We shaved their fur and bathed them every week, washed their beds every few days, vacuumed the house twice a day, and had HEPA filters all over the house.  Little One took a daily inhaler and a daily allergy medicine.
She was still needing Her rescue inhaler a couple of times a week.
So with heavy hearts, we built them a dog house in the back yard.  Within two weeks, Little One stopped having asthma attacks.  Soon She didn't need any of those medicines.  We couldn't argue with that.
So X and E became something none of us ever expected- outside dogs.  In Virginia they had reign over the yard and garage, but this house has no garage.  There is a storage room in the basement, and when we moved in it became the "dog room" for them to sleep in at night or during bad weather.
But just a few weeks in, Little One began having breathing trouble again.  Just having the dogs walk through Her playroom twice a day to get in and out was enough to affect Her health.
So we have converted the shed in the back into a behemoth dog house.  We fitted it with a dog-door, and they have their beds, their bones, their basket of toys in there.  They will have heated pads to curl up in when the weather gets cold.  But we still miss each other.
With the all-consuming life of babies and toddlers, we are sure they have felt quite neglected for some time.  But we've found a new turn of events now that the Sisters are six and three-and-a-half.
The dogs still don't get anywhere as much attention from me and J as they did before their banishment.  But, like all siblings in large families, they now get it from the other kiddos.
Miss and Little One play with them in the yard, throwing things for them, running with them, playing around and cuddling them.  They are now old enough to walk the dogs, holding the leashes themselves while I hold Mr, making their attendance possible on family strolls.  They seem to be reintegrating into the family in a new way, and the bond between the dogs and the children is pretty sweet to see.

It's why our otherwise well-behaved, never-been-a-runner dog X plotted an escape- to walk his girl to school.  It's why he greeted Miss first when he ran up to us.  And why he wagged his tail all the way to drop off- and whimpered all the way home.
Yesterday, Little Miss spent two hours in the back yard mixing mud and decorating a beautiful, elaborate "cake" for X, to celebrate his tenth birthday.

It's hard to believe it's been a decade since I held a tiny flop-eared puppy on my shoulder and whispered him a promise that I was taking him out of that county shelter and would take care of him forever.

Looking back over those years, I remember how he stood guard at my bedroom door every night when I was pregnant with Little One.  I remember how he herded her into the room with us when she was toddling around, how he he loved going down the slide with both girls at the playground and letting the neighborhood kids throw sticks for him or mob him to wash him together in the summers. I remember that time a foster puppy got out and I could not catch her- then I let X out and he rounded her up and shepherded her home.

X with the foster puppy he rescued

 
 There have been times I've watched a Little lean into his fur and cry quietly, and know that it helped them because I've done the same.  I remember the time all the houses on our row of town homes got robbed one night- except ours.  The time when J was deployed that he and E barked so ferociously in the middle of the night, and then the police knocked to tell me that a neighbor had seen a man trying to break in- who didn't.  I realize that while I've kept my promise to feed and shelter him, maybe he's the one who has taken care of me.
On the tenth birthday of the member of our family who was sort of our first baby, I maybe should have scolded my dog for digging a hole under the fence and wriggling through to chase us to school.  But I can't help thinking that he wasn't doing something wrong, so much as righting a wrong.  After all, he ended up right where he should be.
By our side.