love and loss

I wrote the following post over a couple of days, before I received some terribly sad news today. When I got home from work this afternoon, I opened my in-box to find an e-mail from our pastor to the whole congregation. If you live in the Fargo area, as I know a few of you do, you may have heard that a pedestrian was struck and killed there today as he was walking along a road. That pedestrian was Mike Schr*ock, a long-time member of our small church. He was struck by a car and killed as he was walking from his hotel to his mom's house in Fargo, where he had been visiting with his family to be with his mom after his Dad's own untimely and unexpected death. The Sund*seth family members that were on the Boundary Waters trip we took a several years ago might remember meeting him when we ran into him and another couple of church men portaging on a lake in the middle of nowhere along with the church's middle school youth. He was the blond guy with the huge grin that yelled, "Heeeey! Min*ke!" when he first spotted our group. Mike and his wife Erin had two kids in college. He was young, and healthy, and full of life, full of commitment to God and to his family, full of love for the outdoors and soccer and probably lots of other things I don't even know about. They are an incredibly close-knit family, and a big part of our church. I hope that we can do a good job of supporting the family in the ways that they will need us to. It is just so unbelievably sad, I can't seem to wrap my head around it; I just kept wishing I could shut the computer and start over and have that terrible message not be there. Our pastor is with the family. I am also a bit concerned for her, as she herself lost three members of her family when a boat capsized less than 2 years ago. This must bring an awful lot of very difficult memories back for her. The world doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense today, but I do believe that Mike is with God.

Since this post has a lot in it about how much I love my kids, I suppose it isn't inappropriate to post. Just know that I also dearly love my husband and the rest of my family, and that I'm grateful for every day they are a part of my life!

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Oh, I am so in love with my kids right now. They are an awfully big handful at times, maddening even, but my goodness, are they sweet, and the conversations they have with us and with each other just kill me. They are kind of obsessed with rhyming right now, and poems are a favorite. They nonsense rhyme everything, and when they hit upon a real rhyme of two actual words, they are delighted with themselves. We are one language-obsessed family, it would seem. Besides that, what I especially love lately is watching these little glimpses of maturity start to emerge. They can be very polite sometimes, with us and with strangers, and I can’t help but think that this unprompted politeness might become more frequent in the future. Whether it was the 15^th or the 16^th million reminder that did it, we’ll never know, and maybe it’s fleeting, but whatever it is, it’s wonderful and an added reinforcement to our efforts to teach them some manners. Sometimes a stern “no tantrums!” while looking a boy in the eye actually works, before I lead him to the nursery and tell him to have it there or not at all. And the sweetness—these little glimpses of emerging empathy that catch me by surprise and make me swoon with a mixture of pride and relief. I hadn’t realized what a joy this would be—to see your extremely self-focused two-year-old suddenly be able to put himself in another’s shoes a little. After a few years of intense one-way empathy, it is like water in the desert to receive an “it’s OK, mama, let me kiss it for you” after stubbing your toe.

This age, combined with certain issues of temperament, definitely has its difficulties, and I’m pretty darn sure they’re not going to magically go away when they turn 3 in a few weeks. As I was reminded yesterday, when we had to swim in a different pool because the leisure pool at the Y was unexpectedly closed, the boys are fairly good at remembering the rules and sticking to them, but they still lack the ability to reliably generalize a set of rules from one situation to another. At this age, it’s still more about rule-following than actual good judgment. They know, for instance, that they can’t climb in and out of the leisure pool or run on their way into it, but in the new setting, it was like starting all over. It’s easy to forget that and get into the trap of assuming that they should just “get it” and behave in a new situation without our outlining our expectations. Our Early Childhood teacher says that this is a real benefit of the maturing three-year-old, having that ability to generalize from one place to another better. I can’t wait. Hopefully the boys will be a bit further along in this a few months from now when we take them to the Netherlands.

I think O is really only starting to hit the tantrum phase, and my goodness, can he pull out all the stops sometimes. He had a tantrum last week that left him hoarse for the whole next day. We ignore him completely when he does this, since his tantrums are pretty clearly of the attention-seeking, I waaaaaan’t something sort, and I’m pretty sure that’s helping keep his fits to a minimum, as he’ll often stop when he realizes we’re not paying any attention to his drama. Nonetheless, they’re still happening some no matter what we do or don’t do. This may get better once he’s better able to manage getting through the day without a nap. When he’s better rested, he’s really very charming, all smiles with a sing-songy way of talking that cracks me up constantly. O loves structured group activities, the very thing that tends to be hard for N, and for this reason, we’ve enrolled just him in a tumbling class at our neighborhood rec center on Mondays. He loves it, and hams it up for the whole class with his enthusiastic dancing and competent somersaults. It is such a joy to watch him thrive in a setting like this when he used to have a hard time with gross motor stuff before going on preventative asthma medication. Now he’s not only running well, he’s actually quite good at the stuff they do in class. J and I take turns taking him, and get to then spend some time alone with once boy each week.

N, for his part has an intense need for control that isn’t all part of being two – by now it’s pretty obvious that this is a part of his temperament. He really doesn’t like change or uncertainty, and he deals with that by becoming rigid and resisting transitions. This tendency isn’t always obvious while he’s in the midst of whatever new or different thing, but he tends to fall apart later. At times, this can be very challenging to deal with for both J and I, but we are learning. We’ve been even more consistent with him—this is just absolutely essential with N—and trying to make sure that we don’t throw too much new stuff at him at once. With N, a new person and a new place would be a double whammy that’s guaranteed to leave him upset and difficult to manage, so we would never, for instance, have a babysitter take him someplace he’s never been before. As he gets older, we’ll do our best to help him learn some strategies to deal with change and transitions, and even now, we try to get him to stretch his comfort level and learn to become more flexible. I predict that preschool may be a rocky adjustment for him at first, but the small, nurturing place we’ve selected should be a help with this too. I think that having two full years of preschool will be good for him in learning to better handle transitions and change within a group before the demands of kindergarten.

N also has so many strengths—he’s very imaginative, expresses himself well and clearly, and learns easily. If he’s in his element, he’s generally a delight. He has a tendency to overly direct his brother, and O isn’t putting up with much of that right now. O put up with N’s bossiness without much complaint for months, so this has been a bit of a blow to N’s sense of how things ought to be between them. Sometimes he’s using some great language to try to negotiate with O, and it’s a lot of fun to watch them try to figure it out. He’ll say “O, maybe I will have that in a minute, OK?” About 5 seconds will go by, and then N will say, “O: It is almost a minute, I think.” Two more seconds go by. “OK, it is a minute, so I need that now, please.” O usually relents, but sometimes he runs away. When they fight, it usually amounts to some verbal sparring (and O tends to know exactly how to get N going, telling N to his horror for instance, that he not only wants the yoghurt in N’s bowl, but also the yoghurt in his tummy that N already ate!) or some pulling at a toy they can’t figure out how to share. They thankfully don’t get terribly physical with each other, and their motivation to get along and play together is larger than their frustrations with each other by a long mile. What’s changed recently is that they’re able to really hurt each other’s feelings. Along with this new skill is a realization that they don’t really want to hurt each other’s feelings—part of that emerging empathy—and sometimes they’re very sweet in trying to make things right with each other. The other day, they spent about ten minutes just cuddling together on the couch, giggling and hugging.

One area where our boys are very different is in how they give and prefer to receive affection. I remarked to J the other day that O seems to need as much affection as he demands and N seems to need as much as he puts up with. O demands and gives a lot of affection. I don’t mind that at all—it’s pretty easy to cuddle O whenever he asks for it, and he’s a sweet little hugger and kisser. He’s not usually whiny about it. N’s needs are a little harder to meet. I know instinctively that N needs lots of hugs and reassurance too, but N’s intense need for control often trumps his drive to ask for affection. I’ve always been fairly conscious of this with him, making sure we cuddle when we read books, that I pick him up for hugs and kisses, or rub his shoulders when I talk to him. If I don’t do those things, it shows – he starts pushing at me with his head, or getting wild and uncooperative. Finally, though, at almost-three, he seems to be maturing enough to ask to have his needs met when he wants affection, and this is a bit of a relief. When I drop him off at MOPS (which isn’t easy for him because it’s two whole hours only every other week, not quite often enough for him to really get comfortable with the routine), he tells me he needs two hugs and a kiss, and that the second hug should be a really, really big one. No problem—I am so proud of him when he takes care of himself in this way instead of just getting tense and falling apart later.

Every night now at bedtime, he says quietly, “rock me a little minute”, and we rock in the rocker in his room for a few minutes while I sing him a hymn or two. To be able to do this, I put N in his room after story-time and tell him I’ll be right back, go upstairs to put O down, and then come back onto N’s room, at which point he’s usually sitting on the edge of his bed waiting, sitting on his hands with his little legs swinging back and forth. This time together is so special for both of us, his whole long-limbed body draping over me as I sing to him, both of us relaxing at the end of whatever kind of day we’ve had. The boys are getting so big, barely both fitting into my lap together at story time, me having to regularly remind them to move their heads further apart so I can actually see the book. These might be the last months I ever rock a child of my own at bedtime, and I’m happy to oblige. Since he rarely naps now, O has been asleep within minutes of his early bedtime, but he just wants an “extra-long-big hug” while sitting on my lap, his head on my shoulder, arms around my neck. Somehow, the time of day that was very difficult a couple of months ago (and still often is, until we get everyone into pj’s) has become one of the best parts of my day.

Since the boys were about 18 months old, I’ve said the same thing to them as they clamber up onto a knee each, ready to listen to the 3 or 4 stories and several poems we read together before bedtime each night. I say “this is the favorite part of my day, sitting here with my boys”. They love hearing it, and wait for me to say it or remind me if I forget. Last night, as I was rocking N, he said, “this is the favorite part of my day, rocking here with my mama” and then giggled at his own cleverness. My heart melted into a puddle on the floor, and I’ve been trying to put it back where it belongs ever since.