For the last week (actually 12 days) I've been trying to get over a terrible cold. I've been suffering through it silently, dosing up on various cold medicines and praying to the Gods to kill me in my sleep.

It's tough to be a wife and mother when all I want to do is crawl under the covers and sleep for days. The housework has piled up. I have dishes in the sink, my son's toys are scattered all over the living room and I haven't had the energy to vacuum.

And trying to keep a certain 3-year-old occupied, in between blowing my nose and coughing up a lung, is pure Hell. Yes. With a capital 'H'. Add to that a meltdown of a preschooler and I nearly jumped from the second floor window.

My husband isn't much help when I'm sick. He tries to act as though he wants to take care of me, all the while staying as far from me as possible so that he doesn't catch what I've got. But as for helping with the housework? Only in my dreams.

That isn't to say that he doesn't do his fair share. He does, for the most part. But ever since I became a work-at-home-mom, the bulk of the chores fall on my shoulders. And then when I get sick he doesn't step in to help.

I can't figure out why. When he's sick, he acts like a big baby and I do the best I can to make things comfy for him. I take Dawson out of the house so he can rest and get over his sickness. But when I'm the one feeling miserable he tells me to suck it up.

Just the other day, as I was laying on the couch, sneezing and coughing, he had the audacity to ask me, "So, umm, are you going to get to these dishes?"

"Geez, I'm dying over here and that's all you can think about?" I asked. "I'll do them tomorrow when I feel better."

"What time tomorrow?" he snickered.

Now, I know he was trying to be funny. He's a comical guy. Joking is second nature for him. But he chose the wrong time to be Robin Williams. I flipped out.

"How can you ask me what time, when I've been sick for a week and a half and barely functioning? You stupid jerk!" I screamed. "What ever happened to that 'in sickness and in health' part of this marriage?"

I overreacted. I know that. It's just that there seems to be a double standard here.

When men get sick, they revert back to childhood and want to be taken care of. As a mother, and someone who nurtures, I don't mind taking care of my husband. However, when women get sick, all they want is someone to help them, but men act like the tough football coach and tell us to "Tough it out."

Do I have the right to be mad? Or am I just making a mountain out of a molehill?

Posted by Dana at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week as I sat with my husband Clint at my younger son's 5th grade graduation, I thought back to the road that got us here and how sometimes that road comes full circle in ways you wouldn't imagine.

My mind wandered back twenty years to that day when I attended another graduation celebration. I was hesitant to go because I was having issues with my friend who was graduating, but was talked into attending in the name of friendship. "Besides", my buddies who were taking me said, "you might surprise yourself and have a good time!" Across town from the celebration another group of friends piled into a car and headed towards the graduation fun.

As the party got started, I began to relax and was glad I came. It meant a lot to my friend and I was having fun. I only knew a handful of people there, but they were all fun. As the day wore on, a game of volleyball broke out. (Yes, I realize that makes it sound like 'a fight broke out' but, seriously, don't mess with me when it comes to volleyball. I will spike you.) A guy I had yet to meet was taking his turn serving. I have never seen a serve hit so high into the air. Ever. From the time he served until it actually came back down into any general location that it would be reachable by a human to return it, I could have had time to walk off the court, make a sandwich, eat it, wash it down with a Diet Coke and return to spike the ball. Serious hang time. Seeing as I have never been one to resist a good teasing, I completely started in on the HIGHEST SERVE EVER teasing. Grabbed a chair and everything. (Can you believe I could be such a smart alec?)

That guy realized he met his match and teased right back. He never knew what he was getting himself into.

That was the day I met my husband. The guy behind the HIGHEST SERVE EVER.

Twenty years later we sat holding hands watching our youngest son at his 5th grade graduation. Our eyes met and we smiled over our shared memory of that day two decades prior. We could not have imagined then that we would be sitting in an overcrowded middle school cafeteria/make-shift auditorium watching our child celebrate a graduation experience of his own.

Twenty years ago I met my husband.

Eleven years ago I gave birth to my son.

Today we came full circle--together-- from one graduation to another.

Continue reading "20 years ago. 11 years ago. Today." »

Posted by Jenn Satterwhite at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Change. Could there possibly be a better word to sum up your life when you become a parent? Perhaps chaotic? Unpredictable? Insane? Tired? Okay, there are many words that can sum up your life when you become a parent. All of them, however, fall under that broad umbrella of change.

Once upon a time there was a man and wife who slept late on Saturdays. They went on road trips with barely a moments notice. While scanning the paper, if they saw a movie they wanted to see that started in 20 minutes, they could pick up and be there before the previews began. That was the life of a couple without children. Small hip apartment that had breakable items that you didn’t have to step on tiptoes to see. A home that had televisions without fingerprints, walls without crayon marks, and carpets without juice stains.

Then came The Big Change. Certainly, among family we refer to The Change as Being Blessed with a Child. But don’t let that kind title fool you. The Big Change took a couple who was confident in who they were and shook their lives up like a snotty nosed kid frantically shaking a snow-globe he picked up from the half-off bin in WalMart. Except the “soft billowy snow” in the snow globe was in fact the neat little pieces of our lives that we had control over.

For a woman who loves sleep (and I mean LOVES sleep more than coffee and chocolate and even chocolate coffee), suddenly having a tiny person disrupting every aspect of sleep was unsettling. Going from a woman who believed that the only way one could survive waking up in the morning was if it was a gentle and slow waking up process to becoming a woman who now awoke to the blood curling chilling screams from a person that weighed less than a Thanksgiving turkey was as unsettling as it came. Change.

Before The Big Change, I was a woman who loved to spend time getting ready in the morning. I don’t mean that I insisted on having the perfect hair and make-up before going anywhere. I simply loved the process of getting ready. The long hot shower. The body lotion. The facial moisturizer. It was an entire process that was both feminine and luxurious. After The Big Change, I felt blessed if I took a shower at all. The days I did manage a shower, it was usually done so fast I barely had time to get wet. Gone were the days of luxurious primping. The days of “I can wear this. The spit up doesn’t show” have arrived.

I was never a woman who strived to have a home that was showcased in Architectural Digest, but I did enjoy having an orderly home. Orderly? The Big Change took everything orderly and tossed it out of my now fingerprinted window. How could a person who couldn’t even walk have so many toys and accessories? How is it possible that this person without the use of language could let me know that it was imperative that he have the latest gadget to soothe, calm and entertain him? I mean, seriously, I didn’t have this many toys for myself and I was the one making the money buy them! There was nothing that even resembled orderly in my life after The Big Change.

Before The Big Change my husband and I loved each other more than we could ever imagine. We had happiness. We sought out interesting and eclectic forms of entertainment. We shared laughter all the time. We had everything we thought we needed. Then came The Big Change. In the moment of his birth, we learned how to love more than we ever imagined possible. We learned a love that was unlike anything we had ever known. We watched that love grow not only for each other, but for our new life after The Big Change. We began to find happiness in the simplest things. Things that we used to overlook or ignore suddenly made us practically giddy with joy. For entertainment we found that we could just stare at this new little person in our life for hours. His tiny toes, his button nose, and his adorable little fingers could keep us enthralled for hours. Laughter? The first time we heard our little one laugh, you would have thought we were privy to a private concert with a top name comedian. We clapped. We laughed. We did everything we could think of to get him to do it again. We realized that now we truly did have everything we would ever need.

It took The Big Change to shake things up. It was The Big Change that made me realize that although the fear and uncertainty that came when our lives were shaken up like that cheap snow globe, it was also The Big Change that gave me the strength, courage and passion for life that I could never have imagined before.

And the beauty of it all is that The Big Change is never ending. Once we reach a milestone in the life of parenting, we are immediately thrust into a new and different Big Change. So, you see, I cannot really tell you how I adapted to a Big Change in my life. At least not yet. You see, with The Big Change, we are adapting daily.

Change? Seriously, it is the perfect synonym for parenting!

Posted by Jenn Satterwhite at 4:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night, my husband returned from a week-long business trip to Los Angeles. He travels much less than he used to. I secretly like the occasional trip, and in years past, I would take advantage of the change in routine to stay up to all hours, doing projects that I had been neglecting. Still, after a few days, I'm bored with the novelty of sleeping alone and keeping odd hours has lost its thrill, and I begin to watch the clock for his arrival.

As his return approached, I caught a good look at myself in the mirror. I was overdue for a 'night of beauty.' I checked the schedule. His flight wouldn't land until 9 pm - I figured I'd pretty myself all up after I got the kids to bed, and then lounge casually but seductively on the bed when I heard his car pull in. Heeeelloooooo, husband.

When eight o'clock rolled around, the kids were still not tired. At all. No. They were not. I decided that perhaps some vigorous exercise was called for, and turned on some dancing tunes. After five rockin' songs, they were still going strong. I, on the other hand, was laying on the couch, fanning myself and panting. Exercise gives some people a fine, rosy complexion. After approximately 30 seconds of aerobic exercise, I turn mottled red like Alien Nation and pass right through the dewy stage to sweat-circles.

This is not the 'pretty' I had in mind. Clapping my hands together, I turned off the tunes and marched the kids to the bath. I poured in a generous dollop of relaxing lavender bubble bath, and piled all three nuditos into the tub. They began cavorting and sloshing suds onto the floor from the moment the hit the water. Sigh. The floor needed a good mopping anyway. I threw a towel on the puddle, and turned my attention to my eyebrows.

The kids used soap bubble covered hands to reinact several scenes from the Spongebob Movie, ("Are you a goofy goober, yeah? I'm a goofy goober yeah!" followed shortly by chants of "I'm ready! Promotion! I'm ready! Promotion!) while I trotted to the other bathroom to fetch my tweezers.

I spotted the box of hair color on the counter as I grabbed the tweezers - I've been having my hair done by my stylist, but in an effort to quell our family spending, I'm going to color it myself until summer. I grabbed the box of color as well. Why not? I can get my head slathered while the kids are in the tub, and by the time I have them out and into pajamas, I can leap into the shower and rinse it off. See how smart I am?

I checked on my little porpoises in the next room, and then returned to bathroom #2 to do the stinky assult on my head. I snapped on the gloves, mixed up the stuff, and squirted and massaged and squirted and massaged and tried not to breathe or pass out. Ah yes. This is why paying someone else to color my hair was SO WORTH IT. I was excited about budgeting, forgetting the stink that is hair dye. Whew!

Unable to secure my coated hair in a neat french twist like the gal on the box, I sort of wadded my hair into a ball and wrapped a hair elastic around it. Stray strands whipped me in the face, leaving purplish, gooey stripes on my cheeks. I added a few barrettes to my 'do, and marched to the other bathroom to assess the damage wrought my the three amigos.

The smell of lavender did not seem to be having the desired effect. There were puddles everywhere, and the kids were busy slathering on full beards of suds and laughing. With tweezers in hand, I decided to go ahead and pluck stray brow hairs where I could supervise the kids.

I leaned forward on the vanity, standing on tiptoes, and placed my elbows on the countertop, nose a millimeter from the mirror in my short woman standing brow plucking stance. I made up cusswords, hissing under my breath as I yanked one, two, three hairs in quick succession. The fumes from my head mixed with the scent of the lavender were overwhelming, and I felt ill.

"Hey! Stop splashing!"

"Sorry, Mooooom." Slosh, splash.

Sigh.

I returned my eyes to the mirror. Grabbing a burly hair near the bridge of my nose, I yanked. It snapped in half. I regripped near the root and yanked again. Holy crap. It's a bleeder!

I made a grab for a tissue, and pressed it to my forehead, cringing as a rivulet of blood snaked down my nose. "Huzzuh muzza bumble shigga" I muttered. A glance at the clock showed that I had five minutes before the hair color could be washed out. I got a fresh tissue and left it pressed in place, a curtain of white dangling from my forehead as I gathered towels for the kids.

No one wanted to come out. There was a mighty protest, and as I struggled to pull the beasties upright to rinse them free of bubbles, my head was splashed. The tissue fell in the bath, I felt hair dye running toward my eye, and I had both hands engaged in my toddler's armpits.

I dropped her back into the bubbles and lunged towards the towel rack, blotting my face and leaving a nice smear of purple goo and blood on the white towel. I moved into hyperdrive, and managed to get all three kids rinsed and into towels and herded towards the living room for a show while I wondered what horrific damage I was inflicting on my scalp as the 30 minute mark passed by.

I threw pajamas at the kids and ran to the shower. Rinsing the color out in record time, I leaped from the shower to find my kids, completely nekkid except for their towels, sound asleep on the couch. I struggled them into pajamas, and carried them to bed.

Then I poured a big glass of wine.

I had about 30 minutes before my husband would be home. I gave up on the eyebrows, and mopped up the soap suds in the bathroom. I started a load of laundry, and pulled on my funny striped long-johns. After drying my hair, I crawled into bed and figured I could still try to be seductive, but the 'beauty' just wasn't going on. I was snoring, loudly, when my husband got home.

Ah yes. Cleopatra can just move the heck over. Jenny Lauck is in the house.

Posted by Jenny Lauck at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

When my husband and I were first married, we lived in a 2-bedroom apartment that felt like a castle. It was ours alone. We even had a spare bedroom! After that lease was up, we decided to move to a smaller apartment because the $495/month rent was rather steep. We went smaller. Cheaper. We didn't need a lot of room for just the two of us. It was in one of these tiny, cheap apartments we affectionately referred to as Our Shoebox that we found out we would be having a baby. A new person to bring into our cozy home. He would be so small and it isn’t like he would be doing many activities. How much stuff can one tiny person have? We saw no reason to move. We were fine where we were. It took about a day to realize the error of our thinking.

We were using standard mathematics and logic when it came to this new little person. What we should have been using was the Parental Addition of a Child Chaos Relativity Theory. That sounds like a complicated, but truly, it is quite simple. The theory states that for every child you bring into your home, your chaos and clutter will increase a minimum of ten-fold whereas the amount of space you have as a couple will exponentially decrease. It’s a proven theory. Look it up. Better yet, ask a parent.

Now that my husband and I are outnumbered three to two by our children (four to two if we count the dog—and we do), we have completely given up on having any order or personal space to call our own. They win.

After a completely hectic and overwhelming child-centered week, I approached my husband in exasperation about the entire situation.

“What are the possibilities of converting our garage into an apartment?”

“Why would we want to do that?”

(Sometimes the sheer limited thinking he has is mind-boggling.)

“Think about it. Let’s just let the kids have the house. I mean, it is their stuff all over the place. Their mess. I went into my closet for my slippers yesterday and find a child. A CHILD. They’re even in my closet! We’ll never win, you know. We will never gain the upper hand on homeownership again. We just pay the bills now. But! We can just move into the garage and they will never know!”

“What do you mean they will never know? They’ll find us, you know. They will find the apartment and will take it over as well.”

He had a point. I began to pace the floor and think. “I’ve got it!” I shouted as I pointed towards the garage. “We tell them that we are working in the garage. That it is hard work. Manual labor. With no pay. We tell them that we could really use their help with chores in the garage. We actually invite them into the process. We emphasize the work part and the hard part. Especially the free part. What child would go within 20 feet of that place?”

I began to see the exciting possibilities flicker behind his eyes. I knew he was coming around to my way of thinking. “And the cars? Won’t they notice that we never put them in garage anymore?”

“As long as we are hauling them around town at their whim, they don’t care where the cars get parked. They just want to make sure they get to their next big destination.”

That night we sat in our bedroom and giggled as if we were a young newly engaged couple planning our future. We created floor plans and planned on how we would decorate our new apartment. We envisioned the parties we would throw, the lazy mornings that we slept late then read the paper in bed and the freedom we would have to trip over our own shoes and not theirs. The next morning we awoke to the sound of children fighting, the dog barking and one of the little people screeching for a pair of socks. We glanced at each other and sighed as we hit autopilot and started our day. Both of us grinning, though, as we passed the door to the garage.

We have not given up the dream of having our own place. (Would you?) If you need us, check the garage. I am not saying we live there or anything, though. Why? What have you heard?

Posted by Jenn Satterwhite at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Picture a dim, candlelit dining room stuffed to the gills with people, and practically exploding with noise, movement, and quasi-organized chaos. People are crammed around the table elbow to elbow, like sardines. The air throbs with a life it’s own. Like a cross between the warm heart of a mammal, and a pulsing wound. Although hard to distinguish in all the chaos, if you listen carefully, you can pick out the noises of clinking glasses, people talking over each other, the crunch of a nutcracker, requests to please pass the salt, please pass the wine. Cackles of laughter. You might hear a faint choir singing in the background.

You look up just in time to see a discarded, jagged lobster claw fly just past the end of your nose as it’s tossed onto a bowl with the rest of the pieces of exoskeleton. Part of you wants to lock yourself in the bathroom to steal a silent moment and shake the noise from your ears, but if you do that, you might miss something, and you desperately don’t want to miss anything. Someone is pressing against the back of your chair, trying to wedge and shimmy through to the kitchen, and under the table, an animal is stepping on your foot. Your left knee is being jammed into the leg of the table. You are trapped. Wedged in like the plastic cubes of the game “Don’t Break the Ice”. You pray that you can hold your bladder until the end of dinner. You make an offhand comment that is met with peals of laughter, and your face warms with pride and unexpected self-consciousness.

Have you been transported in time to some medieval feast? Surrounded by hungry heathens, bumped by people rushing to the vomitorium? No. You are having Christmas Eve dinner with my family, thank you very much.

My Methodist grandmother on my mother’s side married my grandfather, who was (gasp) Catholic. At the time, it was considered quite the scandal. Her own mother refused to attend the wedding. A decision she later regretted deeply. I imagine my grandmother found the traditions and rules of Catholicism to be a little foreign and odd. She was an amazing cook, and had a taste for the finer things in life. When she learned she that it was not acceptable to prepare meat before Christmas day because of lent, she may have been disappointed. She loved a good roast beef. Chicken was apparently considered gauche at the time. My grandmother loved an excuse to put on a fancy dinner. The strange no-beef rule left her no option for dinner on Christmas Eve other than lobster. The tradition stuck, because… well.. who doesn’t like lobster?

So every December 24th, twenty or so people congregate at my parent’s house in the middle of the coldest, most landlocked state in the country. The state of Minnesota, practically smack dab in the middle of the entire continent. On what is close to the darkest day of the year, we order fresh lobster from a thousand miles away, and sacrifice them in the name of Christmas and by default, Catholicism. We squash ourselves around the table and try to talk over one another. The decibel level in the room is directly proportionate with the amount of wine consumed.

At a certain point your mind starts to shut down from over stimulation. It gives me a small amount of insight into what it might be like to be autistic. To sense so much going on all the time, that it becomes too much for the brain to process. Your mind becomes fragmented and your sentences are blurted out randomly. Much like a conversation between children. “My dad’s a Fireman!” to which the other party replies “I like cookies!” and the first person responds “My goldfish is named Freddie!”

This is what Christmas Eve dinners are like in my family.

My husband is one hundred percent Dutch. His family is even larger than ours. When we have dinner at their house, the scene is much different. People take turns speaking. There are silent moments in between conversations. Pauses. People pass things around the table in an orderly fashion. People don’t crack jokes during the blessing. The only thing tossed at the table is the salad. For some reason, things aren’t typically spilled. It’s all quite civilized. And it’s a nice way of doing things.

I am glad that my daughter Madge gets to experience the best of both worlds. When I spend time in one atmosphere, I tend to long for the other. The pendulum swings from unrestrained chaos and joviality to peaceful celebration and reverence and back again. Two lovely variations of the theme of family at Christmas.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Blame it on the wine. Or on the strawberries and whipped cream. The husband and I were feeling a little amorous last night. We snuggled while we sipped our wine. We played footsie and I got my backrub. Things were looking, uh, up. Canoodling was on the agenda.

"Mama!" called my oldest. "Sssh! Maybe she'll go back to sleep," said my husband, sotto voce. "MY PANTS ARE WET! WAAAAAH!" came the cry from behind our locked door. "Hold that thought," I said with a sultry glance over my shoulder. I grabbed a beach towel and a clean pair of pajamas, and got my daughter calmed down, dry and back in bed.

Whew! As I turned the lock on our bedroom door, I heard a plaintive wail building from the baby's room. Oh, no.

Oh, yes.

"Sssh! Maybe SHE'LL go back to sleep," said my husband. Hope springs eternal in Husbandland.

"You're so good at getting her to settle, babe. You try," I whispered. He stood up and moments later reappeared with my howling
youngest, who had bubbling green snot and a full diaper. A new diaper, new pajamas, a face washing and a dose of decongestant later, she passed out on my husband's shoulder. He quickly returned her to the crib and jogged back to our room.

"So, where were we?" he winked. At this point, I had passed over the good wine buzz, and was feeling deflated. As my husband reached to foot of the bed, we heard the dog scratching on our bedroom door. "Go away, Donna!" we both ordered in a stage whisper. We sat side by side on the end of the mattress, straining our ears into the quiet of our house.

After a tense minute, my husband turned to give me a kiss. With our lips mere millimeters apart, we started to laugh. And we kept laughing, through my son's midnight quest for water, and my baby's second and third waking of the night.

I guess this is what they call Natural Family Planning.

Originally posted on Three Kid Circus on August 20, 2004

Posted by Jenny Lauck at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

When the geek movement first arrived in my life, I did try to resist it. When my husband Clint had a BBS before we got married, I still vowed to love him in spite of the geek factor being blown off the scale.

I resisted becoming a geek.

Oh sure, I logged on, got a great user name and chatted with the other users, but I was NOT a geek. Honest. And yes, I did go with him to the sysop get togethers. (But man, those geeks can drink!)

Yet, I resisited becoming a geek.

After Zarek was born in 1995 I became a full fledged insomniac. Clint's answer? Show me the internet. Teach me how to navigate the World Wide Web. Our conversations went something like this:

Me: What do you mean I can find a website on anything I want?"

Clint: "Just type anything you want to know in that box and it will take you to that website."

Me: *typing* 'anything I want to know' *SMACK to the forehead* "Ohhh, you mean type the TOPIC of what I want to know?? Like if I type 'coffee' I can read all about the different brews?"

Not only did I find coffee related sites, I found PARENTING sites! And JOURNALS! And CHAT sites! (I could suddenly chat with anyone, anytime!) I really did have something new to do with those middle of the night sleepless hours. I was going to like this new Internet thing. (Thanks so much, Al Gore. I heart the Internet!)

Yet, I resisted becoming a geek.

Years passed. I set up a few different websites of my own. I discovered IRC and went to real live get- togethers with these people that I met in *gasp* a chat room. I joined an awesome online Moms groups when Gabriella was a newborn. Even starting my very own blog in 2003 didn't bring me to the realm of full fledged geek. It didn't matter that I wrote on the internet. Or that I actually learned HTML. Even the fact that I knew what people were talking about when they spoke geek. I wasn't there yet.

That moment arrived a week or so ago. It was in that moment that I realized not only had I arrived in the World of Geek, I just may have to try to be their queen.

Clint was in the family room with his laptop doing something geeky online. I was in the bedroom getting ready to call it a night when I had a moment of inspiration. I grabbed my laptop and (giggling like I am being a bad girl) sent him a very suggestive instant message asking him to meet me in the bedroom.

I struck a pose and waited...

...and waited

...and waited.

Perhaps my IM was too suggestive and not blunt enough. Fine. I can do blunt. So, I decide to send him a steamy IM that was in no way shape or form questionable about what I was talking about. Dirty words and all.

I struck a pose and waited...

...and waited

...and waited.

Nothing.

My first thought is, 'Oh my god! What if I IM'ed that to a friend or worse my Dad?!' In a panic I double checked and was relived to see that I had not propositioned either.

Then I got pissed. What the hell is wrong with me that my own husband isn't responding to a very blatant invitation? It then dawned on me that maybe it wasn't his fault.

I grabbed a robe, stormed into the family room hand on my hips and demanded, "Do you or do you not have porn blocking on your instant messenger?"

Stammering, he replied that he did and then proceeded to try to figure out why he was in trouble for NOT having porn on his laptop.

"Nevermind," I sighed turning on my heal and leaving with a pout.

Back in the bedroom, I gave it one more shot. This time it worked.

Can I just share something with you about propositioning your spouse through IM, though? It really does lose something when all of the "dirty" words are spelled with an asterick smack in the mid*dle of them.

Originally posted on Mommy Needs Coffee on January 29, 2005

Posted by Jenn Satterwhite at 6:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)