Accidental Blogging

So this is how this occasion came to be. I had just sat down with what few moments I believe I have left (before she wakes up from her nap) and I decided to check out my favorite bloggy peeps. As I was clicking onto what I thought was my "cool blogs" heading under Favorites, I accidentally clicked onto "Blogger". D'oh. I was immediately filled with dread and remorse. I came so close to closing the window before it could fully open, but then I just decided to go with it. Blogger immediately reminded me that I haven't posted anything since April 2nd. Sheesh. That was like...(counting on my fingers)...a really long time ago. So, here I am. Accidentally blogging.

Life is full these days. Full and good. Thor's so brilliant (seriously) that Floyd and I have realized our job is simply to prevent hurdles and to pave the way for her brilliant self to carry on. She speaks (English) very clearly in 5-6 word sentences, she can sing the ABCs (L,M,N,O,P are a little garbled, but they are for me too), and she's newly fascinated by numbers. She's joyful, healthy and appears to love us as much as we love her...which is a love that is greater than anything I had ever imagined possible. She putters about the house and yard, singing songs, washing rocks, smelling flowers and pushing the boundaries with Jezebel, our cat. She sleeps through the night and, apparently, is becoming increasingly comfortable with napping at home (she's working on 2.5 hours this afternoon). We are blessed in a way that just never seemed possible. Actually, she makes the future seem possible...and that's a new thing for me.

I think I better go rouse her lest bedtime be too much of a chore. I'll leave you with a few recent photos. I hope you're all enjoying your summer!

Two

Thor turned two years old today. The day started out like most any other day these days. She wakes up crying at about 6:50 or so. Her father and I went in, opened the shades a bit (not too much), and wished her a Happy Birthday. We then gave her a couple of books and left her in the crib while I went back in the bathroom to continue getting ready for work and her Dad went downstairs to get her breakfast ready. After finishing up, I went back to her cribside. She was playing and chatting with her stuffed animals...quite content. I asked her if she wanted to get up and she pointed at her bottom and said “poo-poo” in the sweetest voice you’ve ever heard. So I scooped her up. But before rushing off to the potty, I took a little moment with her. I held her in my arms, bouncing gently, and sang “Happy Birthday” to her...for the first time ever. Just then a starling came and perched in the tree outside her window and I explained that he had come to sing her “Happy Birthday” as well and she said “Yea!”.

Reluctantly, she let me dress her all in pink. A sweet little jumper that Nana and Grandpa bought her before we went to China and the pair of pink and flowered Mary Janes that we bought at a little shop on Shamian Island. She was a vision. A little pink cream puff of a vision. I say reluctantly not because of the pink but because anything you want her to do, she will refuse to do....apparently on principal. Sometimes we reason with her (don’t you judge me), sometimes we divert her and sometimes we just wait it out. It all depends on the situation. I’d like to think we’ve got a few tools in our toolbox, but that’s just plain foolish. She hid our toolbox a long time ago.

We were reflecting this evening how it was just four days ago that we estimated about 10% of her responses were “no” and this evening we seem to be up around 98%. It would’ve been 100% were it not for presents and cupcakes. Somebody must’ve slipped her the two-year olds instruction manual when we weren’t looking.

For breakfast she ate ½ an apple, ½ of my banana, some soy yogurt, half a piece of toast and some juice with her medicine mixed into it. She still enjoys her breakfast just like she still enjoys most foods; however, she’s definitely becoming pickier. She’s turned from fish (bummer), only picks at green things (normal), and is just plain fickle with everything else...except for rice. She LOVES the rice. Can’t get enough of it. Wild rice, brown rice, jasmine rice, Arborio rice, clumped in the bottom of the pan cold white rice...shoving it by the fist-full into her gaping mouth. She’s quite adept at the use of utensils; however, we haven’t found a utensil yet that is both safe enough and large enough to shovel it the way our girl likes it. Does Williams-Sonoma make a table-top front-end loader? The picture here is of Thor enjoying her berry smoothie. Scrumptious, non?

After breakfast we headed out. Papa’s sick so he stayed at home, while Thor and I headed downtown. Mornings are pretty easy. She gets in the car seat without a problem, she’s excited to go to “school” to hang out with her friends, whom she calls by name, she sits and stares out the window at the bicyclists, the river, the buses, the cars, naming things and chatting away. She’s now talking quite a bit. Of course, never when you want her to (remember – she’s training us, not the other way around). She’s used a few four word sentences so far. Her last one was “No more mammo tookies” (translation: no more animal cookies), which she said in a despairing way. She mimics everything we say now, so no more cursing. And she remembers words....from days ago. We have to listen hard because many of her words don’t sound like how we would pronounce them, but we’re getting better at it. Conversations often go like this:
Thor: “Deeda meemo car.”
Pause...
Me: “Is that an animal car?”
Thor: “Nooooooo.....”
Pause...
Me: “See the movie star?”
Thor: “Noooooo.....”

...and so on.

When we get to her daycare I’m in a huge rush because if I dillydally I’m going to be late for a meeting so, of course, she decides that now would be a good time to go to the potty. Sigh. So I take her to the bathroom where she decides, after inspecting each stall, that she definitely does not want to go potty. So I take her back to her room, where she decides that she definitely does not want me to leave and that she definitely needs ME to take her to the potty. Sigh. So we head back to the bathroom, set her down on the wee-size potty, and she pees in the potty...like a champ. Papa and I haven’t changed a poopy diaper in well over a week now. In fact, Papa’s giving her a bath and putting her to bed as I type this and I just heard the ecstatic “Yea Thor!!!!” that lets the neighborhood know that our daughter has just gone poo-poo in the potty. She’s even taken to congratulating us on our similar accomplishments. It makes for a happy household.

As I leave her at daycare she’s hugging one of her many friends. She still the tough girl and will sometimes shove a kid or steal a toy, but now I can say, “Gosh Thor, that wasn’t nice. Maybe you can give Nicolas a hug to make him feel better.” And she’ll do it. Big hug too. Not one of those fakey, pat on the back kind of hugs. Mother Effin Teresa I tell ya.

So I get to the office, make my meeting, make millions of dollars for my company, and I’m back to pick Thor up after her nap. She, of course, was the only one up. Every other child was sleeping like a log and Thor was tossing about contentedly. When she saw me at the window, her face lit up like a....like a...like a kid who’s really really happy to see her Mama. And having that face made in response to seeing me? Phew. It makes me feel a way that I will never ever be able to describe. So I pick her up and, like when she’s really happy to see me, she held the sides of my face, gave me a good look, a big smile, and began patting the sides of my head. She’s got a way of making me feel pretty darn good.

Then we’re off to the zoo. It was a rare, crisp and sunny day. I bought Thor some alligator sunglasses. We saw sea lions, and hippos, and we shared an elephant ear on the grass. She had sugar and cinnamon all over her face. I almost licked it off, but decided against it. I think it was a combination of the number of people around us and the de rigueur wire of snot that’s usually lurking about.

As would be expected, things kind of went downhill after the sugar bomb. She climbed in and out of the stroller, ran like a cheetah with her Mama chasing after her dragging the shitty Chinese stroller, and grabbed handfuls of the pebbles lining the floor of the African aviary.

At closing time we headed back into town, bought some candles and “mammo tookies” at the grocery store and stopped at our favorite Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. Papa and I were going to make Chinese food, but we realized that our evening would then be spent cooking dinner rather than spending it with Thor. So, instead, we ate nummy Mandarin eggplant, kung pao chicken, stir fried green beans and mounds of sticky rice. This could be the makings of a tradition.

When I asked Thor if she was ready to open presents she looked at me and said, emphatically, “Yes!” (first affirmative of the day I believe) and she sat down on the rug in her “ready to open presents” position (she’s been getting a few presents over the last six months – I’m thinking it’ll let up after this). We videotaped a relatively stoic present unwrapping session. You see we hit a little snag when we got a cool toy that was lacking batteries, then the batteries we put in didn’t work and then...yea, the moment was lost.

But we regained momentum when it was time for the cupcakes. That was when I heard the second affirmative of the day (btw - when did she learn the word cupcake?). Anyhoo... we sang “Happy Birthday” and presented her with the glowing flames representing her last two years on this planet...and she blew them out. How did she know to blow them out?! She was with us when I blew out candles on my birthday in China, but, man, there was a lot going on at the time and I can’t imagine she’d remember that. I think we’ve been to one other birthday party where she watched somebody else blow out candles...maybe?....or maybe automatically extinguishing a flame is one of those beneficial traits passed down from our ancestors on the Serengeti. Who knows...


But then she put her face down in the cupcake. And that was about when the evening ended.

Our little girl is two. She can no longer go in the “under two” section at the children’s museum. I’m glad she was already bored with it. It’s one of life’s little milestones, after which there’s no turning back. She’s sleeping soundly now. I hope she had a good day.

The Diaper Diaries

Here's a picture of Thor. I think she's wearing a disposable diaper in this shot.

About a month ago we went to our friends’ house for dinner. They have a beautiful little girl about the same age as Thor. We were excited to see them again, meet their daughter and eat their food, but we had ulterior motives. They’re way ahead of us on the waste reduction curve and they were going to give us the “straight poop” on the whole cloth-diapering thing. Floyd and I had been diapering Thor with disposables since we met her. Yes, they were the Seventh Generation, chlorine-free ones, but still...I absolutely hated tossing those into our can every week. Hated it.

So they showed us how to do it. They showed us how to fold the Chinese tri-fold, they showed us which covers they used (Bummis – cost effective AND effective) and they showed us their fancy-schmancy diaper pail and smell reduction system. The whole diapering system was in their daughter’s room (with adjoining bath). I didn’t see one poop stain or smell anything nasty. At all. They even opened their pail and I practically stuck my nose IN it to smell anything that reminded me of human waste. It was a very clean and efficient operation. It seemed so simple we thought even WE could do it.

The very next day, with my new-found knowledge and boundless optimism I went to the sweet little diaper depot (which are almost as ubiquitous as Starbucks around here) and I purchased what I could to get us started. Cloth diapering does cost more initially, and I wasn’t ready to commit, so I just bought what we needed to get us started on a trial basis. I bought the fancy-schmancy, stink-tight diaper pail, one Bummi wrap (they were out of stock), one Nikki wrap (because they didn’t have any more Bummis), a ½ dozen bleached diapers (which was a woefully inadequate amount), and BacOut (which controls smell and stains in a non-toxic and eco-friendly manner, qualifying its inventors for Saint status). Thor and I literally skipped out of the store, both very very confident in our new diapering strategy.

Alas, our confidence exceeded our expectations and things just went downhill from there. For the first several days, we were changing Thor’s pants every time we changed her diaper. We were having leaks every single time. Fortunately, I found a few more covers at home (hand-me-downs from a friend) and I tracked down some more tri-folds so that we could persevere. We tried different folds (at the advice of another cloth-diapering friend) and we made sure everything was all tucked into the cover. Yet our home was starting to smell like pee. Oftentimes after just ½ hour I’d notice leakage and when I went to change her, discovered the diaper wadded up between her legs. The urine was obviously either soaking through the diaper cover at that stage, or leaking out around the legs. I considered withholding liquids...

I went back to the original diaper store and pleaded my case with her. What could we be doing wrong? She went over the same, original folds and asked lots of questions about which covers might be worse, better, etc. (we had no data on that). She did point out that we had only washed the unbleached diapers once before we started using them, so it’s probable they weren’t effective yet (unbleached diapers need to be washed SEVERAL times before they’re effective – something to do with waxes in the weave). I told her about the wadding up between the legs and she said that shouldn’t happen. She mentioned that Thor might be a “heavy wetter” (?) and that some kids were just like that. She then suggested I change her more often (But every ½ hour?? Come on.). When I left the store this time, I felt much less optimistic and actually kind of downtrodden. There was no skipping.

How come everybody made it look and sound so darn easy? It was so important to us to make this work, but we were spending too much time on clothes changes (I started thinking of Thor as our own little Vanna Wh!te) and laundry, my hands were drying up from washing the covers all day every day and, importantly, our home (and our daughter) were beginning to acquire the faint smell of urine. So. Not. cool. But our only option was to give up, and when I thought about that I thought about disposables. And when I thought about disposables I thought about how bad I had felt when I rolled our garbage can to the curb, loaded to the gills with plump excrement dumplings....then about how good it felt to glide our now lightweight, mostly empty can to the curb. I suppose it was this thought that kept us going.

So we washed the diapers again...and again...and again, because that’s what you do, and we started using doublers every single time, rather than just at nap and bedtimes. We change her MUCH more frequently, but certainly not every ½ hour. We have learned that our daughter probably is a heavy wetter (whatever that means) and that the wadding-up between her legs appears unavoidable (even with frequent changing). We’ve come to expect leaks at least once or twice a day, but we rejoice when we don’t have to change her pants. There have only been one or two occasions where we didn’t have to wash the cover with a changing...so we wash lots of covers. I think the diapers have gotten better (more absorbent) with more washings and we’ve jettisoned a couple of the hand-me-down covers that probably weren’t effective any longer. And, most importantly, the improvements to the system have eliminated any lingering odors in my home AND on my daughter (I really didn’t want her to be the one that smells like pee).

The upshot is that we’re still learning, but we’re making it work. It’s important to us. Surprisingly important actually. I told a friend that I was cloth-diapering (I won’t lie, it was as a lead-up to bitching about it) and before I could say more she just looked at me and asked, “Why?” I quickly responded with, “Because it’s the right thing to do.” I don’t mean to be smug about it, but I do think it’s the right thing to do. I care about the environment and I try to make an effort in every other aspect of my life to reduce waste...so why not this one? And it does make me feel pretty darn good when I can see (and feel) the difference that I’m making when I roll that can out to the curb every week.

Our lives have certainly changed with cloth diapers. I would say that, with cloth diapers, I flush the toilet about 2-3x more per day than I would otherwise (I only need to flush when it’s a poopy diaper and, because our daughter is nicknamed “The Refrigerator”, I’ll let you imagine what those poops are like) and I do about 2-3 extra loads of laundry per week. It takes a bit more time per diaper change, but usually not much (poopy ones require more time). Obviously, I’ve never been so intimate with human waste before but you get over it. I just snap on my big, yellow gloves when I have to take the plunge. Other than that, nothing’s changed. Oh, there is the whole feeling smug thing, but that dissipates pretty quickly when I pull on my big, yellow gloves...

Gettin' 'cited

I’ve been back in the States now for...I don’t know how long. Even after thinking about it, I can’t tell you if I’ve been here for two weeks, three weeks or four. I just don’t know. Coming home has been good in some ways. It brings me closer to Thor. I have been able to do things in honor of being a Mom. Things like shopping at Target and BabysRUs (or however you spell the blatant misspelling) and the baby section at Ikea. All monumental things when you’ve been living on a tiny island at the edge of civilization (literally and figuratively) for a couple of years. I’ve been making decisions for the house and planning a nursery and spending time with good friends. All the good stuff.

But being home has also been like smashing my face into a brick wall...really hard. I basically walked off the plane and into my office and I have been at the office almost the entire time. I come home (the rented, furnished apartment) to sleep. I work and work. I work so much I haven’t had the time to buy what we need for our trip to China or even think AT ALL about that beautiful little girl waiting for us over there. In response, I have cried and stressed and screamed, but I continued working. Because that’s what I do.

This past weekend I didn’t work because we had very very very special guests in town, of the Alternative sort (also known as the kind, generous and beautiful sort). And over the weekend I realized that I will disappoint people when I leave for China. I will leave work unfinished because I took too much onto my plate and was not realistic about what I could reasonably do in a such a short period of time. I let my needs, my family’s needs, fall to the side and I went to work with a pitbull’s grip. And then I was miserable. I was trying so hard. All the while knowing that, ultimately, I would be making no one happy. Most of all myself.

People ask me if I’m getting excited and I look at them, with my eyes sunken into their sockets (I’m not sleeping well either), and I explain that I haven’t had the time to be excited. I just haven’t had the clarity of mind or the space for that kind of happiness. And that makes me sad. Especially because I have no one else to blame.

So I’m coming out of it now. I’m taking ½ hour to blog this morning because I want to memorialize this time in my life. The time before Thor. The changes I’m considering...and making...as I make way for the little God of Thunder. I’m picking up my husband and my cat from the airport this evening and I will experience big joy. I AM feeling excited about that. I will then have 3 of the 4 puzzle pieces in one place, with only one wee one to go. That is very very exciting.

And then we go to China. We leave on Saturday morning, get there on Sunday PM and meet Thor on Monday AM. In less than one week we will be meeting our baby girl. Holding her in our arms. Touching her cheeks. Stroking her palms. Offering her Cheerios. Looking into those giant, almond eyes. We will finally experience that moment, and all those moments afterwards that we’ll call life. We will finally be really living it. In it. Not planning for it, or trying to convince others that we’re worthy of it. We’ll be living it. In our home. With our little girl. With our cat. With each other. All of the pieces in one place. FINALLY!!!

OK, now I’m getting excited.

No Crescendo

Last week we found out that we have been approved by the Chinese government to be Thor’s parents. Holy crap.

The approval came in the form of our Letter of Acceptance or Seeking Confirmation (LOA/SC). This is the most coveted of documents in China’s Waiting Child Program. It’s like getting your referral in the traditional, or non-special needs, program. Essentially, it’s huge. It means they have reviewed our files, reviewed our petition to adopt Thor, reviewed Thor’s special needs and deemed us good and fit parents. Holy crap!

There is now nothing but a few simple pieces of paper and a few thousand miles standing between us and our daughter. Holy crap!!!

We are thrilled, yes, but I’ll be honest with ya’. There are a lot of other emotions going on as well. And some of them have nothing to do with rainbows or ladybugs.

I don’t like comparing the process of adoption to the process of giving birth because they are very different on many levels. I have felt uncomfortable when listening to people make comparisons because it *sometimes* sounds like a desperate attempt by a potential adoptive mother to FEEL pregnant or to validate (for her or for other people) the connection to her adopted child and, in doing so, implying that being pregnant is better than adopting. And I don’t feel that way.

Therefore, it feels very strange to admit that I feel like Thor has been growing inside of me since the day I laid eyes on her. I have grown to think about her constantly. Every move I make, every decision I make, absolutely EVERYTHING that I do, I do with her in mind. Everything. I look at her face and not only do I know, intellectually, that I’m her mother, but I FEEL like her mother. I didn’t start out this way, but I’ve become this way. I can sense what her skin will feel like and what her little hands will feel like. I can see her running across our floor. I can feel her on my lap, and I sense her concentration as I read her a book. I can almost...almost hear her cry.

So I think I’m ready for this. Heck, I know I’m ready for this. But I have to tell ya’....I’m scared shitless.

Going back to the birth/adoption comparison, women give birth to an infant. A little, tiny creature that takes up very little space, sleeps most of the time and cries little cries with little lungs. Thor, on the other hand, will be 18 months old when we she storms into our lives. Very different story. They’re all different but, generally, toddlers take up more space than their small frames can account for, sleep only when they darn well feel like it, and have a loud desire to make sure people think you’re the worst parent in the world every time you step out into public. People give birth to infants so that, by the time they’re toddlers, they have learned how to parent this creature.

I just finished a book entitled “Toddler Adoption – The Weaver’s Craft” by Mary Hopkins-Best. It’s a great book that describes some of the trials that adoptive parents can expect when adopting a toddler, and how they might address these “issues”. I won’t go into the “issues” here because many of them are scary. Like really really really scary. Due to the objective of the book, she doesn’t spend much time talking about how wonderful your life will be after you adopt your little one. It’s all just plain scary. Yes, she presents effective tools for addressing these “issues”, which I am thankful to know about, but that doesn’t take away the scary. Just because you know you can repel vampires with garlic, doesn’t make them any less scary -OR- knowing that George Bush will someday be out of office, doesn't make him any less scary. So, obviously, that’s where this fear is coming from. (I love what people are thinking right now...”Oh Lord! She’s comparing her daughter to the undead! – please.)

Adopting a toddler feels kind of like a trial by fire. It’s not a slow build-up, or crescendo, to the maelstrom. Rather, you just start there.

I’m excited by my new (umpteenth) on-line group for parents of toddlers adopted from China. I’m sure I’ll find one or two kindred spirits there. I need to talk to people who understand the fear that their daughter will be repelled by them, who understand the isolation when nobody in your circle of friends can relate to your situation, who understand the rages and the grieving and the frustration and the night terrors. Who understand this particular kind of scary.

Inter-Continental

An internetty friend over at China Calling suggested we post a Google Earth image of where we live. Cool idea! I love Google Earth and we've had some fun playing around with it in the past. So I thought, hey, I'll post satellite images of our Irish home, our Portland home, our property on the eastern flank of the Cascades, and the City in China where Thor lives.




The interesting thing was this...you know how when you type your location into Google Earth and the image "flies" from one place to the next? Well, as I flew over vast stretches of land and giant oceans to get to each place I started feeling knots in my stomach. Anxiety. Almost a cold sweat. I started to feel, well, a little spread out. I felt an overwhelming need to pack up shop, go grab Thor, return to our nest and never leave. Ever. I suddenly needed all of these things that I love to be very very close to me.

And then I looked at the scale of things. Look at our Ireland home at 7,500 ft (obviously not a lot of demand for high res satellite imagery to, say, count sheep). We are one of the little brown dots near the top of the screen. Let's just say it'd take a while to walk down to the store to pick up a loaf o' brown bread. Yet, look at our Portland home at 3,500 ft. Ack! Houses upon houses upon streets upon freeways upon Plaid Pantrys. Then compare this to where Thor lives in China, viewed from 35,000 ft. Even at this elevation it's poor resolution because, well, because it's China. Gazing at that image I can almost hear the noises, the shouting, I can almost smell the warm, dank, choking air. At our cabin you can hear the wind touching the leaves. It's amazing to me how different these places are.

I suppose, though, that when you bring it back down to a human-scale, it's all about home. Floyd and I have "homes" in several places (does that sound pretentious or what?) and we've been traveling so much over the last couple of years that we joke about the concept of home. Where is home? We've taken to saying, "Home is where the Jezebel is" (Jezebel being our cat). Now that we've added Thor to the mix, I'm thinking that home is wherever she is. So here are some pictures of our "homes" on a more human scale. Thor's home? Well we don't really know what it looks like, but this image is certainly closer to the truth than any of those other doorways.




So it looks like I won't really feel at home until we've got Thor and Jezebel taking naps under the same roof (sigh....).

I hope she plays the drums.

This may be hard for some of you to believe...but I think there are some people out there who don’t think of me as a Mom.

I know, I know. I can hear you all saying,

“No!”

“Say it isn’t so!”

“Get outta town...and take your tent!”

I know it sounds preposterous (I say calmly as I wipe my hands on my floral-print apron), but I’m sure that’s what some are thinking. And I don’t blame them.

If we just step back to, like, the dawn of time. I was a Type-A workaholic and my participation in my few outside interests was basically dictated by how I felt after going out on the piss with my peeps on weekend nights. I rocked at my job, I dated drummers and I got tattoos.

And then I met Floyd...so I didn’t date drummers anymore.

As I’m writing this I’m finding myself wanting to make the argument of WHY people might find it hard to see me as a mother and HOW I’ve evolved and WHY I will be an amazing mother. But I think those topics are superfluous to what’s really eating me right now. I think I’m most interested in people’s expectations of what a mother SHOULD look like, SHOULD act like, and how a mother SHOULD behave.

Now, in all fairness, it’s 7am on Saturday AM and I’m not prone to having great, deep thoughts at this hour (nor at any hour for that matter)...so I’m just throwing this stuff out there, because I need to process.

I think that many people of my generation might view their own mothers as non-traditional. I think the 60’s may have been the first time that women had run shrieking from the June Cleaver model of motherhood en masse. My Mom was one of those women. While she was a very young mother in the late 60s I think she was relatively conservative, but still quite non-traditional. She focused on her career, she dated (no drummers that I know of) and I don’t think I ever saw her bake. Our family time was ordering pizza on Friday nights and watching Barney Miller (or Sunday night’s Dance Fever with Deney Terrio). Not very traditional, but good. And I wonder what sorts of opinions she had to face regarding her parenting methods and I think about what opinions ALL mothers (and mothers-to-be) have to deal with.

It seems that one of the really cool things about being a Mom now is that we have, comparatively, many different role models for motherhood in the media. Being a great mom is really “in” right now. There are loads of images and stories about non-traditional mothers raising their conspicuous families in pretty non-traditional ways. It’s awesome really. Yet, while it may not be surprising to see a woman with pink hair, a sleeve of tats on one arm and a baby in the other in my neighborhood (back in Portland), I wonder what sorts of opinions get flung her way when she travels outside of our ‘hood, to the Safeway store in the suburbs. Opinions o-plenty to be sure, because, despite the recent media, she doesn’t look like what most people think of as “motherly”.

I look in the mirror every day now and I think, “do I look like a mother?” Seriously. And not just, “do I look like a mother?” but “do I look like a GOOD mother?” Ugh. I embrace the lady with the pink hair and the tattoos as a perfectly appropriate vision of motherhood. So where are these thoughts coming from? Deep within my psyche I suppose. They’re there. They’re inside all of us that have been raised in the western world. We all have this image of Mom, Mum, Mummy, Ma, Mother, whatever, and she probably doesn’t have a septum piercing. Whether we believe in this image of motherhood or not doesn’t really matter. It’s primal and we are affected by it.

It’s been just over two weeks now that I’ve been thinking of myself as a mom and, fortunately, I feel pretty darn comfortable in that role. I think it’s because motherhood is coming to me later in life. This means, to me, that I’ve had a lot of time to indulge myself and now I’m ready to honor and indulge somebody else. It does not mean, however, that I am ready to give up who I am. I think there are still many messages out there that conspire to encourage women to believe that we aren’t truly “good” until we’ve completely given up our own personal interests and sacrificed ourselves on the altar of the Baby God. I realize that how we define ourselves essentially changes when we have children, but I don’t think that needs to entail turning our backs on pieces of ourselves that may not serve to uphold our maternal image. While it may satisfy the grandparents or the neighbors, I don’t think it serves the mother or the father (or the husband) or the child very well. Just like we deserve the “whole” woman, so do the people we love.

So, essentially, if this jammin’-Mammy wants to put on her biker jacket, sport her tats, and go see an “X” concert, you can bet your britches it’s gonna happen (after the essential attachment and transition period of course)…and, come to think of it, Thor’s gonna get a drum kit for her birthday.

Like mother, like daughter...and proud of it.