to the snow

When my 5-year-old got excited over a pile of dirty ice in the corner of the Andronico's parking lot, I realized it really was time to take him to the mountains to see some snow.

On Serene Lake, Soda Springs, California, March 2012

This was one of those trips where the planning falls apart in several different ways, enough to make superstitious types wonder whether you should go at all, or if you should just stay home and remain in your PJs as much of the weekend as possible.

Back in the days when I was completely terrified of flying, these kind of omens would have done me in for a trip that involved an airplane. But luckily, we were driving, and besides my insistence that we stop to buy tire chains on the way up, fussy children and all, I managed to resist that kind of worry.

So I decided to not do much planning. We abandoned our original idea - to go to South Lake Tahoe with friends - and instead struck out for Soda Springs, near Truckee, on our own. We brought a trunk full of snow clothes and boots, borrowed for the kids, our own dug deep out of storage. We brought sleepers and a crib and a bunch of food, and decided to play it by ear whether we would spend the night or not.

Play it by ear -- words I never thought I would utter referring to travel with small children. I felt daring and spontaneous, despite the children fussing away in the backseat.

Once we got up there and saw how gorgeous it was, we decided to stay. Plus, it was already 3 p.m., and it was supposed to snow the next day.

I'm so glad we stayed. Since we stayed at a small (oddly sweltering 85-degree indoors) lodge, we put the kids to bed and then went downstairs and had dinner just the two of us. Radical!

And then the next day, we woke up to snow. Not just the forecast snow showers, but a solid 5 inches of flakes falling all morning long.

Emry took a nap in the lodge while Elan, Mikhail and I sledded just outside.

Emry was not so into the snow. He couldn't move much in the thick snow clothes, he couldn't grab the pinecones he so dearly wanted with mittens on, he couldn't crawl because his knees kept slipping, and he couldn't walk in the snow boots we borrowed, which were probably about 4 sizes too big for his tiny feet.

But he loved hanging out in the lodge, where the under-6 set was well-represented.

Elan loved the snow. And Mikhail and I loved the snow. It felt like such a victory for me that we made it there.

words for 2012

In what has become a yearly tradition, right around New Year's, Mikhail and I took a walk on the beach and figured out some words to express what we are hoping for this year.

I know it's March now, and I'm talking about January, but bear with me. I needed to let these words grow on me a little before I was ready to share them.

Besides, being on time isn't one of my strengths.

Once we figure out the words, we write them in the sand. Last year, we had this fabulous sunset and it was all very inspiring. This year, the fog blew in dense and cold. But we persevered, Emry in the Ergo on my back chewing on beach rocks and then making a game of throwing them at Mikhail.

Love. Because there's really no other good reason to have children in this day and age. I realize for a handful of families in this country, and for many families in other countries, kids are still a labor force. But it's not like Elan's going to be taking our herd of goats out to pasture anytime soon.

Kids cost a bunch of money, they take up all your time, and they throw food all over the carpet. But in my house, they also increase the love exponentially. Both Mikhail and I have found that when we focus on the love, it makes the craziness feel more manageable -- and less important.

Light. It just felt like a good word to me. I was looking ahead to Elan's surgery and imagining that it could be a difficult winter. So as much as the literal definition sounded good on this chilly winter afternoon -- light, warmth, coziness -- the figurative image of a guiding light, something to focus on as you're making your way through dark times, appealed to me too.

Speaking of light, it was getting quite dark by this time. Emry was fussing, we were all cold, but we still had a ways to walk back to the car, and we were hammering away at this next idea. Mikhail finally got it.

Taking the next step. Wow, does this phrase sound confronting to me. I don't know exactly why, but it really triggered me that afternoon on the beach. It sounded HARD. Like it would require a lot of courage and determination and hard work. Not that those are bad things, I just wondered - Am I ready to take the next step? Sometimes I think I am still in new baby survival mode, sleepless and with the mental fuzziness my mother-in-law calls "milk brain." And sometimes I am (though the sleeplessness is often not caused by the baby - I'm talking about you now, 5-year-old who hasn't slept through the night in 10 nights). But this is an exercise about reaching for something, so I went with it.

And it's interesting - I've already seen taking the next step play out in my life these last few months. Jumping into an opportunity to substantially increase my grantwriting workload, which increases our family's chaos level but also increases the money I bring into the family? Taking the next step. Deciding we're feeling adventurous enough to take on traveling internationally for the first time with our kids? Taking the next step. It even has a literal meaning to me these days, as I watch Emry string together his steps - 3, 5, 10 at a time.

Sometimes you have to challenge yourself.

And sometimes you have to eat Girl Scout cookies with a cold glass of milk and go to bed early.

Deciding when you're going to push yourself and when you're going to hunker down with the cookies? I believe that's called being a grown-up.

it's not spring until there's ranunculus

Awkward name, favorite flower.

they ate ice cream

I was working on Saturday afternoon when I received an email with the subject line "We got ice cream" and this photo:

My guys, February 2012

Things I love about this photo:

1) Elan's giant smile. He's been smiling more lately, as he comes out of post-op fog/fuss/upset, and as he sleeps better. Let me just say that again: AS HE SLEEPS BETTER. Ahhhhhh.

2) My husband's mini-mohawk. His hair doesn't look like that in real life. At least, not most of the time. But sometimes when it gets long, he runs his fingers through it a lot and then I call him the mad professor.

3) Emry, my little gremlin, cute whether his face is covered in chocolate or some other substance, since it almost always seems to be covered in something.

post-op: 1 month

Part of me wants to write an in-depth post about the tonsillectomy recovery, with all my suggestions for how to survive it, in case any of you have to go through your own 10-14 days of Parenting Hell.

And part of me wants to never think about it again.

Basically, we survived through gritting our teeth and reassuring ourselves (and him) that IT WOULD END. Because it's hard to remember that when you're in pain, even for us grown-ups. And we gave Motrin. Lots and lots of Motrin. So much that we had to write it down. We had a very sophisticated tracking system.

Post-its on the bathroom mirror, January 2012

That's how much Motrin Elan had over the course of his 12 days of awfulness. We threw a little Tylenol and Tylenol with codeine into the mix some days, but in general, he didn't like the taste of these (I've heard the codeine feels burning on the raw throat), so he would scream and refuse and we would have to hold him down, one of us pinning his arms, one of us holding his head, shoot the medicine into the side-back of his throat, and pinch his nose until he had no choice but to swallow. Now THAT'S fun for the whole family!

Unfortunately, we had to force him to take his Motrin sometimes too, especially in the night and early morning, when he would not willingly swallow anything. And if we slacked off, the pain would get worse, and the resistance would get worse, and the screaming would get worse.... You get the idea.

Sometime in the middle of the chaos - I can't even remember which day it was because they all blend together in my mind - I called the ENT, who didn't call me back very quickly, and I went into hysterical mom mode and called my pediatrician, and said something like "I'm not usually a hysterical mom but I'm getting kind of hysterical right now." My pediatrician then called the ENT, who called me back and said, "Everything you're describing is normal. Really." And then she gave me a few tricks, like how to squirt the medicine in so that he can't just shoot it out all over you and the bed with his tongue (holding the nose and squirting deep into the throat are the key). She told me it was fine to hold him down to give him the medicine, that I was doing what's best for him, even though it felt rather like waterboarding my own child. She reassured me that his gurgling cough wouldn't make the scabs come off too soon and have him bleed and then we'd be back having emergency cauterization of the wounds and have to go through all this again. Basically, she reassured me. My father is a pediatrician, and I was in constant communication with him on the phone even after he left 3 days post-op. And even with that support, I needed more reassurance.

I had heard from many parents that Day 10 was the turn-around point for their kids, so I was hoping that would be the case for us. On Day 9, I wrote an email to another mom saying, "It just seems to keep getting worse" and she said she could have written the same email on Day 9 of her child's recovery. So that gave me hope.

On Days 10 and 11, Elan was still deeply entrenched in funk. He was obviously still in pain, but even more than that, he just seemed so incredibly out of sorts - frustrated and exhausted, he had no interest in seeing friends or playing. We were all in a very bad mood.

On Day 12, I forced him to go to school. He didn't want to go, which is very unlike him, so I told him he didn't have to stay long, but he did have to go. And he went, and he smiled, and he stayed. That week was still really rough, but at least he was remembering who he is, that he has friends, and that life is basically good. Mikhail had to go out of town for work, so my mother-in-law came to help me since Elan was still up a fair amount at night.

At 3 weeks post-op, his throat was pretty much completely healed, but he got a cold. Which did not help with the recovery, the fussiness, or the sleep.

At 3.5 weeks post-op, I hit a wall of exhaustion and hopelessness. I had been sleeping in Elan's room for 5 out of the previous 6 nights, and he was so restless in his sleep that his frequent rolling around and half-moans were keeping me up even when he wasn't completely awake and crying. (For the first 2 weeks, we had Elan sleeping on a sleeping pad in our bedroom, we call it his "nest.") I knew that I should give it more time, but I was really feeling like the surgery hadn't worked. Mikhail and I had decided that we wouldn't make any real assessments until March. We knew that Elan's sleep problems were not cut-and-dry, that he had behavioral issues as well as the sleep apnea, that the apnea itself wasn't obvious or easy to assess without a bunch of wires attached to our child and machines. And yet, I went there. I made pronouncements. I felt hopeless. We always knew it was possible the surgery wouldn't work, but of course I didn't want to believe that was the case, after all we had just gone through! So I put Mikhail in charge of nights, and got some sleep, and felt a little more human again, despite getting the kids' cold.

And then something happened. Mikhail and I started sleeping in our bedroom. Elan started sleeping in his room. (Emry kept sleeping in the tiny port-a-crib in the office, poor baby.) Elan started sleeping THROUGH THE NIGHT. And now he's slept well for about a week. He's still a little crabby in the morning, but he's not screaming and carrying on for an hour every morning like he was a week or two ago.

In the park, February 2012

Is it possible? Could it really be working?

I've realized I'm afraid to talk about Elan's sleep when it's going well. I'm afraid I'm going to jinx it. Like I should channel my Eastern European ancestors and spit over my shoulder while I acknowledge it: Elan slept through the night last night -- puh, puh!

But I've also realized that I need to acknowledge it when things go well, too. Otherwise, I'm only talking about the negative. I risk seeming like, and possibly becoming, a very pessimistic person. And when there's a positive development, even though I fear it won't stick, that it's just a blip of good sleep in the sea of wakefulness, I need to share it. I want to shout it from the rooftops: ELAN HAS SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT FIVE OUT OF THE LAST SIX NIGHTS! Maybe I'm more of an optimist than I sometimes fear.

early valentine's daffodils

I just realized it is already mid-February. How did that happen?

I keep writing a post in my head about Elan's 1-month post-tonsillectomy update.

But somehow, writing it in my head doesn't mean you get to read it. Funny how that goes.

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that Elan loves Instagram. He loves playing around with the filters and choosing one his very own self. Like this:

I love my new iPhone. It's my first smartphone (after years of using hand-me-down cell phones from Mikhail and even my parents).

While driving Elan to preschool, I asked Siri what the weather would be today. When she responded, Elan exclaimed, "Mama, your phone is smart!" Perhaps that's the origin of the term smartphone: a 5-year-old.

It's pretty. It's white. It takes great photos and video. It talks. Now if only it could fold the laundry.

"Siri, fold the laundry!"

I've tried it. It doesn't work.

after dinner

Tuesday, 8:35 p.m.:

If I just eat that last bit of mac and cheese, I won't have to find a Tupperware lid that fits.

You've been there too, haven't you?