Birthdays After You've Had Children

This was the fancy Malibu dinner I refer towards the end of this very long post about birthdays.

I think it's typical for birthdays to generate more excitement when you're a kid than when you're an adult, but I've found it to be exactly the opposite. Since I was kind of socially awkward around other kids my age (my best friend was 55 years old), I felt really uncomfortable about birthdays.

My parents were probably relieved that my sister and I weren't big on parties and certainly didn't push the issue. Mostly I just had a special dinner with my family (ribs or fried chicken on the special red plate!) and oatmeal cookies for dessert.

I'd also ask to go horseback riding, so my dad would take me to a stable right on the Mexican border where you rode along the fence and could look right over at Tijuana. Looking back on it, it amazes me that  people actually paid for that experience, and I'm not sure I recall seeing any other customers. (I had to put the dig in about going horseback riding for one hour per year just to annoy my parents since they resisted all my pleadings to buy me a horse and I would probably have become a famous horse whisperer.)

I didn't really know how to execute a great birthday when I was younger. As I got older, I became judgmental of people who put too much energy in having a great birthday (and were crushed if it didn't turn out perfectly). But then I had children and now I cherish every single birthday and stretch it out for as long as possible (someday I'll have to do a post about all the things I was judgmental about before I having kids humbled me and brought me to my knees).

This year was no different. I had a very special birthday dinner with my parents and nephew in Malibu (seriously, Malibu?), a great day with 12 other friends squeezed around a circular table at a Sichuan restaurant, and a day off from work that I spent shopping with my mom.

Before kids, birthdays weren't important to me because my whole life was all about me anyway, so what was the difference? I did whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, approximately 365 days a year. I'm not saying people without kids are self-absorbed -- just that I was! I had so few responsibilities and was as free as a little bird (lots of people without kids have responsibilities I didn't have, like debt, family obligations, etc).

Now that I feel the weight of so many responsibilities -- like how I can't just quit my job and travel the world for six months like Tori and I once did -- a birthday is really special because it's an opportunity to be selfish, down to the very smallest detail like not doing the dishes and only doing the fun stuff with the kids and none of the yucky stuff (reading books instead of wiping kids' bottoms!).

I don't mean to imply that I'm a selfless martyr who spends my days scrubbing toilets and cooking meals for my three kids, but there's no getting away from the fact that I'm jointly responsible for the lives of three small human beings.

So I've definitely come around on the birthday issue. I say hooray for grown folks milking those birthdays for all their worth.

Just 355 days till the next one...

Tori Loves this Photo

A special guest post -- the first ever -- from Tori!

This picture shows a bit of our kids' personalities, which is why I love it. Zadie tries her hand at her own style (here represented by two different shoes) and Skip thinks he's a cowboy (check out those boots and leather chaps!). And Charlie's just Charlie. Pre-photo they were doing tricks off of these stacked chairs

Thanks for the photo, Tina, and we're so happy you and Raffi are back!

Zadie Turned Five

Zadie and her moms.  This was one of many great photos my sister took of our family.  The only problem with this one is that Zadie has chocolate in her teeth (we were bribing the kids to sit still for photos!).

Zadie turned five a few weeks ago.  Like last year, her number one birthday request was to have some special time alone with her moms, sans brothers.  We ended up taking her to a totally cheesy 1960s fun center at the Redondo Beach pier, which was a major time warp.  I wish I would have taken photos to document the place, but basically it's like a miniature version of Coney Island.  I think she was pretty pleased with it.  She doesn't care much for the video games, but she likes any of the games that shoot out tickets, like skeet ball and some other silly game where you throw balls into a hole to make your horse advance while a man with poor English skills tries to play the role of the horse race announcer.  We were good mothers and let her win all six times.  She also rode the Tilt-a-Wheel a few times.

Afterwards she celebrated her birthday with Tori's family at Aunt Susie's house and, while I was at the Grand Canyon, she got her true birthday wish.  My parents took her to Chuck E. Cheese's with Sophie and Izzy.  Like McDonald's and Disneyland, Chuck E. Cheese's was one of those places we'd hoped to avoid for as long as possible, but she went to a friend's party there a few months ago and now she's hooked.  So my parents granted her wish and she had a wonderful time.  Last night when I was tucking her in to bed, apropos of nothing, she told me that her dream in life was to live at Chuck E. Cheese's with all of her family. At least it's nice that she included us in her utopian vision.

I want to share a few things about this little Zadie Zoo on the occasion of her fifth birthday.  She amazes us with her creativity, brightness, and quirky sense of humor.  My favorite moments with her are the 10 minutes before she goes to bed every night, when either Tori or I gets in bed with her to read chapter books.  After I finish reading her a chapter, we hold onto each other and spend a few minutes having deep talks.  Like about how she wants to move her whole family to Chuck E. Cheese's.  Or about what she likes most about her life.  She's typically a total pleasure to be with when she's not with her brothers.  She needs some work on the subject of how to get along as one big family, but I know that's normal.  I know what a special kid she is.

Solo Trip to Grand Canyon

One of the things I most appreciate about my new career with the National Park Service is the opportunity for learning and development.  Though I loved working for the Peace Corps, training opportunities were pretty rare given the fact that the five-year rule caused so much turnover among staff.  Guess there's not much point in investing in the long-term development of your employees if they're cycled out so quickly.  

The National Park Service offers a five-part training series for new permanent employees.  Three of those portions are online, but the other two include a 10-day course at the Grand Canyon and a four-day course in Washington, D.C.  I was so thrilled when I learned about this because I'm the kind of person who loves training and big group experiences (I realized at training that not all people do!).  

Thanks to Tori and the help of my parents, I was able to be away from home for nearly two weeks.  The training was excellent and made me think a lot about long-term goals with the agency.  And of course, outside of the training, it was pretty amazing to spend time with 47 other adults.  Beautiful hikes, good conversations, and snowy adventures were had by all!

In preparation for my big solo trip, I downloaded books and podcasts and planned on doing voluminous amount of reading, writing, and learning.  I definitely learned a great deal related to my work, but I didn't read one page of my book and I didn't write one blog post.  So it was a bit of a fail in that respect, but mostly because I was busy socializing and enjoying my adult time in other ways.

Hopefully Tori will get a permanent job with the National Park Service at some point (she's on a term contract right now) and then I can repay the favor.

More Christmas Photos

I've been off to such a slow blogging start in 2013 that it just took me about six tries to remember my password!  I wanted to share a group photo from Christmas with Tori's family, especially because it's part of a long tradition of regular/silly juxtaposition photos.

Obviously I didn't get the memo that we were doing the silly photo this time.  Oh well.

This year we were missing Tori's brother Adam's family, and I'm not sure why Aunt Susie wasn't in the photo given that it was taken at her house!

Pretend You're Not There

I've written previously about how completely wrong I was about what parenting would be like.  But for the past two Saturdays, all my fantasies about the kids happily and creatively playing together (while I do something else and lovingly glance over at them) have actually come true!

Yes, there are occasionally tears and issues that need to be resolved.  And of course I have to perform some basic motherly duties such as feeding and wiping runny noses.  But it's also kind of like I'm not even there.  And that's a good thing.

They're coming up with their own imaginative play and even resolving disputes on their own.  While I was blissfully vacuuming and mopping (five years ago you couldn't have convinced me that cleaning a house could be such a Zen experience!), I saw the kids:

• make a rocket ship out of a flipped-over trash can and go into space
• pretend to be a mama bird who teaches her baby bird how to fly and eat (this lasted 15 minutes)
• pass out several golf balls (gathered from the nearby creek) to golfers who were passing by our backyard.  One guy gave them a dollar for four golf balls, though I made sure they weren't soliciting donations!
• climb a rather difficult tree in our backyard (though she did need help getting down)

So obviously I've been trying to figure out why things have been so awesome lately.  I think it's partly because these two Saturdays have been totally out of the ordinary in that we've actually spent the entire day at home.  That's very unheard of in our lives.  Last Saturday Tori had to work and so she gave me all kinds of suggestions about all the really amazing and enriching activities I could do with them, which I naturally ignored.  I just stayed home instead.

Today we stayed home all day, too, which was only really possible because Tori was suffering from cramps and spent a fair amount of the day in bed with a heating pad.  She typically has to be either working or debilitated in some way for us not to spend the weekend bouncing from activity to activity.

In addition to just staying home all day, the other factor in what I would call a minor parenting success (but just about the only one I've ever had!) is that I made a very conscious effort to pretend I wasn't there.  I've had some form of this strategy operating for quite some time -- I think Tori finds it kind of annoying, but I also think she's finding it harder to argue with its benefits.  I know it runs counter to the whole idea of how nowadays we're supposed to really engage with our kids and spend quality time with them.  Tori is really good at facilitating play, but then sometimes I feel like the down side of that is that the kids look to her for entertainment so much.  

Obviously everything should be done in moderation and I'm not suggesting people ignore their kids -- I still love laughing with them and reading to them and having big family dance parties at night in front of the sliding glass door.  But I do think there is something to getting out of their way and letting kids take charge of imaginative play and problem-solving.  

I always wish that I had more of those parenting-in-the-movies moments when you're just totally overcome with feelings of love and affection for your children -- I have them, but just not nearly as often as I would like.  Watching my three kids spend an entire day playing joyfully and imaginatively -- and never complaining about being bored -- is definitely one of those experiences.

So that's a new parenting tool I'm going to try out.  Pretend you're not there.

(Obviously this has a limited application and doesn't work when you have to get the kids dressed, feed them, bathe them, discipline them, etc.  But it also forces us to make sure we're actually providing enough opportunities to get out of their way and let them make their kid magic.)

The Rogers Come to Town

Unfortunately I don't have a photo of the whole gang together, but this was the thank-you photo the Rogers sent  in appreciation for my parents lending their RV for the visit.

We typically go to the Pacific Northwest when it's time to celebrate the holidays with Tori's family since the majority of her siblings now live there. There's a certain charm to spending the holidays in colder weather, but I wouldn't say that's the case when you have small children. Being cooped up in the house because of bad weather gets a bit overwhelming when you have little kids that need to get their wiggles out, but then trying to properly dress them for freezing weather is a drag (especially when it takes you 20 minutes to get the three kids dressed and they end up coming back in the house after 5 minutes!).

So this year we were pretty happy about the fact that Tori's family was going to be coming to L.A. for Christmas! If given the choice between a white Christmas and a sunny Christmas, I'll definitely take the sunny Christmas.

Tori is one of five siblings and, combined with their kids, that's a whole slew of folks. I admit I made lots of jokes to my co-workers about having a huge group of in-laws come visit for 16 days. People were quite impressed with that number! But it was a bit of an exaggeration because the 16 days ended up being spent all over Southern California and I think there were only three nights at our house (not that I mind having family!). And I opted out for the last leg of the trip (to their dad's house in the Central Valley) because I wanted to go see my parents and sister. The Central Valley portion of the trip featured 14 children five and under, though I admit that the Central Valley contingent of kids are perfectly behaved (unlike my own kids!).

All in all, it was a great visit. I love to see our kids enjoying their time with their cousins, especially when the older cousins are good about entertaining the young ones. And of course I enjoy spending time with the adults, especially my mother-in-law, who I wish we could spend more time with. The only challenge is when all the kids and the adults are heaped together into one big mass of humanity for long periods of time. That's when it's a good time for me to volunteer to go to the grocery store and have some quiet time!