I was so looking forward to those last five weeks of having my little boy as my baby.  The mornings snuggled in bed, the days playing on the floor & napping in the afternoon.  There aren’t words for how much I love Magnus…he is my heart & my miracle child.  Above all I hope he knows that while Marit is loved and adored it doesn’t take one ounce of love from him.  In fact there’s more than enough love for both of them.

It’s been a tough adjustment at times for me to see Magnus moving around the house, independent & wanting to do his own thing.  He took his first steps in my hospital room.  I was so glad I got to see it!  He hasn’t done any walking since so he isn’t too grown up yet.

I can tell he will be a good big brother.  He loves to get diapers for me when Marit needs to be changed.  He also enjoys giving Marit her pacifier when she cries.  Of course he likes taking it back just as much so it doesn’t always comfort her.  It’s cute to see him watch Marit.  Magnus gets a big smile on his face when he hears Marit coo & he hurries to look at her; sometimes he pats (not as gently as I’d like) her head.

Of course Magnus still loves to be noticed & show off for anybody who takes the time to notice him.  If a passerby should mention what a big boy he is & how he has such a cute little sister his grin is ear to ear.  I’m so proud of my little guy…he makes me smile & I love every moment.

That statement really struck me because there are a lot of people that I know that don’t want kids, don’t understand why anybody would, don’t understand kids even.  Some of those people think that Abe & I are crazy to have had Magnus let alone have Marit on the way.  To them kids are a burden, an inconvenience & something that should be avoided to stop all the problems in the world.  To know that this Twitter friend, whom I don’t know that well, is happy for me to have the kids I have always wanted was incredibly nice.  It got me thinking too…

Why am I a parent? What is it about having kids that made me want my own?

Let me begin with the disclaimer.  There are days where I would sell my kid for a bottle of vodka, or a movie ticket.  There are days where I want to curl up in a corner & cry after ripping out my hair in frustration.  My amazing Magnus is only 1 so I know I have a lifetime of those days coming my way.  However, there is so much that wipes out those moments/days.

Watching Magnus discover new things is so much fun.  He has been working on eating with a fork; he learned about ranch dressing & ketchup last weekend; & he has been slowly (very slowly cuz Momma says so) exploring our 2 stories of wooden stairs.  It is really fun to watch the world develop through brand new eyes.  Seeing the wonder of discovering a new animal or a new sound…something I don’t remember from my own childhood.  I get to experience everything a second time & truly appreciate the world.

The feel of those tiny arms wrapping around my neck as Magnus snuggles into me with his blanket for a nap.  How can your heart not swell with joy & the purest love in those moments?  And that’s what having kids comes down to for me.  The chance, the opportunity to share life with a new person.  To share in their growth, their triumphs and especially their disappointments.  Nobody will ever be able to protect them from every hurt (no matter how much we desperately want to do so) but we can share the burden, lighten the feeling of loss when it occurs.

That moment when you first look into a child’s eyes & see the love they have for you…in spite of your faults, your failures, your hang-ups.  To know that no matter how out of shape you are or how broke you are that little person doesn’t care.  All they know is you love them & they return it without hesitation.

Sadly, as kids get older that initial wonder wears off, they grow up & become adults that sometimes stray from what you dreamed for them.  There’s a pain associated with being estranged from your older children that I pray I never have to experience.  I’ve watched friends go through it & I can’t imagine the pain it causes.  Yet I know they still would welcome those kids home with open arms if ever they were asked.

Being a parent is the most difficult & yet most amazing job ever.  It is NOT for the faint of heart…it is filled with joy, grief & even fear but I wouldn’t trade my kids for anything.  They are the best parts of me—realized.

I have a lot in my head but it is hard to put to the page.  This month is flying by in many ways though some days seem to drag.
The heat has been record setting and there is no end in sight.  Normally I don’t mind the heat & humidity of our summers here.  This year with Magnus & a baby on the way I just want cooler weather.  The lack of air conditioning in the house really makes daily chores a nightmare.  I get overheated trying to clean or cook and my first priority has to be how I feel.  I am praying for a few days of cooler weather soon…I need to get stuff done.

Overall I feel pretty good with the pregnancy though.  I have only gained about 10 pounds so far which I’m very happy about.  The weight I already have seems to be moving around though so I’m finding that my pants are getting uncomfortable.  Of course that is the silver lining to this heat cloud…it is just far too hot for pants.  If you’re thinking about visiting, call first.

Other than that I’m not sure what to say.  I’m cranky & irritable, wishing I were superwoman and missing the contact I usually maintain with friends. 

However what struck me was that in the description of beautiful home births I found a hidden barb.  As I read & the re-read the post I started to feel badly about my birthing experience.  I know this was not at all within the realm of the writer’s mind when she was writing the post.  In fact, Willa is the last person who would promote any sort of competition or feeling of ill-will among women.  No all of the sad, inadequate feelings came straight from me.

Suddenly I was feeling like I had somehow failed at being a mother somehow.  That because of complications to my health I delivered my beautiful boy via Caesarean section & somehow that makes my experience less special, less magical.  It wasn’t what I would have chosen…I always imagined that I’d go through labor & delivery naturally.  Well as naturally as possible with a massive dose of pain killers.  Instead I was strapped to a table, numb from the xiphoid process to my toes, and chatting up the surgeons.  I could feel the tugging & pulling going on behind the blue surgical curtain & then I saw Magnus being held up over the curtain so we could see him.  Nothing will ever eclipse the moment I say my son… no matter how he arrived the fact that he arrived is the important point.

What all this made me think of —why do women always feel like they are constantly in competition with each other?  There’s this pressure to have the best, smartest, quickest kid.  Who rolls over, crawls, walks, talks first is inevitably a topic of conversation when mothers are together.  Then there’s what percentile of height, weight, head size to compare—and visiting the doctor every 2 months for the first year where a little graph is charted doesn’t do anything to eliminate this competitive feeling.  I know for me that is one of the first questions my sister-in-law J asks me nearly every time I see her.  Our sons are a month apart (my nephew is older) and there is constant comparison in height & weight.

Thinking about this today I realized that I avoid comparing my son to other kids his age.  I often shrug or change the subject when the comparisons arise.  To me it doesn’t matter if Magnus is the tallest or the heaviest/skinniest baby.  What matters to me is that I can see he is healthy, growing & happy.  However, when it comes to myself I’m the first to not only compare to another woman but I’m certain to see my “shortcomings”.  I’m not the smartest, tallest, most fit, funniest, prettiest or whatever.  The same thing with being a mommy- I tend to look at what another mom has done & find that I don’t measure up.

My goal from now on is to not be a competitive mommy.  I’m happy with how well Magnus is doing…and I am doing my best to raise a happy healthy boy.  When the new baby comes I will revel in the delivery (a scheduled c-section) because that’s MY path as a mother.  No matter what path you are on follow it with conviction— it is your path to walk & nobody else could do it just the way you do.

Recently it was announced that a new edition of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn going to be released.  The reasoning for the new edition is the use of the n-word throughout the text.

The word occurs more than 200 times in Huckleberry Finn, first published in 1884, and its 1876 precursor, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which tell the story of the boys’ adventures along the Mississippi river in the mid-19th century. In the new edition, the word will be replaced in each instance by “slave”. The word “injun” will also be replaced in the text.

The new edition’s Alabama-based publisher, NewSouth books, says the development is a “bold move compassionately advocated” by the book’s editor, Twain scholar Dr Alan Gribben of Auburn University, Montgomery. It will have the effect, the publisher claims, of replacing “two hurtful epithets” in order to “counter the ‘pre-emptive censorship‘ that Dr Gribben observes has caused these important works of literature to fall off curriculum lists worldwide.” ¹

Surely Mark Twain is going to spend years haunting the people who approved this.  Writers (at least the really good ones) choose words for a reason.  They use words to evoke a sense of place, to provoke the reader into the mindset that will carry the individual deep into the text.  Twain’s use of the n-word was very deliberate; part of his social commentary on the era in which the use of such language was prevalent.  That word today is verboten, as it should be, in common speech.  However, to remove it from a text such as Twain’s Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer is not only censorship but also a revisionist version of history.

Our society is so consumed with avoiding the possibility of offending others that we have tossed common sense & critical thinking out with our unrecycled styrofoam.  How can we learn from our history if we are so busy snipping, patching & denying what happened?  Yes there was a time where people used racial slurs on a regular basis…it is a sad part of our past.  We cannot pretend it didn’t happen–doing that not only rewrites the past but it also negates the work done by civil rights activists.

When I was learning about these stories in elementary school we discussed the mentality of the times, the language, customs etc. We were taught why the racial slurs were unacceptable…not just in school but at home too.  Now we treat our children like mushrooms…keep them in the dark & feed them a fine line of crap.  Rather than use Huck Finn as a discussion tool we sanitize it to make sure nobody is offended.  Our educational system should be the finest in the world.  Instead we are rewriting history, smoothing over the ugly parts of classic literature and generally removing the process of critical thinking from learning.  We are creating children who accept whatever they are told.  There isn’t any reason for them to examine what is right & wrong (or socially acceptable–think Golden Rule).

Sanitized literature (and history) does no favors for anybody.  It keeps us from learning, from repeating the mistakes of past generations…as Satayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it”.  I shudder to think what we are dooming our children to repeat by not remembering & teaching our unvarnished past.