My Little People

Many of you may have noticed that lately I've been doing a lot more blogging about things like cocktails and red carpet fashion and pop culture and a lot less about motherhood. There's a reason for that: My little people have been turning into...well, people.

I've always tried to be sensitive about publishing anything that might be embarrassing to either of them later in life. I'm careful not to mock them, even as I'm laughing at their antics. I make a conscious effort to speak respectfully of them, no matter their age. But I'm reaching the point - or rather, they're reaching the point - where discussion of them is more about them than it is about me, because they have each become their own person. It's become much more difficult to write about myself in relation to them because it's as much writing about them as it is about me.

As a mom, it's a bittersweet moment when your kids become their own people. On one hand, that's kind of the point of parenting: to raise your children to become independent and self-sufficient and to not need you any more. But on the other hand, it's painful to realize that they don't, in fact, need you any more.

Now, at only ages 5 and 7, it's not really true that they don't need me any more. Of course they need me to feed them, and buy them clothes, and help them with their homework, and drive them to dance class and gymnastics and wherever else they need to go. But they don't need me for a lot of things that they used to, like tying their shoes, brushing their teeth, picking out their clothes, helping them make friends. Bit by bit, they are becoming independent. The list of things that they need me for is becoming shorter and shorter. Which is a little bit sad. But the list of things they can do entirely on their own is becoming longer and longer, and that's really exciting!

So please forgive me if I don't talk about my children in this blog as much as I used to. But hopefully it won't be long until they're writing about themselves in blogs of their own!

Can You Bake a Pie?

My 3-year-old son loves to help (or, more accurately, "help") in the kitchen, so it's nothing unusual for him to ask me if we can make cornbread, or pancakes, or lemonade. We make those things together on a regular basis. But today he made a different request: he asked me to make pumpkin pie with him.

We did have pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, and he did like it. A lot. I haven't mentioned it since, though, so I have no idea what made him suddenly decide that he was hungry for pumpkin pie. (Actually, the word he used was "starving." Yes, he informed me, "Mama, I am STARVING! I am STARVING for pumpkin pie!") But in the realm of snacks and treats, he could do much worse than pumpkin pie, so I said sure.

And after I thought about it, I realized that pumpkin pie is one of the first things I remember making with MY mom. My special task in the process was cutting the shortening into the flour for the pie crust. I remember it being a somewhat challenging task for me, as coordinating two large butter knives with my small hands was not easy. But Mom was patient and let me take as long as I liked to get it done. (I didn't realize at the time that the longer I took to do that task, the longer I was out of her hair for the more complicated - and messy - parts of the process. Smart cookie, my mom.)

I also remember being allowed to make the scraps of pie crust into a cinnamon roll. I was proudest of that because Mom let me do it all by myself. I squished the scraps together and rolled them out, dotted the crust with butter, sprinkled it liberally with cinnamon and sugar, rolled it up and pinched the ends together, then laid it on a cookie sheet and tucked it into the oven alongside the pie. I probably peeked through the window in the oven door every 15 seconds until Mom finally pronounced it done and set it on the table to cool. And then it seemed like hours before she said it was cool enough to eat. But when it finally was cooled, there was nothing that had ever tasted to wonderful to me than my own culinary creation.

So I'm looking forward to giving my son that same sense of pride this afternoon when we make our pie. It may not taste perfect, but it will taste even better than perfection. It will taste like independence.

Self-Sufficiency Is a Beautiful Thing

Ever since he was born, I’ve said that Ryan is a very easy baby. He’s rarely whiny or fussy, and on the rare occasions when he is, he’s fairly easily comforted (or at least distracted). He’s delighted when someone plays with him, but he’s generally quite content to play by himself, especially if someone else is nearby to keep him company. But the older he gets, the more I realize how self-sufficient he is when it comes to keeping himself entertained.

Most mornings when he wakes up, he doesn’t immediately cry for one of us to come get him. He happily plays with the toys in his crib, or his toes, or rays of sun that fall on him. He’ll spend fifteen minutes just staring at the ceiling in fascination.

Sometimes when I put him down for a nap, he doesn't fall asleep right away but is content to roll around and snuggle with his blankets for a while before he drifts off. Even when I'm playing with him on the floor of his room, most of the time he doesn't need me to interact with him to be happy, as long as he can reach his toys and his rag. He's just very self-sufficient when it comes to keeping himself busy.

This comes in very handy when I'm making dinner, or trying to do housework, or working on some project. I can put him in his exersaucer and fold laundry in the next room and he's perfectly content to play with his toys, sing to himself, and look around the room. I can put him in his bouncy chair in the kitchen and unload the dishwasher, put away groceries, or make dinner without having to stop and entertain him. He's happy to just bounce away, occasionally stopping to gnaw on his rag or crunch his stuffed caterpillar or stare at his reflection.

Last night Herb and I were at a VFW hall we're using for a family function in a few weeks, and while we were checking dimensions and discussing the layout and the floor plan, Ryan was delighted to scoot across the hardwood floor (backwards, of course) and peer up at the underside of the table and chair. And of course, when Daddy plugged in one of the ficus trees that were wound with tiny white Christmas lights, Ryan was just in seventh heaven.

Having a self-sufficient child is such a blessing, and I need to remind myself of that every now and then. I'm afraid that sometimes I take it for granted, since he's just so easygoing. But the pleasant flip side is that on the rare occasion when he does need attention or a cuddle from Mum, it makes me feel extra-special.