Category Archives: parenting

September 19, 2011 · 3:09 pm

The Best Broken Heart I Ever Had

When I resigned from my job at Casa Valentina (an amazing organization helping boys and girls – and soon mothers! – who age out of foster care) to stay home fulltime, my colleagues gave me a heart-shaped glass paperweight with the Casa Valentina logo etched in the glass. It meant a lot to me and has been a fixture on my desk since the day I brought it home.

A fixture and a magnet.  The boys, especially Riley, love toplay with it.  When Riley was younger I would flat out take it away. “No touch,” I would say. Lately, I’ve been less strict. I let him hold it but I tell him to be careful. “That’s Mommy’s special heart and it will break if you drop it,” I say.  “Okay, Mommy,” he replies. 

This morning, Riley broke my heart.  I was folding towels in the laundry room when he walked in holding my heart.  Before I had a chance to remind him to be careful, it slipped out of his hands, fell on the tile floor and broke.  I looked down at the little pieces of glass around our (bare!) feet and said, “Riley, you broke my heart.”  Then I laughed because he didn’t break my heart.  He broke my heart-shaped paperweight.  It was an accident…and a paperweight.

What happened next was remarkable.  Riley looked at me with his big blue eyes and said, “Mommy, I’m sorry I broke your heart,” and then he hugged me.   Dylan, who was just a few steps behind Riley when the paperweight broke, started to cry and yelled, “Riley, you broke Mommy’s heart!”  I shooed the boys and their bare feet out of the room to clean up the mess.  While I swept and vacuumed, Dylan sobbed and told his brother over and over that he broke Mommy’s heart.  When I put some larger chunks of glass in the trash, Dylan tearfully insisted I take them out.  “Daddy will fix your broken heart when he comes home,” he insisted.

If you didn’t know we were talking about a paperweight, you would think something dreadful happened to our family.  When everything was finally cleaned up, I sat down with the boys and told them not to be upset.  I told them I was disappointed that the heart broke, but I wasn’t sad.  I told them my heart was happy. Beaming, actually.  Riley knew he did something wrong and apologized immediately, and even though Dylan over-reacted a little bit (my emotional creature!), he expressed perfectly just how much he knew the heart meant to me.  I told them it was the best broken heart I ever had and then we got dressed for school.

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August 15, 2011 · 1:11 pm

Bon appetit!

I would have posted this sooner, but my computer access was limited on vacation.  Also, I’ve been recovering from several consecutive dinners at restaurants with my two adorable but occasionally horribly behaved children.

When you’re engaged, all you see are brides. When you’re pregnant, all you see are pregnant women (and babies and strollers and car seats and diaper bags…).  Ironically, when you have two kids who are despicably behaved in restaurants (i.e. they’re loud and whiny, irritate nearby diners, refuse to eat anything, won’t sit down in their chairs and won’t let you sit down in your chair for one freakin’ minute to take a bite of food or a precious gulp of wine), all you see are well-behaved children sitting nicely, talking quietly and eating chicken.

You resign yourself to the fact that you’ve somehow spoiled your children and failed miserably as a parent (or at least in the how-to-behave-in-a-restaurant department), and you won’t ever be able to take them out to eat unless they’re sedated or 30-something years old (perhaps with their own naughty little children!).

The day after a particularly disastrous outing, you climb the stairs of the poolside eatery to go to the bathroom and pass a table where a family with young children like yours is eating lunch.  (You have fed your kids poolside on this day to keep your head from exploding…again.) 

You can’t help but overhear the mother say, “Enough! There are other people here trying to eat,” and then, “Sit down!” and then, “Cut it out or we’re leaving.”  You smile briefly at the mother.  She probably feels embarrassed or thinks you feel bad for her, but actually, you want to wrap your arms around her in a big bear hug and say thank you.  

As you continue toward the bathroom, the tension between your shoulders releases a little bit and a smile spreads across your face when you realize – at least for a fleeting moment – that you are one of many mothers with small children who turn into baboons when they cross the threshold of any restaurant, bistro or café.  You also remember you have a babysitter coming that evening to watch the kids so you can have a peaceful dinner surrounded by adults.  Most likely, all you will notice at the restaurant that evening are ill-behaved children and mothers (and maybe some fathers) with exploding heads.  

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