Going To Grandma's

My elementary school nurse was Mrs. Oliver. She had short gray hair and glasses, and she always wore sweaters and just-past-the-knee-length skirts. And ugly shoes. Really ugly shoes. In a school of what had to be about seven or eight hundred kids, she knew me by name. Because I was in her office every day.

I find this sort of funny now, because as a germophobic mother I tell my own children they must never, ever go to the nurse unless they are actually very sick. It's germ central! But nothing could have kept me from Mrs. Oliver's office when I was a kid. I knew all the tricks: Eyes half open. Droopy shoulders. Let your hair fall in your face a little. Furrow your eyebrows. And most importantly, never smile. Any sign of happiness will send you right back to class.

Sometimes Mrs. Oliver would get me crackers and juice from the cafeteria to help me "perk up." Sometimes she'd just let me lay there with a bucket we both knew I didn't need. But mostly, she gave in and called my grandma. And my grandma always--always--came and got me.

"One of these days," Mrs. Oliver said once as my grandmother collected me, "I'm coming to Grandma's with you. I need to see for myself why you seem to love going there so often!"

I hadn't been at all embarrassed (I rarely realized I should be). Instead I'd looked up into my grandmother's green, green eyes to find her smiling down at me. "Any time, Mrs. Oliver!" she'd said cheerfully. "You're welcome any time at all." Then she helped me with my coat, put an arm around me, and guided me out of school and down the front walk to where her big old Lincoln sat waiting.

My grandmother never drove the speed limit. Her fat car cruised along slowly to her turquoise split-level house in Lackawanna. I'd yank my backpack out of the car with me and as we walked up to the front door, we could already hear the loud, urgent barks of her pit bull, Shiner. Shiner was the fattest dog I've ever known, and was all white with a big black spot around his eye. He seemed to believe he was a purse-sized dog, and when we'd enter he'd hop and jump all over us gleefully. Grandma always had to shove at him with her hip so he wouldn't knock me down, all the while shouting, "DOWN, Shiner! Come ON, Shine! Get outta here!" The sound of his cord-like tail would be thwop-thwopping, and Grandma would guide me into the house and up the short staircase to her living room. It smelled like fruit and vegetables and whatever she'd cooked that morning. It smelled like Grandma herself.

She'd go upstairs and get me a pillow from her bed and set me up cozily on her satiny black and gold couch, easily the ugliest piece of furniture I've ever seen. My grandparents to this day insist that Shiner would curl up beside me for the duration of my stay, never leaving my side and growling at anyone who came near me. I don't really remember that. What I remember is leaning back against my grandmother's pillow, her covering me with a blanket, me closing my eyes, and knowing that no matter what had been bothering me at school that day, right now I was okay. Everything would be okay.

She served me fruit salad and sandwiches for lunch. Once, she made me a shrimp cocktail. We would pretend her house was a restaurant and she'd use a little notepad to "take my order." She liked to periodically press her hand on my forehead to check my temperature, something I think we both knew was just plain silly, and she would tell me stories about when my mom was a little girl. And I would listen, imagining getting to live with my grandma all the time, eating as much fruit salad as I ever wanted and never having to go to school because she clearly wouldn't ever make me go.

When my mom would come and pick me up later, dread would creep up into my chest. Not only did I have to go home, home to a brother and a sister and not being the center of attention anymore, but I was sure to get a good lecture on the downfalls of people who pretend to be sick to get out of school. I would sit on the couch silently while my mother tiraded on, until my grandmother would emerge from the kitchen and look at me fondly, saying, "Oh, Judy, she didn't feel good. She just needed a little day off. Right, Mary Pat?"

It wasn't just when I was sick that I got to spend time with my grandma, either. She was a very young grandmother compared to what my friends had. My memory tells me she was fifty-five the entire time I was in grammar school, which doesn't really make sense, but I know she was the only grandma who still had black hair and wore makeup, and definitely the only grandmother who ran (and won) marathons. Being so young, she took my brother, sister, and I everywhere, and stayed with us when our parents took their yearly honeymoon for a week. She bought us exactly what we wanted at Christmas, no matter how ridiculous, and she took us wherever we asked to go: Show Biz (which was around the corner from our house and pretty much a Chuck E. Cheese), Burger King, picnics at the Botanical Gardens. She drove so slowly but we laughed the entire time, because my brother was always teasing her and telling jokes. She once let my brother and sister roll down the windows of her car so they could climb in and out of it like they did in The Dukes of Hazzard. I wanted to so bad, but I was just too short to make the climb. My father would never have let us do something like that (he was big on taking care of his cars and we had a lot of strict rules, including never climb in and out of the windows). And of course, to add to the hilarity of all, my grandmother always did something ridiculous, like lock her keys in the car, or forget her entire wallet (she once asked a horse and carriage driver, "Do you take checks?"), or, to our greatest amusement, get really, really angry with one of us and yell at us the whole way to wherever we were going. When I think of every big moment of my childhood, the birthdays, the holidays, the Communions, even the proms and things like that when I was older, every one of those memories will show my grandmother in the background, always simply a part of the scene.

I've been thinking of these things a lot lately, these things and of how lucky I am that my own children have gotten to know and spend time with her. The first time I took Joey and Noah to Florida, Noah spent pretty much the whole trip in Grandma's lap, just chatting away, and those memories of my sick days at her house came flooding back. It wasn't ever anything particular that we did together, it was that whatever I said, she listened and responded to me like I was a real, interesting person. I love that Noah appreciates that in her, too. It creates an ache in my heart, though, because these days Grandma is having her own sick time, and I know she isn't faking just so she can get out of school or have a visit with her favorite person in the world. I also know that she's one of the strongest people I'll ever know...I mean, she doesn't run marathons anymore (she stopped just a couple of years ago; she's eighty-three now), but she does go to the gym every day and work out. Jeepers. If ever there was an eighty-three year old woman who was going to kick illness, it's my grandmother. Any time I start to doubt that, I'm going to picture the time she was shouting at her hundred-fifty pound pit bull, "Come ON, Shine! SHINER! Get outta here!" and whacking him over the back with her giant, gilt-paged Bible. (Don't worry; he barely felt it.)

Grandma, I love you so.

Right Now

We have microfiber couches, and the secret my children have not yet discovered is that the fabric displays fingerprints (and footprints) of all their day's crimes for me to see after they've gone to bed. I step through the family room, picking up and straightening, and I pause by the arm of the couch and look down at the prints of five tiny toes and my heart clenches up and my teeth bang together and I close my eye and say, "Oh, Noah."

For some reason, whether a day has been good or bad, Bed Time in my house is like stepping from perfectly fine weather into a hurricane. It's ironic, too, because when Joey was a baby I set his entire life's schedule by a book called Secrets of the Baby Whisperer, and one of the most important tenets I learned was that bed time should be a quiet time, a time to wind down from the day's activities. I used to carry Joey through house whispering soft good-nights to everything, even picture frames and rugs, all to set the right tone for going to bed. Sometimes, Joe would just be coming home from work during this time, and I would greet him with wide warning eyes and say in a soft, but emphatic voice, "Good night, Daddy."

Bed Time is so far from that peaceful fantastical sunset that I could cry just remembering the easy days of only having one. I'm sure moms of four and five read my blog and roll their eyes at me, as I would roll my eyes at the old me, a mom of a measly two. But I don't think it's the quantity of children that makes being a mom hard. I think it's the need in your heart, the want in my own heart to be a good, nay, a good enough mom. That's what's really behind all my crazy.

Tonight I put Max to bed, gently nudging him onto his side the way he likes and tucking his favorite blanket in a roll behind his back. I turned off his night light and closed the door behind me, and took a deep, calming breath with each footstep that carried me away from his room and toward the bigger boys.

One down.

I settled down in a chair with Noah and a book, one-on-one time my emotional middle child desperately needs, when Max began to wail loudly.

In short, the evening consisted of resettling Max three times, forgetting Joey and Noah's cold medicine and having to re-tuck them in, only for Noah to leap out of bed screaming, "SPIDER ON THE CEILING!" at which point I had to get out a stepladder and kill the spider, which escaped from the tissue in which I'd captured it and began scurrying about the room to the horror of its occupants. They must have added ten extra people to our "God bless" list during prayers, and as I was finally closing their door behind me, Max began to cry again.

I think I probably cry once a day. Some days more. It could be anything that sets me off, from a corny commercial on TV to a phone call from Joe in the midst of chaos. I don't cry for any real reason, and when I look back over my day as I am now, once everything is finally, finally settled and done, I feel the need to stand on a mountain--a very high and isolated mountain where I'm standing all alone--and shout out how absolutely grateful I am for these crazy days and these crazy boys, and for being able to stay home with them every day. Because I am. But the truth is, a lot of days, I take a lot of deep breaths. I count often. I pray often. I wish for the patience everyone else seems to have that I definitely lack. And I look at footprints on couches and I remind myself, "They're just being little. They can't help that they're kids." Because if I don't remind myself, I'll be mad. Like, really mad. And impatient, and more than a little crazy. And most days, I'm probably somewhere in between.

But then, the other day, I called out to Joey, "Hey, buddy, you know I love you, right?" and he turned around to look at me. He rolled his eyes with a smile and said, "Of course I know that, Mom. You tell me a hundred times a day, every day of my life." And I thought...I hope he's always exactly the way he is right now. Because "right now" is so good, well, it makes me cry, too.

Cheesecake

I like to have somewhat meaningful conversations at the dinner table with my kids. Not, "How do we accomplish world peace?" but conversations that let them know I care about them and what they do each day. It's also a good time to discuss anything serious, because I have their full, undivided attention. It's like the first five minutes of class in school. Everyone has just sat down and they're expecting something to happen. So whatever you want to say, say it right in that moment and you know it's heard.

One day not long ago, I said, "Do you guys know our code word?"

Noah was instantly intrigued. "We have a code word? Cool! What is it?" That answered that question.

"Is it cheesecake?" Joey asked. "Because you always say that to Dad."

I had to hide my smile then. "Cheesecake" is not our code word, or the word we have set up so that if my children are confronted by someone they aren't sure of, they can ask, "Do you know the code word?" The theory is, if the person knows the word, they're "safe." Our word is pretty obscure, too, which makes it that much more effective. (Although, if the kids don't know it, then it's kind of pointless.)

When I didn't answer right away, Joey said, "Why do you say 'cheesecake' at Dad all the time?"

So I told him. The reason is connected to something that happened a long time ago. We were at a family dinner at Joe's parents' house, and for dessert there was a large tray of cheesecake slices. It was one of those aluminum trays you can throw away, and it had to be at least the same circumference as an SUV tire. As Joe's mom served everyone tea and coffee, his father brought out this tray so it could be passed around.

Now, the thing about "passing around" this cheesecake tray was that it was just so darn big. It was difficult, too, to set it down anywhere because of all the coffee and tea cups and plates and silverware. When the tray came to Joe, however, he really thought he had it figured out. He placed his giant hand, fingers splayed, under the center of the tray and then began to peruse the selection.

And then the tray buckled under the imbalanced weight of the cheesecakes. It just...folded down around Joe's hand. I watched this like it was happening in slow motion, and it was if Joe suddenly grew  five hands, and they were all dog paddling in an attempt to catch every slice of cheesecake, but rather than save any of them the hands were splattering dessert everywhere. It was really one of the funniest things I've ever seen at a Bielecki family dinner, right up there with the time Joe's dad spent ten minutes constructing the perfect salad and then his little sister accidentally sneezed into it.

Ever since what I now call "The Cheesecake Incident," I use it as a frame of reference with Joe. He's not overly clumsy like I am, but there are just certain decisions he sometimes makes that instantly call the Cheesecake Incident to mind, at which point I simply look at him squarely and say, "Cheesecake." Apparently, this must happen pretty often if Joey decided "Cheesecake" must be our code word.

I was thinking of this all tonight because when I put Max to bed, I realized that his pajamas are too small. All of them. I looked down at his chubby leg rolls, which I completely love and want to kiss every time I see them, and realized that he needed the next size up.

"But that's impossible," I said out loud to myself. He only just transitioned into the 3-6 month size a couple of weeks ago. He's not even five months yet! For a baby who was scarily underweight in the early weeks of his life, I found this to be darn near crazy.

Anyway, I folded up the pajamas I'd initially selected and bent down to his "next size up" drawer to find something more suitable. I slid the jammies under his back and placed his arms inside, marveling that the length was right. One foot after the other tucked inside, and then I zipped everything up and lifted him into my arms.

"You're only four months old, you big boy!" I said to his twinkly blue eyes, and was rewarded with a great big silly smile.

But then I realized that's not really true. He'll be five months next week. Five months! Where did that time go? I turned down the lights and settled into the rocking chair with my baby, loving the feel of his head in the crook of my arm, and then noticing that his legs dangled off the side of my lap. Five months.

When I had Joey, I swear that first year took forever and a day. And then when I had Noah, I thought I was better prepared and I'd finally understand what everyone meant when they said, "Cherish every second! It goes too fast!" but then that first year crawled by, too. What I finally determined was that the first year is just really hard for me, because I prefer toddlers and children who can talk and interact and run and play. I can put them down and they can, you know, sit there. Independently.

As a newborn, Max had a really hard time gaining weight. He dropped well below his birth weight, and it took a lot of troubleshooting and trips to the pediatrician to figure out how to get him where he needed to be. I had to surrender breastfeeding, something I'm not sure I'll ever fully get over, and I worried myself sick day and night. "Here we go," is what I thought to myself. The dreaded first year. It seems like it's always something.

But in just a few short months, Max has eaten his way into a wonderfully cute chubbiness I had feared would never come. Smelling his baby lotion and feeling the weight of him in my arms as he chugged away at his bottle, I suddenly realized I felt like Joe with the cheesecake tray. I can't believe it, but I am loving these months with Max. He's difficult, it's true, being a refluxer and not being able to verbalize his needs in any way other than screaming, but he's got this charming smile, and, oh! when he coos at me it's almost like he's shy. And did I mention those leg rolls? They should be on a sushi menu and I'd order them and eat them right up! I mean, I just love this kid! And when I think of his age--almost FIVE MONTHS--I want to start trying to snatch all the months as they slide off their flimsy aluminum tray, but all I'm doing is making time fly away even faster.

Maybe "cheesecake" isn't our family code word, but it's not just a symbol of a goofy choice, either.

It's trying to hold on to a time that just can't last forever.

Hating Kindergarten

Noah is in kindergarten and he does not enjoy it. Worse, he brings his misery home with him and inflicts it on all of us during homework time. He laments the work itself, but also the teacher, his classmates, the number of hours in the day, all until he comes to the apparently inevitable conclusion that everyone must hate him if they expect him to go to school only to come home and do homework.

I have tried various things to combat all of this, but the problem is as it has always been: Noah is supremely stubborn. Unfortunately, I don't think I can communicate the degree to which this extends in any blog ever. I'll either come off as an inept mother or a terrible exaggerator (and I'm a bit of both, I'm afraid). I try to explain to people how Noah refuses sleep, and they smile smugly, turn up their noses, and say, "Oh, that would never fly in my house." When potty training Noah, it was more about advice. People couldn't seem to accept that he understood the entire concept and was simply going to do things in his own way at his own time. "Buy him toys!" they insisted. "Lock him in the bathroom for two hours!" "Take away his toys!" "Make him be naked!" Goodness. All that advice made me crazy and in the end, it worked out, anyway. It just had to be done Noah style.

Noah has missed a lot of school recently, first because of a terrible ear infection and then because of a family trip. At first it was all fun and games. He was thrilled to be out of school, and as I feared, began to seek new reasons to not have to go back. But upon his return, he discovered the mountain of make-up work that had been piling up. "Take the February break to complete this," his teacher said generously.

That brings us to this week. Every day has been excruciating and painstaking trying to get Noah to do schoolwork, though I know there is simply too much to complete all in one day and the longer he procrastinates the more miserable he will be in the end. So today I said, "Noah, you need to do your homework today. You must do it."

"No! I won't!" he declared. "It's the terriblest, worstest, most awful thing and I won't do it!"

Meanwhile, I intermittently go online and read about kidnappings, murders, child molestation, and terminal illness, but, yes, Noah, homework is the worst.

During a break he and I sat on the steps with his now four-month-old brother Max. The second Noah joined us, Max's face broke into a wide smile, the sort he saves only for his brothers.

"He's smiling at me," Noah pointed out unnecessarily. But it was necessary to him. Making Max smile is a point of pride for him.

"Of course he is," I said. "He loves you very much."

"Why?"

"Because you're his big brother. Little brothers and sisters always love their big brothers. No matter what you ever do, Max will always think you are the greatest thing ever. He will love you no matter what. He'll look at you and say, 'I want to be just like Noah.'"

Noah grinned.

"That's a pretty big responsibility, you know."

"It is?"

"Well, yeah. Max won't always realize you're doing anything wrong. He'll just think whatever it is you're doing is cool, since it's you. So it's your job to make good choices so he learns that being good is cool."

Noah frowned.

I went on. "You know, maybe Max will hate school when he's in kindergarten. Are you going to want to hear him moan and complain and say he's not doing his work? You'll be in fifth grade by then. What would you tell him?"

He didn't hesitate. In his great big voice, he said, "Oh. Well, I would listen to everything he had to say, first of all. THEN, I would say, 'I know. It was hard for me, too.' Because IT IS."

Having Three

Joe and I, having been "in love" for ages now, didn't mind not having a babysitter on Friday night for official Valentine's Day. He brought home some sushi and we had a little wine after the kids were all in bed, and then, to avoid crowds and craziness, we went out to dinner on Saturday night instead.

Joe didn't remember this, but eleven years ago, Valentine's Day fell on a Friday. He sent me flowers, but back then we were only friends and he wanted to avoid the complication of seeing me on the official day of looove. So we went out on Saturday the fifteenth instead, which was the special night we held hands in the car and he kissed me for the first (second) time ever. (Our first kiss had actually been five years earlier but we don't count it because it was such a bomb.) So much for avoiding complication.

But then what I didn't remember was the significance of yesterday. One year ago yesterday was the day I discovered I was going to have Max. I remember the panic of realizing the possibility of being pregnant, and knowing I had exactly one pregnancy test somewhere in one of the bathroom drawers. (I really like taking pregnancy tests. It turns out I'm really good at them.) I had been wide-eyed in my bed at three a.m. with the awareness of it, and by four I was in the bathroom, blinking blearily in the too-bright light as I waited for the second pink line.

Unlike our first two pregnancies, Joe and I really knew what this third one meant. We'd spent a lot of heart-wrenching conversations discussing what another baby would mean for our family, so that little white stick with the two pink lines was more than just a thrilling moment. It's the only pregnancy test I kept of all three of my children, and I think it's because it was the only time I fully understood how different my life was going to be.

I wrote the rest of this blog in my head tonight while I rocked Max to sleep in the nursery upstairs. All of my boys had unique nurseries, something that is inexplicably really important to me (though it might have something to do with my being born third, not having a room, and being housed in the bathroom). Max's room is my favorite one of all, decorated with blue stripes and accents from Where the Wild Things Are. I toyed with how cliche that was, but in the end decided I didn't care. It's a wonderful, magical story, and I love how many times I was able to find something small that said "Max" on it.

Max had a fussy day today. In general he is a fussy baby, afflicted by reflux and a strong personality. I never got to have one of those easy, breezy, on-the-go type babies you see strolling through mayhem whilst sound asleep. The pediatrician actually commented on that early on during an office visit. Anyway, Max gave me a hard time going in for bedtime tonight, polishing off his whole bottle but waking himself up at the last second with the need to spit up. Poor buddy. If you never had a refluxer, count yourself lucky. It isn't necessarily the worst thing at all, but it is hard to see your little one so uncomfortable and unhappy all the time. 

So there I was, playing mind games with Max trying to get him to sleep, bouncing him this way and that, making "sh-sh-sh" noises, and carefully not making eye contact with him because that seems to be an indicator to him that it's Awake Time, and mentally writing this blog. I came up with a concise one through ten list of the changes in our lives because of Max. But when I went to ease Max into his crib, he decided he wasn't ready to sleep and I had to start the bouncing and the shushing all over, so I re-wrote the whole blog a second time, including entertaining details about the difficulty of going from two to three children.

And then I sat down to write it. The cursor blinked at me, the white screen stretched endlessly, and I felt...quiet. My mind and my heart went quiet, thinking over the details of the last four months, and of the last year. The changes seem obvious, but then profound, and then...unimportant. Not because Max is not wonderful and amazing, but because he is. I expected him to be like Joey or like Noah, or like me or like Joe, and I am amazed that he is completely his own person. Already. I am amazed at his tiny ears and his tiny hands and the amount of toe jam one small person can accumulate in a single day. I am amazed at his voice and his sounds and his belly button and his rosy lips. I'm amazed that he knows and loves each member of his family so much already, and that his brothers have loved him without thought or question since the moment they first saw him in the hospital. 

Having a baby is not an easy thing for me. Having three children seems impossible a lot of the time, like I'm having a dream where I watch this messy, chaotic version of myself try and deal with problems that can't possibly be mine in real life. But there is one thing that comes very easily to me, and I am grateful, deeply, that my children share this same gift. I  love my family. I love these children. Here I wanted to avoid being obvious or cliche, but it is the most profound thing I can think to say. That when I reached a point in my life where I believed my love was all used up and given away, the Universe found a way to reach deep inside me and show how much more there was. It is hard and I think I am awful at it, but I love my children and am very glad to be their mother. 

That is all.

Fussy baby yawning. <3 p="">

The Gift of Time

Today was supposed to be my last official day home with my kids. Last October I tried hard to focus on the positives: I was having a baby, a beautiful one, and I was able to stay home with him a few weeks longer than originally planned. But the realistic me was focused on the fact that a few weeks longer only meant that I'd still have to leave an awfully tiny baby at home.

Fast forward to now, and I don't have to go back to work after all! And somehow, taking off a whole school year is way easier for me to handle than just half of one. I'm not nearly so focused on having to go back. Instead, I'm thinking of all these things with huge relief:

1. I won't miss baby's first word, which will surely be "Mama," because we're already so much in love. I mean, he loves his dad and his brothers, too, but he definitely loves me best.

2. I won't miss baby crawling! I don't know why, but crawling is almost more thrilling to me than walking. I think it's because I struggle so with infancy so much. I've loved all of my babies desperately, but not because I love babies. Just because they're mine, and because as they grow, they turn into my people. It really isn't about babies at all, who in general I find to be both nerve-wracking and baffling.

3. I won't have to worry about someone shaking my baby. I never worried about this with Joey and Noah, and I blame that on the fact that I was really young, comparatively, when I had them. I spent time worrying about small things, like spitting up and sleep schedules, rather than even thinking of all the other, greater dangers that could befall them. I think that for me at that time, it was easier to believe my greatest worries were such little things. Now, however, I read the news, and it's spoiled my illusions forever. So. Yeah.

4. I don't have to go to work. This is not as lazy as it sounds. First of all, I'd have to leave my three-month-old (and my kindergartener, and my third-grader) and go to be with other people's children who, let's face it, I'm never going to care about as much as the children I'm leaving behind. Sorry, but if you thought otherwise, be real! Second, I was out of sick days. Already, in the first have of the year, Noah alone has missed nine days. Any time I needed to stay home and take care of him, I'd have to take unpaid leave, which equals additional stress. And last, teaching is a rough industry right now. Just saying.

5. I get this many more chances to be the first one to make Max laugh. I seriously thought he would have by now, and I'd be terribly upset if I had to go back without hearing it.

6. I'll be able to go to Noah's Mother's Day celebration at school AND his kindergarten graduation (which I would have had to miss due to not having any sick/personal days left).

7. I get to take my family on a trip during a non-peak season. Because if we had to go during a peak season, we wouldn't be able to afford the airfare for all of us.

I have thought about the fact that I might miss Max's first steps next fall, but I reassure myself by thinking that a) he might be an insanely early walker (though by the looks of things, probably not; he hasn't even laughed yet, after all) or b) we'll have an awesome nanny who will do something cool like knock him over if it looks like he's going to walk before I get home.

In the meantime, I am focusing on how the tough stuff is temporary, how the good things are so insanely good, and how my children fill me up and make everything so, so worth it.

Lucky

Tonight I went to the grocery store to replace a bottle brush that had fallen into the gummy, questionable depths of my kitchen sink drain. It had been a long day: Max's christening followed by a party I didn't want to have. I never want to have parties. I love my family, both our families, but I hate entertaining. Everyone wears shoes on my rugs and rummages in my kitchen. These are things a germophobic control freak simply can't abide.

Anyway.

I realized about halfway through Wegmans that my face felt stiff and starchy, and I realized it was still streaked with tears and mascara from an episode Noah, my second born and beloved five-year-old, had had earlier. It should not surprise anyone if they see me with a tear-stained face. I had a baby seven and a half weeks ago and my emotions and hormones are still a mess. But add my Noah into the mix, and, well, you just can't imagine.

Seven and a half weeks ago, my Noah went from being a second-born to being a middle child. You think that doesn't matter? Well, I've got news for you. It definitely does. I knew it would, but I had no idea just how much.

How many times a day do I shout SHHH! The baby's sleeping!  or, Watch out! The baby's right there! How many times a day does Noah hear me say No!  or Oh, Noah! Maybe I always spoke sharply to him. I think I did. But now, it carries an entirely different message to him. Now, it says, "Somebody else is more important." It doesn't matter that it isn't true. It matters that it's what he feels. And, yes, he is five, but his feelings do matter. At least, they do to me.

This weekend, knowing it was Max's big weekend, I arranged for a special "Noah and Godmother Day" with my sister. It turned into a sleepover, which Noah was absolutely thrilled about. What we didn't bank on is that he decided at some point it was not just a sleepover, but a life swap. He wanted to trade families altogether and move in with my sister as his new mother.

I can't say this didn't hurt.

It exploded at the christening, during which he must have leaned over and whispered to me several hundred times to double check whether I might let him go through with the swap. To deter him, I kept hissing things like, "Shhh, we'll talk later." This was a major mistake, apparently, because "we'll talk later" translated to Noah as, "We'll pack your things later." I had no idea what I was in for.

As the party progressed, I found out just what was going on with my most tempestuous little boy. Realizing that no one was taking his plan seriously, he began urgently seeking out anyone who would listen, insisting they help him gather his things and wondering why no one else was on board. Finally, I pulled him to the side and gave him the truth as gently as I could. "Noah," I said, "you can't go and live with Janie. You have to stay here with me."

Noah has the biggest roundest eyes I've ever seen on a little boy. The other day, he said, "I can make my eyes ginormous, wanna see?" In this moment, they were soaked with tears that spilled over his long eyelashes, and his chin puckered as he said words I don't ever, ever want to hear again: "But I don't want to live with you."

I'm a smart enough, pragmatic enough person to know that he is a child, and that he had no concept of what he was truly asking. However, any mother knows that those words hurt, no matter how empty or fleeting they may be.

It was a long haul from there. Jane spoke to him, my mom spoke to him, Joe spoke to him. No one could get through. It wasn't much helped by the fact that his cousins seemed to think the whole thing was a grand idea and kind of encouraged it. Finally, the guests left the house and I was left with a crying middle child in my arms. A little boy who knows he has a big brother who gets everything first and a baby brother who has more important needs than anyone and two parents who just can't seem to give him what he needs, apparently.

He cried in my arms that my sister wouldn't take him, and that he didn't want me.

I looked at Joe and said, "Let me take him alone." Joe, for once, realized the importance of this and took Max to another part of the house. Joey set himself up with video games, and I brought Noah to my bedroom and closed the door. While he whimpered and waited, I reached into the bottom of one of my drawers and pulled out a book that I've had since he was born. I always meant for him to have it when he was grown up. Maybe when I died. (Do you do that? Imagine what you will leave for your family when you die? I'm kind of obsessed with it.) The book is called The Mommy Journal: Letters To Your Child and was created by Tracy Broy, but it's written by me. It's a journal with blank pages so that a mother can write to her child short little epistles over the course of his (or in some cases, her) life. I have one for each of my boys, and tonight I showed Noah his.

We sat on the floor together. I opened to the inside cover, where I'd begun five and a half years ago by etching an inscription.

"'To Noah,'" I read aloud, "'I never knew how much love I had to give until I had you. Love, Mom.'"

This is when I began to cry, too. When Noah's face turned to mine, he was aghast.

"But you're crying," he whispered.

"Yes," I said. "Now just listen."

I turned to the first letter.

"I wrote this one in May," I told him, and began to read.

Dear Noah,

You are two weeks old. Last summer I asked God for a baby. I immediately knew you were a boy, and that your name should be Noah. Dad disagreed, but my "mother's instinct" won him over. While you lived in my tummy, you moved constantly--especially when I tried to sleep. You desperately wanted to come out and be part of the world--proven when labor didn't move fast enough and you had to be a c-section. After the moment you were born, they placed you, shivering, in my arms. They bundled us up in three blankets so you could stay with me longer, because they knew we had bonded instantly. Now, you are an angel. Golden blond hair and deep blue eyes. I loved you immediately, so much more than I thought possible. You are snuggly and sweet, so alert and smart already. You coo and cry so cutely, with a quivery lower lip. They say you look like me. I gave you a bath tonight, after which you promptly spit up and pooped. I love you. Welcome. 

Love, Mom

I was shaking with sobs as I finished this letter. Not because I love Noah so much now, which I do, but because of how true every word already was even then. His stubbornness, his strength. His insistence and impetuousness. Everything that made him Noah even as an infant. He looked up at me, crying, too, and said, "You wrote that when I was a baby?" His chin pulled up and he swallowed. I nodded, and put my arm around him, reading on. I read him four more letters before he reached out, closed the book, and pulled away.

"You don't want to read anymore?" I asked, my nose covered in snot now and my voice heavy with crying.

He shook his head. He looked at me. He said with some confusion, "You're making me cry even more."

I took the book from his hands and set it aside. "I know things are hard right now," I said. "They're hard for all of us because we're learning. But I want you to know, you are the one boy I asked God for. Joey and Max were surprises, and I love them very much. But I asked for you. You are everything I've ever wanted."

He nodded, closing his eyes and more tears spilled out. "You're making me cry more!" he said again.

"There's no one else like you in the world," I said, still thinking in amazement over all the personality traits he'd shown even in his first months as a baby. "You are the only Noah, and I would never ever want to live without you. I love being your Mom."

He look into my eyes and said, "And I love being your Noah."

Maybe I should have been embarrassed as I walked through Wegmans all tear-stained and starchy, but I wasn't. I just felt lucky.