Turns out this is a big deal. Full days of school start soon in this house which means I’ll be packing a lunch for my daughter almost exclusively because of allergies the hot lunch isn’t really an option.

Only, we have to worry about more than just her allergies and how to protect her from them, because we also have to protect the other children’s allergies from whatever might possibly end up in her sack-lunch.

Nothing of a peanut variety may be along with her for her bus ride. They did say we could pack them but that they could not open their lunches on the bus and thats like asking your three year old to help you wrap the presents blindfolded for Christmas.

It’s easier to just do it yourself, am I right?

So, no peanuts. Which is one of the food groups she can have plenty of and we can be pretty creative because of it … but not for school.

And because of the cost we don’t eat a ton of Gluten Free breads or crackers, which is half of what a sack-lunch used to be – your sandwich and those yummy-bad-for-you crackers and cheese. Oh yum!

I put it out there on my personal facebook page asking parents who make them WHAT THEY PUT IN THEM!! I just don’t know.

I’ve gotten some great tips, best one of all was to include the occasional note or sticker, I loved it when my mom did that and can’t believe I was totally forgetting that about lunches.

Here’s the other dilemma I run into … how much do I pack with her? She get’s a snack in the morning (crackers that all parents provide to the school, in her case, special crackers) and then lunch. Do I plan that she’ll stuff herself so she can make it through the ride home and then beg me for something to eat? Or do I pack something that along the way home, she might find and decide to snack on herself.

I have been the sole source of nutrition and food for my daughter since she was born. Unleashing this huge responsibility on her and strangers around her feels like I’m handing reigns over to someone I haven’t met, who doesn’t understand that her rosy cheeks mean more than she’s warm.

Or the tight red line she gets around her lips means her stomach hurts. That when she starts itching her legs and arms she’s having an allergic reaction and the only that makes her feel better is a cold drink and time on my lap, possibly some lotion.

They don’t know that the awful sound she makes when she’s frustrated is really where the word “HELP ME” is supposed to go but she can never find it in time to say that instead of burst out yearning.

And how in the world is the teacher going to see all of this when there are 20some other children, all with their own special quirks and stories, in her room expecting the same treatment that I expect for my baby girl? WHO IS NO LONGER A BABY AND … AND …. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

{long pause}

Well I just lost my marbles. So this week is going to be tough, the week I have to act all “This is so exciting!” and I’m feeling “Dear God please keep her safe, when did she start walking again? Will she come back to me?”, “She’s still so small!!”. She’s already announced to us that she realizes I am going to cry on her first day of school – it’s what I do! She declared.

She’s right.

But along with working through all of this, letting her go, giving her wings and watching her take off and be great, I have to pack a Lunch! With no peanuts.

Mom’s, how do you do it?

We woke up this morning to this master piece in progress:

Seems like more than just my creative juices have been released since moving.

She’s fantastic.

Maybe it’s because yesterday was the very last day of preschool or that I can’t stop comparing years ago to today in photos but this summer smells of something Big for us.

I cannot put my finger on it, nor do I really want to. But it feels like we were just released into the great unknown, that something is coming. Hopefully good, hopefully wonderful and amazing. Hopefully an adventure.

Schools OUT! It’s SUMMER! The freedom alone in those words is delicious. Beach time, both of my babes every day all day. Sun burnt noses and freckles. Berries to pick and a garden to sew.

I feel like we’re on a countdown to when the “Real” parenting begins, the official school season of our lives begins in kindergarten with homework and science fairs and all kinds of sleep overs and hot lunches.

She doesn’t need a push – she’s all ready to go.

Get ready, world.

Here we come.

This is now.

This photo was taken weeks before we decided to start adding to our family. It was in August of 2009. We took our little fam to Grand Haven for lunch and a walk on the pier – I remember getting a beer and sitting there thinking how perfect life was. Sitting outside on a deck eating with the people who meant the most to me.

Our little girl. Our world. In a pink dress and barefoot, she cascaded the rocks on the pier, always looking for something else to climb. Another mountain to over take. A challenge to over come.

I think back to this day often, actually. I knew in my heart that we were spending one of the last weekends as the three of us before a fourth became a reality in my womb. I knew, in the bottom of my gut, in all of my instincts that this weekend was for all of us. For Aaron and I to remember how sweet it is. For Jessica to remember how much fun it is. For me to know how peaceful my life really is.

We’ll never forget those years with “just her”. We wouldn’t trade that time for anything and we wouldn’t redo it or decide to not move forward and build a bigger foundation in our family.

Before we knew it – her bare-feet were tangled and touching his.

And then we could breathe. We could exhale. We didn’t know we were holding our breath, trying to hold on to every moment and every feeling. Trying to touch our souls and reach for that moment.

I don’t know if we’re complete, yet. But I know we’re lucky. We are so damn lucky.

What???!!!

I can’t sleep and have been shocked at what I’m finding in the early hours of a Wednesday.

Sadness shrouded in joy. And other things, too.

I just read this and think you should too. Leah is amazing and I never knew any of this about her – I only knew that she was part of this, behind it when a friend nudged me to submit something … and so I did.

This is not what I submitted – it’s something I tried to write but couldn’t figure out how to make it work and now, after reading her story and re reading my rejected one … I’m ready to tell you.

I wrote this April 30, 2010

On May 5th we will be celebrating my son’s second birthday. It’s hard to imagine our life before he was with us but I know my daughter, now 5 1/2, remembers me being pregnant. She remembers how special it was to be the only one and now knows how special it is to be one of two. I have guilt about having more kids, more than her, more than them. Right now life is so wonderful and easy yet difficult and tiring and so unwilling to bend. She sees me love him while I’m scolding her, she sees me hold him while I can’t touch her at all. I wonder if she sees me loving her, too.

To Jessica:

People suspect this, I’m sure, but 6 years later how about we let out this little secret? The one I told you while tucking you in not long after Oliver was born. When you were feeling down and I was feeling unconnected to you and wanted nothing more than to hold your heart ever so gently so you wouldn’t be hurt any more. We told everyone that your sex, as a newborn, was a surprise on the day you were born but it wasn’t. We were preparing for a girl all along, we were preparing for you. Your name changed in the delivery room and I’m so glad we did that, you’re every part a Jessica Ranae and not at all an Onalee. You’re fierce in every way. Dramatic and theatrical. You are magnificent.

I painted a window to put in your nursery before you were born and on it said “Sweet Baby, You are a breath of Heaven” and I would whisper that to you in my belly and then in your ear while you nursed and before you went to bed every night when your dad and I would fight over who got to hold you just one more time.

Jessica, I see through your ploys to get attention. I know how unfair it is be the oldest although I, myself, am a youngest. How difficult we can be as parents, how easy you really are as a child. I’m so sorry you feel the need to quit or be smaller than you really are to get us to notice you. I haven’t done a very good job of yelling from the top of my lungs that you are noticed. You are loved. God, how you are loved. We really are alike even though I lay awake at night worrying that you’re going to grow up resenting me, hating me. I hope you don’t do the same. This past week I witnessed a live birth that resulted in an adoption and the emotions in that delivery room were nothing short of a marathon from ecstasy straight to hell.

Tonight, I’ll hold you a little longer. I’ll play with you a little longer. We’ll ride bikes past bedtime and go on walks instead of naps and I’ll give up breathing just so you know how much I love you. It’s true, I push you, but Jessica, you keep me going.

Love,
Mom

These videos are a bit of “full circle” moment for us as adults. Mostly my husband as he spent most of his youth skating off rails and trying to make sure that having any children naturally would probably never happen (I’ve seen the videos. The stunts that ended in a crotch fall are numerous. I’m just saying).

The fact that both of them love to go fast is no surprise, I mean … kids like to go fast right? Most of the time? Be thrown into the air? Roller coasters? Fine … we do, they do, it fits. We love it.

I was starting to get anxious about our morning out because we had no real way of keeping the kids near us … they were MOBILE on WHEELS. And the coffee wasn’t kicking in, or maybe it was and that’s why the bitch inside of me came out with 4 heads and crosseyed pointy fingers going “LOOK!! LOOOOOK!!! WE’RE GOING TO LOSE THEM IN THE SEA OF PEOPLE!”

I could feel my heart beat faster and all I could see was me sweating even more while we tried to venture through the Farmers Market without any kind of device with a belt on it to keep them close.

You are right, I have issues. I am kind of insane. And mostly intense.

But then. THEN! We came to this hill and all was right with the world – the kids were laughing, I had ditched my coffee because I realized that being even more jacked up was not the right decision and we stayed there at that hill for a good 15 minutes, riding the hill, watching them laugh and discover and be kids.

Some times things don’t go my way at all … and it always turns out better any way.

It’s a beautiful rainy day here in Holland and my dutch dancing this morning was canceled, no matter that I was already dressed and walking to find my group.

I have a list of things to be doing right now because both of my kids are sleeping but I can’t quiet my mind and my hands want nothing to do with busy work.

So I’ll just catch up here *smiles*, you don’t mind, do you?

May has been a full month. Full as in fulfilling, full as in robust and full as in overflowing.

I submitted to a magazine and was asked to write, which I did. I’m pretty sure I’ll be in the next issue but I haven’t heard the final yes or no, although maybe I did and I’m trying not to jinx it. It is on my life list to be a published writer for magazines, so … holding my breath.

This is the month when Gleek Retreat is happening and behind the scenes I am BUSY getting things wrapped up (sponsors) and planned (swag bags, details, etc) for the event. I am tired in the best way possible, but I’m also anxious. Ready to see some faces.

Last weekend the hubs and I went to DETROIT! to see some friends and also a Tigers Game, a first for me. It was a wonderful little hiatus.

In one of my recent lists of lovely I linked to this and we tried them … delicious fun, folks. But don’t really eat them. It’s just wonder and awe in bubbles … a snake of bubbles. Perfect post naptime pick me up, to see something floating above you, made from your breath – this beautiful string of little soapy rainbows.

And then giggles. Lots and lots of giggles. Filling the air, filling me up, preparing me for a celebration. The one where he turns two.

The one where she watches and celebrates him anew.

She made us a family and he made us complete.

Happy birthday, us. We did it!

I think I worry more now about my kids than I did when they were infants and it was expected of me to worry about them.

Mostly my daughter, actually. We have a relationship that I can literally feel pain when she bleeds but to touch her is like sand paper on her skin and she recoils. I always want more, she always wants less.

If there were leashes it would be very small with her choking on the length but panting from the short distance freedom.

She’s ready for more in life, more trust. More adventure. More of something other than this and it’s been a real struggle this past few months to occupy her mind.

The caveat is always trust, she (at age 5) has yet to show us that trusting her beyond her current parameters in our lives is a good decision. So we continue to hold steady right where are – all the while looking at each other with burdened eyes because we’re so damn tired from pulling on 750 pounds of Want forcing it’s way past our threshold.

This morning we had her Kindergarten Readiness test done at the school she’ll be attending in the fall and I will not lie, I was having a small panic attack that she would get in the class room and FAHREAK OUT – which means running and jumping and, think of it this way … it’s like watching someone have electromagnetic therapy – strapped to a bed, biting on a rubber strap – only her eyes don’t go in the back of her head. She kind of foils at the mouth some times, but it’s never bad. It’s just always a little uncontrollable.

At which point in my panic attack I envision the teacher walking out of the classroom to tell me, dead on, that this must be a joke? To bring her here thinking she can attend SCHOOL?!?! I must be out of my mind.

Don’t you worry. I was frightened for naught. She did GREAT! Better than great! We have nothing to worry about! She’ll go to kindergarten! NEXT YEAR!

This feels like such a proclamation because we tried to get her into Kindergarten last year but was told the above … with less horror and more seriousness as to why we thought our child was smart enough to be in Kindergarten yet? She only missed the age requirement by 6 weeks. And she is fucking intelligent. So yes. I thought kindergarten would be fabulous. The folks down at the Other school? Not so much.

So we went another round of preschool, in a different preschool, and the past few months we’ve seen some regression in her attitude and her willingness to listen.

TURNS OUT SHE IS BORED OUT OF HER MIND.

Thank you Jesus! She’s just bored! She’s not trying to taunt us or be awful. She’s NOT awful. I’m not doing it all wrong. It’s a waste to worry! I’m STEALING JOY!

We got in the car after her test this morning and she asked politely for her brother to share something with her. ohmygodohmygodohmygod. She sang songs on the way home and skipped instead of walked, but still stayed close enough not to require a reminder from me.

Which is when it dawned on me, right there, driving home and listening the joyful noise of a child who finally has something else to look forward to, that she can deal with the next few months of water-play and gluing scrap pieces of paper together if it means that she gets to GO TO SCHOOL and LEARN when she’s done.

Sometimes my worries scare me, I think to myself, is this ok to worry about? Am I doing it right? Should I lighten up here or crack down there? Should I, would I, may I?

And then I get a moment like I had today, where I realize that it’s all working out. It is tiring and worrisome and stressful, but fulfilling and life giving and awesome.

So we’re strapping our boots on for the last leg of this ride. The one where I cry and thrash my way about it but know full well that when it’s done, I’ll want to do it again … and so will she.