Spacing Kids

Well, I have actually experienced having a 5-year-old "only" child and also two babies 22 months apart in age. You might say that I have fairly good insight into each situation!

First of all, it was never my intent for Walker to be newly 5 and in kindergarten before he had a sibling. But that was God's intent. I tried, He denied.

Being young and petulant whenever I didn't get my way, especially if I imagined my way to be totally honorable and blameless (Come'on, Lord...all I want is another baby! Is that too much to ask?) I didn't take the denial well. I felt sorry for myself. I thought that other mothers with a string of little chicks, or even just two in stair-step heights was adorable. My lone baby was not a baby anymore, and my four losses grated on my mind quite a bit.


Until - I learned that almost certainly they would not have developed into healthy children. Then I understood God's mercy. Four little precious souls soared to Heaven without gasping under ventilators and enduring tubes, needles and early death. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.


Walker was my solitary child for over 5 years and I have to say that I enjoyed his company immensely. He was funny, he was relaxed, he didn't compete with anyone, he had friends when he wanted them and lots of Mommy time when he wanted that. It was easy and fun to take him places as he grew older because he was cooperative and not rowdy - there was no one to be rowdy with! He was cherished by both sides of the family - the only child during his little kid phase.


You think - only child= SPOILED. I don't think he was spoiled because we didn't have much money at all and he didn't get toys or treats whenever he desired them. Besides that, Daddy and I weren't soft on discipline.


He also didn't have a playmate in the home. We had to import them.


Along came Laurel at last. Walker was 5 years, two months old. They would never "play" together in any way, shape or form.


She was 22 months old when Sean was born.


Now things got stirred up a bit! Diapers in two sizes! Tugs over toys before Sean could sit up well. Lots of tears and lots of baby giggles, too. I think one reason he talked well so early was because Laurel was constantly talking to "Connie". He crawled after her with infant rapture. They lined up stuffed animals under the oak breakfast table and made a "house" under there after I topped it with a sheet which overhang the sides. When they were seated in a wagon people thought they were twins...they had matching yellow blond hair and jammered to each other ceaselessly. Sean's first belly laugh was when a hot dog wiener jetted out of her hot dog bun onto the floor. Her wails turned to peals of laughter because "Connie" showed her the humor in the situation. I think he was under a year old that day.

She was bossy and he was controlling. Sounds like a married couple, doesn't it? The thing that struck me as amazing was that he was worried about her safety by the time he was four. "There you go, talking to STRANGERS again!" he yelled when just we three were at JC Penney and she showed the lady in line ahead of us Brad Randall, her Cabbage Patch doll. He jerked her away with fierce anxiety while I stood there bewildered. Was my baby the man of the family while Winston was away? He'd grab her hand when we were about to cross a street and of course she'd try to pull away but he got stronger quick!


Inevitably, their gender differences, not age difference, created the GREAT DIVIDE. Laurel didn't want him in her room "touching" her things, (he could care less about her things). Walker was out and about the neighborhood long before Sean could cross a street without holding my hand. But for fully Sean's first four years he and Laurel were best friends. Just about the time she met Jennifer he met Miles so no one was left out in the cold.


So...that's what raising an "only" bigger child without a close sibling, vs. very young children close in age is like. Frankly, I enjoyed both situations to such an extent I wouldn't do it any other way! I loved hopping quickly in the car for outings with just one kid. I loved watching two babies tussle, hug and laugh together!


Love, Mom

The Ring Bear

Hi. we're baaaaaack! Had a fun time but we had offered to take Wendy to the motel with us after the rehearsal dinner so the bride and her parents could relax and the girls could get their hair done in the morning without worrying about chasing a toddler. Well, we got stuck in horrible traffic and it took us 1 hr. 45 min. to get to the motel in San Antonio!

That would have been bad enough, but Wendy began to vomit and she drenched her only pair of pj's I had with us and her beloved Pooh bear she now carries everywhere with her and splashed the flowergirl dress, and we still couldn't even pull over to clean her up! She kept saying, "Baby sad...baby sad...fingers YUCKIE! Mouth sick!" all the way there. She actually had TWO major throw-ups then. When we got to the motel I had to carry her through the lobby - both of us reeking. Bathed her trembling body and then she threw up again on the only play outfit I had with us. Two baths. Wrapped her in a sheet while she cried for "Bay-uh! Baaaaay-uh!" and I dunked him in the basin and did all I could to get the odor out...even blow-dried him but he was still like a wet sponge. So she couldn't have him to sleep with. End of story? No...she cried and coughed until 1:38 AM!!

Don't forget the flowergirl dress, ecru eyelet with specks of broccoli all over the back of it. Had to dab at that with a wet washcloth.

Wendy up at 7:00. Took her in last remaining outfit - a sundress - to the "continental breakfast". She ate grapes and seemed better. Walked her around the lobby with still-damp and slightly stinky Pooh. Out to the parking lot where she insisted on carrying Bay-uh Pooh, her sippy cup and every rock she could find. I think she has all the makings of a fine hoarder. When she failed to be able to add in a 2' long stick, she began to weep. Time for a nap.

Winston takes van to be "detailed" and de-stinked.

Nap going fine...then Wendy wakes with you-know-what all up her back. This is not looking good.

This is now the wedding day. Wendy is flowergirl.

Off in the car to move to a closer hotel. Wendy now clad in only a diaper. She spews yet again. Winston says, "This is the perfect storm..."

So much for the $50 detailing job.

He sits with her in the car while I run into Target to get another outfit and wipes, paper towels and diapers, some sort of nausea remedy for babies...oh, and Pine sol.

To Taco Cabana so Winston and I can eat something. New brown heels and I step in a fat fresh wad of gum. What a day. Clean Wendy up in restroom feeling like germs are leaping from every surface to distance to get us.

Back in the car I pray aloud that she will be able to participate in some way in the wedding despite everything. Actually, begging for a miracle. Wendy listens and says, "Again." So I say the same prayer again. And Again. Again and again and again. Finally I switch to singing "Jesus Loves Me" but she doesn't like that as much.

To church. I am supposed to pin on the boutonnieres and corsages. Wendy asleep again in van. Winston sits out there with her with doors open. Thankfully it's a cool day!

Run in to pin boutonnieres...forget about corsages...out to check on Wendy every 15 min.

32 min. before wedding I reluctantly wake Wendy. Her cheeks are bright pink. She says, "Hot!" and she is. Why didn't I think to get baby Tylenol at Target?

Dress her quickly and she looks like a doll despite her half-closed eyes and whining, "Hot...hot..."

Yep. Bear still stinks. Wendy's holding Bay-uh and so she stinks and I'm holding her so I stink as well. We are a stinky threesome.

God hears prayers. Wendy was able to walk down the aisle holding James' mother's hand and Bay-uh. Not the flowergirl basket. I guess you can say she was the Bear Girl?

Maybe she can start a new trend...she accessorizes with a stuffed animal!

Love! Mom

Memories

I am reading OLD letters I sent to Dad when we were apart for 6 months at a time...can you IMAGINE that? Talk about frustrated and miserable...yikes....it was tough but then all the other military wives were in the same boat so I couldn't feel SOOOOO sorry for myself then. But looking back, I DO feel a bit sorry for Penny aged 30 in Japan with a newborn third child and knowing that he will be 2 1/2 months old before his father even sees him! An ocean apart from the family back home most of the time and trying to walk to the post office on base in the RAIN to see if there is mail from the USS Midway ship that day or not...I cannot believe I tolerated that but I did and hundreds of other wives did, so it wasn't only me by any means.

It is sad to read all of the anxiety and hopefulness but yet I also am sort of pumped up that I did it! I thought that I was sort of wimpy but I guess not!?

It is great in a way at my age to look back and see evidence that you actually gave pretty cool birthday parties sans Daddy, had a neighbor and her three kids over for quiche ( a brand NEW recipe and sophisticated idea!), went to PTO meetings, drilled math facts, went to soccer games, kept a 2-year-old boy for over a week while his mother (sans his Daddy who was on the ship with Winston) ) had a c-section, went to Ueno Zoo with three kids and a base tour group, lost toddler Laurie (and found her sitting at a zoo picnic table with a Japanese family eating a rice ball!), put toys on "layaway" at the exchange and fretted over being able to pay them out before Christmas, found a scrawny Christmas tree shipped over from California to the base in Japan and decorated it heavily to fill in the bare spots where all the needles had fallen off...

Had a nursing newborn and a two-year-old with double pneumonia and begged the pediatrician to let me treat her at home rather than hospitalize her because the Dollahon grandparents were there to help me medicate her, fretted that at the exchange there were NO manila envelopes and Winston NEEDED manila envelopes on the ship, gave a baby shower for a wonderful dear neighbor, Mary Keeton, who I miss to this day - accepted the marvelous "gift" of a Japanese housemaid who came every Tuesday from 9:00- 4:00 for $17 my in-laws paid for, so that I could take one child alone with me for MAMA TIME while Fumiko-san (aged 55 and I thought that she was ANCIENT!) tended the other two and fed them odon noodles with chopsticks...

Wrote sheeves of letters to my parents and in-law parents which this day are the basis of actual journaling of our lives in the early 1980's! Wow! It's better to have gone through all that and emerged fairly triumphant than not to have been challenged at all! Talked to a second grade teacher at the elementary school right across the street to find out that Walker was bright and delightful, went on a preschool base bus tour with Laurie's class and led the singing of "The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round"...had someone at the commissary (grocery store) mistake Sean for a girl because of the pretty curls at the nape of his neck...stood on the corner of our lot wearing a blue wrap-around skirt my mother-in-law had made and sent to me and realized that all the horn beeps and "Whoooo!" calls by sailors was because the wind had blown the skirt OPEN at the back! Sheeeesh...who wears a slip under a wrap-around skirt?

This is life. Gotta love it!

You got a dog?

I have been trying to catch up on a lot of household work and in the evening I am reading TONS of letters out of a big carton I have collected for years..cards, letters...baby congrats cards my parents got when I was born, a letter from my parents to me when I was at summer camp in 1960...TONS of letters between Winston and I when he was in the Navy of course.

In one written August 28, 1977 (weeks before his fourth birthday) Walker and I were in Houston; I quote my letter to Winston ~

At Aunt Cyn's in Rockport, he crossed over to their neighbor's yard, to meet some boys. His opening remark wasn't, "Hi - my name's Walker", or anything so civil.

Instead he blurted,

"You got doo-doo in your yard. You got a dog?"

On becoming a grandmother

Our answering machine light was blinking. It was Missy, and this is exactly what she said, "This is it!"

I was struck with the urgency to call Winston and tell him that our son and daughter-in-law were about to become parents - that every day! We must rush to the hospital!

On the way there we mused about how amazing it was that all the revolutions in our lives together had culminated in this astounding event. WE were about to become grandparents!

I don't know if others feel old when they become someone's grandparent, but I felt foolishly young! 

I felt amazed (just as I do, alas, when I take a good long look in the mirror these days). It seems I had so recently ceased in the active rearing of my own children, with barely a breather in between - and here I was a member of the Granny club! Wow!

Naturally my thoughts turned to my own grandparents, the only set I ever knew - my mother's parents. Nanny, that beloved old lady, walked with a wobble, wore calico dresses with an apron that went over her head, and wrung the necks of chickens while I watched in stunned but fascinated silence behind the chicken wire fence in their yard. She wore her very very long still dark hair plaited in twin buns which were secured on either side of her head with pins she kept in a saucer on her dresser beside the statuary of saints holding rosaries. Her hands trembled when she served Papa coffee in a cup on a saucer, so that the tinkling noise signaled that it might be time to sit down and eat something, too. Rice pudding, hopefully...with plump raisens and again the sounds I recall forever...that squiiiiiiish as the spoon sank into the fragrant warm concoction. She had a very soft lap and little growths on her eyelids I asked her about all the time (shameful and merciless, the curiosities of children). She was slow and plump and sweet beyond measure....could I ever be a grandmother as wonderful as mine?

Missy sat in the hospital bed with her hair sleek and brushed and glossy as if she just might be getting ready to go someplace nice. I suppose she was about to go someplace nice...into the land of Motherhood, from whence no traveler ever returns.

I stood anxiously and awkwardly as her own mother touched her face, made soothing noises, and Missy began to feel the pain like no other. She finally expressed a tear and yet never ever made complaint or became belligerent like some women on the Baby Story do, but welcomed her firstborn son into the world with grace as my own firstborn son watched in that age-old paternal dismay.....

Done! I was a grandmother! Me?

There lay a creamy-skinned little boy, blinking at the lights, mewling softly, his arms flung up beside his head as if to say, I give up Mr. Robber! Take my money!

Such irresistible submission, neediness and beauty!

Happy fourth birthday, Shepherd! We love you!

Mimi and Granddaddy