Amy Seiffert

What a story about Nella, eh? I know, I know. Amazing and honest and sweet.

Overheard parenting thought of the day from a 50-year old father in a life group with younger parents. One person said to him “you’ve got great kids, you’re just lucky.”  He looked back at that person, almost offended and said, “Lucky? This isn’t luck at all, this is a result of years and years of hard work!”

It feels like such HARD work many days. But, hey, whaddajob. To raise little human beings – little people – with thoughts and creativity brewing and laughter and love to give to this broken, busted world.

Speaking of raising children…if you are the prayin’ kind….I would love for you to join me over the next few days that we would specifically make a baby. Is that weird? That you know I’m ovulating? And that the ovulation kit said I was? Too much? Oh well, good people. You can just plug your ears and Lalala your way outta this post……

I feel really thankful that I am parenting with other moms who have similar aged children..and are just a little bit ahead of me with good perspective to share. Thank you – friends and family!

In light of Robby’s 48 hour hold-out of refusal to brush his teeth, we have learned a lot. He did choose to brush his teeth tonight after every single car, lego, camel, and then food privileges (he could choose water and veggies for dinner – or brush his teeth) were in timeout. He brushed, and it went just fine.

Things we have learned:

-Robby has choices in everything – but we must establish non-negotiables and create his choices in those non-negotiables.

Non Negotiables:

-We will teach good hygiene to our children. Brushing our teeth is something we will do daily. If he wants to choose to make it easy or choose difficulty – he can. (my comment from my friend about his baby teeth was to bring levity – not to make it ok that he’s refusing)

-We will wash our hands after using the potty. He can choose to cooperate or I can drag him to the sink while he kicks and screams and yells while I sing the ABC’s as we wash our hands together.

-We will wash our hair and our bodies in the bathtub each time. He can choose to scream bloody murder and win an Oscar for a stellar drama performance, or he can take it well. Either way, we do this. We do all of this, and with grace and love and kindness.

A friend relayed: “so… i have been on the floor, straddling a boy, my calves over his arms, my feet holding his head in place so that my hands are free to brush his teeth yep, done it! i would tell robby that this is something he has to do every night. he doesn’t have a choice. either he is going to cooperate with you and make it easy, or you are going to do it yourself and it will be hard.”

Great advice. I like it.

Another great piece of advice I got from a Mom in her 50’s was: “Parenting is exhausting and hard, isn’t it? If you are parenting well, it’s hard.”

Amen.

Here’s to the literal and figurative wrestling, to the early-life battles, to the hard work. We have to do the hard work now, so that they are the men and women of character as adults.

You can do this, sweet mothers. I believe in you.

(Robby trying out Mama’s Spring boots….with just a shirt….and nothing else. Love my boy.)

What a treat. And “treat” is a modest word for our 3 evenings in New York City.

Showered. Grafted into unconditional family-love. Blessed. (We have been friends with Marco for 13 years and have celebrated his many accomplishments alongside his parents…and now, a b-day in his new town, Manhattan)

We arrived Thursday evening (after a sweet drop off of Robby to g-ma’s and g-pa’s) and headed with Corrine and Marco to “Five Napkin Burger” on 84th and Broadway….just a stone’s throw away from M’s apartment.

Woke up for a jog in Central Park. Drizzling but still lovely views of the park. The four of us were our own team in matching sweatsuits. Then a homemade savory brunch (scrambled eggs with goat cheese and shittake mushrooms) and we’re off to the Metropolitan Museum of Art! I just love Degas. Something fluid about him, rich, unhindered, a bent toward the feminine everyday. I did my senior thesis on his life crossing paths with Mary Cassat and Kate Chopin and I have thought about him ever since.

(I stared at this one for a while. Real up-close. Ah.)

Then to a tapas restaurant for dinner. Finished at M’s favorite little dive-bar-juke box joint: Jimmy’s Corner. Time Squareish. A great conversation or three. (Rob is going to be designing some ads for Time Square! Scoped it out…)

Woke up to a sweet brunch: french toast with marscarpone cheese, bananas, cherries and mimosas. Yum. Off to my first Broadway show ever: In the Heights. I danced, cried, laughed, practiced my spanish and swayed with the cast and crew for 2.5 hours. (All the while hoping I might be discovered…you think?) And it was a gift. For crying out loud. Truly.

Grand finale: Babbo. Yikes. Mario Batali as owner. Never, ever have I had melt-in-your-mouth pasta like that. And 5 courses….followed by 5 desserts. What??? Yep.

We toasted to Marco throughout the evening, wishing him health, love, longevity, elephants. It was magical and refreshing. I told stories of a Germany I have never known (on behalf of my  husband and his ridiculous near- Mrs. Robinson experiences). We recalled how my husband had cat-like reflexes to pull open a subway door to save the life of a woman with her arm caught – the speed and heroism in him like his father. We spoke of how each marriage or relationship came to be. Of hallways in a cheap European hotel that narrowed the further north you got – feeling like Alice in Wonderland.

The time sounds fantastical. I’ve only written a slice of it, good people. And did I mention there was rain? Never mind you.

(trying not to shop…at the Met. 18th century couch. Would be lovely against my peacock blue wall. And works with my Real Simple “D” decor)

Corrine and I: lots of laughs, a Sephora moment, a heart to heart jog

Happy Birthday, dear Marco. May you get to ride an elephant this 32nd year of your life. (No pressure….just a water-drunken toast)

Yesterday’s post was out of anger. Disappointment. Loss.

Have you ever been to a place in your heart of extreme doubt? Of scary callousness? Of a just screw-it (or insert choice word) attitude? And as you are weeping you start crying for all the pain you’ve ever experienced….all the hurt of those dear to you that have suffered great and appreciable loss….of being misunderstood…..of those suffering from a Haitian earthquake….of the ugly sex-trade of beautiful, innocent 5 year old girls….of the endless evils many face daily?

I was/am there.

Feeling isolated in my emotion and ready to bite off anything (or anyone) in my line of vision – I took a walk. I walked about a mile in my small town and I stopped on a wooded path. The sun was starting to set. Patches of snow and green were sewn together in landscape serenity. Beauty jolted me from my pitiful inner self.

The trees silenced me. I stood and stared up and let my neck hurt from craning at their confident glory. I wanted to be like them. I wanted to be an oak of righteousness. Firmly planted. Not hardly shaken. Patient and basking in the seasons. Poised in the winter. Assured in the dead, cold, hard winter.

I wanted to blend in with them and stay very still and forget everything and just Be.

Beauty has a way with me. God will use it to silence me. To listen to me. To accept me. I had a moment, while shaking my fist, of fear that God was shaking His fist at me, too.

But then the trees told me that my childish rants are not like Him. He is strong. He is powerful. He is set-apart, or holy. He is just plain bigger.

There’s not much else to say.

I don’t feel resolved, really. I feel conflicted in wanting to give life to others in conversation, in laughter, in love  - but then in also wanting to remove myself from any sign of life. I do know that beauty met me……and it is not my creation that silenced me.

Beauty remembered me. I am not forgotten even if I feel that way.

The BBA: Boobs, Books and Attitudes will Celebrate 10 Years!

A book club that has been meeting for ten straight years out of Northwest Ohio? Preposterous. Unheard of. You’re lying.

Nope.

In ten fruitful and life-changing years we have experienced an entire decade through the eyes of countless characters, plots and eras. We have waddled in and out of each other’s living rooms, book in hand, as some of our bellies have grown, swelled and given birth to our children. We have held each others newborns and grandchildren and nephews while agonizing why Kate in “House of Sand and Fog” did not just open her damn mail. We have exchanged parenting tips, we have walked through job and relationship loss, we have laughed until we ached –  all with a common book on our nightstands. We have debated religion, we have given one another tennis tips, we have basked in our gardens as we threw our two cents in on each story.

We have decided who killed JFK.
(Only did this once: we each chose a book on the Kennedy family and reported back and compared notes and family trees.)

We have cried with Dinah as she walked through horrors in the “Red Tent” and laughed with Biff, Jesus’ best friend, in “Lamb.” We have each fingered the pages of over 100 books together, throwing them, staining them, swearing by them and swearing them off. We have experienced all genres, we span a 23-year age gap, we have had 11 of us at most, 9 of us still.

Ten short and long and dull and dynamic years.
One book club.
And One request: Will you celebrate us on your show, dear Oprah? Will you celebrate that we have endured so much, bound together like a good, thick story – well worn but savored, delicate but tenacious?

We’d love to be a collective guest on your show. We know you adore and soapbox literacy, beauty, the written word, knowledge. We do, too.

Humbly,

The BBA