Author: Jenny

Like a magpie, I've always been drawn to things that have sparkle, from rhinestone-embellished housewares to gold lamé get-ups in second-hand stores or beetles whose metallic armors reflect in the sun. But in my interactions with the world, oh, how I can fixate on the not-sparkly stuff: ill-timed traffic lights, a web page that won't load, the impolite server. Post-pandemic, I took to saying, "Everything's broken, and nothing works." It's not good for the soul, and as a lifelong writer, I've noticed it's also not good for creativity. This blog is about redirecting my attention to what's good in the world -- seeking and finding joy in the same way I notice sparkly objects around me -- and writing about it. There is an old nursery rhyme about magpies, "One for Sorrow," which tells us a solitary magpie symbolizes sorrow, but two magpies symbolize joy. This blog is about looking harder for the good stuff. Here's to finding those second magpies.

Live, from the Teething Colosseum (from the Momplex Blog archives)

April 15, 2009February 27, 2023 JennyLeave a comment

First there were larvae. They came in a cup in an envelope in the mail. The cup was full of some sort of food, and the larvae ate it, night and day. The composition of what was in the cup slowly changed over a couple of weeks, until we saw less and less food, bigger and bigger caterpillars, and more and more pink balls of caterpillar poo. After weeks of eating, the caterpillars crawled to the top of the jar and created their chrysalides. We watched and waited, waited and watched, knowing it should take about a week for the final metamorphoses. Today, our butterflies emerged: six painted ladies, with wings of orange and black and white. I even got to witness one emergence from the very start to the very finish, how the butterfly poked its head out of its chrysalis, then did a sort of sit up to get the rest of her body out. Her wings were stunted and dark and wrinkly, but as she filled them with blood, as meconium (yes, meconium! bloody butterfly meconium!) dropped out of her, she grew wide and lovely.

Ever read When the Heart Waits by Sue Monk Kidd? It’s about the author’s spiritual crisis at mid-life. At the beginning, deep in distress over a seeming loss of faith, she snagged a cocoon she saw on a nearby tree and brought it to her home. She kept referring back to that cocoon throughout the novel, making it a metaphor for the spiritual catharsis she was experiencing. Eventually the butterfly emerged, and the author went from faithless to faithful again.

You know what I was thinking the whole time I watched our beautiful butterflies emerging? Despite my own spiritual troubles, I wasn’t thinking about metamorphoses. I was realizing it took LESS time for Sue Monk Kidd to find God again, took less time for freaking larvae to pupate, grow wings, triple-double-quadruple themselves in size, and transform into completely new incarnations of themselves than it is taking for our baby’s top teeth to cut through. ‘Cause I’m glass half full like that, babies. Seriously, the little dude began teething his first top four teeth around the time those larvae arrived. I’ve seen the blisters and the little white spots for weeks, gone through a fair share of Orajel and Tylenol and mad crying at odd hours of the night, but only one tooth has busted through, and just this morning at that.

Other things that have taken less time than this teething episode include: the writing of the Declaration of Independence, the entire Greco-Turkish War, the papal conclave’s full deliberation over the most recent papal successor, and the writing of Jack Kerouac’s classic On the Road. Oh, and the construction of ancient Rome. Well, never mind that last one. It just feels that way. We all know Rome wasn’t built in a day. I guess toothy smiles aren’t either.

bah-dum-bump

babies · colic · motherhood · sleep

Infants are Such (Sun)Downers

April 11, 2009April 9, 2014 Jenny4 Comments

It’s 10:20 p.m. Both my kids are in bed. But really, they’re still running around in my head, one of them saying, “Mom! Watch what I can do! Look at me! Look at me!” and the other just going, “Waaaaah! Waaaah! Waaaah! Waaaah!” I’m not sure which one makes me want more to crack my head open against the wall. It’s sort of a dead heat for now. No, wait. It’s definitely the infant, because while my preschooler’s incessant need for an audience has been quelled by the sandman for the night, my baby is now going on hour four of fussing and fighting sleep. (I have been lying down near him, patting, shusshing, breastfeeding, rocking, blah, blah, blah — for most of that time, and now my husband’s on his shift, because I’m near my breaking point.) The baby does this every night, and every night as we tag-team him through the colic, it drives my husband and me to the brink of insanity.

Why are some babies’ witching hours so much more horrendous and long-winded than others? And more pointedly — a question I intend to ask the Creator when and if we get the chance to meet — why were we blessed with two babies that don’t know how to fall asleep?

Barring any late-night visits from the big J.C. to put things into perspective for me, I have an observation I’d like to have checked out by somebody over at the National Institute for Health:

Alzheimers and dementia patients commonly experience an agitated state in the evening hours — sometimes lasting through a fat portion of the night — that keeps them from falling asleep. As with colic, nobody knows for sure what causes this troubling phenomenon, but its existance is well documented. Called sundowning, the behavior is widely believed to be linked to end-of-the-day exhaustion. Several articles I’ve read say the agitation and sleeplessness associated with sundowning may also be linked to the following:

– an upset in biorhythms, causing the patient to have day/night confusion

– reduced lighting and increased shadows

– disorientation due to the inability to separate dreams from reality when sleeping

What’s equally compelling to me is that the nighttime restlessness associated with sundowning typically peaks in the middle stages of dementia and diminishes as the disease progresses. That’s interesting, considering that the phenomenon of late afternoon and nighttime fussiness that strikes most infants, hitting colicky ones particularly hard, also peaks in the middle stages of infanthood and diminishes as they grow out of the disease that I shall heretofor refer to as Womb Exodus Syndrome.

At any rate, I think I’m going to start telling people that my baby is suffering from the effects of sundowning associated with infant dementia, or I.D. for short, because nobody takes colic very seriously. I’ll just coin a new term to amuse myself through this hideous, hideous stage where nothing, and I mean nothing, soothes our baby to sleep at night. And while I’m at it, I’m going to start calling dementia geriatric colic.

craigslist · daughters · motherhood · preschoolers

Destroy Your Preschooler’s Street Cred in 10 Easy Steps!

April 7, 2009March 8, 2012 JennyLeave a comment

First, ask your preschooler if she wants to invite over her favorite friend to play during Spring Break. Invariably, this will be the playground “alpha dog” that deeply influences every schoolmate’s wardrobe choices, play interest, and general sense of self worth.

Second, do not anticipate that your own child will be spending the entire play date working freakishly hard to impress said friend, who should begin the date by announcing to your child, “Your jeans are funny!”

Third, do not maintain a beatific face of calm and love when, despite repeatedly declining their advances, the children continually ask you to play with them the way her friend’s mom does, every 2-3 minutes: chase, monster, dolls, camping, dentist office, etc.

Fourth, do bend to your child’s request to show her friend that she can now ride without training wheels. Also, make sure you don’t run alongside the bike like you normally would. This will cause your child to crash into the grass, giving her “friend” the perfect opening to say, “Seeeee?”

Fifth, poo-pooing your uber-white child’s longstanding delusion that she is “faster than a cheetah,” do bend to her request to time her and her friend in a footrace around the house. Forget that the friend is black, lean, and athletic. There are no guarantees, of course, but you’re playing the odds that this will give her friend another opening to say, “Seeee?”

Sixth, serve carrot sticks.

Seventh, offer to pack another snack in a portable cooler for their pretend camping trip. Open the cooler in front of the kids to reveal an old sandwich sporting about three inches of white, furry mold. Try to make this seem cool and interesting.

Eighth, banish the girls to the playroom after they ask for the third time in 10 minutes if you will play hide-the-fruit. Do not hide your irritation when the friend says, “Seeeee?”

Ninth, ask your child why she’s suddenly sucking her thumb today, not realizing how much her friend will enjoy your doing so.

Tenth, when you think the kids are in your child’s bedroom, rip off a colossal, booming, one-for-the-books fart. Then realize the friend is actually standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at you, judging you, quietly making you understand exactly why it is she really is the alpha dog. Smile right back at her, frightfully matching the little hint of devil in her eyes.