coronavirus Archives - pnw mountain mommy

Chocolate Detangler

April 13, 2020

I figured out this whole Easter candy thing.

I suspect it serves the same purpose as Halloween candy.

Bribes.

This morning, after a healthy bowl of oatmeal and blueberries, I fed the Cub chocolate eggs in the bath while combing through his accumulated dreadlocks.

Also, the bath water was freezing.

I had filled the tub while Ben was taking a shower and apparently that was enough for our hot water heater to say HAHAHAHA. NOPE. So, the Cub stood in cold water eating chocolate while I worked at combing through the seven cups of detangler I had smeared all over his head.

I came away victorious, and he came away covered with chocolate. It was mutually beneficial if you discount the ‘getting clean’ portion of bathing and only focus on the curls. Which is what I do. Because that’s how parenting works. 50% success rate is like… a SOLID shelter-in-place day. So, go me.

I’m down to six chocolate eggs. Which means, the Cub’s hair will probably only be presentable for the next few days. When the bribes dry up, he’ll just live matted with dirt and crumbs; a feral bike-riding beast who scoots around the yard terrorizing my flower beds and demanding sesame street videos from his nest of snarls, toy cars, blueberry stains, and cherry-petal-encrusted-feet.

Sending love from on top of the hill,

Easter. Nailed It.

April 11, 2020

I got a text last night at 9:30 from the Easter Bunny.

She wanted me to know that there were eggs out front. She had tucked a couple in some tulips, a few behind the daffodils, three near the cedar tree. She wanted me to know where they were because she knew I wasn’t an ‘Easter mom’. I have yet to dye an egg or purchase chocolate. I haven’t made a goodie basket or busted out the pastels. I haven’t let my toddler do any holiday-related crafts. What even is a holiday-related craft?

You see why the Easter Bunny had to step in.

Luckily, I’m on extremely good terms with the Easter Bunny. We’ve been friends for a year now, and she’s willing to throw me a cadbury bone during this childhood benchmark. All she asks in return is I occasionally grab an item at the grocery store if we’re going, or send Ben over for a handyman project from time to time.

We live across the street from her.

Did I not mention that? Her name is Rebecca. She’s lovely.

So thanks to Rebecca and her generous bunny ways, we had a successful egg hunt this morning and the Cub was delighted and had many questions about why the “Beaster Bunny” wouldn’t stick around after leaving all these eggs. The best I could come up with was: “The Beaster Bunny has to head home. She’s tired! She’s healing from a foot surgery! She needs to put up her paws and enjoy a cup of coffee. She’s earned it. She loves you and can’t wait to bring you more eggs next year.”

It looked like that explanation wasn’t going to cut it, but then he realized that all the eggs were full of chocolate.

So, there you go. Easter. Nailed it.

Sending love from on top of the hill,

A Scoop of Decaf

April 8, 2020

I recently learned an approach to writing that was new to me. My instructor told me that when I sit down to write, I should empty my head. Seems simple, right? It’s not. It’s not because I have a thousand ideas every day. It’s not because I have things that happen in my life and I think: I have GOT to write about that. Now THAT is something people will love.

To be fair, sometimes I do write out all the things in my head, but those pieces rarely make it onto the blog. A lot of those things are just needing to be said, to get them out of my head, into the universe, unburdening me of their attention seeking.

When I sit down to write now, I release the pressure of expectation and I sit at my laptop, looking out at my cherry tree. I light a pile of christmas lights that sit tangled and pretty to one side of my desk. I put on some writing music (typically a wordless film score) and I sit. I sit and I start typing. A lot of times it starts with the way the light is filtering through the petals or the smell of my coffee. I start there and see where it takes me. Sometimes it doesn’t take me anywhere of profound interest, but it always takes me somewhere I enjoy being. I just let myself see what comes.

This morning I feel jittery. I typically try to mix in a little decaf with my morning brew so it doesn’t get me too wound up. I’m sensitive to coffee. I love it, and with two little kids I need it, but it can make me rapid and distracted. I guess there wasn’t enough decaf this morning, or maybe I didn’t eat enough eggs with toast. The great mystery of April 8th. I’m sure this is riveting…

The jitters are not just in my coffee, the jitters are in the air. I see the jitters in neighbors when we cross the street to avoid being too close. I see the jitters in the way we check the media, eyes half-lidded, as if that might shield us from the worst of the statistics while still giving us the knowledge we need to stay connected.

Rapid heart beats, distraction, an excess of unproductive energy. This is the state of our world, and of our quarantine. I feel it when I miss my parents and my friends. I feel it when I see the refund from the airbnb that was supposed to be our home base for a hike-filled girls trip in Sedona.

It’s not just the coffee…

As we move forward in this new temporary normal, some things begin to fall into place: This constant vigilance is tempered with the routine of the moment. We get up, we eat breakfast, we play with toy bikes, we play in the yard, we watch shows, we go through our day. Activities, rest, snacks, tantrums, repeat. All very humdrum, all very normal.

So that’s our scoop of decaf.

As we continue to move through the day and play and clean and laugh, we help take the edge off. It’s not a large space, our house and our yard. But, when you’re three and seven months, there’s plenty to touch and pick and prod and bike over. As this pandemic stretches on, and as we continue to shelter-in-place, a tempered brew is being poured. It tastes the same, smells the same, exists in the same universe. But it slows me down instead of winds me up.

Sending Love from on top of the hill,

Sleep, Sleep, Selected Poems

April 7, 2020

I have a stack of books next to me. Two different sleep training methods and one collection of Mary Oliver poems. The two sleep training books are out because it’s time to sleep train Bay.

There are as many approaches to sleep training as there are opinions about it. To be fair, we’ve already tried to sleep train the Bay Leaf, but it was traumatic. She cried, and choke-cried, and banshee screamed for six hours even with our many checks and shushes and holds. And that was using the gentlest method I found among our archives… So, we’ve been dragging our feet picking it back up again.

It didn’t help having a global pandemic sweep through. Suddenly things felt more fragile, more temporary. I wanted to give my children everything—love, attention, closeness, security, physical availability. The instinctual reaction to the unknown is to pull inward, grab those closest to me, and refuse to let go until the danger has passed.

The danger has not passed. The danger may not pass for months. It’s here and it’s dictating our current existence. So, we’ve continued to press our children close.

But, there’s something that scratches at the back of my mind. On mornings where I feel thin, or evenings where I feel brittle, the scratch turns its nagging drags into long, deep cuts. This painful reminder is for physical space. With everything going on in the world, the children and I are spending most of our days in the house or on the patio. We are all smooshed together while the pandemic plays out and most days it’s a relief. Having us all be together and safe and healthy and cared for, fills me with profound gratitude.

Of course, I worry about Ben, out in the world, possibly exposed to the virus. But, we know he’s out there doing what he needs to do to support our family in this era of crippled restaurants. He’s doing everything he can to keep the businesses going and keep us as financially stable as we can be.

When he’s home, the Cub and him are riding bikes together, playing on the ramps he built, generally soaking in one another’s company. The Bay Leaf spends time with her dad but eventually is only mollified by mom.

She is very attached to me.

I mean that in an emotional and physical way.

She is attached to me unlike the Cub ever was. This is new territory.

Particularly at night, she cannot abide Ben. It can only be me. She doesn’t transfer, she only wants the warm comfort of mom curled around her pudgy little body. Protecting her little heart and soft skin. And I love her babyness, her sweet puffs of breath, her search for my breast and my warmth. I love having her with me because I know this is the end of our babies. And I was never needed in this way with the Cub. It makes me feel special and necessary.

But the scratch-scratch of self-preservation continues. I need to have some physical autonomy for extended sanity in a world that is keeping us all home and smooshed. We need to sleep train Bay so that Ben and I can spend time with each other in the evenings. We need to sleep train Bay so I can write. If we can get her sleeping at night, naps might be longer and a writing practice can be carved out for more than twenty minutes at a time.

Speaking of twenty minutes, we’re at minute thirty-two and so you can see I’ve got a tag-a-long.

So, I’ll look at these books, we’ll try again. It’ll be hard and awful, but it’ll be necessary for all of us. I’m not looking forward to it, but I know it’s the best thing we can do for her, for me, for all of us.

Oh, and I included the Mary Oliver because sleep training is the fucking worst and she is the fucking best, so… a little poetry helps the pill go down.

Sending love from on top of the hill,

Writing Instead of Eating

April 6, 2020

It has been a year since I’ve written in this space.

A lot of things happen in a year.

Time, for one thing, has disintegrated into the stratosphere. Now there are two children instead of one. Two children who require constant observation. Except for now, right now, the baby is asleep and the toddler has been given my phone to play games for the duration of Bay’s nap. The typical nap duration for this particular baby is about twenty minutes on a good day, so, this writing will be short.

I’m writing instead of eating. I haven’t eaten anything yet today. I did have coffee (the most important part of my morning) and I did feed both of my children. Somehow, my own basic human needs got pushed to the side. I’m not hungry first thing in the morning because I’m busy. Both Ben and I are busy. He’s up with the Cub, I’m up with the Bay Leaf. Whichever one of us is up first makes oatmeal with blueberries for the toddler and coffee for us. Somewhere in the middle of that there’s changing diapers and the cub’s favorite show and feeding Marmot and making sure Marmot has his meds and then Ben has to head to work and here we go!

So, I’m writing instead of eating. I’ll eat when the baby wakes up. I’ll make myself something quick and easy for lunch while simultaneously spreading peanut butter and jelly on whole wheat for the Cub. I’ll dish up some veggie/fruit puree for the Bay Leaf to smear all over herself. That will be lunch. It will be a chaotic affair with laughter and messes and push back and impromptu dance parties. It will be, another lunch in quarantine.

I’m writing instead of eating because I haven’t written in a few weeks. I took a class, a writing class, with a bunch of very talented writers online for a few months. It was amazing. I wrote every single day. I wrote in ways I had never written before. One thing I learned was to come to my writing with nothing on my mind. Start typing whatever pops up and then go with it, follow it through the thickets and into the dark corners or the open spaces where the light pours through. Go in and keep burrowing until you tell your truth, whether it be mundane or earth shattering.

So, I’m doing that. I’m sitting here, listening to my stomach growl and writing my truth. Writing is one of my basic needs, and though it isn’t feeding my stomach, it is feeding my soul; trite but true. I’m going to let my son look at my phone for twenty minutes so that I can feed my soul. I’m sure a few parenting blogs out there would be scandalized.

Twenty minutes is not enough time to get into the vastness of the current climate. This shelter in place, this pandemic, this unease. There’s a heap of anxiety surrounding our lack of information. I have a sneaking suspicion that all of us will know people infected with this virus (I know two, and I may have been three), we may even know people who die. This is a time that will define a generation.

But there are bright moments. There are little corners I can sweep up and let the light in. As tiring as it is to have no break from my kids, I love my kids. Being together has been an eye opener on how much fun we have as a family. It’s not perfect. There’s screen time guys, and sometimes, a lot of it. But there’s also building little bmx tracks for toy bikes, there’s singing songs and making mac n cheese. There’s bouncing babies who giggle and running toddlers who can twirl and do a two-step.

I have been stepping up in a way I didn’t realize I could, until I had to. I’m crushing this constant parenting expectation without escape. I thought a week in I would be muttering to myself and eyeing my beer fridge (we have a beverage fridge full of beer, because, pandemic priorities) by nine a.m. Turns out? By nine a.m. I am elbow-deep in cardboard ramps and makeshift foam pits. By nine-thirty I’ve done two silly dance contests and paparazzi-ed my baby.

It’s not that bad, in fact… it’s pretty good.

I’m worried about my loved ones, may parents, my extended family.

But, with what we’ve been given? I’m pretty content in this moment, sitting at this computer, not eating, but typing. Giving myself the space for creative nourishment.

That being said, twenty minutes are up.

Time to grab a baby, feed my stomach, my toddler, and maybe try to wash a dish.

Sending love from on top of the hill,