toddlers – Mama Needs Coffee

Evangelization, Family Life, Parenting, toddlers

Thanksgiving acts of service with kids

November 21, 2018

This is the first year where we’re feeling like we can creep past bare minimum mode – just a single toe over the line, honestly – and attempt to do a little something extra for Thanksgiving.

I’m not hosting or even cooking all that much this year, so no doubt that inflates my sense of wellbeing. If you have a nursing baby who is under 6 months old, are pregnant, are postpartum to any sort of baby at all, have a child with special needs, a husband who works 120 hours a week, etc etc etc, then just stop reading and look away, you’re already maxed out on awesome acts of service.

If you are a mom to older kids and have this thing down already, then won’t you tip your hand and let us freshman have a peek at what you do to help your kids connect with the deeper meaning of this special holiday?

In years past, our friends who live closer to downtown Denver have bundled up early in the morning and brought Starbucks to the homeless people who congregate near the cathedral. I love that idea, but we’re a little far out in the suburbs to execute it. We do have some homeless people around, but no specific concentration where we could seek them out. It’s more like you’ll see someone at an intersection here or there. Our parish food pantry hosted a frozen turkey drive…yesterday. So that’s a miss for us, too.

I conducted a casual poll of mom friends asking for ideas and came away with some good suggestions: bringing treats to homeless people, passing out coffee, delivering donuts or sandwiches, handing out breakfast burritos, going to a park with hand warmers, hats and mittens, assembling blessing bags, etc. to distribute to panhandlers at intersections and freeway on ramps.

Some businesses will donate their products if you ask. A few businesses my friends said they’d had success partnering with:

Jimmy Johns: will sell day their day old loaves for $.50 a piece
Starbucks: will sometimes donate coffee with advance notice; will provide creamer, sugar, cups and lids at no charge when you order a coffee traveler
Dunkin Donuts: will sometimes donate with advance notice
Krispy Kreme: will donate day old donuts with advance notice

I’m guessing many fast casual chains and coffee places would be willing to donate, especially bread places like Panera, etc, where if they don’t sell that day’s offering, they aren’t able to sell it the next morning.

I love the idea of giving food at Thanksgiving, especially since it tends to be a time when we as Americans overdo it in the consumption department. I also think it’s a super relatable way of doing charity with kids. Kids understand being hungry. Kids understand having an empty tummy, and the immediate gratification of someone handing you something good to eat because they love you.

If the idea of serving on Thanksgiving itself is overwhelming, I think taking back Black Friday as a day to serve instead of shop is pretty awesome.

I’d really like to take our kids to a nursing home or retirement community to visit with the residents and provide a little comic relief. I worked at a nursing home while I was in grad school, and it made a lasting impression on me. Most of my residents just wanted someone to talk to, and would light up whenever a child – especially a baby – came onsite. Many lived far from their families and had visitors only once a year, or even less frequently than that. It was so life giving for them to just sit and visit with someone, even if it was only me or one of the other staff members. I will never forget the kind of relational poverty I witnessed there. Now here I sit with a bumper crop of my own children and I’ve yet to make good on my vow to return and visit nursing homes one day when I became a mom. Maybe this year’s the year.

Finally, I don’t want to rule out serving within the home itself. Especially where little kids are involved, I’m forever underestimating what they’re capable of, and they’re forever surprising me with their competence. (Well, and other things. There are other surprises, too.)

Inviting them to set the table, peel potatoes, peel and cut apples for pie, fill a pot with water, use a pitcher to fill water glasses at the dining table, etc are all valuable and super #Montessoriandyouknowwhat ways to let kids participate in and contribute to the family economy, and not just for the holidays.

So I’m all ears guys, what does your family do that has become a tradition? What are you hoping to try out this year? Have you had any memorable flops, like taking toddlers to the soup kitchen and violating food safety standards (ahem Luke cough cough)? Anything you’d do again? Anything you’d advise against, at all costs?

About Me, toddlers

Luke is a verb

November 17, 2018

Lately I’ve been taking a little journey back to the period called “inexperienced motherhood.” It usually happens in Trader Joe’s or somewhere else in public, where I’ll look down next to my cart and see that someone has taken a massive bite out of a raw zucchini and then stashed it on the lower rack.

I make sure not to look down for too long though, because if I don’t keep my eyes on the whirring blonde ball of energy that is our resident three year old, he will be behind the counter and elbows-deep in the free sucker bucket, much to the consternation of whichever Trader Joe’s team member is lucky enough to be our cashier that day.

“Hey buddy,” the Hawaiian shirt clad stranger will begin, “you can’t be back here!” or else it’ll be the arched brow and the “Hey, mom, can you get him back on your side?” with a knowing look that plainly says “you’ll get the hang of this sooner or later, lady.”

Little do they know, these innocent bystanders who stand witness to our public displays of destruction, that Luke is not my first rodeo, or even my second, but my fourth.

I’ve had the opportunity to confess that to a few well-meaning good samaritans who stop to help me disentangle him from the climbing net at the park where he is hanging upside down, dangling from one leg, which he somehow managed to thread through 4 different squares of cargo netting.

Or at a splash park last summer when I would march him back naked (again) and unashamed from the edge of the pop jet fountain, white buns blazing under the hot Colorado sun for all the general public to observe. “Sun’s out, buns out!” the neighbor kids shouted gleefully all summer, watching Luke streak across the yard having freed himself once again from the shackles of swim trunks or his pull up.

I thought it would abate with potty training, but alas, he is now more naked and I am wiping more things off of more surfaces than I was before. At least diapers were a contained, albeit expensive, environment.

When Luke’s true nature first began to show itself around his second birthday, we told ourselves he was bidding for attention. Acting up because a new baby was coming. Having a hard time adjusting to all the big kids being in school some days.

Nope. Turns out this just is Luke. Or else he is having the longest and most persistent case of the terrible twos in recorded history.

He’s not terrible, though. He’s actually really sweet and funny and really, really smart. He tells strangers he is 7, that he is the oldest in his family, that he is going to learn how to drive soon. He tells anyone who will listen to him that he “used to live in Italy” (no, he did not) and that when he grows up he is going to be a daddy and a garbage truck driver. (lucky gal the one who scoops him up.)

He is always dirty, usually naked, and has single-handedly inflated our grocery bill by at least $150 a month. A typical breakfast might be 2 eggs, a bowl of oatmeal, and maybe a strip or four of bacon if there is any lying around. He eats like Gaston, he has the manners of Gaston, but he is much kinder than Gaston.

“Mommy I just love you! Come here, I’m going to kiss your mouth. Mommy when I grow up I’m going to live with you and come home every night for dinner (nope). You’re a good mommy, you do a good mommy job.”

It’s hard to stay mad at a guy like that, even when he manages to extract himself from his carseat and OPEN THE VAN DOOR WHILE WE’RE DRIVING THROUGH TRAFFIC.

Yesterday someone posted a viral video from like, home security cam footage and it showed a toddler hanging on and being lifted by the opening garage door while mom’s back was turned and I was like, “yep. That is for sure going to happen to me.”

When I meet boy moms with grown or older sons, I beg them for reassurance that he is going to make it safely to adulthood. Last week we thought an upstairs toilet needed a professional snake job, but then lo and behold, daddy’s amateur snake job turned up AN ENTIRE GREEN APPLE and we all looked in fascination and horror at the child who assured us “Mommy told me it was okay to flush apples down the toilet.”

Nope again.

Next fall Luke will start preschool in our sweet little Montessori atrium. And as much stock as I put in the great Maria Montessori’s methods, I do wonder if Luke might accidentally eat the class pet, punch a hole in the ceiling tiles with the red rods, or squirt his classmates in the face with the spray bottles they use to gently mist their succulent collection during the zenlike period known as “plant work.”

Also, he knows how to use matches.

I feel like we’re playing some strange new game in the raising of this child – one that doesn’t include a rule book – so we’re making them up as we go along, to varying degrees of success.

He wakes us up some mornings by dropping a shoulder into our slightly sticky bedroom door and flipping on the overhead light while bellowing out IT’S MORNING TIME I’M HUNGRY before turning abruptly and thundering down the stairs towards the kitchen. Thanks to DST reveille has been nudged forward to 5:50 am but who’s counting?

Other mornings he will creep around the side of the bed to find daddy and wiggle his still-saturated pullup-clad butt in between our sheet and and comforter, and let me tell you, the person who brings to market an aroma-based alarm clock is going to make some real money.

One memorable morning around 3 am earlier this Fall, I awoke in the midst of what I assumed was a home invasion when he’d pulled a stepping stool up to the bed and stood, 2 centimeters from my head, yelling WAKE UP MAN. (?????) I awakened. And spent the following hour trying to get my cortisol levels back down to sleep-able range.

We love our crazy Duke, don’t get me wrong. He is hilarious, loving, super personable and very, very good at getting his way with his 3 older siblings and 3 older cousins.

I recount some of his antics here for posterity’s sake, and also to demonstrate that no matter how many kids you’ve had, you might not be fully prepared for the immensity that is one of their personalities in particular. (Or maybe more than one! I’m looking at you Blythe). You never know what – or who – you’re gonna get. Which is part of the fun.

(And by fun I mean the kind of fun that you feel on a roller coaster ride, just to be clear.)

I’m curious – do you have a verb in your family? Is there one – or more – in every family?

oldie but goodie (gosh I’m glad I painted that kitchen…everything)

large family, motherhood, Parenting, toddlers

Leaving baby land

July 11, 2018

I just had a 5 –minute conversation with my seven –year –old where I used words like “extroversion, introversion, resources, and primary vocation.” He blinked his understanding to me and I really felt like we were having a moment, a real meeting of the minds.

I asked him if he understood what we’d just covered, and he nodded. Then I asked if he had any questions.

“Yeah. Uh, Mommy” he began, hesitantly. “Can I go put some pants on now?”

I’m in a weird in between place right now with family life. Everyone is still heavily dependent upon Dave and I for almost all their basic needs, but there are also glimpses of a shifting landscape. Just now, the child I was conversing with wandered off to find pants and, finding none, ran a load of damp laundry through the dryer of his own volition.

Folks, that’s what we call a paradigm shift. Also in this category: baby sleeping through the night, school –aged kids who are able to empty the dishwasher, a preschooler who no longer needs intensive bathtime supervision, and sufficient energy (or desperation) to rise early from sleep and steal an hour for prayer and exercise before the kids are up.

I’m having these moments I can only describe as “existential lurch”- where I have the distinct feeling I should be doing something and I’m not really sure what that something is. I look around and yes, the floor needs to be mopped and I really should finish those school forms and that project isn’t going to write itself, and also, why is it so hard to remember to fill up the gas tank before the empty light goes on? It’s weird to come out of survival mode and to look around and wonder “do I still know how to be a functional adult?” after so many concurrent years of night wakings and mopping up barf.

We are by no means out of the baby years, as the current stakeholder baby in thaet positionfamily is only 6 months on the job, but it’s a totally different landscape to have an almost 8-year-old and a 6 -year-old along for the ride. The 2-year-old is mentally unbalanced, and I say that with the utmost charity, truly, but last month I opened the bathroom door and started screaming, finding him perched (naked) on the countertop, drinking water directly from an older brother’s dirty soccer cleat as water from the still-running facet flowed over the basin, spilling onto the floor.

But, you’re probably thinking, this kid is feral and unsupervised and it serves you right, you neglectful social media peruser.

Nay, I say to you, I was standing just outside the doorway at the kitchen counter, chopping vegetables for a healthy dinner, audibly supervising what I had reason to believe was a valiant toileting effort in progress.

You should see some of the stuff he does when he’s actually unsupervised.

But even with crazy Luke, even with little teeny baby Zay, life is still a little… easier? Less physically grueling? than it was a baby or two ago, thanks to the maturity of my older kids.

At the same time, I now lie awake at night pondering the day’s events and agonizing over my mistakes and shortcomings. I feel very much out of my depth to parent a kid with a conscience, and, just like breastfeeding was agonizingly difficult the first time around, so is trying to explain the existence of evil, or what is really happening at Mass and why it’s necessary for us to go every week, and how come the neighbor kid can’t actually move in with us, and where money comes from, and why cemeteries exist, and why you can’t use Siri without mommy and daddy’s supervision, and, and, and…

I’m going to be honest, I’m terrified to leave babyland.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m exhausted. I’m more than ready to drop the 40 lbs I can’t seem to shake after this 5th pregnancy. And boy oh boy, am I ready to sleep (consistently) through the night again, but, control freak that I am, parenting older kids scares the hell out of me.

What if I mess up and they (insert trauma here)? Spoiler alert: I will. I have. I am. And they might, and they could, and they are.

I know this on an intellectual level and I always have, but it’s easy to look down at a trusting little baby or even a mischievous little 4-year-old and think “You’re never going anywhere. I’ll always be able to hold you in my lap and keep you safe.”

I think this may be what all those older moms in the checkout line are getting at when they wistfully or ironically assure me that it all goes by so fast.

It does, and it doesn’t.

I’m crawling along to mile marker 5 of the marathon of parenting and I’m recognizing I have years ahead of me, some of them grueling, but I’m also looking back and seeing the ground we’ve already covered and sort of pining for it, retrospectively. This current season, too, will surely be one I long for in the years to come. Zelie could be our last baby, for all I know.

The frontier we’re crossing into is uncharted territory for us. These are years my kids will remember. These are experiences and lessons that will shape their personalities and mold their characters.

I am not up for the task.

I am inadequate.

And no amount of reading or research or application of guaranteed magical techniques can ensure a good outcome.

Then again, neither did any of the one million baby books I consumed like manna from heaven. If only “oh crap 3 day potty training” had delivered as promised. If only having the happiest baby on our block had more to do with my mothering prowess and less to do with dumb luck and genetics.

I want an instruction manual. I want the promise of perfection and a guarantee of success. I don’t want to parent kids to adulthood in this scary, crazy world full of suffering and violence and chaos. I want heaven now. I want the resurrection without the cross. I want victory without death. I want God to speak directly to me and to be able to hear Him, crystal clear, and to be able to follow His suggestions effortlessly and without hesitation.

I don’t know that I’m up for this next level of motherhood. And I have five kids who won’t stop eating and outgrowing their shoes and so level up I must,— somehow.

This is the part where I tie it all together with an uplifting or inspirational realization. Except, I don’t have anything to offer. That is what it feels like at the end of another long, hot day of summer parenting. They all wore sunscreen and they ate a couple vegetables, but in the grand scheme of things, I tend to feel like I’m failing them a little bit every day, one day at a time.

I guess that’s the lesson? I guess parenting, like life, is the sort of gig that humbles you as you go along, and instead of progressing in acumen and technique you become ever more convinced of your inadequacy and suspect that it might one day become apparent to everyone around you that you are, in fact, making it up as you go along.

Younger moms, you are in the most grueling and physically intense thick of it right now. I always tell people who express wonder at being able to handle more than two that however many kids you have, you are maxed out. Full stop. There is nothing harder than having as many kids as you have right now. And when you’re knee deep in the baby trenches and literally can’t remember taking a shower by yourself, you think this is your life now, forever. And that it will never get any easier.

It will not be easier. But it will be different. That’s the scary part, for me. Stepping out into the unknown and wondering if the gps is offline, and can I really do this part? The baby part you just have to do. They are crying and fussing and depending utterly and you have no choice.

It feels like this part of parenting has more agency, more heft to it, besides the glaring and obvious burden of, you know, keeping a helpless human being alive and fed.

My kids can forage for granola bars and fill their own water bottles now, but they cannot shape their own hearts. And I look around and realize, with a start, that they’re all looking to me. And it feels crazy! Isn’t there a grown up somewhere who is running this show?

Permanently 17 on the inside, I’m telling you! But I fake a smile and put some more hot dogs in the microwave and pray that grace will cover my multitude of sins.

Family Life, motherhood, Parenting, toddlers

More work, more love

October 3, 2016

(and if I’m being honest, more diapers)

While I was sitting vacantly before the keyboard this afternoon a happy little reddish-blonde head bounced up from underneath my chair, and two bright blue eyes crinkled with delight over having located me. Luke is baby number 4, but he is beloved in a way that numbers one through three (sorry, kids!) were not privileged to experience.

I do love all four of them very much, but if I’m being honest here, I’m a little bit in love with Luke. Maybe it’s the mellowing effect of having done the pregnancy/newborn thing a couple times and being able to relax into the enjoyment of it, maybe it’s the cacophony of joy as his older siblings orbit him like adoring planets, racing to retrieve him from his bed in the mornings, or maybe it’s just the winning combination of the sweetest smile and the most joyful temperament, but this kid has me smitten. I kiss him more than is probably socially acceptable, and even now as I sit here tapping the keys, he’s tearing the lid of the trash can and searching for coffee grounds to dig in and I’m smiling benevolently at him over my shoulder because it’s adorable.

Somebody get a message to my first-time momself that I will eventually lower my standards to an unrecognizable level of filth and indulgence and that it will be fine. It will all be fine.

It’s only the machinations of a divine economy that could yield increasing returns of joy and pleasure from decreasing levels of sleep and time and money. It doesn’t make sense that this little person should have brought so much joy with him when he banged open the doors to our hearts a little over a year ago, but there it is.

I never wanted to have a large family. If anything, I was ambivalent about having children, period. Not because my own childhood wasn’t great (it was), or because I didn’t like kids (I do. For the most part.) but because I seemed to lack that nascent maternal instinct that had my girlfriends easily answering “1 of each” or “3 boys, 3 years apart” when asked about their reproductive futures. When I peered forward into the shimmering mists of time, I could never see clearly what it was that I wanted, exactly.

Which is why motherhood has been so pleasantly surprising and so gruelingly difficult, at turns. I didn’t really plan for this, and even now, at Costco, when someone blinks in astonishment or delight at my little crew and asks if I’m done, I never know exactly what to say. I don’t have strong feelings either way, that we’re “done” or that there are “(X) more babies” waiting for us (<– never was too keen on that theologically-sketchy concept). But I do have strong feelings for Luke, and for each of my children. Every one of them is an incomparable miracle, someone I never could have dreamt up or planned or, quite frankly, executed to the level of perfection they each possess.

I am astonished by the level of collective joy that seems to titrate up with each new arrival. And yet. Even knowing that, even having experienced it firsthand four times over, I still can’t fathom it happening again. I can never love another baby the way I love Luke, I’m sure of it. And yet, if God does send another baby, (which, for the record, He has not currently) He will also send the love. And it will be a new love, and a greater love, and a love that literally did not exist before the object of it’s affection did.

Babies come from love, but they also bring the love.

There is never quite enough time or money or sleep to go around, and yet there is. It works out. Some months or days are tighter on energy or money than others. And some weeks are grueling, and some seasons are disappointing and trying beyond belief. But there has never been a moment that I regretted saying yes to these kids, and if anything, each subsequent baby has deepened the love I have for my older children. (Which doesn’t mean – please, please hear this – that smaller families have less love.)

But, to limit the size of one’s family out of fear of a lack of love, a poverty of love, to imagine that there is a limit to love…that is the lie.

I may be afraid of having another baby for all kinds of reasons, but I’m not afraid that there won’t be enough love.

All I have to do is look down at my little puppy dog Luke (currently eating deli turkey off the kitchen floor #reallife) and know with deep certainly that the love is there, that it will come in abundance. And that it will overflow the bounds of my grinchy little heart and stretch it just a little further, until I’m that mom who is kissing her toddler’s fat neck in the checkout line at King Soopers and wondering if there was ever another cherub alive whose (now borderline feminine and becoming confusing to strangers) curls were so perfect, and who laughs a little and shakes her head when asked “is he your first?” and answers honestly, “nope.”

About Me, toddlers, Traveling with Children

Have baby, will travel

September 12, 2016

This is a little fluffier than last time, because I like to keep you guys on your toes. Also, because I’m staring down the barrel of packing for 10 days with a messy 13 month old and no idea whether we’ll have laundry facilities at our disposal. Which is a good thing to check on in advance, actually, so maybe I’ll send an email to the travel company as soon as I tap this little missive out.

We’ve done a fair bit of international travel with our kids, and all our long flights with kids have been with ages 3 and younger. I think as they get older it will probably get easier, but as we no longer live abroad and their tickets aren’t “free” any more, (ask me about international taxes on lap babies. My upper thighs are a tariff-able region.) we’ll probably never find out.

Or maybe we will. I don’t know why, but our family seems to have been given a travel charism of sorts. Or at least a “travel to Italy” charism. It’s one of those ridiculous this-doesn’t-make-sense-at-all God things, but since we got married almost 7 years ago, we’ve had the opportunity to make the trek for work or as a ridiculously generous gift at least once per year, and always with kid(s). (So to the narrative that laments “your life is over once baby is born” I issue a resounding “nuh-uh.” At least not mine.)

By now I should be a travel guru where lap babies are concerned, but of course, I’m worried afresh about how Luke my very mobile, cusp-of-walking, pushing 30 lbs chunka love will do on the New York to Rome leg of our journey. I haven’t started worrying about the return trip yet because to date, every return trip across the Atlantic is a blacked out blur in my mind, and hopefully this time will be no exception.

But I do know how to pack a suitcase. And a carryon. And in case anyone out there in blogland is gearing up for holiday travel season with minions and sweating a coast to coast flight, I got you.

Here are some of my non negotiables for friendlier skies with babies on board, in no particular order. Well, maybe in order of size. We’ll go with that.

1. The umbrella stroller. I know you have a great stroller, maybe an amaz$$$$ing jogger with a super comfortable seat and undercarriage storage for days. That’s awesome. Don’t bring it with you. At least not for an international trip.

First off, cobblestones and inner tube tires do not play nicely together. Secondly, if you will be jumping from plane to train to automobile, the last thing you want is anything larger than a simple umbrella handle to sling over your arm as you wrestle bebe+bags onto a crowded vehicle or into a diminutive seating compartment. I asked around this time because our last umbrella stroller retired somewhere between babies 2 and 3, but alas, I had to resort to a very sophisticated Mickey Mouse model found at Walmart for right around $20 bucks. I’d love to have a Uppababy or BabyJogger version just for such occasions one day, because the construction is so superior, but for the price and with the distinct likelihood that this thing will get super beat up during our trip, Micky Mouse it is. Bottom line: leave the fancy stroller at home.

2. The baby carrier. Yeah, you’ll have a stroller with you. But once you hit the airport, that bad boy will be pulling double duty as a rolling luggage rack, and you’ll want baby strapped on for the ride until you clear security. (Bonus tip: around the same time the x ray scatter machine things came into vogue, I had my first baby. I’ve only traveled +1 since then, and I’ve never had to go through the scanner. Just step to the side of the line, put your palms out for a bomb wipe down, and be escorted through the center aisle for a simple wanding. Voila. Plus, you get to keep baby strapped on the whole time.)

I am not a huge baby-wearer outside of travel, but when we’re on the move, I wear at least one kid for the majority of the day. I try to wear them during the majority of the flight, too, thought some airlines will make you unstrap them during takeoff and landing. It helps keep baby calm and contained, distinctly increases the likelihood that they will sleep, and makes your arms a whole lot less sore as you’re pacing the rear of the plane for hours. And hours. Once my babies fall asleep in their carrier (I like the Ergo Sport, but I haven’t really tried anything else), I can usually settle gingerly back into my seat with them still strapped on and sometimes enjoy up to an hour or two(!) of peaceful seated flight time. Once you get to wherever you’re going, and especially if you’ll be doing a lot of touristy stuff or walking (like on a pilgrimage) having a front to back carrier is basically essential to having any sort of a good time. And you can always toss them back into the stroller when you’re both too sweaty and too tired to go on.

3. The food. Bring baby foot pouches or applesauce squeezes. Injecting liquid nutrition straight into an angry toddler’s gullet is a proven delivery system. I usually bring about 40% more food than I think they can possibly eat, and then they eat it all and I spend the rest of the flight changing diapers. Which brings me to my next point…

4. Diapers. Bring so many more than you think you will need. And if you cloth diaper? Don’t do that for the flight. Just trust me on this one. I figure 2 diapers per flight hour is a safe bet, while accounting for delays and tarmac sitting too. So for a 3 hour connection to La Guardia and then a direct flight from NYC to Rome, I will bring 24 diapers. Isn’t that ridiculous? Yeah. But you know what’s worse? Repurposing a blown-out diaper with some cocktail napkins and crossed fingers. Don’t be that guy.

5. Change of clothes. I bring a single onesie for the baby and I layer the older toddlers so that if one layer gets blown, they can get peeled back to a clean base layer. I’ve definitely arrived at my destination with a shirtless diaper-wearing cherub, but usually the backup onesie is a sufficient plan, and doesn’t bulk up the carryon.

6. Muslin swaddling blanket or scarf as wrap/nursing cover/swaddle/comfort object. Don’t bring their beloved stuffed animal, unless they truly won’t sleep without it. Do bring a super soft, versatile something they can cover up with, rub their face against, and which becomes your umbrella stroller canopy-extension once you’re on the ground.

7. A water bottle with a suction pop top. My little man is currently in the throes of weaning from an actual bottle, but he will be appeased by the sucking action this little water bottle requires. Plus, there are no sippy cups in most restaurants in Italy, so we’ll be able to dump his cappuccinos into this.

8. That’s it. Did you think there’d be more? Trust me, you are already going to be a human pack mule. Don’t exacerbate the problem by overpacking or bringing 10000 fiddly little toys and stickers (okay, maybe 1 sheet of stickers) to try to keep track of on the flight. It’s crap that will get dropped or thrown away anyway, and most airlines offer complimentary tv (cartoons!) on individual screens for long haul flights anyway. Plus, plastic cups and drink stirrers make great toys. If you simply must pack something, bring an activity book with stickers and let them go crazy on the tray table (maybe test the stickiness first) or inflight magazine. I have done the 824 dollar store toys in the bag trick before, and it’s not worth the hassle nor does it keep their attention or keep them from fighting. Flying, as my friend Rachel eloquently notes, is already super stimulating for kids. Let it be that.

What to find/buy/borrow at your destination:

A crib or packnplay (most hotels have these, call ahead. Or look up friends in the area and ask for them to lend you one/borrow one on your behalf. You can even buy one at your destination and then gift it to a friend, local charity or church when you leave, and that will still be cheaper (and less of a hassle) than checking and paying international fees for your own trusty Graco model.
A carseat. This one is personal preference of course, but when we’re going to be traveling a lot by train/bus/taxi, we don’t bring one. Some parents are okay with this, others are not. When we lived in Italy our kids didn’t have carseats because we didn’t have cars, and carrying around multiple carseats + kids while navigating public transportation would have rendered us effectively homebound. If you will spending time in a car, or if you have a scheduled airport limo pickup or tour bus, most companies will rent you or find you a carseat or booster, too. Ditto for rental car companies.
diapers and wipes. Bring what you need for the flight plus day one, then plan on buying the local brand at your destination. It’s actually sort of fun.
Babyfood/formula: ditto. Unless your kid has specific food allergies and needs something special.

Traveling with kids is a little bit stressful. But travel in general can be a little bit stressful, and there is something kind of magical about experiencing a new and exciting place with your kids. Plus, people are really so kind, sometimes especially when your baby is having a hard time. We’ve always been blown away by the charity and kindness of strangers, the flight crew, servers in fancy little restaurants you’d swear were coming to yell at you but really just want to take the baby for a stroll around the dining room, etc. It’s a great way to see the world. (Also, pope bait.)

Buon viaggio! (And pray for us on Friday if you think of it. Fingers crossed for a very sleepy Luke.)

(p.s. follow along on our pilgrimage on Instagram.)

About Me, Evangelization, Family Life, motherhood, Parenting, toddlers

Grocery shopping with kids, and other small sufferings

July 5, 2016

They only occasionally nap together still. Today I figured, still hopped up on legal fireworks lit well into the 10 o’clock hour last night and an endless infusion of high fructose corn syrup and food dyes, would be a rare quad-nap opportunity. Perhaps the last of an era, with the eldest kindergarten-bound in August.

No such luck.

I’ve threatened to pull the plug on Netflix indefinitely, held out the specter of a week without popsicles, and made various empty threats about skipping the zoo with grandma tomorrow, and still they lurk in the shadows, popping up from the basement to inform me of waking nightmares, spooky noises, uncomfortable Star Wars pillowcases lacking sufficient starch, and a host of other ailments too ridiculous to recount here.

I just disciplined thin air. Head whipping around at the sound of crinkling plastic, I barked at a grocery bag to “get downstairs if it ever wanted to play with Toby across the street again.”

My bad, grocery bag. We’re well into mommy PTSD territory now.

Still, when they do awaken for the 43 time from this “nap,” I will probably load them into the car and head to the library down the road. I will probably not put on makeup before lugging the double stroller out of the trunk and filling it with babies and overdue batman comic books, (and actually, this really great YA fantasy novel from Raymond Arroyo that is guaranteed to scratch a lingering Harry Potter itch if there are any other recovering fans out there in blogland) and we’ll stumble into the air conditioned oasis of learning and distraction and at least one or two mom/nannies will raise eyebrows and give a verbal salute to the insanity of taking multiple children anywhere in public.

And I will smile.

Because they will be right, and because it is hard. So is hitting up the doctor’s office and the pharmacy back to back with octopuses leaning out the cart, swiping foodstuffs from shelves left and right and hoping against reasonable hope that today will be the day mom forks over $5.99 for the lego star wars mad libs in the stationary aisle. Dare to dream, little ones. Dare to dream.

Raising children is a lot of work. It’s worthwhile work, but it’s grueling. I feel like those two things go hand in glove more often than not.

I have no lesson to share. I have no happy ending for today. My kids are a hot mess of needs, and I am a hot mess of frustration and pain from a viral illness I thought only people in nursing homes could contract. I cannot call in a sub, hit time out, or free myself from the next 4 hours of life. At least not responsibly, given that I’m the only adult home.

And I wish I could spin this into some fluffy parable about redemptive suffering and the privilege of being a mother, but while those things are real and true, they’re not always in the forefront of my sucks-at-suffering brain.

Nevertheless, I do have a few gems of experience to polish and throw out onto the internet, in case nobody else has explicitly told you these things before.

First, doing errands with kids probably won’t kill you. It will make everything take longer, but it will also create a magical time-sucking portal in your day whereby you can burn 1, 2 or even 3 hours of prime whine-time real estate out in the wild public square instead of your own backyard. Maybe this is a downside for some? But my kids seem to thrive in public settings. Perhaps because we have done so many things as a family unit, minus daddy, for so many years. They’re 100 times more likely to tantrum at home than abroad, and for whatever reason, the gas station and the grocery store are 100 times more interesting to them than their own playroom. Go figure.

Second, people need to see moms doing stuff with their kids in public. When I walk into Whole Foods with half a preschool class and a ~~dead eye stare on my face~~ smile for anyone to see, I’m sending a very simple message just by existing. It’s something along the lines of, “hi, we’re a biggish family. We come in peace. Where are your sparkle waters and diaper wipes, por favor?” Why, I’ve trained a whole cadre of food service industry professionals in a 5-mile radius to hardly startle at all, at least visibly, when we walk into their establishment.

Third, my life is actually really easy. Maybe yours is too? I can say this with boldness because even with a teething baby in the house, the aforementioned elderly viral illness, and a pair of cracked out 4th of July sugar junkies “sleeping” downstairs, my life is really easy.

I have very little actual suffering to my name thus far. I’ve had the usual share of heartaches, disappointments, wounds, and losses to bear, but in the grand scheme of things, my house is not going to get torched by militants, my children are not going to starve to death, and I’m (probably) not going to die in a terrorist attack. There are so many suffering souls in this troubled world of ours, and it is good for those of us who live privileged lives to embrace the small suffering we do encounter and bear it, if not well, than at least adequately. And yes, it’s pathetic that my suffering involves trips to the dentist and pained attempts at daily Mass spent mostly kneeling in the vestibule angry-whispering, but you’ve got to work with what you have.

Finally, people are really, really good. They are! Deep down most people want to interact with you in a positive way, even if they think the proper foray is a question about your sex life. I can count the truly mean-spirited comments on one hand, and that’s in 6 years of motherhood. I cannot count the positive comments, because they’re well into the hundreds. If you go out in public with your children, I can almost guarantee someone is going to smile and say something so undeservingly good to you that you might choke back tears.

Agree? Disagree? Rather have a root canal than take your kids into the liquor store for a bottle of wine and a handful of suckers? I know at least one of my sisters will read this and shake her head over my gluttony for punishment here, but surely I am not all alone.

decluttering, Family Life, motherhood, Parenting, thrifting, toddlers

Spotless would be great, but decluttered is good enough

May 23, 2016

Hi, my name’s Jenny and I’m a compulsive tidier-upper.

My bathrooms might have an easily distinguishable level of grime about them, but rare is the afternoon you’d walk into our home and see toys on the floor and laundry scattered across the family room floor. At least for more than an hour or two.

It’s not that it doesn’t get dirty. It’s filthy under the kitchen table, and the walls are slick with the evidence that we have 4 kids aged 5 and under, none of which are particularly domesticated as of yet. But I’ll be a goat in Joanna Gaines’ shed if my house is going to be untidy.

I think I was a minimalist before Marie Kondo was a glimmer in the NYT Bestseller List’s eye. While she grew up collecting organization magazines, I watched my mom get her A-game on with a garbage bag and full throated promises of one-way tickets to Goodwill.

(And she always delivered.)

Now that I’m grown with babies of my own, like any good country song would have it, I take their same bags of crap and worn out onesies and tchotchke toys to my own local thrift store, feeling a surge of pride as I empty another tailgate full of clutter in the name of “charitable giving” and a handy 20% coupon for my next visit. Dave affectionately refers to the thrifting life cycle as “renting from Saver’s.”

Close enough.

Over the past year, as the kids have morphed into more distinctive personalities and not so much an amorphous mass of basic biological needs (<– not a commentary on their inherent worth or fundamental human dignity, just an observation that small children are colossally inept at pretty much everything…so somebody please explain to me the difference between a fetus and a 1 year old, and why they aren’t equally eligible for handy dismissal for inconvenience. Geography isn’t a terribly compelling argument in my mind. But that seems to be the leading explanation. End tangent.) we’ve seen a growing affinity for keeping Lego creations intact for more than one afternoon, hoarding treasures in surprising places, and attempting to colonize bacterium in the downstairs bathroom in new and scientifically adventurous ways.

In other words, there is crap strewn about that I did not strew, and people mind if I move it.

I think they call this leveling up. So I now have more compassion for friends and readers who’ve said “but I can’t just take their stuff away” to the Kondo-esque advice of ridding the joy sucking detritus from one’s abode. Okay, okay, I get it now.

That being said, as these children grow and develop extensive leaf and rock collections and stuff apple cores and sucker sticks under their pillows, I’m seeing a greater necessity to cultivate the essentials, and let the “would sure be nice-es” fall by the wayside.

For me, as a mom with introverted type A tendencies who works from home and has nobody in school full time yet, that means an almost militant commitment to keeping our common areas open and airy…well, not exactly airy (looks pointedly towards diaper can) … but absent of piles and stacks.

But how?

Practical steps:

1. We’ve had a lot of success with training our otherwise basically feral children to put things away where they belong. ~~Because they’re angels~~. ~~Because I’m an amazing parent.~~ Because they don’t have very much stuff to begin with, and everything has a home.

We have a single toy basket on our main floor, and a single book basket in the family room. They’re free to trash the family room with both to their heart’s content, and then clean the entire thing in a 2 minute fire drill. The key to this system succeeding is that they actually can clean it up, totally on their own, in 2 minutes.

I learned the hard way that having too many toys and a larger than average family could easily equal a crapped out living space. Because 10 toys out on the floor is messy, but 10 toys per kid out on the floor is like the library in the rich suburb north of us after Tuesday’s 10 o’clock preschool story hour. Looks like FAO Schwarz after a terrorism drill.

So they don’t have a ton of toys, and we rotate them out in a kind of toy library system. The trains and tracks live high up on a shelf and come down whenever they want to play with them, but they don’t live in easy reach. The hot wheels have a specific drawer they sleep in at night, and return there they do with every setting sun. The Legos live on top of the fridge, and I have a catch all spot in the kitchen I dump stragglers into throughout the day so I can rehome them at night. I figure it takes about as much energy to see and resent a Lego on the floor in the bathroom as it does to scoop it up and sequester it.

(They do not keep toys in their bedrooms. Just the stuffed animal lovies and the odd book or race car. But only the animals live there.)

2. The bigger headache has traditionally been books, which seem to be just too overwhelming to reshelve. I don’t really blame them: when I walk into the toy room and see 104 children’s tomes scattered open across the floor, I feel incapable of rectifying the situation myself.

This past winter I stopped shelving them, period, and just started keeping the daily selection upstairs in a basket in the family room and the rest dumped in no particular order into those ubiquitous canvas storage bins which fit neatly on the bookshelf. Suddenly they are able to clean them up, because dumping stuff in bins, as every mother knows, is the absolute easiest way to clean.

I’ve also committed to bringing them to the library every week or so, which has alleviated the guilt of donating unwanted/worn out/twaddly books. Yes, I know, I know … smart, well-adjusted future Nobel laureates all have one thing in common, and it’s an extensive home library. But, as a confirmed dweller of suburbia with 3 excellent children’s libraries within a 2 mile radius of our house, I’ve let myself off the hook. Why not let them hang onto the bulk of our books, and I’ll build up a little collection of true favorites and classics at home?

3. Their wardrobes are continually and scrupulously edited. Is something ill-fitting? Worth saving for a younger sibling? Best donated to our local Gabriel House or a cousin? I have a constant outgoing bag in our front hall closet for donations. I pull something out almost every time I’m doing laundry, and it helps keep their wardrobes manageable for me, the sole launderess. When they are running their own loads of whites and colors one day (soon, I hope!) they can have a dozen t-shirts a piece. But for now, they have like 5.

The other big factor is shoe containment. We’ve perfected a system of 2 pairs up, 2 pairs down for the big boys. They keep their mass shoes and school shoes downstairs in their closet (1 pair of each per kid) and their play shoes and sandals upstairs in the front closet on an IKEA shoe rack. In the winter, the sandals get swapped out for boots. They know where to put their shoes when they come in, and when they forget (which is 90% of the time), there’s relatively low drama when I point to the closet and remind them. The babies’ shoes live in their rooms, and they also own 3-4 pairs apiece. I do not save shoes unless I love them and they’re in great shape, because they’re so cheap at garage sales and thrift stores, and because my kids wear them hard, and generally they’re not in inheritable shape, baby shoes notwithstanding. Also, my kids are barefoot a lot, much to grandma’s dismay.

Finally, I’ve had to relax and admit to myself that nothing bad is going to happen if things look trashed at 1:30 in the afternoon. It is trashed, because 5 people are sharing space and trying to build a life together here during the daylight hours. I’ve tried to relax and look past (waaaaaaaay past, in the case of the bathrooms) the normal wear and tear of daily living.

And knowing that I can pick up the house (with a little help from my little friends) in 20 minutes after dinner, I don’t sweat the messes, the piles, and the puddles that accumulate throughout the day.

We’re in this together, me and these kids, and we’re getting better and better at putting the pieces back together before bedtime, even if the sink is piled real, real high.

Catholic Spirituality, Catholics Do What?, Culture of Death, Evangelization, motherhood, Parenting, Pornography, Sex, sin, Theology of the Body, toddlers

Porn proof kids and patron saints {part 3 in a series}

April 27, 2016

{Part 1}

{Part 2}

Lately I’ve been writing about — and hearing heart-wrenching accounts of — people struggling with pornography addiction. It’s rampant in our culture in the West, and the deeper I dig into the statistics and the anecdotes, the more I’m realizing that it is very much a cross-cultural issue, and that even as the internet has transcended geographical boundaries in the best ways, it has been the vehicle for what I suspect history will look back upon as one of the most pernicious evils of our time.

And none of us are immune to it.

But it’s not hopeless.

And the very last thing we’re called to do, as parents, is throw our hands up in the air and resign ourselves to the sad inevitability of our kids and their friends becoming statistics.

So we take the practical steps. We talk to our kids early and often about what pornography is, the real cost of it, emotionally and spiritually and physically, and we put physical and behavioral barriers in place to protect them and to safeguard the sanctity of our homes.

At the same time, we are called to be salt and light in a world grown dim and flavorless – and increasingly so, where sex is concerned. So we fill our little people’s hearts and minds with truth, goodness, and beauty, and we demonstrate for them what real love looks and feels and sounds like. And we send them out.

Christianity does not belong in a bubble. And neither do little Christian foot soldiers in training. So while do our best to make our home base a sanctuary of love and learning and growing in discipleship and virtue, we must also equip our kids to engage the outside world, bit by bit, bringing the Gospel to their friends and classmates by means of those organic, innocent child-to-child encounters that the very young are so ideally suited for.

Our kids are going to be exposed to evil in this life, but we needn’t resign ourselves to the inevitability their becoming enslaved to it.

By teaching them, using the language of Theology of the Body and the currency of virtue and the grace of the Sacraments, our kids can become little living icons of Christ in a dark and hurting world, and grow up to be the kind of men and women who change history.

St. John Paul II left a great gift to the world in his masterpiece, Theology of the Body. As his wisdom and holiness continues to be distilled into materials that kids and young adults and laypersons of every stripe can readily access, simply entrusting our kids to his heavenly protection is a powerful first step.

A famous story has been circulating on the internet for a couple years now, and it never fails to bring me to tears. Fr. Gabriele Amorth, chief exorcist for the diocese of Rome, was speaking about the effectiveness of invoking different saints during exorcisms. During one encounter, he asked the demon point blank “why do you fear the name of John Paul II so much?” and it replied “Because he pulled so many young people from my hands.”

Mic drop.

Another heavy hitter in the battle for purity, I’ve no doubt: Mother Angelica.

Though she’s only been in heaven (hey, even the Pope thinks so!) a month or so, stories are already circulating about wealthy businessmen (as in, this exact scenario played out more than once!) trolling for porn in their hotel rooms and instead happening upon the oddly captivating image of an elderly nun, sometimes sporting an eye patch, telling them who they really were, and why they deserved to be fed more than garbage.

(Those encounters, by the way, ended up culminating with conversions to Catholicism and massive financial gifts to the ministry and operations of EWTN. Because God can use any of us.)

So we entrust ourselves, and our children, to the mercy of God and the powerful intercession of His saints, and we face the problem of pornography head on, because, in the immortal words of St. Joan of Arc: “I am not afraid. I was born to do this.”

Take heart, moms and dads; So were you.

(This post originally appeared at Catholic Exchange)

motherhood, Parenting, toddlers

Just be a good lion

April 25, 2016

I’ve been trying to put some better parenting practices into place lately, to be more present to my kids and to be less, um, yelly.

Not that I ever yell. I’m really very mild mannered.

But on the off chance that things do get heated, I tend to blow up quickly and then cool down almost as fast, leaving me to question my secondary temperament (melancholic, allegedly) and wonder if motherhood hasn’t lit a bit of a sanguine fire in my belly.

Then again, that could just be the sleep deprivation talking.

I’ve been quietly observing parenting qualities I’d like to emulate (or avoid) in my friends the past few months (sorry guys!) and I’ve come up with a working mental list of areas I’d like to improve upon, along with corresponding examples of said virtue or knack as demonstrated by my (unwitting) observation subjects.

For example, I have a friend who is newly pregnant with her 6th child, and who is always joyful. Even in hard moments, she exudes joy. I suspect a large piece of this is genetic and emotional composition, and the rest is virtue and careful years of practice. But I like to think that a sliver of it could be just plain choosing to be happy, no matter the circumstances.

And that piece of the joy puzzle is eminently attainable, even for a critical realist like yours truly. So sometimes, when I find myself unreasonably upset with something that is really just a normal kid thing: mud, fights, Costco defiance, etc., I am trying to pull back a little and think about her, about her maintained composure and peace, even in the midst of chaos, and I’m trying to exercise those flabby little smile muscles of my own and laugh it off.

It works about 8% of the time.

But! It’s 8% better results than I was getting before.

Another friend is incredibly patient and incredibly respectful of her children, roughly the same ages as mine. They interrupt her with a baby need or a toddler yowl of protest and she calmly (and usually immediately) engages them. Now, a piece of this puzzle is her natural tendency towards people and their needs. She is fundamentally oriented towards the person. Everywhere she looks she sees relationships and individuals, where I see behavioral patterns and ideas and sweeping cultural movements.

(You should have a drink with us some time, it’s pretty entertaining.)

But, the thing is, she’s present to her own children in a powerful way because she is so fundamentally other-oriented. And I’m not. But I can watch her practice her other-focusedness on them, and I can look into my own motherly navel and examine whether my children might benefit from mommy spending less time analyzing them and more time acknowledging them.

It’s nice to be collecting little pieces of encouragement and best practices from all my unwitting peer teachers, but it’s also tempting to burn out on the all the bigger and better Methods and Improvements I want to implement right away, and end up in an exhausted couch heap with 50 minutes still to burn till bedtime.

This afternoon I was resolved to practice some good old fashioned togetherness with them in the backyard. We’d been in the car too long this morning and I – and they – were frazzled by carpool dynamics and hanger and that weird reunion angst after a day spent apart. So we got home, I made them a snack plate (read: held out a torn open bag of salt and vinegar potato chips and a bowl of almonds and shrink wrapped string cheese) and let them race out into the yard to devolve almost instantaneously into verbal and literally fisticuffs.

When the dust settled and the carbohydrates were being processed, the man cubs pounded downstairs to the basement to play “Star Wars Cantina” (very exclusive and involving shards of fence slats and yelling), leaving me and Evie upstairs and Luke napping in his room.

“Play with me, mommy!”

Wearily setting my library book aside and lowering myself to the floor, I asked her what she wanted to play, bracing myself for a laundry list of toddler book re-reads.

She looked at me thoughtfully and then dropped onto her hands and knees with a grin.

“I’m a lion mommy. Rawr.”

I shook my wind-destroyed hair out of it’s bobby pinned prison and growled back at her, surprising us both with my playfulness.

“I’m a lion too.”

Then I rushed her on all fours, causing her to devolve into giggles and mock terror. She ran screaming to the back door and roared at me from behind the glass a few times, then came back into the room and looked at me seriously.

“What do you want to do now, Evie?”

She tossed her hair over her shoulder and announced she was going downstairs to join her brothers, and, turning at the top of the stairs, she tossed a final command my way:

“Be a good lion, mommy. Just be a good lion.”

And then she disappeared, happy to have been seen and heard, and happy to leave me to my own devices for as long as it took to tap out this little narrative.

So the moral of this story is…well, I don’t actually have one. Just that parenting is a work in progress, and that even infinitesimally small attempts at doing better can make things…better.

Parenting, toddlers, Traveling with Children

Flying with kids (hint: grab a drink and drop those expectations nice and low)

March 1, 2016

I’m delirious with excitement (and a little bit of denial, apparently? Because I’m woefully behind in laundry so packing remains but a glimmer in the hazy future) because Luke and I are venturing eastward for my first official girl’s weekend in years. Maybe ever? Definitely since having kids. And by “girl’s weekend” I mean “crashing at one mama friend’s house for a byob (bump or baby) DIY home renovation weekend (pics and tutorials to come!!) Plus wine.

It’s a mouthful.

But my beautiful best friends from Steubenville glory days are both Virginians, and while that is very sad news for our phone calling schedules, it’s very good news when I do get the chance to head out there because it’s a twofer.

One sweet friend is getting her house ready to sell, and after virtually advising her via Pinterest and Voxer and text messages about whitewashing bricks, I decided to jump on Southwest and see what could be found for under $200.

A round trip ticket for 1+ lap baby to DC, that’s what could be found.

So Luke and I are headed out, and since I’ve flown solo with him once before, I know the drill, but more than that, I know the thrill that is now flying with one single solitary lap baby on board.

I guess this part depends on your individual baby and his or her good – or not! – nature, but I am personally looking very much forward to the 3.5 hours of uninterrupted baby-on-lap airtime. Because free wifi, free drink coupons, uninterrupted snuggles with my youngest, and a loaded Kindle.

My favorite way to travel with kids is hardcore minimalist. For example, I’m not bringing a car seat. I phoned a friend and scrounged up an old Graco she’ll bring to the airport when she picks us up. Saved: 20lbs of heft and mommy’s right elbow joint.

Next on the chopping block? A stroller. Unless I’m going to be walking a lot at my final destination, I don’t bring one. If there will be walking and the need to put baby down somewhere (like at a conference or event) I’ll bring a cheap umbrella stroller that I don’t care about losing. Only if we’re traveling internationally (see: cobblestones) with more than one child do I bring the big kahuna. It’s easy enough to break down and fly with, but I’m always wary of the wear and tear and the possibility of losing it when we check it.

My best trick when we do bring the big stroller is to use this mommy hook to clip the two seats together, pile them directly on top of the frame, hand it off to the gate agent, and stow the seat post pegs in my carryon bag. I feel safer gate checking it than sending it through at the get go, but make sure you confirm with your airline that it’s not getting sent through to your final destination, unless you want it to.

(Though you may not have a choice, and you may end up laid over in Copenhagen for 7 hours with 2 exhausted toddlers and nowhere to stow them. Until you find the complimentary on site airport prams the Dutch are kind enough to populate their airports with. But I digress.)

I am not much of a baby wearer except under duress, for example, during Mass or baseball games or, you guessed it, travel. But when flying, I never leave home without my Ergo Sport. It’ll be 6 years old this fall and I’ve washed it, um, never mind actually…but it’s a work horse. And an added bonus? I’ve never had to go through the X-ray naked image screening booth (technical term?) because I’ve had a baby strapped to my midsection, either via Ergo or pregnancy, every time I’ve flown for the past 6 years. Which is convenient. And funny.

(You will, however, get bomb swabbed every time. Because you are wearing a baby, and therefore you might also be wearing a bomb. Palms up, ladies.)

I always bring 5 more diapers in carryon than I calculate needing in the absolute worst case scenario. And I’ve never.run.out. I’ve been down to a single undersized soldier scrounged from the bottom of my purse, but we’ve always made it off the plane in time.

I also like to bring a little cash for airport sundries, a squeeze pouch of food for whomever might need it most desperately, baby advil or tylenol, and a backup paci and onesie. Luke actually met the Pope in his backup onesie, and wearing his very last diaper of the day. Nicely timed, son.

Don’t forget your nursing cover or a gallon of formula either.

This might not be everybody’s jam, but I love sipping an adult beverage before I board, if I’ve allowed for the time and it’s not 8 am. It soothes the nerves and alleviates the fear that junior will kick your $8 watery white wine spritzer off the tray table. (If you’re flying internationally, of course, all bets are off, and you’ll need more than one glass to get you across the Atlantic. Godspeed.)

I also bring my phone and my super basic Kindle with a book or two that I’m currently reading. It’s hard to read a real book with a baby in your lap, and it’s even harder to read a newspaper or magazine, which is a shame because print media is normally my guilty alone time pleasure. But you’re not really alone in this scenario, c’est la screen.

Finally, and most importantly, remember that you have a right to be there, and that so does your baby. I’ve had very few uncomfortable travel experiences with our kids, but when I have, a single gracious and sincere apology for their somewhat inevitable and entirely age appropriate behavior is all you owe your seat mates. I heard someone say once that babies and toddlers just express with honesty what everyone else on the plane is feeling. Particularly if you’re stuck on the tarmac 😉

But truly, the calmer and cooler you stay, the better the odds that your fellow travelers will grant you grace. Don’t be flustered if your baby freaks, and by all means if a friendly older woman offers to hold him to spell you, take her up on it! Flight attendants can also be generous along these lines, and I’ve had no qualms handing a happy baby to a Southwest agent while I pop in to the restroom. It’s a lot easier than the alternative.

So happy travels, fellow baby toters. And don’t be surprised if your little bundles of joy get you an upgrade, a preferred seating option, or a door or two held open for you. Chivalry in air travel with little people is definitely not dead.

Remember to put on your own mask before assisting the tiny drunk guy next to you.

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