A Shower of Affection

Yesterday, I had my first pre-baby baby shower.

Yes, it demands some explanation. E was born almost exactly two months early. It's the only time in his life that he's ever been that early for something. I had baby showers post-baby, but I remember them through a somewhat hazy fog, since by that time, I had other things on my mind (like neonatal ICUs and diapers and breastfeeding and whatnot).

But this time, things were different.

My beautiful little mother offered up her house, and some of my very best friends offered up their time, and together we had a veritable sensory overload of pink, frilly, baby girl items. There were cupcakes galore, a delicious pink punch, cakes, fruits, and dips. There were pom-poms and tutus and tiny pink sneakers. My sister planned her vacation time so she could attend.  My aunt who always hated it when her mother put her in frilly clothes gave me the frilliest dress in the collection.  My sister-in-law and D's cousin both gave me huge boxes of baby clothes, lovingly picked out from their baby girls' closets. My own mother appears to have saved everything I ever wore as an infant, including the outfit my father picked out for me to wear home from the hospital. And that's just a short list of the beautiful, adorable, thoughtful gifts that everyone picked out.

It's overwhelming sometimes to realize how much people care about you.

Thank you, ladies. As wonderful as all of those gifts were, you give me something even more precious every day: your friendship and love. I can only hope my daughter will have such wonderful people in her life.

Small Boy Drama

A couple of weeks ago, my son went down the street to investigate what his friends were doing. He wanted to ride bikes outside. Unfortunately, they wanted to wrestle and play video games (which they were currently engaged in when he arrived). For a child who loves to play at cage fighting with his grandfather, he is surprisingly uninterested in physical altercations with children his own age (and, to be fair, the cage fighting games are highly ritualized, involving helmets and outfits and announcers and everything...), so he outright refused to participate in wrestling. And he had his heart set on bike-riding, so he didn't want to play video games either.
Unfortunately, then he made a mistake. He told an entire group of 9-year-old boys that they were boring. Obviously, they retaliated in kind and, since he was one against many, he was banished from the house and the fun.
I was sitting on the front porch to watch him go down the street, so I was also witness to his return, tears pouring down his cheeks, and disappointment writ in every line of his sad, skinny little self.
Such little dramas are usually commonplace in our neighborhood. Someone won't like what someone else is doing in a game, tempers will flare, and angry tears follow. Usually the upset is short-lived and by the next day, they have all forgiven (and probably forgotten) what came the day before.
However, this time, that didn't happen.

I'm not sure if it was because it's the tail-end of summer, and it's a million burning degrees outside, and these other children's parents are just tired of preventing their boys from playing video games 24/7, or if the insult was really that deeply felt on both sides of the argument, or if the other boys were on vacation and actually out of town. For whatever reason, our front door was shockingly un-molested for the next 2 weeks.

My proud, hard-headed son refused to seek out their company, despite his own boredom with the pace of adult life that pervades in our house. Every suggestion of "go find out what your friends are doing" was met with the disgusted rejoinder "they're not my friends any more."  One day, while helping E clean his room, I found a scrap of paper with "I hate A & N" (the two boys he's closest to) written over and over in rather hilariously disturbing fashion. I was beginning to think that the little idyllic neighborhood gang had truly fallen apart.

Then one evening, the day before school was going to start, E was complaining after dinner that he was bored. Being extremely persistent, I timidly suggested "Maybe you should go see what your friends are doing." Sure enough, as hotly as ever, he replied "They're not my friends!" But then, D said mildly, "They came looking for you this weekend."
There was a profound pause.

"Well, maybe in a little bit, I'll go see what they're doing." He threw out nonchalantly, the eagerness in his voice not at all well-hidden.

Within 5 minutes, there was a knock at our front door. E leaped off of the couch like he had been shot from a cannon, disappeared out the front door, and in no time, this is the scene that was playing out on our back patio:

All is right with the world again.

Something Right

I limit E's exposure to the news: he's not allowed to watch the news on TV, and I don't leave popular magazines or newspapers around where he can read them. (On the other hand, he has more exposure than he would like to medical journals...) I listen to NPR in the car with him, but change the station if they start talking about death counts or other violent things. This may be over protective of me in one way, but in another it also keeps him from being overwhelmed by the negativity that

dominates so much of world news. It also lets me discuss select events in a one-on-one manner with him, to assess his feelings and thoughts, and guide him toward his own understanding. Yesterday, while standing in line at the grocery store, he happened to catch sight of a headline about the Colorado shooting. He commented that a friend of his had told him about it. I had him tell me what he knew about it, and then carefully explained a little bit more (that's another parenting strategy: don't discuss more than he wants to learn). And when I was done, he looked thoughtful and said "I feel sorry for that man. I feel worse for all the people who died, of course, but I still feel sorry for him." That's a level of compassion that is so rare in today's society. I had just been telling my husband how disappointed I was by someone on the radio who had said the shooter was a dog who only deserved to be put down. I've also been disturbed by people who point to the amount of premeditation the shooter demonstrated as a reason why he can not be considered mentally ill, as if that would be the only thing that could help them understand what he did. I'm definitely not of the opinion that mental illness excuses actions, or that a diagnosis should be a get-out-of-jail-free card. But regardless of whether or not he has an illness, something in his brain or life malfunctioned to the extent where his actions seemed like a good idea to him. Something made him abnormal. That should make him an object of pity, if not sympathy. And my son, who's only nine, was able to express that pity. Maybe it's just a factor of how innocent and sheltered I try to keep him, but if that's what I have to do to make him a human being, that's what I'll do. And apparently I've been doing something right.