I love youthful curiosity and how my children make me take note of the beauty all around me.
I hate wrenching cigarette butts, hardened dog poop, rocks, firecrackers and all sorts of other contraband out of tightly clenched fists (or mouths).

I love the weight of my cuddly, sleepy children on my chest. They give themselves over to me with no hesitation.
I hate being a jungle gym – all day, every day.

I love the biceps I’ve built while constantly carrying my children.
I hate holding a squirming 20-pound child while vacuuming the entire house – all because she is convinced that the machine will suck them up.

I love those rare moments when I get to step back and observe how their tiny minds and bodies are perfecting new tasks.
I hate tying three sets of shoelaces, brushing three sets of teeth and wiping three behinds.

I love hearing my child whisper Mama for the first time, in an adorable teeny little voice.
I hate hearing my children yell Mama, over and over and over again — for no apparent reason.

I love the development of my motherly instincts.
I hate seeing, in terrifying clarity, little motion-picture “what-ifs” play in my mind. What if he falls from that ledge? What if the gate isn’t shut? What if someone kidnaps her? What if a mountain lion snags him right from the trail and runs away with him?

I love how freely they love me, without peer pressure or social norms pulling them away.
I hate how tremendous love can so easily breed guilt, an ugly emotion and one that I am constantly battling.

I love bearing witness to the beginnings of their relationship as brother and sister.
I hate breaking up fights.

I love children’s toys. Who doesn’t love balls, bubbles and sprinklers?
I hate stumbling over a sea of Hot Wheels cars, building blocks and baby doll dresses.

I love to watch them grow up, as they slowly become the people they are meant to be.
I hate to watch them grow up, waxing nostalgic (as so many do) about the versions of themselves that they are leaving behind.

“Why airplanes in the sky, Mama?”

“Well, so they can go fast, I guess,” I responded. My voice tight. My hands laden with grocery bags and a squirming one-year-old.

“Cars go fast too?” J, nearly three, asks me.

He’s still staring at the now empty sky.

“Yes.” I’m short. Trying to herd him inside.

He glances at me. And then, understanding my body language lowers his head and walks toward the front door.

“Why everything go so fast?” he asks, while stepping over the threshold into our house.

“It not so good,” he finishes firmly.

Then he shakes his head.

And once again, as he has countless times since his birth, my son rearranged my priorities.

*   *   *

Even as an infant, my son was old.

He rarely cried and rarely smiled. He was balanced and stable.

He walked early, but waited to truly speak until his words were clear.

By age two, he shocked me with his insight.

Like the time, when I asked him if he was excited about turning three. And he solemnly stared at me and shook his head no.

“Why not,” I asked.

“Being two is perfect,” he said. “Perfect for me.”

Or the hundreds of times when he’s asked if something could be recycled or reused, and upon hearing that it was simply just trash, he sadly muttered, “shoot. That bad for the earth.”

Or when, while I watched aghast as a group of older boys began to fight at a neighborhood park, my terribly shy boy stood up and shouted loudly that it wasn’t nice to hit.

He often hands me, or his Dad, or his little sister, the last chocolate chip cookie — unflinchingly — knowing at two years old that good things are always better if shared.

He calls big things “humongous” and tiny things “infinitesimal.”

His patience, at three, sometimes exceeds my own.

*   *   *

Until recently, I worried more about my son’s tenderness than I embraced it.

Sometimes I would ask my husband, “what are we going to do about Jonah?”

What will we do about school?

How will we help him socially, where he struggles?

Can he continue to carry the world on his shoulders?

But I learned — or should I say, he has taught me — to just stop.

Stop pushing. Stop worrying. Stop moving so fast.

All children have things that make them exceptional. They all have something to teach, if we just allow ourselves to listen.

In my case, my son’s kind, patience and open nature has served as a stunning example to me — a die-hard, always rushing, plan-ahead, type-A personality.

So I don’t need to DO anything.

There’s nothing to do with a child like this, except to learn from him.

I suppose that’s why I didn’t quite get it when he suddenly insisted that my husband hug and kiss me before he left for work.

Or why every hug bestowed upon him required another one for my husband.

It was a giant two-by-four that wiffed right over my head.

See, my husband and I had been going through a “rough patch.” (Don’t lie, even the best marriages have them.) We love each other deeply and weren’t really worried about the tension in our house. We knew we’d get through it.

We hadn’t noticed, but our lack of communication also resulted in a lack of physical affection between us. It scared our son. Of course, he didn’t know what he was afraid of. He knows nothing of divorce. But he just didn’t feel safe anymore.

It’s easy to think of marriage as a two-person relationship. But the truth is, when you have children, you invite them in. They become part of your marriage — the good, the bad and the ugly.

The U.S. Administration for Children and Families agrees. In fact, its research shows that children raised in healthy — with the emphasis on the word healthy — marriages are physically healthier and do better in school, and they are less likely to commit suicide, abuse drugs or get pregnant as a teenager. These children even tend to have better relationships with their parents and, much later, their own spouses.

This research should be a wake-up call. To all of us. Married or not. (More than 30 percent of kids are growing up in a household without married parents.) And to even those in “healthy” relationships.

Beyond teaching the ABCs and minding their pleases and thank-yous, we are modeling how to be in a relationship. A parent’s relationships are the only ones children see up close. They will never be intimately involved in another romantic relationship until they begin to have their own.

If you treat your wife like she’s an idiot, don’t be surprised if your son treats his girlfriend the same way.

Yell at your boyfriend? Your daughter will yell at hers.

Disappear when there is conflict? Your kids will learn to run.

Perhaps contrary to popular wisdom, all of this information and our recent experience will actually mean increased transparency for my family.

We realize that Stepford-like relationships, with all their wine and romance, don’t really exist. No one is happy with their significant other all of the time. Why would we begin to teach that? So our children will be saddened when the rush of romance fades and normalcy, with its highs and lows, sets in?

Instead, we’re going to stop foolishly believing that our kids don’t pick up on our sarcastic comments, harsh tones or late-night arguments. Instead, we’ll try to model healthy conflict resolution. And when we fail, we’ll explain. Even a 2-year-old can understand that sometimes we don’t talk nicely to each other, but we always try hard to do better next time.

Our hope is that our kids will learn how to manage conflict, how to apologize and how — really — to be married.

What are you teaching your children?

Sure, I only have one superhuman power. But it’s a stellar one.

I use it every day — only to do good, I assure you.

I make milk.

Not a superhuman power, you say, but something private that shouldn’t be shared?

Crazy talk. And here’s why:

I don’t like to brag, but my milk is pretty darn incredible.

For one thing, it sustained two human beings for six months each. No other foods required.

And while doing that, it protected them against cancer, diabetes, heart disease and obesity — all of our nation’s top killers. It also enhanced their brain development. In fact, a recent study of more than 14,000 children found that breast-fed kids have higher IQs and better performance scores in school.

My milk protects me, too. Not drinking it, silly, Making it. By allowing my body to engage its superhuman power, I’ve protected myself against breast cancer and ovarian cancer. Breast cancer alone kills more than 40,000 women annually and it runs in my family. So maybe, just maybe, I’ll escape a diagnosis.

Speaking of cancer, new research has even found that a protein found only in breast milk actually kills cancer cells. The protein causes cancer cells — every type of cell tested — to commit suicide.

See? My superpower might eventually lead to the cure for cancer. Can’t get much more superhuman than that.

And if that weren’t enough, my superpower put my kids to sleep. It was the only thing that stopped the colicky screaming of my infant daughter. When my son was a baby, it comforted him through his bout with the stomach flu. It was the only food item that I didn’t clean up off the floor.

And … (What there’s more? Crazy, I know.) … my superpower has provided me with some of my sweetest and proudest parenting moments.

My daughter, who is now 1 year old, moves nonstop. But, for my milk, she snuggles close. She rests her little head on my breast, stares up into my eyes and I tell her about the things I hope for her and about what type of woman she could become. In those moments, I’m nourishing more than just her body.

I wasn’t just “handed” this superpower, by the way. I fought for it, like most of us with this particular power do. I endured blisters and bleeding where there should never be blood. I battled the pump, and won. I practiced and practiced and practiced — until I was able to breast-feed while holding my baby in one arm and typing/gesturing/reading stories/loading the dishwasher with the other.

With all that my superpower has to offer, it’s shocking that sometimes I’m shunned.

Once, in my car at a drive-in, I was asked to move my vehicle. Another time, someone told me that nursing a child older than 1 year of age was disgusting.

It’s not just me, either. It happens to almost every person with my particular superpower. We are asked to leave restaurants. We’re called names. We’re told to stop talking about it, because just mentioning that we breast-fed hurts other women’s feelings. We’re sent to the bathroom to feed our babies.

If someone was pedaling bottled cures to cancer or a canned beverage that reduced the risk of diabetes by about 40 percent, do you think they’d be asked to sit on a filthy restroom floor while doing it?

Bottled. Ah.

You’ve found it — my superpower’s only weakness.

Seems the packaging of my superpower has American culture all atwitter. In a society where sex sells, a baby attached to a nipple threatens to undermine not only our culture, but also a multi-million industry.

My daughter, refused to accept her superhuman drink from any place but the source. Makes sense when you think about it — I like my produce fresh too. Would you want to drink something that had been frozen for months, then thawed and reheated?

And to tell the truth, it suited me just fine. My electric pump isn’t nearly as cuddly as my daughter. And it’s a terrible conversationalist.

Plus, why in the world should such a tremendous superpower be hidden? Horses don’t duck behind trees to feed their young. Monkeys sure as hell aren’t shy.

If you’re really scared of a nipple, aren’t you forgetting that the cream for your Starbucks Frapuccino came from a cow’s teat?

Now, I don’t just whip off my shirt. When my babies were newborns and breastfeeding was a challenge, I always used a nursing cover in public. Later, when we were pros, I could order dinner at a restaurant while nursing without a cover — the wait staff never knows a thing.

I’m discrete about my power. But I refuse to hide it away because it makes some people uncomfortable.

For all of you nursing mothers out there, keep your head up.

And in times of doubt, imagine your “fashionable” (really?) nursing cover is a cape and hum yourself a little theme song.

You are a superhero. To your children, to your families and to everyone who would like to see a healthier, happier society — including me.

It’s a question I used to know the answer to. I could spout off more than a hundred characteristics, titles and job descriptions. And when I tacked up all of those words on my little bulletin board of life, things made sense. I could prioritize, organize, synthesize. I could define myself.

Runner. Writer. Lover. Passionate. Caring. Optimistic.

Now, it seems M.O.M. sums me up.

And I’m to blame.

I realized it one early morning when my husband and I were contemplating our daughter’s upcoming first birthday. I was lamenting her fleeting babyhood.

“I feel like I missed it,” I said, with a nostalgic sigh.

My husband, the more ‘realistic’ of our twosome, pointed out that my nostalgia was misplaced.

“After all,” he said. “You didn’t even miss a feeding. Not one feeding in a whole year.”

I happily breastfeed my daughter. Still do. And she – not so happily – refused every synthetic feeding device we put in front of her. Admittedly, we got lazy and didn’t try too hard — accepting her preferences as a newborn because nothing seemed worth another bout of crying.

But one year’s worth of feedings means this: It’s been one year since I’ve been away from my children for more than three hours at a time.

In one year, I have only had a handful of hours to myself.

In one year, I have spent every night within arm’s reach of my daughter.

In one year, I have, without questioning, always placed my children’s desires ahead of my own.

*                                  *                                              *

Before I had kids, I vowed two things: first, that I would not lose my sense of self; and second, that my life wouldn’t change that much.
The latter, I now realize, was about as realistic as the saying, “sleeps like a baby.” But, in my haste, I tossed out both promises– without stopping to think.

And I disappeared.

There’s nothing pretty about it — wandering through life not knowing who you are.

And, for parents, it’s a revolving door. The more parents lose themselves, the more they invest in their kids – as a comfort, a time-sucking distraction, something they can point to and say, “I do THIS well.”

But I have to wonder, if we are sacrificing everything for our children, are we really doing our job well? Is it healthy to teach children that they are, unequivocally, the center of our universe? To feel that we must set aside our own personalities, so that our children may develop theirs?

There is no black answer, only shades of grey.

And we must all find our place there, in the grey, giving as much as we can and holding on to as much as possible.

I suppose I’ve learned that I need hold on a bit tighter.

That my happiness is worth tears shed by a one-year-old – even hours of them.

That my friendships are worth my husband’s inconvenience.

That my self worth does not belong on the backs of my children.

We’d been chatting for less than 15 minutes while our kids scrambled over the play equipment. I didn’t see why my son’s eating habits should be her concern, but I indulged her anyway.

“Yes,” I answered, cautiously.

“I did too.” She responded quickly. “When did he start walking?”

Ah. Now I get it.

She’s got her scorecard out.

*                                              *                                  *

Most parents are familiar with the game. It goes a little something like this:

You meet another parent. You compare children. You earn points for things like early walking, breastfeeding, staying home with the kids, your two-year-old knowing the alphabet and other such nonsense. You deduct points from the other Mom for things like a clingy toddler, silent 15-month-old or crazy work schedule.

Oh, and if one of the children happens to throw a temper tantrum while in the presence of another parent– that mother can pretty much throw in the towel. I mean, what kind of terrible parents have a kid who throws tantrums? In the store/at the park/in the car nonetheless?

It’s all about drawing comparisons where none should be made. Realistically, we know this. But we all do it.

And it doesn’t end with infancy and toddlerhood. Parents compare high school student’s accomplishments, their grown children’s jobs and much later — even their grandchildren.

Why do parents — particularly mothers — engage in this dangerous little game?

One simple reason: Guilt.

The guilt comes along with your baby when it emerges from the womb. Amniotic fluid, baby, placenta and a heaping mound of guilt that sinks into your chest and resides there for at least the next 20 years.

Parents feel guilty when they go to work. Guilty when they stay home. Guilty when their child is diagnosed with autism. Guilty when they miss bedtime, again. Guilty when their teen gets drunk or high or pregnant.

The guilt can become so all consuming that it actually impacts our parenting style. I call it “compensation parenting.” I see it at our house all the time. My husband feels guilty about being at work, so he doesn’t want to discipline. I feel guilty because my two-year-old isn’t very social, so I push him.

The only way to ease the guilt is to find the things we do well.

Thus, the scorecard. It’s the only barometer we have to measure our successes.

I’d like to say I don’t have my own little scorecard. But I do. I constantly watch other Moms with their children and secretly think I handle my children better.

But every time I do it, I try to remind myself that next time it could be me hovering over the screaming kid at Target.

That every child is different, with different talents and different challenges.

That my guilt doesn’t do me, my kids or anyone else around me any good.

*                                              *                                  *

So just as I’m about to announce to the Mom at the park that my son began walking at 9 months, I stop.

“You know, I don’t remember,” I said.

Then I smiled slightly, hoping she’d caught on. That she’d know I didn’t want to play the game. That maybe, we could ditch the guilt — together.

“Oh,” she responded, haughtily. “My son walked at 11 months.”

Crap, I thought. Well….

At least my little guy has hers beat.

We’d decided to accompany my husband to work in order to break up the monotony of a long, freezing cold Friday. My husband photographed the game, while I tried to keep my two-year-old from leaping for the ball.

During a break in the action, the cheerleaders made their way onto the court. In a flurry of hair bows, elongated eyelashes and locked elbows, they chanted, “We’re number one. No, not number two. We’re number one!” And so on.

Just a side note: The team was losing. Perhaps not the best cheer at the time.

Anyway, that’s when it occurred to me. Fast forward 15 years and my daughter could be one of those girls donning a short skirt for the entire student body.

Ugh.

Really. big. ugh.

It’s not that I hate cheerleaders. I’ll be the first to admit that I cannot (nor will I ever be able to) do a back handspring. And I’m certain that teenage cheerleaders feel more comfortable in front of a crowd that I do.

I just feel that cheerleading represents what’s wrong with the American “ideal” woman. And just in case there is any doubt, cheerleading is American. In China, one of the largest industrialized nations in the world, cheerleading was virtually non-existent a decade ago.

Now before you cheerleading enthusiasts stomp off in a fury, consider the following:

My son could look out into that gymnasium and see role models. Strong, confident young men. Working hard. Sweating. Trying and failing.  Celebrating victory and managing defeat.

When they were on the court, their looks were unimportant. And they had more than 100 peers standing and yelling out their support.

My daughter on the other hand, saw beautiful young women — who were, to a large degree, decoration. It’s certainly true that their job is to entertain and lead the crowd in cheers, but couldn’t they do that in loose-fitting sweats? The early cheerleaders wore them. But, then again, the first cheerleading squad, formed at the University of Minnesota in 1899, were men.

And if short skirts weren’t required, wouldn’t the 250-pound teen I spotted in the stands be a perfect anchor to the pyramid? I’d much rather have her catching me than a 125-pound girl with arms no bigger around than a paper towel roll.

It isn’t the exclusion that bothers me. It’s the message it sends. Yes, there are girl’s athletic events– but they don’t get half the fan support and acknowledgement that boy’s sports do. So the average little girl grows up attending and watching on television many more boy’s and men’s sporting events.

American girls grow up watching the cheerleaders. Wanting to be one of those beautiful girls that everyone seems to be watching. Wishing to emulate the dolled up women the ESPN crew loves to use as a segue to commercial breaks.

Combine that with the more then 20,000 advertisements a child sees each year, according to the University of Michigan, and I struggle with this simple question:

In a culture that still, so often, places value on a woman’s looks and not her character, how do I teach my daughter — especially as a teen — that her purpose extends far beyond being merely decorative?

How do I teach her that she’s beautiful, without makeup? That any boy or man she spends time with should want her because of her personality, not the size of her thighs.

I ask this because I’m well aware of my role. Her father and I set the stage for her self-esteem. I can model athleticism and love of my body. I can go without makeup most days of my life. He can show her what he values in women. We can both teach her to be proud of her accomplishments, not her waistline.

But somewhere along the line, our influence will fade.

If she ends up being a bit chubby, we can’t protect her from sneering peers. We can’t edit MTV music videos. And we can’t fully explain to her that while teen boys seem to only value what’s clearly outlined by the dance team’s skin-sucking outfits, they’ll be terribly disappointed if that’s all they look for in a mate.

I guess I’ll just have to be content to do my part.

And hope that somewhere along the way, the world starts to change. Maybe when my daughter is in high school, she’ll be part of the cheerleading team. And maybe, just maybe, she’ll lead cheers in her sweats.

I roared.

Not a petite, sweet little noise.

It was a loud, animalistic, powerful sound that shook my ribs and reverberated off the walls of my bathtub.

At first, I was embarrassed by the sounds I made while delivering my daughter naturally — with no medications — in the bathtub of my Northland home.

I imagined a very peaceful, calm birth. I wanted to light candles and listen to music, while tenderly pushing my daughter into my husband’s waiting arms.

It didn’t work out that way. After a day-long bout of latent labor pains, my body rushed through active labor in less than two hours. The intensity was shocking.

So I moaned. Then I roared.

It hurt. Bad.

And I wish every woman alive could experience it.

* * *

When preparing for the birth of our first child, my husband and I dutifully read “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.” And we attended the 12-week childbirth class offered by our hospital.

We learned about what doctors do to save babies. We talked about all of the things we’d need to make our delivery safe.

But, as we covered the facts and the choices, I never once considered how I’d feel about my birth. Looking back on it, I felt like the birth belonged to my son — not to me.

I didn’t know that women — mothers — remember the delivery of their children. They remember the good moments and the bad. And then remember, without wavering, how it made them feel.

After a 31-hour Pitocin induced labor at just 37 weeks,  a vacuum-assisted delivery and a Neonatal ICU stay for my baby — during which one nurse actually told me that sometimes babies do better when their parents don’t visit — I felt inept as a mother and as a woman.

My body failed in it’s most basic capacity. It didn’t know when to go into labor. It couldn’t push out on its own. And my mere presence in the room with my baby might actually make him sicker.

When our pediatrician told us we could take our baby home, I panicked. How could I care for him? I couldn’t even get him here safely.

Gradually, my fear lapsed. I began to feel love for my newborn son, instead of just fierce protectiveness mixed with blind fear. But two and a half years later, I still have not gotten over the hurt caused by that experience.

In some ways, however, I’m grateful. The hurt made me take action.

I started researching birth centers, midwives, home births, the safety of epidurals, the implications of a Pitocin-induced labor, maternal death rates, infant death rates and the emotional impact that birth has on women.

I read everything from medical journals to blogs. I watched documentaries.

As I gathered information, I was shocked about how cavalier I’d been regarding the birth of my son. I’d spent more time planning my wedding that preparing for the arrival of a human being. As though the flowers, cake and toasts would have more impact on me than the birth of my son.

So when we conceived my daughter, I knew things would be different.

My daughter’s birth at nearly 40 weeks was completely different than my son’s. Labor began naturally after a day of family fun. I rocked my son to sleep just 90 minutes before my daughter’s head crowned.

The labor was so quick there was no time to fill a birthing tub, so we moved into the bathroom.

I experienced things that I can never fully describe.

I felt power, more intense than I’d ever imagined.

I felt my daughter move inside me, while my husband cradled her head in his hands.

I felt animal and, yet, so womanly.

When my husband placed our newborn daughter on my chest, the pain was gone. It was replaced by pride and a rush of love, so perfect, so pure, so basic and fundamental.

We cuddled her in our bed and she nursed. There was no hospital staffer, rubbing her roughly. No pain medications to make her and me drowsy.

Just us.

It was something only I could give her and my husband.

It was something only I could give myself.

* * *

When I say I want every woman to experience it, I don’t mean that I wish every woman pain.

The pain is just part of the whole. It’s part of the most intense sensations you’ll ever experience.

There are hundreds of reasons why I choose to give birth at home. Many of those reasons regard the health and well being of my child.

But one of the most important was how the birth made me feel. I chose to give birth at home because it gave me the best opportunity for me to take control. It was the best way for me to have the birth I wanted.

I remember the pain. I remember the pleasure.

And I remember my roar.

I feel a little silly writing you this letter. After all, you’re an orange and white stuffed cat.

Or at least you were when you first came to our house. Now your white stripes are sort of a brownish grey — tinged irreversibly with orange popsicle, Amoxicillin and dirt from a dozen different playgrounds. (Don’t feel bad. I’m a little dingier too.)

I suppose I shouldn’t feel too silly. This is nothing compared to the time when on a “divide-and-conquer” trip to the grocery store, I realized that I’d been singing to you, tucked under my arm, instead of to my infant daughter.

Or the time when my son insisted that you “nurse” from my boob, just like the baby. (Yes, I obliged.) Or how sometimes, in fits of exasperation at the mercurial moods of my two year old, I find myself rolling my eyes your way…as though you’re right there with me.

After all of this, we’re family. And that’s exactly why I’m writing this note.

I just want to say thanks.

Thanks for always being there when the lights go out. When J is alone in his room and the night light isn’t enough company, you’re always there to see him through until morning. It used to be my job.

Thank you for having just the right-sized little head. Your neck fits perfectly into the crook of my son’s elbow. When he carries you, he can still use both of his hands.

Thanks for never truly getting lost. I’ve retrieved you from doctor’s offices, grocery store carts and restaurants. There was even the time when J insisted, somewhat tearfully while lying in bed, that you were outside laying on ground. Thank goodness we found you underneath the couch. At first, I thought of buying a replacement for you — just in case — but I know that an imposter wouldn’t really do.

And thank you for helping him deal with all of this “big brother” stuff. It hasn’t always been easy for him and I know you’ve gone out of your way to help. There have been many times when I’ve been talking to his little sister and I’ve looked over to see him staring wistfully at me, with you cuddled up next to him. I’m sure that just your touch made him feel a little bit better.

But thank you most of all for what you’ll offer me.

Sometime — not soon, but all too quickly for my taste — my little boy won’t need you anymore. You’ll probably sit on a shelf for awhile. Later, you might even find yourself in a box.

Then, one day, maybe when J goes to college, maybe when he gets married or maybe when he has his own child, I’ll find you.

And when I rub your little ear, it will all come flooding back to me.

All of J’s “friends” (of whom you are the most important) filling his bed to the point where I’ve wondered how he would fit.

The way he cocks his head to the side, nods slightly and narrows his eyes when he trying to instill the upmost seriousness to something that is, to me, inconsequential — like bringing you to the breakfast table with him or having another portion of pretzels.

His caring and sweet nature. Remember when he wanted you in a carrier, similar to the one we used with his baby sister? We wrapped a scarf around his body, tucked you in and walked to the park. He caressed you and shushed you to sleep. And I believe that his nervousness about letting you go down the slide was real, at least to him.

You, fuzzy ‘lil old you, encapsulate all of the things I love so much about this two-year-old version of my son.

He’s constantly evolving. But you — you’ll stay the same.

So don’t get lost Leo and please, please let your stitching hold.

My son needs you now. And I’m going to need you in about 20 years.

Lots of love,

Mama