RW: Being the mother of two young children is not easy.

Me: Yeah, I know, but . . .

RW: [grabs my shoulders and looks into my eyes] Being the mother of two young children is not easy.

Me: Well, yeah, of course, but . . .

RW: [determined] Being the mother of two young children is not easy.

Me: [breaks down; sobbing uncontrollably].

When you’re suddenly thrust into mothering another child (as all mothers of more than one child are), it becomes clear very quickly: This is not easy. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the first time I was left home alone with Lilly and Henry. Well, actually, I already forgot most of it. Or blocked it out. It’s one huge blur. But I’ll never forget the scene when Elliott walked back into the house after about a twenty minute absence. The Nut was barking incessantly. Henry was screaming. I was pacing the floor, pulling on my hair, and crying. And Lilly was sitting in time-out, screaming and crying, and completely naked.

I honestly have no recollection of what happened in that twenty minutes except that I have a vague memory of there also being a puddle of urine somewhere in the vicinity, which would explain some of the nakedness. But I do remember thinking, “Holy crap. How am I going to do this by myself every day?”

So, yeah, I know it’s not easy. It’s the accepting of that message that is more difficult. Because for some reason the fact that people do this all the time convinces you that this should be easy. But it’s not.

But every once in a while things click. Maybe not everything, but a lot of things. And that’s all it takes sometimes.

Today did not start out well. When Henry woke me up around 2 a.m. for a feeding, I immediately noticed that I was not entirely over the stomach virus that had kicked my butt the day before. Then I realized Elliott was not in bed anymore. Odd. Then before I even got out of my bedroom, Lilly came running in asking to sleep in our bed – a habit, which we have been working on breaking. But since I didn’t have any reinforcements to keep her out of the bed once I went into the nursery and since Henry’s crying was getting more frantic, I just ok’ed it knowing we were undermining some of the progress we’d made on that front. After feeding Henry, I sought out Elliott and learned that he was victim #3 of the aforementioned virus. So that’s how the early morning hours went.

I woke up knowing there would be no time for slacking off today. And I do recall a moment this morning when I was trying to get a cranky Henry to nap, while trying to keep Lilly from disturbing Elliott convalescing on the couch, when it hit me once again: This is not easy.

Yet still, now that everyone has been cared for and is asleep, I’m thinking back on my day and I’m not thinking of the stress. I’m thinking of the minutes when Lilly and I were pretending to be Kung Fu Pandas in the backyard; and when Lilly and I took turns snacking on baby toes to make Henry laugh; and flying Henry on my knees; and teaching Lilly how to play tennis in the driveway, and reading bedtime stories to both kids at once for a change.

It was a good day. Not an easy one, but a good one. That’s the distinction I have to remember. Motherhood is not a day at the beach. It’s a long, hard workout that kicks your ass, but makes you collapse into a chair and say, “damn, that felt good.”

In high school, I loved it because it seemed to be one of the few days parents and teachers looked the other way while masses of kids ditched school and took the train into Manhattan to see the parade. Not coincidentally, it was also one of the few days that the NYPD seemed to look the other way when it came to drinking in public and/or underage. In college and in my twenties, it was all about partying in the Irish pubs in D.C. and N.Y. and it was always a blast.

Throughout all those years though there was a quieter, more traditional, celebration with my family. My Irish-American mom would hang out the “Erin go Bragh” flags, bake delicious Irish Soda Bread, and we’d feast on corned beef and cabbage. It’s not much, but I always looked forward to it. These days, that’s more my speed. That, and a St. Patrick’s Day craft with Lilly. Maybe next year we’ll venture into leprechaun trapping, but for now I’ll share the makings of our St. Patrick’s Day so far.

Here is the self-explanatory craft I made with Lilly earlier this week. It gave me a chance to discuss with her how lucky we are to have a happy, healthy family. Lilly felt particularly lucky to have a singing Jasmine doll and Aladdin.

"Things That Make Me Lucky" St. Patrick's Day craft

Today we spent the day making Irish Soda Bread using my mom’s recipe. This was the first time Lilly was old enough to really help with it and it was fun to pass on a family tradition that I enjoyed so much. It came out just like Mom’s — delicious.

Mom’s Irish Soda Bread

(makes 2 small loaves or 1 large loaf)

4 cups flour

1/2 cup sugar

4 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 egg

2 cups buttermilk

1 cup raisins

6 Tbsp butter or margarine

LOTS of caraway seeds

Mix dry ingredients in large bowl. Use knives to cut butter into dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix egg and buttermilk, then mix with dry ingredients. Coat raisins in some flour, then add raisins and seed to mixture.

Split batter into 2 batches (or use as one large loaf) and mold them into large mounds. Place in center of a metal cake pan or metal bowl. Cut a cross into the top of each loaf. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour or until fork comes out clean.

Finally, enjoy your bread with some butter and Irish tea!

Age 1:

We used some Valentine’s Day-themed scrapbooking paper from the dollar bins at Target to make these valentines when Lilly was 18 months old. She picked the construction paper color and the shapes used. I provided some assistance with the glue stick and then she added some extra “design” with markers and stamps to finish it off.

Age 2:

By 30 months, the sign for “I love you” was very well established in the signing vocabulary of our family, so it only seemed fitting to work it into our valentines. I traced Lilly’s hand, cut it and the heart out, and glued down the fingers to sign “I love you.” Lilly did all the gluing and added touches.

Age 3:

This year we had to step up production since we were also making them for 11 classmates. So I bought a 30-pack of foam hearts for a few bucks at Target an then just let Lilly go crazy with all our glitter glue, stickers and stamps. At this age, Lilly was running the show and did everything herself. I just wrote out “Happy Valentines’s Day” on the back and let her sign her name.

They’re not the craftiest of crafts, but they were perfect for getting Lilly involved at each age. And that’s what makes it a gift from the heart.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Besides the extra sleep, which is very nice, there is another perk to having Henry in the nursery however. It’s what I think of as our date nights.

Our days tend to be a bit crazy. Lilly keeps me going pretty much all day, and that means Henry is in tow pretty much all day. And, while I hate doing it, I often find myself looking for a time and place to put Henry down. It kills me to even think about this. Like most first children, Lilly was held constantly. And although it meant I missed many meals and had to do nearly everything one-handed, I loved it. I would spend hours just watching her sleep, staring at her, playing with her, doting on her. Poor Henry gets a couple hours in the morning, in which I’m also trying to push through several loads of laundry and do grocery shopping and any other random errands.

In his younger weeks, before he moved into his own room, Henry would stay up late with Elliott and me after Lilly went to sleep. That gave us some time to dote on just Henry, begging him to grace us with a fleeting smile and his cute little laugh. Now that bedtime is much earlier even those precious hours alone with Henry are no more. And crazy as it sounds coming from someone who hardly gets a minute to herself, when I’m sitting around in the evening, I miss him. I find myself gazing at the video monitor and wishing I had the time, like I did with Lilly, to just hold him and stare at him for hours on end. But I don’t.

What I do have is date nights. I have time in those hours of the night when everybody but college kids, graveyard shifters and nursing moms are asleep. That’s when Henry and I have our alone time. Granted, I’m exhausted and often when Henry calls upon me with his hungry cries, I don’t want to go. I want to sleep. I really want to sleep. Much longer.

But after we get through the initial screaming diaper change ritual, Henry makes it easy. Clad in a clean diaper, he is nothing but smiles. And once we’re settled in his armchair, sitting in the quiet, dark nursery, and Henry is feeding, I start to remember what it was like in those early days with Lilly. I get to just hold Henry. I get to feel his warm body against mine and his cute little hands grabbing my shirt or my fingers. And even if it is only by the light of his nightlight, I get to stare at his cute little face, his tiny ears and his little twitching feet until he tires of eating and falls asleep in my lap.

There’s something about those nightly nursing sessions that breathes new life into me. I remember feeling the same way when Lilly was still breastfeeding. Life seems simpler at those times. All the petty annoyances and stresses of daily life are lost in the cloud of a sleepy brain and all I can think in that moment is, “I’m a mom and this beautiful creature is my baby. How did I get so lucky?”

Then exhaustion overtakes me once again and I put Henry back in his bassinet and I go back to my bed. When the sun comes up, it’s back to our crazy life. And while there are many precious moments in which I’m grateful for my kids during the daylight hours too, around the fourth or fifth time I am forced to put Henry down in some baby-entertaining contraption, I do wish life could always be as simple as date nights.

But does it have to be so soon??

With Lilly in her second year of preschool, I’ve learned a little bit about letting go – the good and the bad. Watching my little girl walk confidently into a new classroom and make friends immediately: good. Choking back tears and prying her hands off of me as she begs me not to leave on the mornings when she really doesn’t want to go: bad.

Still, I know the good outweighs the bad at this stage in Lilly’s life. But Henry? My sweet little Henry? Do I have to? According to my husband, who is tired of being kept awake by baby snores and cries just a couple inches from our bed, yes. Yes I do. Alright, alright, the pediatrician says it’s time for him to move to his own room too. And I know it’s true if I want either – or any – of us to get decent sleep in upcoming months. But, simply put, I just don’t want to.

Now, I should sincerely apologize to those moms and dads whose various work leaves expire around this time and they have to let go in a much more severe way. I do not mean to sound like a spoiled, ungrateful SAHM. But another universal of parenting is that all things are relative. So, for me, moving Henry to another room is my first big “letting go.” And I don’t want to.

The thing is that it’s just easier to let go as they get older. Lilly is ready to be on her own, playing with her peers rather than mommy. She asks to go to school on most days. And while she still gives me lots of good cuddles that I will crave like crazy in ten years (if not much sooner), there are also times when she rebuffs my affection. I’m letting go, but she’s pulling away also. If I don’t let go, there’s attitude and tantrums.

But with Henry, not so. He doesn’t want me to let go yet either. The protests come when I let go, not the opposite.

No, no, Mommy! Hold me more! Smile at me more! Snuggle with me more!

I’ve been trying to will myself to this transition for a while now. It all boils down to this: Henry is my baby. The baby of my babies. Almost definitely my last baby. I’ll never have those sweet baby snores inches from my bed again after Henry. So, I’ve been dragging my feet. I had to find just the right monitor; I blamed his reflux (the crib’s too flat!); and, ultimately, I flat out refused to be rushed.

But it’s time. I’ve known it all week. We are keeping each other awake and sleep training must begin. So I’ve been waiting for the right time. I needed a little bit of something, a little something special, to tell me it’s ok. The perfect night if there is such a thing, so that I can look back and feel I truly appreciated what I had when I had it. Last night was that night.

One of the things I’ll miss the most when he’s in the crib is reaching over and calming him with just a touch of my hand and the occasions when he actually holds my hand as we drift off to sleep. So last night when Henry began fussing I tried to seize the moment. I reached over to the bassinet to pat his tummy as he so enjoys, but he was just a bit too far away. Alas, my hand was left dangling over the side of the bassinet just inches from my baby but unable to reach him. He was calming on his own so I didn’t dare disturb him by pulling the bassinet closer. Then, just as I resigned myself to simply listening to his sweet baby sounds, a little hand reached up, grabbed my pinky and held it tight. And we both drifted off to sleep. . . not letting go. It was perfect.

I’m out of excuses. Tonight, I let go.

The other day Lilly was playing with our temporal scanner thermometer. She was pretending it was a magic mirror à la Snow White, but I wasn’t aware of that at first. We had this conversation:

LILLY: Here, Mom, look into this. What do you see?

ME: [Not sure what we were pretending yet]: Hm, I don’t know. What do you see?

LILLY: I see a strong, beautiful, young woman. . .

ME: How nice!

LILLY: and you!

ME: Oh.

LILLY: Noooo – it’s you, Mommy!

ME: Aw, thank you, Lilly!

LILLY: Just kidding!

ME: Oh.

Ouch. I admit it. That one stung a bit.