Motherhood in the Sweet Spot

My children are no longer babies. While they will always be my 3 Beans, we have reached what I like to call the sweet spot in parenting.

That's right. It can happen. Everyone can get dressed by themselves, feed themselves, respond to and follow simple demands (although this might take some repetition), and for the most part function normally in society, with the exception of them running through hotel hallways and Target aisles like gazelles being pursued on an African plain.

The transition from newborns to toddlers to tweens did not take long. And while I miss the sweet, smelling newborns against my skin, the inquisitive toddlers exploring their world and the toothless smiles of kindergarten and first grade, I am grateful for this time that I find myself in.

This is the best I got of all 3 of them!

The Lady is 11. While she is a full on tween who is navigating middle school, social media and the expectations and changes associated with her age, she hasn't quite reached the point where she has sequestered herself in her room. She still allows me to hug her, tell her how much I love her, and dance terribly in front of her without too much embarrassment or rolling of her eyes. She is the most introverted yet independent of my children and demands the least attention from me, for now.

The Little Lady is 9 going on 19. She wears her emotions on her sleeve, is quick to lash out, but loves, loves so freely. She is social and funny and wants more than anything to spend time with her family (when she isn't staring at a screen of course!) playing games, watching movies, baking and creating. She does roll her eyes--frequently, but what she wants most is my attention and time, for now.

QT is 7. How did my baby get so old? He asks the most random questions that I can tell he has been thinking about and then just kind of starts to speak as if we all have been part of the conversation going on in his head. He loves video games and hanging out with his friends. He is always coming really close to the proverbial "line" and can still for the most part get away with it by batting his long eyelashes and smiling, for now.

For now, what I want is to recognize this time, take advantage of it before the doors close and the eyes really roll. For now, I want my children to see our family as a safe space, to be themselves wholly and without fear or doubt before the outside influences, the peer pressure, the impact on their self-confidence continues to creep its way in. Life is coming for them but for now, in this sweet spot of time, I want them to know that their terrible dancing, Grateful Dead loving, lapsed runner and blogger of a mom is here and loving each of them for who they are right now.

On Discovering the Three Bean

Last night as I pecked out a few words for my Monday post, the Lady happened to be sitting beside me and asked "What is the three bean?"

I have been blogging about her for 5 years and she didn't even know it.

I like to think I am not taking advantage of her childhood, her moods, her actions. I like to think I am not exploiting my kids just because I happen to like to write and this is an outlet as well as a way to capture all those moments that you can easily forget.

I don't know though. In ten years when she reads some of these things will she be embarrassed or angry?

In twenty five years will she be grateful she can look back and see what a new mom goes through? A mom of two? Of three? Will she relate? Will she be happy to hear my voice on these pages?


I write about my children because they are such a huge part of my life, and life isn't just photos on facebook and parenting doesn't always equate to joy. They will remember the big things, Disney trips and vacations, but it is those small moments of crazy, it is random afternoons at the beach, getting stuck in rainstorms, changing diapers in the trunk of a car, its puking kids and dance parties that I want them to know about as well.

The Lady and I took a few minutes to look back at some old posts. Her first birthday, Halloween, Christmas when she was 3. I am amazed always at how much she has grown. How much of a big girl she seems these days.

I am forever grateful to her as well. She changed my life. Changed the way I write and why I write and who I write for.

I hope that when my kids eventually do read these pages that even though they may not remember all the details, that even though they might be a little embarrassed or put out that they can hear through all these words how much they are loved.

Some Updates on the Three Beans

I've had a tough summer. Here are a few things you might have missed.

The Lady

The Lady lost her first tooth a couple of weeks ago. It happened during a blanket war with her little brother where they act like dogs and each hold a side of a blanket in their mouth. She came up to me with a bit of blood on her fingers but no tooth and at first I thought it was lost for good. We did finally find it on the carpet underneath the blanket and we avoided having to craft a letter to the Tooth Fairy. I had no idea her tooth was even loose, probably because there was a full-grown tooth behind it and it was just wedged in place. And you read that right the new tooth is behind it, like a full row behind the rest of her teeth. I think we are all headed for orthodontia in the future. Wish me luck this Friday when all three of the kids visit the dentist simultaneously.

The Lady is very excited for school to start (one week from today!) and we finally got the letter with her teacher and all the school supply info last week when we got back from Crayola. The one good thing was that the teacher she got was the only first grade teacher she could actually name when I asked her a few weeks ago. I am hoping for a smoother transition this year.

I took all three kids to Target on Friday night to get the supplies on the list. We got everything we needed in addition to a new Hello Kitty lunchbox for the Little Lady (who isn't even signed up for Lunch Bunch), a copy of Kidz Bop 24, which I am mortified to admit to you. The Lady knows all the songs on it, but these are the cleaned up versions sung by children. Some are better than others. The Selena Gomez cover isn't bad, but three 13-year-old girls should not be singing Mumford and Sons. Ever.

There were a few Target mishaps along the way, the Little Lady couldn't make up her mind about being in or out of the cart, the Lady was three steps ahead of me at all times trying to cross everything off her list and QT thought he could take off whenever he wanted when he wasn't trying to push the cart by himself. But in the end everyone earned a Kit-Kat and I think that says something. I think that says something indeed.

The Little Lady

Both girls are taking a four week/twice a week gymnastics class. They love it, which is great because we all know how those classes have sometimes ended up for us. The Little Lady started the first week as the only kid in the class. She was pretty much getting a private lesson and even though a new girl showed up last week, I am glad she is getting some directed attention because she is so into it.

So obviously we had a gymnastics/bouncy house party for her birthday over the weekend. She showed up wearing just the leotard, no clothes to cover up, she was full-on ready to literally roll. I was so glad that two of her friends from her class last year were able to make it and that by the end of the party everyone was exhausted and we didn't have to clean anything up! We ended the day at an impromptu BBQ and pool/dance party and the Little Lady fell asleep on the way home so she didn't get to open any of her presents until yesterday, which she did with the abandonment of a four-year-old girl presented with a bag full of presents tied up with balloons.

School doesn't start for the Little Lady for another couple of weeks. I think getting back to a schedule will be good for her and I am waiting to see who her teacher is. Hopefully, it is who she likes or we may be hearing about it for a while. I am reminded about a blog I wrote a couple of years ago. You may remember it, I think it was called the Ferocious Fours. Here is to hoping we have a great year Little Lady!

QT

What can I say about this kid? He is talking so much now and he is also mimicking pretty much everything his sister's say including the dreaded and punishable "stupid head." It is hard to punish him though because he is so freaking cute and also likes to peek his head around the corner from the "time out stair" with a huge smile on his face. He is a runner and will take off quickly. I know he is small but it is hard to keep up with him! He still hates sand and during every beach outing this summer has refused to step one foot in it. He will however nap on the beach for 1-3 hours at a time, which is amazing. We will see how it goes this weekend as we attempt to make it back to the beach one last time.

I was able to spend a little bit of time with him on Saturday before the Little Lady's party. He was the only one who wanted to run errands with me. I will admit to dawdling at Dunkies because he prefers to sit there and eat three bites of a donut rather than take it in the car. It was nice to just hold onto his little hand and watch him explore his world. It has been so long since we have had any time just the two of us and it amazes me how much he has grown in just the last few months.

The kids have all really started playing well together. Sometimes it is pure chaos but when you hear the three of them laughing hysterically it is a lot easier to ignore the giant mess they just made and think I am doing an OK job by them.

Egg Head: Why Yes, That is My Profile Pic

So, as some of you may have noticed, there have been a few changes on the Three Bean. I have created a fb page specific to my blog. Go ahead, click right on the "like it" button over on the left, or click on the fb button to bring you to my page. Come on, I know you want to. . .

I have also joined Twitter. Now, I am still not 100% sure what I am supposed to be tweeting, but I am hoping it will increase readership and draw some traffic to the site. However, I do have a two issues with it.

1. Beyond linking to a new post and unintentionally retweeting something from the Yankees about my boyfriend, Andy Pettite, I haven't really posted anything.

2. I have no profile photo. Apparently on Twitter, it is like the kiss of death if you just have the default "egg" photo as your profile picture.

Basically, it is lazy. And it is kind of anti-social networking. It is hard to promote yourself if people can't get a visual. 

I want to put a profile pic up, I just haven't done it yet. Initially, I was hoping to put up a logo for the blog, but since I haven't gotten around to getting it created yet that isn't going to happen (but it is on the to-do list). So, partially it does come down to laziness, the other issue, and perhaps the one most responsible for my still-egg-persona is that I have no photos of myself that are even remotely usable.

I think it is a cop-out to post a pic of my kids. Are they cute? I think so. Do I have thousands, upon thousands of photos of them at my disposal? Yes. But I am the driving force behind this blog and the "face" of this brand, so I do think the photo should be a shot of my mug.

The problem is twofold.

1. I don't have a ton of photos of myself because I am usually the one taking them. Any photo I actually like is more than two years old and even though people misrepresent themselves on the Web all the time, I think a more recent photo would be a better representation of me at this point in my life. 

2. Any recent photos of me have been taken by my kids on my phone. 

Please see below for those lovely gems.

This one was taken by the Lady. Note the breast pump in the background and the sheer look of exhaustion on my face. This was when QT was about three months old and there was no sleep to be had. I don't even think Instagram could save this one.

Here is another photo. This one was taken by the Little Lady. There I am in the background, behind QT and his incredibly red cheeks. Not sure this one will make the cut.

 

Finally, there is this one. I can't remember if this was also taken by the Little Lady or if I just took it myself. Obviously, I would have to crop out the Lady. I did consider this photo for about 10 seconds and then I became distracted by my front tooth, which looks really snaggled. In real life there is a bit of a tilt to it, but nothing that extreme. I dare you, try to look away now. Also, I feel like my nose looks weird. The one saving grace is that it is blurry enough to hide small wrinkles and I don't have a double chin.

I am not kidding that these are the only photos I have. I can get my husband to take some pictures when he gets back from his trip, but the whole process of that is too much for me to think about. He will tell me that he can't take a good picture, then I will say that anything is fine, when in reality it isn't. . . you get the (for lack of a better word) picture.

I guess I will have to spend some quality time with the self-photo feature on my phone and hope for the best. I mean I can't spend the rest of my life as an egg.

If you are at all interested in following me on Twitter, I can be found @the3bean.

On The Three Bean Salad

When I first articulated the idea aloud that I wanted to start a blog, I was sitting on the beach in August 2008, trying to come up with a name. I had already formulated the first three or four posts in my head so it was just a matter of finding a title and getting started.

I was aware of the idea of "branding" or "marketing" myself and I had seen a ton of mom-focused blogs out there with clever mom-centric names like Popping Pampers and Prozac, or Parentopia or PoshMomma or MommaBytes or something that screams parenting and most importantly being a mother, but let's be honest here, I knew I wasn't going to make money off this blog and I wasn't 100% interested in writing solely about motherhood and parenthood.

So, since I have been called Bean by family and friends from the time I was little, I decided to use that in the title. Granted, I did mull over MommaBean and, Bean, Beers and Babies, but ultimately settled on TheThreeBeanSalad for a few reasons. The first was because it didn't scream MOM-BLOG, however I was a little worried it would be misinterpreted as a recipe site for barbecue enthusiasts. The second reason was because for me three bean salad actually had a childhood memory associated with it, we always had it for our Fourth of July get-together and it captured that simplicity of childhood, the act of pouring three cans of beans and some dressing in a yellow bowl and making it part of a meal. In keeping with that line of thinking I realized that a three bean salad can be a barbecue staple, something dependable, easy to make, a mixture of any beans you have on hand, shook up and seasoned, it is simple and standard and although it might make you a bit gassy, you always know what you are going to get. I hoped that this blog could be a reflection of that. I decided to go with it.

Later, after I had created my blog and started posting, I realized that the Three Bean could describe my new family, my husband, the Lady and myself. We too, were a mixture thrown together and shook up and what came out of it was our everyday adventures that are essentially the fabric of this blog. When the Little Lady was born, I kicked my husband out of the salad, well I guess I regulated him to the vinaigrette dressing. He plays a less substantive role in this blog, but in truth, without him we would just have a bowl of beans and no flavor. He keeps us together and is an integral part of all of our lives.

Now, I think the real reason for this title is actually revealing itself to me. Come June we will have one more bean to add to this salad and the title of this blog will actually reflect not only all those things listed above, but the actual number of kids I will have. And in order to keep us all a part of this metaphor, perhaps I will make myself the vinaigrette and my husband can now be the bowl that keeps us together. If you are rereading the above sentence just to make sure, let me be perfectly clear: baby number three in June.

If you are wondering why it took me 18 weeks to reveal this to you it is because I had a hard time adjusting to the idea. While, I have always wanted three kids, this just happened sooner than expected and because of it, all those big goals I want to accomplish for me and my family have become much more urgent and can no longer be ignored. There is no way there will be five of us living in a 1020 sq. ft. condo. I know babies are small, but they grow and if you have a three-year old who runs as much as mine does, you know that any small, confined space can be an issue. You have read here before about my inability to figure out the logistics of parenthood, and with the addition of one more child that is amplified for me. I probably haven't been blogging as much lately, because a lot of what I have been thinking/feeling has been wrapped up in this pregnancy news and until I was able to tell the world, I wasn't able to be 100% honest with my readers, and for that I do apologize.

I will say you missed out on a lot of posts of me just complaining that I felt like throwing up everyday and that dry-heaving was my enemy. You also missed out on a post about how much weight I have already gained and that for those two weeks when my husband was gone when I felt like complete poo thanks to a cold, I couldn't take any medicine to knock me out. So basically, you were probably spared the first-trimester pity party, which was probably best for all of us. But now you know. Now the ThreeBean will truly be about my three little beans, and I appreciate you taking the time to read all about us.

Oh, on a side note, since everyone I tell thinks this will be baby girl number three (no, we are NOT finding out), send me any good girl names you might have. I am at a loss. If it is a girl, I thought I would refer to her here, in a totally unoriginal way as the Littlest Lady, but then I decided that perhaps the Last Lady would be more appropriate, because I am pretty sure this is it for us. I do think I would shorten it to LL because, well that just sounds cooler and will be easier to type. If it is a boy, his name on this blog will be based on personality and initial impression, and don't worry, even though I have a rudimentary understanding of the penis (this is my third pregnancy) I am totally unsure of what to do with those little balls and will be sure to post about it ad nauseam.