http://rialeephotography.com/blog/2012/01/18/oh-oliver-childrens-photographer-fargo/

I have just one child that I can legitimately claim as my own, but these two girls hold a similar place in my heart.  Seeing them as nearly grown women left me simultaneously breathless, heavyhearted, and scared to death.  Breathless because they have grown to be so uniquely gorgeous, intelligent, witty, and talented.  Heavyhearted because I no longer know them like I once did and very much want to. And scared to death because they grew so fast, and know that this is what I have to look forward to with O. 

Parenthood has helped me appreciate the small things.  So, I drank up the time I had with all my nieces and nephew.  They seem to grow even faster than O.  And they are divine – each one a unique combination of their parents.  They make me laugh like I forgot I knew how. 

But I now have an adult life, much different than when the Lover and Dancer were young.   I no longer have the time to bake and send a batch of sugar cookies that spell out “Happy Easter”.  Hell, I haven’t even printed Christmas cards, let alone sent them off.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t think of these girls – correction women – and the rest of the bloody lot almost every day.  It just reminds me that life goes on, and I better pay attention.  A lesson I should have learned from Ferris years ago, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

We are raising our family in the Midwest, where family is paramount and most children live within an hours drive of grandma’s house.  Aunts and uncles often live across town, if not a few blocks away in the same neighborhood.  For better or worse, S and I have not spent any of our adult lives in the near proximity of family.  And so we don’t have the luxury of dropping O at Grandma’s house for a much needed grown-up night out on the town, scheduling a play date with cousins on hot summer afternoons, or having back-up daycare on the inevitable occasion that O gets sick.  On the contrary, we’ve come to appreciate that it takes a village to raise a child.  We continue to meet other people’s grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins that will come to play a role in shaping O’s childhood.  They aren’t a substitute for his own family, but they enrich his life in ways we never can.

So instead of recapping several unaccounted weeks since our last post, I offer this – a few mental snapshots of O’s village.  He’s lucky, I reckon.  A diverse cast of characters that animate a small boy’s daily life.

“Gma and Gpa” Tjon trailing behind O as he politely destructs their retirement-esque home.

O is always fascinated by a cell phone belting out the old-school Batman theme which is invariably played by L, our agility instructor (while S runs his Monday night course).

“Daddy, you pretend you are S, and I will be O.” spoken by a neighborhood girl to her dad after watching O for the afternoon.

“Wow, look at that kid go!  Way to go kid!” exclaimed by a young teenager on roller blades as O cruised by on his Sesame Street Truck — followed by a fist bump which O didn’t know how to reciprocate.

“What do you mean? O knows LOTS of words! Haven’t you heard them? He’s been saying his own name for a while.” An observation of our experienced daycare provider when I was sure O’s vocabulary had stagnated.

“Hey, O is awake!  You better go get him.” spoken by a colleague’s child at a meeting of the Ivory Tower Beer Club.  O is THAT fund to play with!

“You OK?  Do you need your bottom wiped?” from a concerned father to someone else’s (potty-trained) child.

While we miss our friends and family from elsewhere, the friends we’ve acquired here are extremely caring, diverse, and inspiring.  Indeed, this is a pretty descent village in which to raise O!

Yesterday the thermometer barely broke 90, but with the extreme humidity the heat index was well over 100.  Unlike Arizona, is was NOT a dry heat.  This is my least favorite weather.  S, on the other hand, walks out the door and inhales deeply.  He must be part salamander, to crave that type of moisture on his skin.  O, as you might expect, is a mix of the two of us.  Neither cold nor hot weather really seem to deter him.  Yesterday he made it through the entire downtown street fair and an afternoon trip to the park.  This morning on a walk to the park, he only sought refuge under the playground after several trips up and down the jungle gym, and because he wanted to be with G who had long since abandoned the idea of ball chasing. 

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.  Any kid around here has to be built Fargo tough to survive the range in weather we experience.  I submit as evidence, the neighbor girls.  As we backed out of the drive yesterday I saw two blond heads chasing each other in the front lawn across the street as their mother hoisted a 12×12 canopy.  When we returned over an hour later, we saw the colorful, hand-painted sign reading “Lemonade $0.50” and the girls huddled in the tiny slice of shade provided.  I made a mental note to jaunt over after unloading the car, but was quickly side-tracked.  It was nearing 5 p.m. when G could no longer handle the confines of the house and demanded an outing.  O in backpack and weighed down by gallons of water, we began the trek to the park.  The girls were still outside womanning the lemonade stand.  The extra 30 ft to their driveway darn near killed me, but the girls greeted us perkily.  As I paid for two gloriously ice-filled glasses of (surprisingly tasty) lemonade, the oldest of the girls proudly explained, “We’re donating all of this money to my friend, D.  She has cancer.”  Now, if that doesn’t make you a little teary, fine.  But it did me.  More than that, it made me realize how good it is to be raised Fargo tough. 

Some things haven’t changed.  The rides are expensive and the lines too long.  Fried food is plentiful (didn’t have fried cheese curds when I was a kid!) but palatable beer scarce.  And kids of all ages enjoy themselves.  O was transfixed by the goat, sheep, and swine barn.  He made three laps through the petting zoo, giggling excitedly when the animals reached through the slats to sniff his grubby hands. He especially liked feeding the fallow deer! 

The afternoon ended with a tired, sweaty child pushed in his stroller by two equally sweaty (and exhausted) parents.  All in all, a very good day at the fair!

After dropping O at day care today, I noticed that his artwork has made its debut on the walls of the corridor.  He has been in full-time day care for just over a month, and for the most part we are all quite happy.  S and I feel confident about the care O receives, so much so that my guilt-as-working-mom has been surprisingly low.  Yet today, flanked by my son’s first artistic endeavors, I was struck by the realization that this is the beginning of us knowing less and less about O.  He is awake for approximately 12 hours a day, of which, we see him for 4.  He spends twice as much time with other adults than with his own parents.  Oh how “tragic”, but really I think I have it all in perspective. 

You see, I adore Barbara Kingsolver.  She, like many of my favorite authors (e.g. Julia Alvarez) write from personal experience in a way that resonates with me.  Strange, given that I began reading both authors when I hadn’t really seen the world.  Somehow their work has always seemed to, eventually, map onto the meanderings of my life.  The Bean Trees is a perfect example.  I can’t remember if I read it while pregnant, or during those first incredibly sleep deprived months after O was born.  Beyond the few emotionally draining recounts of abuse to which we all hope our own children will remain blissfully oblivious, I mostly remember from this story a single salient message.  As parents, we will all do our best to not only protect our children, but to afford them opportunities to grow.  Ultimately, despite our efforts, the most we can hope for is to be accepted by our adult children as friends.  Someone with which they share their lives, not with the guarded testimonies of children, but with the rancor of a companion.  Our success as parents will be measured when our babies have grown. 

So I have come to view daycare as the beginning of O developing into his own person, but not with sadness.  I will continue to set and enforce reasonable boundaries, to seek opportunities for his growth, and be his advocate.  And I will make heaps of mistakes.  Tons.  He will undoubtedly reject me at times, hate me at others, and (hopefully) continue to love me along the way.  It is his journey.  And in the end, when he has a partner and perhaps children of his own, I will count myself so very fortunate if he chooses to ring home, and to confide in S and me his successes and failures. I (perhaps naively) think that will be my measure of success at parenting. 

Is he walking consistently yet?  Or course not!  Mostly only around other kids.  But I first saw him walk on June 8 in my office (the day after he took 4 steps at daycare) and several times since them, mostly out of the corner of my eye and NEVER at home!  I’m excited and proud.  And, wistful.  I’ve been really OK with the passing of so many of O’s developmental stages.  But this one, well?  There’s something a little sad about both S and I working so much coupled together with a child who apparently only walks around other kids.  So we just chronically miss those magical, fumbling, swaggering soon-to-be-trivial steps.  So, in an effort to feel liberated from my temporary foray into mommy guilt, I say, cheers to O, you lovely little thing!  And cheers to me and S, because we are working our bottoms off to be the best parents we know how to be!

Oh, and on that celebratory note, J is for STILL for Summer!  Which means lovely beer brewing for S.  And lots of creativity this time.  I took a sneak peak at the grain he scored from his mates at the Ivory Tower Beer Club, and all I can think is (in the words of Stewie Griffin) victory is mine!!!

Well, only if by victory you mean slower race times, a pudgy belly, and lots of laughter.  Yes, VICTORY is MINE!

But now it’s summer.  You can taste it months before it actually arrives; rhubarb crisp, fresh peas off the vines, and oh those tasty berries.  Many of my colleagues choose to travel during these precious months, but we prefer to soak up and store the gorgeousness of the season to see us through those  long winters. 

So pardon my French when I ask, “Fargo, WTF?!”  It’s as if Fargo feels its hard-earned title is threatened by the rest of the Midwest.  A record-breaking tornado season for neighboring states has Fargo on the run.  And in a feeble attempt to prove its meddle, Fargo invited the beginnings of tornado season a bit earlier than I would have liked. 

Our three year anniversary of arriving in Fargo was celebrated yesterday over a lovely meal with kind neighbors – and late evening tornado sirens.  A girl from Western Montana, it’s taken me a bit to grow accustomed to the drill.  But, I’m getting there.  I had just finished stocking the basement with bare essentials (diapers, wipes, candles, matches, etc.) and sat down for a much deserved adult beverage when the sirens began.  After snatching up O, I headed straight to the basement.  As I settled down on the floor just outside the closet beneath the stairs, I was aware of just two things – S and G upstairs gathering last minute supplies and the unearthly stench wafting from my child’s nappy.  S eventually arrived with a few forgotten items, G at his heels. With lights flickering and the wind and rain eerily mimicking the sound of a train passing by, my usual terror was overpowered by a giggle.  Somehow the image of me changing a diaper, elbow deep in baby poop and S supervising with wine glass in one hand and box o’ wine in the other, the house disintegrating around us,  was enough to squelch my irrational fear of tornado season for the moment. 

So how did our 3rd anniversary turn out?  In short, no tornadoes.  Just 72 mph wind (incidentally, 74 mph is the minimum for stage 1 hurricanes) and lots of downed trees, power lines, etc.  39,000 people without power initially, down to 4,000 now (24 hours later).   For us personally, a few missing rain gutters and a leaky basement.   And maybe a tiny lingering question – just how FAR will our town GO to maintain her hard earned “Toughest Weather” title? 

As I pull out of the drive, I turn the radio from NPR to hard rock and crank the volume.  It primes me for the hunt.  Adrenaline pumping, I mentally review my shopping list and map out the most efficient way through the store as I belt out lyrics to AC/DC.  The competition begins when I turn in to the parking lot.  Hundreds of other cars are already trolling, looking for a spot in the overcrowded car park.  Despite the bitter Fargo wind, I opt for a slot far from the entrance of the store knowing that my long stride will propel me quickly past those in a closer spot.  The front entrance is a barren wasteland without all the shopping carts.  Others mill around waiting for carts to be brought in from outside, but not me.  Shopping carts clog aisles and slow passage through the store.  Instead, I sling a hand basket over each forearm and push onward. 

I elbow my way through produce and score some organic kiwi.  I weave through the onslaught of shopping carts on my way to the meat department.  There I reluctantly pass up crab legs that would normally be a treat for S and me and choose hormone-free chicken for O instead.  I pounce on Eden Prairie garbanzo beans (the only brand with BPA-free lined cans) which I’ve never been able to find in Fargo before.  The miser in me winces as I carefully select each item for O, which are often twice as expensive as the food I used to buy.  And my eyes begin to blur from reading the fine print on all the packages.  Why is there sugar in a product touting to be unsweetened?  But with each addition to my baskets, I envision O happily slurping his food down and smile knowing that it will be the freshest and healthiest available in Fargo.  And that my little lion cub will grow strong as a result. 

The ridiculous check out lanes don’t even phase me at this point.  I take my chances in the self-checkout line and zip through in a fraction of the time.  And so my morning adventure is comes to an end.  I slowly walk to my car, recounting the rare finds and good deals I’ve stashed in my cloth grocery bags.  And so, like a lioness dragging home a wildebeest, I make my way back to the house.  Gotta love Saturday shopping!

Tonight he woke earlier than usual, and was inconsolable.  Knowing he hadn’t had a proper bedtime snack, I brought a bottle up and offered it to him.  Again, I resisted a chuckle as I gazed down at him.  His blond hair tussled, chubby hands glommed onto the bottle, and body stretched across my body and dangling in midair, I found it amazingly difficult to remember back to almost a year ago.  It was then that I awkwardly arranged pillows and rolled up receiving blankets to position his tiny body in just the right position for him to latch, my arms uncoordinated and unskilled to accomplish the task on their own.  So small he barely spanned the width of my chest.  Now, if he were sufficiently elastic, I could wrap the bloke around my waist as a belt.  Couple his size with the round face and messy blond hair, and all I see in those hungry midnight feedings (heaven help me) is a very young, and much more intelligent, Augustus Gloop!