Melissa Anne Cohen

Marc’s working today. On a Saturday. And I’m a little bitter, I miss him, my kids miss him, it feels as though we are being gipped (gypped??) in a major way. Especially (and I don’t mean to get all religious on you) because it’s Shabbos and that’s gradually become the highlight of my week. Friday, I make four loaves of challah, a big dinner, and we have this elaborate meal, sometimes with guests, sometimes not, then Marc and I put the kids to bed together and Saturday we just… are. We don’t watch television, we don’t type, we don’t do anything other than just hang out and spend time together. But last night, by the time dinner was ready, I was tired and worn out, and ended up letting the kids eat on the floor having a picnic and then put them to bed by watching CNN. It was still a lovely night, but it’s not Shabbos. And this morning, all is perfectly well – the kids are getting along well, and it’s a nice rainy day – but it’s not Shabbos.

Jess seems to be adjusting to kindergarten perfectly. She’s got a little group of friends, a friendship club, she calls it, and is dashing off happily each morning. She’s so grown up, all of a sudden. It’s amazing to watch, and just a tiny bit scary, because I feel like so much of her life is “hers” now, instead of mine. Normal, natural, the absolutely right way it’s supposed to be moving, but it happened so fast. I miss having her with me all the time, being intimately aware of her moods and thoughts and feelings. I’m so lucky that I can be home with her after school, and so glad that we had the past two years together full time.

And I’ve still got my Sammy – who’s so amazingly funny all the time. He’s a little chatter box, and so earnest. He’s realized that he can make people laugh, especially Harrison, and has developed several little routines he’ll do just to incite the laughter. He pretends to fall, which cracks Harrison up every time. He’ll also eat stuff, like pretend to eat the couch or the matchbox car… I guess you have to be here, but it’s really sweet and cute. And I love the hand gestures, when he’s really mad, he uses his hands to communicate – it’s wonderful to watch. I feel so blessed to have him. I know it sounds corny, but really – when I think about how many people struggle to get pregnant and how many people aren’t able to have kids – and as goofy as this sounds, the people who are stuck with kids who aren’t mine… I know every mom thinks this, but mine really are just the most amazing, funny, sweet, loving creatures.

I know they aren’t perfect, Sam likes to throw things around and still thinks whacking people is fun, Jessie is still prone to heart stopping screaming at the top of her lungs, and has developed an increasingly sarcastic little attitude (comes by it naturally). They don’t always share, sometimes they’re really rude and careless – but I do think that they are both exceptional human beings. My job is just to make sure they stay that way :-). Teach them kindness and self discipline and respect. I love my kids. I really, really do.

I know it’s not a popular thing to say – and I know that I’m happily married, with two healthy children and that I should count my blessings. But dammit, I’m just flat out lonely. I don’t have anyone to TALK to – not about converting to Judaism, not about this whole new weird conservative voting outlook that I’m adopting, not about anything. And it’s making me sad and depressed. Somehow I managed to alienate everyone that I used to consider a friend, leaving me with people who love me a lot, and people who like me, but nobody that I can just say anything to. I’ve got Marc, thank God, and he’s wonderful, but he’s sick of listening to me.

Maybe I’m just having a sucky night. Jessie started school two days ago, and it’s been hard on everyone. She’s loving it, and seems to be fine about going – but I’m still having trouble adjusting to not KNOWING what’s going on in her world. Who she’s talking to, what she’s doing, what her day is like. Maybe I’m just a weird overprotective mother, but this doesn’t seem at all normal to me to ship your child, a five year old child, off to spend the majority of her day with strangers. I get little bits and pieces of her day, when she remembers to tell me, but she’s only five, and just doesn’t have the ability to sum up everything she’s done in a neat little synopsis for me. Maybe there’s a kindergarten mom support group somewhere??

Jess and Sam are not adjusting well to being without each other, they are alternately madly in love with each other and playing perfectly well or screaming at the top of their lungs at each other. And whirling from one to the other in rapid succession and I can’t keep up.

It’s a really crappy night.

Onward and upward, I guess. They’re eating and vegging out in front of the television (I finally put it on when I couldn’t get them to stop yelling at each other) and I’m going to shoot for a very early bedtime tonight. Maybe if everyone got more sleep, we’d be happier.

I grew up in what used to be known as a ‘broken home.’ My mom was a single mom, not a divorced mom who co-parented and received copious amounts of child support, but an actual single mom. My dad was nowhere around, and when he was, I mostly wished he’d go away again. I am the oldest of four children, and my mom had four sisters and a brother. We were, I thought, a really close, loving extended family. I loved my family. All of them. My cousins were all adorable and sweet and I was the babysitter extraordinaire. I was the favorite niece, the bestest granddaughter and the daughter that my mother counted on. And I loved it. I loved my family.

My aunt just reported my husband to the Department of Homeland Security for threatening to … well, it’s a long story. I still love my mother, a bunch of my cousins, most of my aunts, but mostly… I’m good without them. I’m hurt and angry and feel ashamed and betrayed.

I don’t know why I loved them all so much for so long, if it was all for… this. If my aunt can do this – can accuse my husband and the father of my children of being a TERRORIST and everyone just thinks it’s funny, then I’ve wasted a lot of time and effort into trying to push them all into this picture of a loving close family that I guess I needed to believe that they were. There’s no loyalty. This is just being portrayed as one lunatic aunt and my own specific problem. Everyone is going to stay out of it – and I find myself more and more wanting to opt out of the whole mess. Pull everything in, talk to my mother and my sister and one of my cousins, and the rest of them can all go to hell.

I’m really so unbelievably angry, and I don’t see it changing. I don’t think I need to get past it, or I need to forgive and forget. I feel like if you want to have me and my children in your life, than there has to be a level of loyalty. This is not acceptable behavior on her part. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit back and allow it to continue. As of right now, she’s out of my family. Actually, as of about three months ago, she was out – but I was willing to let it just be me. Not anymore – you want to have her at family functions, then I, and my children, will not be attending. It’s just that simple. And if that means that I only talk to two or three members of what I always thought was such a loving, close extended family – then so be it.

Not technically, as Jess doesn’t start school until next Tuesday or Wednesday (should probably figure that out) but next Monday is Labor Day – so this is my last official Monday of the summer (defining summer as the three months that the kids are out of school). It’s been a GREAT summer. We’ve been unbelieveably broke, but it’s still been wicked fun. We did lots of outdoor stuff, Jessie got to go to swimming lessons and camp, and Sammy started talking all the time. We started doing Shabbos a lot more seriously this summer, with formal dinners and no television and computer. Jessie grew up a lot this summer, she’s reading. Slowly and not very much, but I can officially say that she was reading before she started kindergarten. Her hair is growing a lot longer and it feels as though her face is maturing as well. She just looks like a big girl now, not my tiny little Jess… Sam also matured a lot this summer. Not just with the talking, but also in his ability to fit in and play with the other kids. He’s not the baby anymore. I don’t have a baby anymore – I’ve got two kids. Which is wonderful and scary – I miss having a baby in my arms, and can see the end of it with Sam. He’s still nursing, but not for too much longer, I hope. I really want him to stop on his own, but am pushing him as fast as I can without making it horribly hard on both of us.

All in all, I have to say that this may well have been one of the best summers ever. I got to really focus on my cherubs, spent lots of time running around the park and playing with them. Marc really got to enjoy Sam as a boy this year, playing ball and wrestling. It’s been really nice.

And now I have to get ready to send my girl off to kindergarten… the first step. First kindergarten, then middle school, then college… it’s all right there, in front of me, and I feel like I’m preparing to push her out of the nest. She’ll be on her own at school, no hiding behind my legs or running to me for comfort. She’ll develop her own personality, her own relationships, her own life, independent of me. Can you tell that I’m not ready?

End of the summer – and there’s just not that much going on… we’re counting down the days until Jessie starts kindergarten, and trying to work out transportation and Hebrew School issues. Marc is tired, of course, and overworked and under exercised. I’m happy and content as could be… Sam is getting bigger and bigger, becoming more and more of a huge presence in the family…

Much going on in my little world of child raising… we’ve been trying (unsuccessfully) to get Jess to stay dry at night – to the point where the poor kid was trying so hard and waking up soggy every morning. I’ve been getting up in the middle of the night to bring her to the potty, saying no drinks anytime after four o’clock… it was getting crazy… and nothing was working. So I called the pediatrician and spoke with a nurse there – I LOVE my pediatrician. The whole office is so wonderful, so helpful and supportive, and the nurse I spoke with told me that it was perfectly normal, not only is it totally okay that she’s still wetting the bed – BUT THAT NOT LETTING HER DRINK AND HAULING HER POOR SCRAWNY BODY TO THE POTTY WON’T WORK AT ALL. I feel so much better. So Jess and I had a long talk, and we’re not going back to pull ups, we’re going to use “big girl pull ups,” not the baby ones she was using and let her body grow up on her own.

Sam has fallen a little bit in love with Swiper. Seriously. (speaking of seriously – Jess has started saying it all the time – it’s like living with Meredith Grey). And he screams “Oh Man” all the time now – it’s so cute 🙂

And am I lame because I have? I made myself a hot dog last night (PMS – I was eating everything that wasn’t nailed down). And with nothing else to do for a few minutes, kids and husband all asleep, I stood there and watched the pot of water. It’s magical, really it is. It’s so cool… it happens really gradually and there’s nothing in it, just the heat below making the bubbles start to form and then they start to rise to the top and it happens faster, faster, until all of a sudden, you’ve got this water that’s steaming and bubbling and making all kinds of noise. It was great ;-).

Still struggling with bedwetting… today, I’m going to try no drinks after 4:00. I’m going to make sure she gets enough to drink the rest of the day, I’m afraid she’ll get dehydrated 😉

Not too much going on today, for a Monday. No Harrison still, so I’m just hanging with my two cherubs. Sam’s asleep and Jessie’s busy in her room. I’m loving that Jess can play for so long by herself, I think it’s adorable.

Jessica Mary, my precious little love, slammed her fist into a window yesterday and broke it… she was having a temper tantrum, I had put her in my room to calm down and she responded by pounding on the door. As luck would have it, half of the door is glass, and it broke. No injuries, thank God, but I was livid. I made sure she wasn’t broken or cut and then sat her on my lap and yelled at her for a while.

Talked with Marc in the car on the way to our Marriage Check Up, figured out what we’d do (three days, no computer, no television, and she’d have to help repair the window – plus a chart where she can earn a reward for going so long without losing her freaking mind in a screaming fit). I told Marc yesterday that I’d been dealing with her tantrums for almost five years, and had yet to hit on a cure all technique for solving them. I’ve done time out in a chair, time out in her bedroom, my bedroom, time in – holding her and waiting until it passes, ignoring it, feeding into it by yelling back at her (this actually never works and manages to make me nuts as well), rewarding it by picking her up and cuddling her and reading to her once she calms down, punishing it by taking away the computer or the television… everything works some of the time, and some of the time, nothing works.

The broken glass immediately made me think of the number of times that Scott or Mandi would freak out in the car and slam their heads or fists into the windshield. I HAVE to get this under control asap.

The thing is – she’s such a wonderful, smart, funny, nice kid. She’s exceptionally well behaved with others, and when she’s not a screaming mimi, she’s awesome. She’s just got a tendency to let herself get so emotionally caught up in her temper, it’s like she chooses not to control it and just lets it go, as loud and as extreme as she can. It sucks for her, because I’ve had temper tantrums myself, and once they get bad, it’s really hard to get it under control, you can tell that she’s not enjoying it – and it sucks hard for everyone around her.

My marriage check up went really well too – it’s a great program. We signed up for a study at Clark University and basically we fill out questionaires and every six months or so, we go in for a check up to make sure that the marriage is still healthy. Last night, we got the results of our first session – and it’s all good. Really, there’s no down side, she tells us how fabulous we are and how much we love each other and then gives us a check. The therapist says that we have a strong, loving marriage and that there are very few problem areas – one of them being, of course, lack of individual time together. I don’t think it helped that I explained that our idea of a date was having only one child who was asleep in the back of the car. She actually suggested that we go to the thing in Providence that Becky and Greg went to – which sounded lovely – now I just need to find someone who wants to take on two cherubs. Jessie probably won’t break any windows at someone else’s house – and Sam didn’t cry at all last night when I left (in the interest of full disclosure – he cried until he puked on Saturday when Jess and I went out with Mom).

Just got back from the bank, and then a long walk to the grocery store with my little cherub who says “no, walk” every time I try to put him in the carriage. And the walking takes a long time – because there’s a TON of cool stuff out there. Like grass. He LOVES grass, likes to walk in it, name little patches of it, and touch it. And God help me if there’s an ant. We have to stop and watch his progress for a while. And there’s lots of rocks – they need to be touched, pushed around, and if they’re extra pretty – he needs to pick them up and present them to me.

I bought 96 meatballs, tons of sauce, cheese, pasta and a bunch of cute little rolls for meatball sandwiches for tonight’s game. I also bought some sugar because I was out and sugar for coffee is as critical as diapers for me. One of those things we MUST have in the house at all times. I also bought Hershey’s kisses – as part of my new technique for rewarding time without a tantrum. If she goes all morning, she gets a kiss. All afternoon, a kiss. I’m not thrilled with this – rewarding with food – doesn’t seem like the best idea… but on the same hand, it’s a couple of kisses a day and it’s not like I give her a lot of junk food.

It’s just my favorite day of the week. I mean, sure, I like Monday, because it’s back to the routine, and I love my routine. And Wednesday is nice, because it’s the middle of the week, the night that Marc is almost always home, and the day before the Office is on. Thursday, because that’s the day I get paid, and the aforementioned Office is on. Friday is lovely, because I make challah and a big dinner and I really enjoy Shabbat. Saturday, now that we do no computer/television is this really odd, magical sort of day that lasts forever, so I really like that as well. And Sunday is generally the day I catch up on all the crap I missed on Shabbat, so that’s kind of exciting as well. But Tuesday – that’s my day.

Jessie is off to camp this morning, my big grown up girl. She’s been a bit of an emotional wreck lately, but I’m hoping that the worst of it was yesterday and my normal sunshiney angel girl will be back. She was friendly this morning…

I’m adding a chore to her list. Cleaning off the table after dinner. I use plastic plates and cups so she can’t break them, and I want her to have responsibilities around the house. Once Sam gets a little bigger, they can alternate nights. And on the weekends, Lilli can do one night and Sarah can do the other.