The Magic of Christmas

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Greetings from under the giant Christmas tree where Rosie and the Elf on the Shelf are laying because both got the three-day flu for Rosie’s sixth birthday and I’m feeling the impeding sense of doom that comes with knowing I’m probably next.

My husband just walked in from hauling hay in the balmy 50+ degree December weather and I know I’m supposed to feel grateful, especially this time of year, but I am also feeling a bit overwhelmed. I told him, after spending my entire morning moving between promoting a new music release, meeting a deadline and trying to decide if I should take my daughter to the doctor, that my creative energy is running low.

And I’m feeling like I’m falling a foot or two short at about everything I’m working at right now. And he said, “Well, why don’t you write about that?”

So then, because I was in an honest mood, I confessed that two nights ago I might have wrecked the spirit of Christmas for our oldest when she caught me scrolling through “Elf on the Shelf Ideas for Parents” on my Pinterest feed.

“Mom,” she piped up timidly, surprising me in the quiet. “Does the elf move itself or is it the parents?”

Oh no…oh no…oh no.

“What do you think?” I asked softly.

“Well, I saw what you were looking at on your phone. Now I think it’s the parents.”

Oh no again.

In my defense I thought the child was already asleep while I scrolled and snuggled in the dark of her room. And also I forget that she can read now. She is eight but I forget that sometimes too. Because it all goes so fast and in my mind she’s still three and pudgy and twirling in that oversized quilted blue dress she wouldn’t take off for a year.

Eight? Is that an age where a kid might stop believing? She has been skeptical of this Christmas magic Santa thing since she could express it. She’s a practical kid and the details of a man who delivers presents to every child in the world in a flying sleigh pulled by an animal that doesn’t even fly in real life just doesn’t line up with the things she’s come to know about how the world works. And so that’s why we told her that to believe is part of the magic.

And so that’s what I told her the night I got caught planning that felt elf’s next move. I told her I think she could still choose to believe. And then I added something stupid trying to explain the Pinterest feed, like the pictures were of other families’ elves that moms share for fun. And the kid, bless her, I think she just pretended to buy it.

Now that I think of it, it was the same way I pretended to buy it was I was about her age, old enough to know better, but aware of what it meant to choose reality over magic. To me it seemed too close to the fire of adulthood, and I was still young enough to know I wasn’t ready for that yet.

So that night I tiptoed out of Edie’s room and moved the elf to the windowsill, wrapped her in a little washcloth and propped her up against a bottle of cough syrup in solidarity with the youngest member of the family who hadn’t lifted her head off the couch for 24 hours.

On the long list of things to worry about, the idea that my oldest daughter might become wise and ruin the magic for our youngest didn’t occur to me until it was time to locate that sickly little elf in the morning. But Edie woke up surprised and happy to see the elf and Rosie was still sick and I had a deadline and appointments to reschedule so I could stay home and care for her, and my husband had a calf to find and hay to haul and Edie had a computer test she was worried about and it was just another day in reality, the way the days come at all of us regardless of the season, the traditions or the size of your Christmas tree. Except on Christmas especially, it’s nice to have a little magic help us along. Hopefully that magic is currently working as a disinfectant…

Stay healthy out there!

Listen to the new single “Whiskey in the Winter. New full length album out everywhere January 11!

Oh, Christmas Tree

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Thanksgiving weekend we completed the great Christmas Tree hunt tradition at the ranch. Nature melted the snow away but held on to its cold and wind and so we thought we better get out in the hills before we needed to borrow the neighbor’s snowmobile. So we bundled up the troops and headed out to a spot in the home pasture where we spotted a cedar we thought might work on one of our rides this fall.

It didn’t take long to find it again out there stretching toward the sky among the scrub brush and thistle, the bottom three feet of its trunk rubbed bare by the deer.

Now I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, a potential Christmas tree out in the wild is not the same size as a potential Christmas tree in the house. My daughters, standing under the boughs of the 12-foot tree standing in its natural habitat declared the tree “tiny” before helping running up a tall butte after their cousins and sliding down on their butts.

I’ve been in this same situation for years now, so I knew to save my argument about it being too big to fit in the door. And I didn’t say a thing about how it will take up our entire living room. And not a word was spoken about how we need to work on getting the house addition done just to display this tree. It’s not worth it and it doesn’t matter to my husband anyway. If he thinks the tree will fit the tree will fit.

And so, with the help of my dad and the tarp straps that my husband always magically seems to have in every nook and cranny of every vehicle and every pocket of every jacket he’s ever owned, we strapped the world’s-most-perfect-Christmas-Tree on to the back (and top) of our ATV and puttered on home to the house where we nearly pulled the front door off its hinges dragging it into the entryway to thaw out.

But, alas, the hinges stayed put and the neighborhood (a.k.a my parents and my little sister’s family) filed in a few minutes later to get in on the spectacle of getting that thing through the house, propped up in the tree stand and screwed to the wall without any of us, tree included, losing any limbs.

And yes, you heard it right, after all these years as adults who cut wild Christmas trees from the wild prairies, and one year where the tree nearly took out my oldest daughter while she spun innocently in her Elsa dress in the living room, we have learned to skip past the hazard and just screw the tree to the wall right away. 

Is it weird that our giant Christmas tree ritual has become a spectator sport for the rest of my family, complete with bloody marys and snacks? I don’t know what’s normal anymore.

At any rate, the tree is up and it smells beautiful, the way a cedar tree should and not like wild cat pee like that one unfortunate year we only speak of when we have the tree thawed out inside and can guarantee it hasn’t happened again. These types of issues don’t occur with the plastic tree sane people take out of storage year after year says my mother over her first sip of bloody mary. Since her kids have been out of the house for years, she’s been basking in the Martha Stewart Magazine tree that she’s always wanted. Tinsel, coyote pee and abandoned bird nest not welcome.

Also, kittens. Kittens are not welcome, which is a problem because we happen to have one and that was stupid timing and also another good reason to put a few more screws in the boards connected the tree trunk to the wall.

Anyway, Merry Christmas. I hope your traditions are bringing you as much joy as they are hassle. If you need me I’ll be looking for that dang elf…

New Music: Whiskey in the Winter

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Happy release day to a song that has been waiting for its time for eight years. It was this song that compelled me to work on creating another album from this chapter in my life of full-on, unfiltered, unsympathetic adulthood where life is messy and the curtains have been pulled back to let the light and the dark in.

Thank you for continuing to support my efforts to tell the story of the people up here, the soft and the rough edges.

Get “Whiskey in the Winter” here and wherever you get music.

November at the Ranch

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November is a busy month at the ranch. Not only are we getting ready for the impending (or continuing) winter, but November is the month for roundup, working and checking our cattle and selling our calves. It’s one of my favorite times of the year because it’s one of the rare times that I allow myself to drop everything and focus on the ranch.

One of my jobs is to make sure that the people (who also drop everything to help) get fed. And that there is hot coffee and cookies out in the pens so we all have an excuse to take a few minutes to break between tasks. This is about as important to me as anything because it forces a slowdown during a moment in time that makes everyone who owns these cattle a little anxious. Because a day like shipping day is the culmination of all the work the family has put into caring for these animals–rolling out hay in the winter, fixing water tanks and fences in the spring, watching for and tending to trouble during calving season and keeping them on the best grass in the summer, free of hoof rot and pink eye.

This year we lucked out with a couple nice weather days where you could only see your breath until about noon and then we could take off a layer or two. My sister and I keep our daughters   home from school on the day we ship and sell calves so they can be a part of the grand finale. They ride along to the sale barn with a bag full of coloring sheets and snacks to sit next to Papa and our old neighbor and watch our calves go through the ring. I wonder what they’ll remember more, the sale or eating the pizza buffet and playing in the arcade in the big town after?

Unfortunately, for Rosie and everyone around her who she scared to death, it will be falling off her pony during roundup, an unpredictable incident that left me questioning all my parenting decisions. Things like this don’t happen to kids who live in the suburbs. And kids in the suburbs don’t go to the arcade smelling like the sale barn.

Maybe all we’re doing when we bring them along is solidifying the idea that marrying or becoming a professional YouTuber or a computer programmer is a safer life choice. Because is there a YouTuber or computer programmer in the history of the world who makes small talk with the community vet for two hours while he puts his arm down the backside of 120-some cattle to confirm they’re bred and then invites him over for lunch only to discover that your new kitten has somehow got herself stuck INSIDE THE WALLS OF YOUR HOUSE!!!??

Not a good look for that specific house guest.

But seriously. Anyone ever had to cut open a wall in your house to retrieve a live animal? I don’t want to admit this, but in the history of my life on this ranch, it wasn’t the first time.

Turns out that kitten was just after the dead, rotting mouse that had somehow also discovered the secret wall portal. When I tell you that feline stunk, I cannot stress it enough. And when I tell you that squirmy little barn cats don’t like baths, I also, cannot stress it enough.  

Yes, life on the ranch is messy and volatile and this time of year can make us as grateful for it as we are anxious about it. Because we can control the calf market about as much as we can control the weather and that pony trotting across the field with his reigns dragging…

What are we doing here? Well, all I can say is we’re doing our best, and learning plenty of lessons along the way.

Next up? December and keeping that kitten off the Christmas tree.

The Outfit

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It probably won’t come as a surprise to you considering you’ve heard about my mother, the lady who owns a clothing store in my hometown, that in my life I have always been very aware of “the outfit.”

I mean, my mom was raised in a family of four girls and then went on to raise three herself, so it goes without saying that there have been countless hours spent filling and flinging clothes to and from closets, discussing what to wear for Christmas, for Thanksgiving, for a date, to a concert, to a wedding, to my wedding, to your wedding, to the beach, to the bar, to a baptism and everything in between.

There have been arguments and tantrums over denim skirts and borrowed shoes, a great deal of philosophy spent on the concept of accessories and where to get the right purse and plenty of time wondering why the hell my fashion forward mother let me wear leotards and tights for the majority of 1986.

So I won’t even mention the hair bows and that one moment in time where girls and women were really into the “Pirate shirt.”

As women we spend a lot of time standing in front of our closets, scratching our heads trying to piece together items in our wardrobe that will serve our purpose for who we need to be on that particular day.

Because in our daily lives, just as like our outfits, we rarely are asked to serve one purpose.

Like, some days you need to be a fairy…

And while I can assume we can all appreciate fashion phases, I think even more than that women can appreciate clothes that actually work for them, not against them.

Anyway, these self-imposed trends exist to remind us of the process we’ve gone through to grow on up into ourselves and find a way to present that self to the world. These are the types of conversations I’ve had with my mother anyway, and conversations I’m already having with my own daughters.

The conversations with my dad? Well, they have always gone something like this:

“It’s cold out, you better wear layers, because when we get out there you can take things off, but you can’t put more on.”

And by out there, he meant, of course, wherever it was we were chasing cows or fixing fence or breaking down that day.

As a girl, and now a woman, out on the ranch, function trumps fashion, no questions asked. Even my mother appreciates this, although she’s been known to stand in shoes blistering her feet all night in the name of looking cute. And I can’t judge, because I’ve been there too, but I can blame her for the blisters…

Anyway on the ranch if your feet ain’t happy ain’t nobody happy. Same goes with ears and hands. These are lessons learned through a few wrong choices made before an all-day roundup in the chill of the fall air where there is nothing you can do about it but shut up and ride and take note that next time and every time you get your ass back out there you will wear:

1) Good gloves
2) Proper boots
3) A decent, weather appropriate hat
4) And, for the love of Martha Stewart, the right pants…

This is not a proper example…

Which reminds me of one of the most embarrassing moments of my life–the time I blew through not one, but TWO pairs of jeans on the first day of a two-day ride in the badlands with the world renowned horse trainer, Craig Cameron and his good buddy the-professional-bull-rider-with-the-smallest-waist-I’ve-ever-seen. Did I ever tell you this one? Oh gawd, after I ripped through my second pair before supper on the first day, the tiny waisted bull rider offered me his extra pair of pants as if I wasn’t a 19-year-old college student who spent the last two years eating late-night chicken Alfredo from the campus cafeteria. I had to decline his offer because there was no way my upper thighs stood a chance. But Craig Cameron’s Wranglers? Well, turns out they fit just right…

That’s been over 20 years now and I still cringe at the memory…

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about proper dress these days because it’s the season of bundling up for fall work at the ranch, and so I’ve pulled out all the neckerchiefs, chaps and long underwear I could find. The amount of Carhart we have strewn across the entryway floor, you’d think they’d give me some sort of endorsement deal or something… Anyway, all these years later I hear the advice I got from my dad shoot right out my own mouth to my daughters, who seem to be already scheming on ways to make their warm clothes more fashionable. It’s a trait they get from their grandmother, I thought as I watched my oldest limp across the room the other day after wearing really cute shoes that were one size too small to a recent 4-H meeting. Fashion over function or function over fashion? If only we didn’t have to choose…

Anyway, if you need me I’ll be sorting gloves and wool socks and shopping for the most impractically adorable Christmas dresses I can find because ‘tis the season of the outfit!

What’s in an hour

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I remember when moving the clocks back meant moving the hand on an actual clock. I look around my house and I realize I don’t have an actual clock anywhere. Our clocks blink blue numbers on stove tops and microwaves, on telephones and digital temperature gauges and cellphones, computers and iPads that are smarter than us. They don’t need a human hand to remind them to change, they already know.

They do the same when we cross the river into Mountain time, switching swiftly and we gain an hour. Switching back and we’ve lost it.

I’ve spent that last few days looking at those clocks, the one on my phone and the one on the stove I haven’t managed to change yet, and saying ridiculous things like:

“What time is it really?”

“So, it’s 9 o’clock but it’s really 10 ‘o’clock?”

“It’s 6 am but it’s really 7 am?”

“Man, it gets dark early.”

“Man I am tired.”

“Man, I miss that extra hour of light at the end of the day.”

But what’s in an hour anyway? It’s not as if the changing of the clock changes time. There are still 24 hours in the day and the sun still does what it will do up here where the earth is stripping down and getting ready for winter.

Daylight Savings Time, moving the clocks, adjusting the time, is just a human’s way to control things a bit. Moving time forward in the spring months means daylight until nearly 11 pm. Moving the clocks backwards in the fall means we drive to work in the light and get home in the dark.

It means a 5 pm sunset and a carb-loaded dinner at 6. It means more conversation against the dark of the windows, more time to plan for the things we might get done on the weekends in the light.

It means I went to bed last night at 9 o’clock and said something ridiculous like “It’s really 10.”

But it wasn’t. It was 9.

Because we’ve changed things. (Although I still haven’t changed that stove top clock).

I lay there under the covers and thought about 24 hours in a day.

10 hours of early-November daylight.

If I closed my eyes now, I thought, I would get 8 good hours of sleep.

I wondered about that hour and what I could do with 60 more minutes. A 25 hour day? What would it mean?

Would it mean we could all slow down, take a few more minutes for the things we rush through as we move into the next hour?

Five more minutes to linger in bed, to wake each other up with sweet words and kisses, to talk about the day and when we’ll meet back at the house again.

Three more minutes to stir cream into our coffees, take a sip and stand in front of the window and watch the sun creep in. A couple seconds to say, “What a sight, what a world, what a morning…”

An extra moment or two for the dogs and the cats, for a head pat or a scratch to go along with breakfast.

Four more minutes in the shower to rinse away the night.

Two more moments to brush my daughters’ long hair, to make it style just right while they wipe the night from their sleepy eyes..

Six more minutes on my drive to town singing with them while trailing a big rig without cussing or complaint. What’s six more minutes to me now?

Fifteen more minutes for lunch with a friend, a friend I could call for lunch because I have sixty more minutes now and the work can wait.

Five minutes more for a stranger on the street who asks for directions to a restaurant and then I ask her where she’s from and she makes a joke about the weather and we laugh together, a little less like strangers then.

Then, when I get home, eight more minutes on my walk to the top of the hill, to go a little further maybe just sit on that rock up there and watch it get darker.

Four extra minutes to spice up the supper roast or stir and taste the soup.

One more minute to hold on to that welcome home hug.

Three more minutes to eat, for another biscuit, to listen to a story about their day.

And four more minutes to say goodnight. To lay there under the blankets again, under the roof, under the stars that appeared and to say thankful prayers for the extra time.

So what’s in an hour really? Moments spent breathing and thinking and learning. Words spilling out that you should have said, or should have kept, or that really don’t matter, it’s just talking.

Sips on hot coffee cooling fast.

Frustration at dust while you wipe it away, songs hummed while scrubbing the dishes or washing your hair.

Broken nails, tracked in mud, a decision to wear your best dress tonight.

Laughter and sighing and tapping your fingers on your desk while you wait.

Line-standing, hand-shaking and smooches on friends’ babies as you pass at the grocery store.

Big plans to build things. Small plans for tomorrow.  

It’s not much, but the moments are ours to pass. And those moments, they move on regardless of the clock and the hour in which it’s ticking.

Although not many people have clocks that tick anymore. I suppose that’s just one of the many things time can change…

Winter has me turning into my mother

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Ok, I have another thing to say about the weather and then, as Edie says, I need to start expecting snow instead of being so surprised.

The wisdom in that seven-year-old.

Also, I’m sort of behind on updating these columns. It was going to be nice to say the snow has melted, but then it came back a couple days ago, and so here we are. It’s winter.

Also, we got a new kitten

And I’m turning into my mother…let me explain.

Winter has me turning into my mother
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In case you’re wondering we have yet to thaw out over here in the west. And there are some things that bad weather stops, like school busses sometimes (as we discussed last week.) And occasionally, school (which happened last week), and at times, good moods (which seems to be happening currently).

Because something happens to my character when I’m behind the wheel on bumpy, icy, snow covered, wintry roads in the dark before the sunrise when I have three precious little souls in the back. I morph into the-cage fighting version of myself. When we arrived home from school last week after plowing through thirty miles in over an hour in the eye of the blizzard, I learned that my seven-year-old had been tallying up my swear words so she could report back to her dad. And in my defense, I figure it’s better they hear the language than learn what digging out of the ditch in a blizzard feels like, or worse.

Turns out what does NOT stop for the weather is the oilfield traffic. I knew this, but they could at least slow down for frazzled mothers in dirty SUVs shaking their fists at them while they’re passing in the icy lane. I mean, this weather warrants a little more caution don’t you think? Didn’t we all see the pickup flipped on its roof on the way to town? Do those plates attached to that truck read Texas? What do you know about snow and ice in Texas? (she screams into the  windshield of her Yukon…)

So this is my mood today. It’s been five straight days of some of the iciest road conditions I’ve seen, and I’ve lived here most of my life. Lord knows I’ve put on more than a million miles in all sorts of weather and so maybe it should set me up to brave conditions like this. But honestly, it’s only made me more afraid and more cautious, because I know what can happen!!!

Wait…whoa…did I just become my mother?

Oh no. The transformation might almost be complete. Because when I got to town this morning, I promptly texted her to tell her to stay home. And then I called my little sister and told her the same thing. The weather worrier is a role my mom unabashedly holds. That and the “no running on the dock” announcer and the “careful, careful” caller and the “cut the grapes up in fourths to feed a child with a full set of teeth” police, so much so that we lovingly call her “Safety Beth.” It’s only a matter of time until I get my “Safety Assistant” badge and vest.

I already have four or five weather apps downloaded on my phone and the ND Road Report key memorized. Add to that a stockpile of harrowing stories stored in my memory to rehash when someone dares to actually run on the dock!. “Did you know Shirley’s daughter’s mother-in-law had a cousin who ran on the dock? Yup, sure did. Almost lost an eye to a fish-hook. Couldn’t have been a closer call.”

And anyone asking me today, how I am? Well, I’m giving them the full recount of the six pickups and two trucks who dared pass me this morning. And I’m likely gonna be really dramatic about it. And maybe, while I eat my turkey sandwich for lunch, I’m looking up houses in Florida. Or Arizona. I was there once at a place where you don’t even need a house. Just drag your camper and park it on a slab of fake plastic grass. The lack of lawn mowing opportunities will surly be overshadowed by the absolute insistence that everyone drive everywhere in a golf cart.

Anyway, stay safe and don’t go anywhere for three to six months because I heard it could snow again. If you need me, I’ll be refreshing the ND Road report, stress-baking chocolate chip cookies and saying every worry out loud for fear that if I don’t, it will all come true. It’s all a part of the transformation process…

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Why do we live here?

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Winter field.jpg
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Well, winter arrived here in full force, and I got to be one of the first to welcome it as I packed the kids into the SUV to drive 40 mph for 30 miles through sideways-falling snowflakes and atop icy, snow-covered roads while cussing under my breath. It’s not like I was surprised, I expected it. It comes every year.

And it turns out the first blizzard of the season fell on “Hawaii” day at school. And if stuffing the tropical dresses and plastic leis under winter coats and snowpants that are too small because you’ve been in winter denial and haven’t gone snowpants shopping doesn’t scream North Dakota kids, then come and see how we dress for Halloween. When it’s cold enough I don’t have to convince my daughters that cheerleaders and fairy princesses wear snowsuits, too.

It’s days like these, I understand why there are towns and why so many people live in them. 

My 7-year-old daughter and I have been reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “The Long Winter” before bed every night, and you know what? Even that beloved homesteading family moved to town in October. They figured it might be the right thing to do when Pa and Laura had to free cattle with their noses frozen to the ground after a fall blizzard. Figuring they could be next, they packed up for their version of civilization.

Why do we live up here? If you asked me last week while I was riding horseback with my family through trees lit by the golden autumn sun, I would have answered with a love song. Ask me today, and it’s a threatening breakup song.

But it’s only a threat. We’re stuck here come hell or high snowbank.

Anyway, this morning while I was plowing through the dark space-scape of blinding snow trying to stay between the invisible lines on my way to get the kids to school before the last bell, I was reminded of an epic winter school bus ride I had when I was in third or fourth grade. It was over 30 years ago now, so I figure the statute of limitations is up. And plus, it was the ’90s.

Once upon a time, I was an elementary school kid who went to a country school only 15 miles from the ranch. Every morning, I rode the school bus with about 10 of the neighbor kids, our house being the first to pick up and the last to drop off, which is the same as our parents saying, “I walked to school five miles uphill both ways,” but I digress. 

This particular morning was especially brutal. I think it was early spring or late fall, one of those times when the winter weather still surprises you. Our bus driver, as seasoned as he was, was struggling to navigate his route on roads completely slick with ice. But he diligently made his rounds, nice and steady and slow, to finally arrive at the last house at the bottom of the final long stretch of hill with only a half-mile to the school to go, only to find that he couldn’t get the bus to move another inch.

After several failed attempts at backing the bus up and taking a run at that big, icy hill with all 10 kids breathing down his neck and sending prayers up to the almighty for miraculous traction, something inside him shifted and he made a decision that, if it worked out, would be regarded as a ranch-y type of heroic that would be recorded in infamy in the Bus Driver Hall of Fame.

Turns out the move did become infamous, but only because no other bus driver in the entire history of the universe would have decided to take his attempt to cross the ditch and then rev the bus into the stubble field where he figured he could get more of that almighty traction. And so off he went, us 10 praying kids now wide-eyed and bouncing around and up and off our seats while our gallant driver slammed the pedal to the metal to keep the vehicle in motion past one tree row and on to the other before Little Yellow School Bus #25 finally sunk into the snow up to its floorboards a quarter of a mile off the highway.

It was silent then as we all took inventory of our new situation. Our bus driver reached for his CB. “Breaker, breaker, ‘Operation Go, Go Gadget snow tracks’ failed us.”

That SOS call would result in my very first ride in a four-wheel-drive SUV when an area superhero mom came down that icy hill to the rescue. I can only imagine what she was thinking as she spotted that bus, bright and yellow and stuck out of place in a white and gold sea of winter stubble field, all 10 of us kids trudging, with backpacks, snowsuits and confused looks through the snow to pile in the back hatch of that 1993 Chevy suburban, a shiny new beacon of hope that we’d make it to school at last.

Making it home would be another story, which is what I’m thinking now, a mom with my own four-wheel-drive SUV, watching the snow drift another inch outside the door.

If you need me, I’ll be checking the radar and ordering the girls snowpants that fit. Because winter’s here, just like it comes every year.

If You Were A Cowboy (Official Music Video Release)

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Breaking News! The official music video for “If You Were a Cowboy” is up on my YouTube Channel!

Featuring real North Dakota working and rodeo cowboys and families, this song is a shout out to the men who show up, cheer you on and hold your purse.

Filmed at the beautiful Triangle M, Missouri River Angus, the Veeder Ranch, Burnt Creek Farms and the Mandan 4th of July Rodeo, there’s plenty of cowboy footage to get you through your weekend.

PLEASE SHARE! The world needs more cowboys…

Special thanks to our favorite rodeo cowboy Clay Jorgenson, Quantum Digital, Breaking Eight, Burnt Creek Farm Triangle M Ranch & Feedlot, Missouri River Red Angus and WarnerWorks, Brian Bell, Brady Paulson Beni Paulson and Mya Myer and Travel North Dakota

Song recorded at OMNIsound Studios in Nashville.

My current list of failures

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Before I became a parent there were things I swore I’d never do when I was a parent only to find, rather quickly, that the type of expertise I thought I possessed before children was a total crock.

I knew nothing.

And the more the kids grow, the less I know.

Lately my current list of failures has become a full page, single spaced document in 10-point font. Just a few days ago my husband and I hovered around a homework page like we were back in high school algebra and wondered when the heck they changed second grade math?

“Edie, you’re just going to have to tell your teacher we couldn’t understand the directions,” my husband said handing our seven-year-old back her pages, an act that nearly broke him. I shoved a marshmallow in my mouth and asked our kindergartner if she had anything to color because I know I’m good at staying in the lines and bad at figuring out how to get supper on the table before bedtime. Frozen pizza anyone?

When the girls were little, I spent a lot of time trying to start good habits for us all. I mean, they were so fresh to the world the idea of totally screwing it up in the first few years was daunting. Everyone in my family teases my brother-in-law for asking the hospital if they had softer washcloths for his newborn baby, “like something made of silk maybe,” because she was so tiny and her skin was so delicate. I didn’t blame him for asking, I probably would have asked too if I would have thought of it.

Oh, how quickly they go from itty bitty, fragile little burritos to piling up the wreckage of their bikes on the dirt trail heading to their cousin’s and coming in crying, bleeding and covered from head to toe in dust. How quickly they go from copying your every move to requesting you change out of your Crocs before dropping them off at school.

How quickly I got comfortable going out in public in Crocs.

Anyway, I’m thinking about this today because our family is working on a solution to something I thought I’d have mastered before my youngest daughter turned one. But here we are, five years later, and my darling little almost-six-year-old will not go to bed on her own. And by go to bed I mean fall asleep and stay asleep under her own covers without her dad’s arm around her, her little head nestled in his pit, her favorite spot in the world.

Now I’m going on record here to blame this situation all on my husband. Because I had that girl sleep trained before she moved out of her crib, but once that man started laying down next to her for a story at night there was no returning to the land of the awake-past-8pm. I mean, I understand, he’s tired. He does manual labor, he’s in the elements all day. And the room is dark, the sound machine is on, but darling dear husband we all know that regardless of the state of awake our child is, you’re out for the count by 8:30 pm. You might as well change out of your full Carhart ensemble before you open “Chicken Little.”

 My sister-in-law, who had a similar situation with her youngest, suggested having my two daughters sleep together at night, something they are happy to do at sleepovers with the relatives but is somehow less appealing at home. So when my husband was at a meeting past bedtime, I put both girls in bed together, read a story, turned out the lights, gave them a few snuggles and escaped from between them when their breathing turned to tiny snores. “This will work. I’ll just ease them into this,” I thought as I headed upstairs to begin tucking myself in for the night. But halfway through my face washing routine I heard a door creak and a set of small footsteps heading toward me, and then a cry and then a wail and then I was standing at the top of the stairs looking down on sisters angrily explaining a train of events that can only be described as a full-on sleep fight. I mean, I’m not positive my oldest was even awake when she angrily called her little sister a “big meanie” for attempting to use her arm as a blanket.

“Well, that escalated quickly,” I thought to myself while I followed them both back to bed to wait for the return of daddy’s armpit. 

Anyway, if you need me, I’ll be studying second grade math and Googling “sleep training for five-year-olds.” And I’ll probably be doing it all in Crocs, using my embarrassing wardrobe choices as payback because I’m out of ideas…