Amateur Hairdresser

Excerpt from my journal:
April 5, 2001

I cut a lot of my hair off today and put it in the grumpy mug.
Then I had to wear a hat until Katie could fix it.
I love Katie oh so very well.

Jaz needed a haircut. He'd been complaining for weeks about how his hair was in his eyes, and how he didn't like the way it looked.

Jaz, two weeks ago

I used to be the one to cut Luke and Jaz's hair exclusively, until I was in the hospital after Zeben was born, and my mom secretly took the kids to a professional hairdresser and had all of their (beautiful, naturally-highlighted) hair chopped off. It's true that it had become more difficult for me to cut it myself what with the combination of the kids having thicker, straighter hair (as opposed to that superfine and forgiving baby hair), and having developed the ability to complain loudly about needing to sit still. I was sad to see their hair go, but I wasn't sad to have missed out on an opportunity to cut it myself.

After that, I kept bringing them to the salon for hair cuts (where they behaved fabulously) until last summer when I felt like the hairdresser didn't do a great job, and like maybe even I could do a better job myself at home. So for the next hair cuts (sometime this past fall), I did them myself, and they didn't turn out terribly.

Thus, when Jaz was complaining for the umpteenth time about the hair in his eyes this past weekend, I said, "why don't I just cut it off right now?" And Jaz happily wet his head and climbed onto the "hair-cutting stool."

Ready!

I should mention that I have no idea how to cut hair. But for some reason, this fact does not bother me. I don't even have hair-cutting scissors or a fine-toothed comb. I use some of my sewing scissors and the wide-toothed comb left over from when I permed my hair at age 13 (how it has survived this long, I have no idea). Neither of which work particularly well, but I like being able to blame them as the reason for why I don't do an amazing job (i.e. I do know that I could buy real hair-cutting scissors at the drug store if I so desired). I like to think of cutting the kids' hair as something that doesn't require a huge amount of skill or any fancy tools.

Jaz played with Zeben's hair while I cut his.

Snip, snip. Chop, chop. I have no method or plan.
My mantra is, "it will grow back."

Zeb loves watching me cut hair, and having his own hair cut.

I think hair-cutting maybe is another one of those things that everyone used to know how to do, until professionals started emerging. And now we choose to pay $20 (or more) to have it done, when really we could just do it ourselves at home for free. Not that I'm claiming that the results are at all comparable, but I think the look is acceptable, at least for a 5-year-old.

Finished.
Jaz was disappointed that I didn't go shorter.

Lukas watched me cut Jaz's hair from the side lines and then announced that he's growing his hair long.

"Don't even thnk about coming near me with those [sewing] scissors!"

I think maybe I'd kind of like to be a Jack-of-all-trades when I grow up.

In the Meantime

Lena and I have a shared dream of someday living on a farm. We really hope that it will turn out to be a "someday soon" reality, but since we're not yet in a place to buy a house, it's not clear when our farming dream will come true. In the meantime, we get our farm animal fix at the local vocational-agricultural high school. Their barn is open to the public seven days a week.

I learned about this gem of a place to go with children from a family I was baby-sitting for 10 years ago. And it has proven itself to be one of the easiest and most lovely outings over the years. I especially like to visit the farm in the wintertime because it's not as smelly, mucky or buggy, and because it's one of the few places to go in the winter that's not especially germy (I'm talking about human germs, not animal germs; I'm much more concerned about the former than the latter, especially during this pukey-bug season).

On Saturday we met up at the farm with Katie, Aaron, Elijah and Aryeh, and visited our animal friends.

Goats are my most favorite farm animals.

I love the way the cows look right at us.

The donkey in the foreground is the baby of the donkey in the background.
The baby still tries to nurse occasionally, and the mama usually bites it away.
I have never tried that particular weaning technique myself.

We were lucky to get to visit a pair of newborn lambs
who had been born only two days before.

"Good job, mama!"

Zeben running ahead to see the huge work horses.This horse is patiently waiting for the carrot
that we forgot to bring him.

Luke and Jaz spent as much time climbing on the huge piles
of snow as they did visiting the animals.

Zeben is actually trying to feed the sheep a piece
of their own poop that he found on the ground.
The sheep were not interested.

Beautiful Jersey heifers.

Eli sharing a special moment with one particularly friendly calf.

I'm sure that I am romanticizing it more that just a little, but I can't help but feel like our life would feel so much more whole if we were growing our own food and if the kids were involved in taking care of animals on a daily basis. There's a small chance that we may be able to get some chickens and goats as early as this summer (it depends on whether or not my mom is able to keep her house; my parents are in the midst of a divorce), and I am just bursting with excitement about the possibility. I can't imagine anything better than sending the kids outside in the morning to do barn chores. And then their triumphant return with fresh eggs in their hands. Someday.

Third Child Syndrome

Some things are different for Zeben because he's our third child. For instance, when Luke and Jaz were his age (27 months), they were night-weaned (no longer allowed to nurse at night) and sleeping the first few hours of every night in their own room. I haven't even considered nightweaning Zeben yet, nor have we ever attempted to put him down for the night in his cute little toddler bed. I remember what a struggle it was to achieve those milestones with Luke and Jaz, and I have no interest in making our life any harder than it needs to be right now (especially knowing that once nightweaned, Luke and Jaz were awake every morning at 5:00 a.m., demanding breakfast . . . and that 4 years later, Luke and Jaz would still only be sleeping the first few hours of every night in their own room). Those milestones seemed so important the first time around, and now they're not even on my radar. Because they don't fall into the category of: "Parenting Choices that will have a huge impact on the future." And with the 3rd child, that's all that matters.

When Zeben acts out by hitting me in a moment of anger, I am quick to stop what I'm doing, pick him up and speak to him sternly about how it is NOT OK to hurt people with his body, and remind him about which words would be appropriate to convey his feelings. I'm hoping to nip this "hitting thing" in the bud before it becomes what it became with our first two kids--I think due to the fact that I was so non-chalant about the behavior when it first appeared (after all, it didn't hurt . . . so I foolishly tried to distract them rather than to address it). By the time I realized that it was a problem (they were beating me up all day!), it had become such a habit that Luke and Jaz are only just now starting to finally "use their words" pretty consistently.

And I never would have encouraged our first two kids to stop napping shortly after their second birthdays. It took me a whole year to realize that bedtime wouldn't be such a struggle, and that Lena and I would get quality alone time together every evening, if only the kids were actually tired at 7:00 p.m. I fought to get them to take naps even when they wouldn't easily fall asleep! They were 3 before I figured it out. Even still, I thought it was important to have a whole complicated bedtime routine with Luke and Jaz . . . a bath, pajamas, and several books every night before we'd sit in their room and sing them to sleep. The whole ordeal took at least an hour. Lena and I both dreaded it. Zeben's current bedtime routine consists of getting into bed, and falling asleep. Usually I change him into pajamas (if his clothes are dirty or not soft enough for sleeping), and I almost always remember to put a diaper on him (definite puddle in the bed if I don't), but that's it. He still gets plenty of baths and books and singing, but it doesn't often happen at bedtime for him. With our third child, we've chosen to just cut to the chase.

This afternoon Zeb fell asleep nursing in my arms on the kitchen floor, and I transferred him to the changing table pad so that he would have a soft place to nap for 20 minutes or so before I woke him up (a soft and pee-safe place, since he was not wearing a diaper and it had been a while since his last pee). And because he is a third child, he happily continued sleeping on the changing pad on the kitchen floor. . .


. . . Even when his big brothers came in and started singing and dancing around him.




I always find it funny when we have friends over after Zeben is asleep at night, and they think that they need to be really quiet, so that they don't wake him up. Zeben has never known quiet. He developed in my womb to the soundtrack of my heart beating, my organs gurgling, and his big brothers SCREAMING at each other. Sleeping through noise is not an issue for this third child. Not at all.

I can only hope that our fourth child will be just as resistant and resilient as his big brother, and that the benefits of being a 3rd child (less restricted nursing, more hours in the family bed) will outweigh the drawbacks (tougher discipline, less fanfare, less energy, being made to nap on the kitchen floor while big brothers dance around you) in the end.

Multi-Tasking

My exceptionally talented wife:

20 weeks

Doing the dishes, talking on the phone,
and growing a baby,
all at the same time!

The Name Game

I always thought that thinking up names for my future children was quite fun and exciting until I was actually pregnant with said children, at which point it became stressful. I think it was partially due to the pregnancy-brain total lack of creativity that happens to me when I'm growing a person inside myself (and that I've mentioned before), and partially the realization of what a huge deal it is to give someone a name. A name is a major part of one's identity, especially in the early years . . . these days Luke and Jaz get excited even about other words that simply begin with the same letters as their names, as if those words are somehow a part of themselves . . . and I suddenly felt that by choosing my children's names, I was also, in part, defining who they would be.

I don't think Lena was quite as stressed as I was about the whole naming thing, but she was no more inspired. I really don't think we had any clue about what we were going to name the babies until one day when we got a letter in the mail.

I was about 16 weeks pregnant, and the letter was from a friend who had moved away and was responding for the first time to the news of the pregnancy. Her chosen last name is "Jasper," and she wrote in her letter . . . "as for names, if you have a boy . . . duh . . . 'Jasper!'" And Lena and I looked at each other and thought, "she's totally right! Of course!" Later that week we found out that one of our babies ("Baby B") was a boy, and he became Jasper (people are always curious about how I could know which baby was which inside me. Since "Baby B" was attached to the right side of my uterus, and "Baby A" was attached to the left side, they could not switch places. We also knew that Baby A would be born first, due to being located closer to the "exit"). We knew from the start that we would call him "Jaz" for short.

We still didn't have any idea about what to name "Baby A," no girl or boy names whatsoever. A month after discovering that "Baby B" was a boy, and naming him Jasper, we went in for the big deal ultrasound (where they checked to make sure that the babies were not sharing blood flow), and found out that "Baby A" was in fact, "Jasper's brother" (we had been referring to him as such, figuring that we would end up with twin boys). The ultrasound technician was not used to seeing lesbian families in her office, as was made apparent by the fact that she felt the need to tell us about her lesbian friends who also had a baby boy. Her friends' baby boy was named "Lucas." And, since we like to follow in the foot-steps of other lesbian moms, we decided to name our second boy "Lucas" as well (in reality, of course, we just liked the name and for some reason hadn't thought of it before). It just seemed right. As had Jasper's name. Later on in the pregnancy, someone asked us how we were going to spell the name, "Lucas" or "Lukas," and while we hadn't yet thought of using a "k" in place of the "c," we instantly preferred that spelling (and it made more sense to us since we knew that we would also call him "Luke"). And that's how Lukas got his name.

The middle names were easier to come by. Since the babies would have Lena's last name (we were not yet legally married, and I had not yet changed my name to take Lena's name, though it was the plan), we wanted to give them middle names from my family. We chose to give Lukas my middle name, "Beach," (also my great-grandmother's maiden name), and we gave Jasper my little sister's middle name, "Lee" (my older sister is named "Jes," so I felt like we were naming "Jasper Lee" after both of my sisters). Lukas Beach and Jasper Lee were born a couple of months after we named them, and I was really glad that they already had names because I think it would have been much harder to name them after seeing their faces. Before long it seemed like we'd chosen perfectly.

newborn Lukas Beach

newborn Jasper Lee

After the stagnant experience of trying to think up names with my pregnancy brain, I decided that any future names would probably best be decided upon in my not-pregnant state. This realization has allowed me to think way too much about the names of our third and fourth children. Zeben's name first started to come to me two years before he started growing in my womb. Luke and Jaz were nearly two years old, and my fertility had just returned. I suddenly had a vision of our third son, and I felt very strongly that his name would begin with the letter "Z" (which I loved the idea of since one of my very best friends from childhood has a "Z" name).

At first I thought his name was "Zeke." A little while later, I thought of giving him the middle name, "Alexander," which is a family name (and would also be reference to my given name: Alexa). "Zeke Alexander" lived on in my mind for quite some time until my wife finally got the memo that we were meant to have a third child. And then, just when we were ready to start adding sperm to the mix, "Zeke" didn't sound right anymore. I still loved the name, but it didn't feel like it was our baby's name. I like to think that babies choose their own names, and it very much felt that way with Zeben. I was driving our long daily drive from the hills down into town, and the name "Zeb" just popped into my head. I wanted to give him a longer name that we could shorten into "Zeb," and somehow I thought of "Zeben" (one thing I love about the name Zeben is that it's almost a palindrome. Especially if you write it in capital letters: ZEBEN. I love palindromes). When I mentioned it to Lena, she agreed that 'Zeben" would be our baby's name . . . if we were to get pregnant, and if the baby were to be a boy, of course. Lo and behold, I did get pregnant, and the baby was a boy, and we named him Zeben. For a while he still had Zeke's middle name of "Alexander," until another long car ride where I realized that it wasn't quite right. The other kids had two-syllable names followed by one-syllable middle names, and I wanted to follow the same pattern with our third child (my sisters and I all have three-syllable first names, ending in "a," followed by one-syllable middle names . . . I guess that's where I got the idea that siblings' names should follow a pattern). "Sky" was a name that I have always loved, and that we gave to our third puppy (who, tragically, died just a week after Luke and Jaz were born when he was only 18 months old).

Sky, the puppy, 3 months old

When I added "Sky" to Zeben, it sounded perfect: Zeben Sky. And when he was born, there was no question that we had named him well.

newborn Zeben Sky

Two summers ago, when Zeben was less than a year old, I started to get a sense about our fourth child. I knew that I would not give birth to this baby (though at the time I thought that meant that we'd be adopting, not that Lena would be getting pregnant), and I got a very strong "O" feeling about the name. Actually, the name that came to me was "Ori." I mentioned it to Lena, and she rejected both the name and the idea that there would be a reason to think up a name in the first place. But the sense that our "O" baby would come to us one day stayed with me for the next year until Lena surprised me with the news that she did want to grow a baby after all.

This current pregnancy is the first time we have ever thought of a girl name. Lena was kind of feeling the name "Kai" for a girl but I was not a fan. First of all, the name had to have two syllables to fit with the other kids' names. Lena then suggested "Kaia." I liked it better than Kai, but not quite enough. It felt too trendy to me. I also wanted to pick a name that somehow reflected Lena better in meaning (I think of our fourth baby as our "Lena baby," which is perhaps somewhat odd since I certainly don't think of any of our other babies as our "Lex babies," just because I gave birth to them. But because this baby will be the only one of our four children to come from Lena's womb, I want to honor that somehow). Lena is a Forestry student and an avid tree and river-lover. We tried to think of a river or tree name. We briefly considered the name "Castanea," which is the Latin name for "Chestnut." We could call her "Cass." But, of course, it is way more than two-syllables, and it isn't exactly pretty. Next we thought of "Willow," which we both liked, but we worried that maybe it was too new (I love names that were hugely popular in the 1800's but that have since become less common--true for Lukas, Jasper and Zeb). Finally, my sister mentioned her friend's new baby, "Koa," and I loved it instantly, especially the strong "o" sound (in keeping with the original "O vibe" that I got about our fourth baby). It turns out that "Koa" is a type of tree, once used to make canoes, that grows in Hawaii (thus bearing some resemblance to Lena's original choice of "Kai"). The meaning was perfect. I also really liked how it fit with the other kids' names, especially since Zeben's name starts with the last sound in Jasper's nickname ("Jaz"), and Koa would do the same thing with Lukas ("Luke"). (Yes, I really do think about things like this, at least when I'm not pregnant). For a middle name, we decided to use the second-half of Lena's middle name, Suffrane (which would sound like "Rain," and thus fit well with the other kids' naturey-middle names (granted, Jasper's middle name, Lee, is not exactly a nature name. But because of "Beach" and "Sky" and our last name beginning with the letter "F," people often think that Jasper's middle name is "Leaf" when he says his name). Our baby girl would have been named "Koa Rane."

a Koa Tree

"Koa," like many Hawaiian names, can be used for a girl or a boy, but it didn't feel right for our fourth child once we knew he had a penis. We talked about maybe using the name "Silas," which would have been Lena's name had she been a boy (and there's a fabulous family story about how when Lena's mom was pregnant with Lena and her twin sister, Addie, Lena's mom and dad explained to Lena's then 2-year-old brother Ethan, that there would be two babies. Choosing to keep things simple, they shared with him their first choice girl and boy names: Addie and Silas. When they returned from the hospital and introduced the young Ethan to his baby sisters, Addie and Lena, Ethan responded with a confused and sad, "where's Silas?"), but while I love the name, something wasn't sitting quite right. I didn't particularly like how "Silas" and "Lukas" both end with "as," since I enjoy the fact that at the moment our three kids all have different name endings: "as," "er," and "en." And then there was the "O" factor. Which is entirely missing from "Silas." Since Lena had rejected all possible beginning-with-O-names, I started thinking of ending-with-o-names. And I asked around, and a few people suggested "Leo." And it struck me right away because Lena is a Leo (astrologically), and she's such a Leo at that. She has the constellation of Leo tattooed on her shoulder.

Lena's Leo Tattoo

She has a huge collection of stuffed lions. She is a Leo to the max. Also, I like that "Leo" is three letters (like Koa and Ori . . . and Lex, come to think of it), and that it shares a first letter with Luke and the beginning sounds of Jasper's middle name, Lee. The middle name we had thought of for Koa, "Rane," did not sound good with Leo (too many vowels, not strong enough), so we started trying to think of an alternative. The limitations were: one syllable, somehow linked to some sort of family member, ideally nature-related, and somehow Lena-related. I got the clue from Lena's feet.

The first of Lena's many star tattoos

"Star" is one syllable (check!), is also the middle name of my sister's son Ezra, the cousin who will be closest in age to Leo (check!), is certainly nature-related (check!), and happens to be one of Lena's most favorite things (check!). Giving Leo an "S" middle name also gives him the same LSF initials that Lena has. Perfect. The middle name, "Star," also links Leo to Zeben, since Stars are in the Sky, and they both start with "S" (you had no idea how complex this could be, right?).

We'll wait until he's born (we're half-way there!) to make it officially official, but for now we're calling our fourth little one, "Leo Star," and falling more and more in love with him everyday.

How Babies Are Made

When we were first researching the process of buying sperm, I requested information from several different sperm banks, and one of them (I can't remember which exactly) sent us a free video. We eagerly sat down to watch it one evening, thinking that it would provide a good explanation of how sperm donation and freezing and buying and shipping works. Instead, the video showed an interview with a straight couple who had used sperm from this particular bank to conceive their daughter. The clear message from the movie was that using donor sperm was a fine choice to make and that if we decided to go through with it, no one would ever know that we hadn't conceived our baby the old-fashioned way. The dad in the video was especially insistent that his daughter would never have any way of knowing that he wasn't her genetic father and that he felt great about the fact that they'd been so successful with donor sperm.

Clearly, this was not the video for us (nor was it the sperm bank for us), but it did bring home the point that I always wanted us to be entirely truthful with our children about how they were made. While there was never any risk of concealing the fact that Lena and I did not make our babies in the "old-fashioned way," we planned to be exceptionally open and up-front with our kids about their conception, from the moment they were born. Of course, in the early months of their lives, telling the kids their conception story served no purpose beyond allowing us to practice telling it, but that was reason enough for us to do it. When Jaz started babbling, "da-da, da-da, da-da" at 10 months old, we would correct him and say, "do-nor, do-nor, do-nor." Which is to say that we have taken every opportunity to be completely upfront with our kids about the fact that they don't have a dad. That does not mean, however, that our kids really understand what it means for them to have a sperm donor.

Luke and Jaz were 2 or 3 when we started using the seed analogy to explain conception.

"To make a baby, you need a seed from a man, and an egg from a woman. Because Mom and Mama had lots of eggs, but no seeds, a very nice man gave us some of his seeds. He didn't want to be a dad, but he wanted to help us make a family. The man who gave us his seeds is your donor."

Over the years, the kids have shown us their lack of understanding of this concept a few times, referring to the donor as "the donut," or asking us how we knew that the "owner" was giving us the "right kind of flowers." They have never seemed especially interested in their conception story or who this "very nice man" is. Just the other day, I asked Luke and Jaz directly if they ever felt curious about their donor (they do now, at nearly 6, understand that the donor gave us his sperm), and Jaz responded, "nope. Never." And Luke said, "I certainly don't feel curious right now." We've shared with them the information that we think they might find interesting (the donor's favorite color (black)), his favorite animal (dolphins), his favorite foods (cereal and chicken)), but for the most part these little tidbits fall on deaf ears. They just don't care about it yet.


A few weeks ago we checked out some "how babies are made" types of books from the library, and through doing so have discovered the part of the conception story that the kids are curious about right now. They are completely fascinated by the pictures (drawings and photographs) of babies developing in-utero. Perhaps this is the exact scenario that coined the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words." Because now that they've seen it, they really get it. This understanding has not increased, for them, the significance of where the sperm that we used to make them came from, but there's no longer any question about if they know how babies are made (minus any sexual reference).

This weekend, after learning that our new baby is a boy, Jaz made a book for Lena ("Mama") about the baby growing inside of her. Here it is:

the cover

sperm meets egg

the baby is beginning to grow some legs

the baby now has arms and fingers

the baby now has ears and a penis

the baby is born

The last page looks to be a duplicate of the first page:

Jaz explains, "well, then it starts all over again, this time with our girl baby." That made me laugh. I actually love the whole book and think he did an excellent job of showing the different stages of fetal development (he drew it all from memory, not consulting the books we have on hand).

This weekend we did begin to get into a discussion of genetics, after one of the kids--either Luke or Jaz--said, "maybe this time we'll get a brown-skinned baby." Lena and I explained that while there are many things we won't know about our baby until he's born (his eye color, his hair color, how big he is, what his nose looks like, if his pinky finger is straight or crooked, the exact shade of his skin), there are some things that we do know because of how genetics work. The baby will not have brown skin because the egg and the sperm that made him didn't have any brown-skin genes. The kids were only mildly interested, but I wonder if this will be the beginning of them questioning the significance of genetic relationships. If so, we'll be ready with lots and lots of answers.

A Quick Photographic Fix

When I started keeping this blog back in February of last year, I hoped that it would encourage me to craft more and to write more. And it has definitely done both of those things. What I didn't anticipate is that it would also encourage me to take lots and lots of photographs of our daily life. I realized the other day that I have taken 6 times as many pictures just in the last year as I did in my first 5 years of motherhood put together! And while I think it's important to find a balance between documenting a moment and living a moment, I'm so glad that I have so many visual memories from the past year. I do not bring my camera everywhere with me, by any means, but I do think having the blog has inspired me to take pictures of things that I wouldn't otherwise notice or think were worth remembering: the kids painting, or making sushi, or playing with their toys. I love being able to look through our digital photo albums and remember these simple, real-life moments.

a literary potty moment

snack time

the guinea pig maze
(from when Luke and Jaz's class pets came to visit)

walking to the car, post-soccer game

Most of these pictures don't make it to the blog, and they don't make it anywhere else either. A couple of weeks ago, I was struck by the fact that we didn't have any pictures of our family hanging on the walls in our house, and that I was the only one getting to appreciate this recent increase in photographic documentation. So I took advantage of some great post-holiday/new year sales, and ordered some prints for our walls from an online photo shop.

For a long time, I've wanted to have a few large prints on canvas, so I made 3 using some of my favorite pictures from the past year. They turned out really well (especially considering that the photos didn't have quite high enough resolution to be blown up so big).


I also made a poster collage by selecting 23 photos from the last 12 months that I felt provided a good representation of all of the seasons and many of the best memories. Because the online photo shop was having a special sale on anything calendar-related, I decided to make a calendar poster collage. Once it arrived, I just trimmed off the calendar part, and the collage fit perfectly into a 10" x 20" frame. It was a very quick and easy way to frame several photos at once.

We all love the end result, but no one is more pleased with it than Zeben. He studies it carefully, going from picture to picture, pointing out who is who and what everyone is doing.

I hung the framed collage in the playroom, at Zeben's height so that he can continue to enjoy these snapshots of the past year.


I'm so glad that some of my photographs are getting put to good use, and that our walls are finally displaying some of our best memories in picture form. It may even become a yearly tradition to add more.