Last night, about an hour before bedtime, Six quietly told the Chaplain he didn’t feel good, and curled up on the sofa. A few minutes later, he was asleep.
An hour later, as we were putting everyone to bed, the Chaplain lifted Six off the sofa to transfer him to his bed. He found Six was burning with a fever a shade under 104. We feared he wouldn’t go back to bed, but after a dose of children’s acetaminophen, he snuggled willingly into bed and went back to sleep.
Three hours later, the Chaplain and I were reading in bed when I heard a cry coming from the room Six shares with his older sisters. I paused to make sure I had heard him. There it was again. As I walked into the room, Two made a dramatic pronouncement along the lines of, “If he does that all night, I’m going to die.”
When I was pregnant with Seven, I went to the chiropractor regularly. It started before he was born.
I have a lot of responsibilities. Some might say, more responsibilities than I am capable of keeping up with. So in order to get a break, sometimes my body just quits working. This can look like a head cold, a stomach bug, or a sudden, unexpected nap. In this case, I tried to lift my head off of my pillow one Monday morning and it felt like something in my neck had snapped.
This weekend, I lived an introverted homebody’s nightmare: I went to the Bronx Zoo on a beautiful holiday weekend with six kids, and I went to the mall afterward to get new shoes for Two, who is the most indecisive shoe shopper I have ever met. Perhaps that’s one reason why she has only one pair of shoes.
Many times, I get so caught up in needing everything to be just right before I get started, that I never actually do anything meaningful.
The time my mom put my pigtails in too tight. That is to say, the scalp sensitivity referenced below may be of a genetic nature.
There are some things you can only learn by living them.
Black Hair is something I am beginning to understand. I first had a glimmer of understanding in college, watching a comedy where Caucasian girls were disparaged for flipping their hair around. As a Caucasian girl, when I did have hair, I always liked the way it flopped around, especially when I was running and had it in a ponytail. But it also always bothered me when other girls with my hair type were really obvious about their personal grooming or touching and flipping their hair around in public. In the movie, it was portrayed as something annoying because it is something Black hair just doesn’t do.
This year, my middle daughter is in her third year of competition dance. For each of her three classes, she has a different costume, makeup, tights, shoes, and a hairstyle. For ballet, that usually means a bun, and after I finally looked up how to do it on YouTube, I’ve had good results. It’s super satisfying to take a couple of my oldest son’s worn out (and laundered) black socks, cut the toes off, and roll them into a fat donut that makes my daughter’s bun look thick and round.
One of the things we did at our marriage intensive was learn the Care Cycle. The idea is, you are in charge of you. When you are feeling upset, triggered, or stressed, you should do a little self care before looking to others for help.
I took the diagram they made for us and made a simple printable with a blank spot for adding personalized info to the “care package” section – those are the actions you can take to feel better. 
I made them for all the people in our family who are potentially aware enough to use it, although we haven’t finished filling everyone’s out yet.
I find that small kids meet their own needs pretty well. 
