Julie Pippert: Using My Words

She is three, no four now, and she is running along a stretch of grassy lawn. Her feet flash over the mix of brown and green blades of grass and the skirt she wears---skirts and dresses only---peals behind her, bell-shaped. Her short hair, self-cut, flops beneath three bows placed strategically yet erratically on her head. She faces forward, never looking away to either side or behind herself. Her arms and legs pump fast and hard as she races to meet up with friends to play, big kids, who are waiting for her in the cul-de-sac. Except she never thinks they will wait for her and so she, the younger child, spends her life running to keep up. I shuffle more slowly behind her, trying to gauge the right distance to stay back---enough forward to assuage my desire to protect and enough back to respect her desire for freedom and independence. She has no idea I am there, but I watch her closely, not just for safety but for the remembrance of pure emotion I know she feels. She is unguarded, yet. ...

The last few months of 2008 were a little mind-blowing in a "I'll let you know when I've finished processing that" kind of way. Have you ever gotten busy and let your house go? You know what I mean...skip the laundry, dusting, cleaning, tidying, vacuuming and so forth and one day, walk in, notice the mess and dirt and think, "Holy crap, how did it get this big and bad so fast and where in the world do I start?" Have you ever just backed out of the house and decided to find errands to run and a good excuse to eat out in order to avoid the mess and all you have to do? Overwhelmed. I haven't written much because I've been so overwhelmed, and had no way of figuring how to break it down and which one thing to tackle first. The next thing I knew, the things I wanted to say had piled up on top of one another and I? had no time to get to it, but more than that, it was such a cluttered jumble in my mind that I needed to break it down. Let's go back a few ...

Recent work from my little artiste, Patience. Persistence is showing her approaching four. She sneaked into my office and got a pen, which she used on paper she also sneaked from my office and that happened to be an important part of a document. "Oh no!" I said, upon discovering this, "Oh Persistence, what did you do. You went in my office---a no-no---and got my pen and paper---a no-no---and messed up my important work. I am so sad, so disappointed." I took back the pen and paper and walked to the office to return it. I stood and stared at the wall, frustrated and disappointed: why was this child so persistent, why did she not learn, what technique would work, how could I teach her to stay out of my things, oh what to do about this curiosity and getting into things---why wouldn't redirection work? I begged for patience and strength and guidance, and wished this didn't get to me. I was feeling poignantly the stress of a long summer, which felt more like a str...

Yesterday we ran out of bread. That surprised me because we don't tend to eat that much bread in my family, and we spread what bread eating we do across a plethora of products (Kashi waffles, bagels, English muffins, etc.). However, apparently this past week saw a big run on the bread and we ran out, on a week I don't have a shopping trip planned.* Of course I didn't even have stale crusts left over from the previous weeks because of the Ginormous Seagull Feeding Disaster.** That's fine, though, because you can't keep a good woman down. I rooted in the pantry and found a box of bread mix. Excellent, I thought, I'll just whip up some homemade bread. The kids can help and we'll have an Activity! Some Fun! The house will smell delicious and we'll have bread for the week! I got the kids set up at their table with "helping" tasks (mixing flour and water) and set to it. Yeast and warm water, check, waiting, mixing bread ingredients, check. Waiting. M...

It always starts here, in the cute place. I know you read that title and expected a long, deep post. You aren't going to get it. In fact, this post, which is not be about politics or world affairs at all, is actually about mommying. More specifically, it is about Persistence, whom I adore, but who is also hmm shall we say in an extremely challenging phase that I am extremely challenged by. Persistence's pre-school ended nine days, three hours, and 22 minutes ago. That would be three weeks before public school lets out. It has been hell on earth ever since. I realize I should be overflowing with the joy of uninterrupted quality time with my precious child who I adore more than life itself, but pretty much I wake up and within ten minutes am humming, "I wanna new drug." I'm counting minutes until her father comes home by 8:30 a.m. This is because Persistence is THREE, also known as the Cruel and Vicious Age. People tell me five is worse, but I lived through Patience...

Image from SurvivalIQ Handbook : Edible and medicinal plants---raspberry, blackberry and dewberry The bush along the bike path to school first sprouted bright red berries about a month ago, right when the rolie polies came out in force. My children, naturalists of course, spotted them immediately. They also immediately wanted to put them in their mouths. "Raspberries!" they shouted, grabbing at the bush. "Wait!" I said, uselessly. "Ouch!" they said, stabbed by thorns. "YUCK!" they said, spitting out the partially chewed berries, and as much taste as they could. "Sigh," I said, as usual wondering when they'd ever learn to listen to me and why the entire myth of natural consequences began. "Step back from the bush," I said, "Close your mouths and open your ears." They hesitated, and looked back at the bush. "Before you grab at any plant or bush, you need to know what it is. Some plants can make you sick or giv...

The monkey, her wrenches, and the works. (Available here .) Today...monkeys are throwing wrenches into my works. It's 8:30 in the morning and already shaping up to be one of those days. You know, one of those days---like every other one, only for some reason today you want to bang your head on the wall because that seems to offer relief of some sort. * When I walked into the downstairs half bath, I could immediately tell the Smurfs had broken in to our house because they left little blue handprints all over the wall, sink, mirror, doorknob and door. I'm not sure what they were after in the half bath, but apparently it had something to do with the hand soap, which was mostly gone. So...I cleaned the bathroom. * The kitchen fairies must have been scared away by the Smurfs because when I finally made it to the kitchen, the dishwasher was still full of dishes (clean at least), and the sink was still full of dishes (dirty, sadly). Also, nobody cleaned the Whatever off the bottom of ...

If you ask Persistence how old she is, she'll tell you she's five. She can't quite bring herself to say six, her sister's age. Is it because her sister holds a claim to that number right now, or is it an inherent talent for hyperbole---knowing exactly where the line is that she shouldn't cross? On Saturday at a party several of us were laughing with a neighbor, my friend's husband, and he was spinning yarns about his upcoming trip to Italy. "You need to learn how to lie, Jack," I said, "You go one step past believable. If you'd said you were biking from Paris to Florence, some of us might have partially believed you. But walking?" And we all laughed harder. "Maybe it's intentional," he told me, "I get in trouble for teasing, so I try to make sure I'm way over the top upfront so nobody even starts to believe me." Someone reminded me that I must be a very good liar because everyone thinks I'm truthful. I am ...

1. Danger Zone -- Kenny Loggins (A song I've never liked.) The air force is out doing maneuvers today. The jets fly low and fast over my house and the windows rattle in their frames. My dog barks uselessly at the perceived threat---anything so loud and unknown must be a danger. I don't mind the jets so much, though. They are on their way to the Gulf, and I'm simply on the flight path. They don't linger here at all, and are gone in a split second, leaving the air vibrating behind them. I mind the helicopters more. They fly low and slow, circling. Sometimes they are so close my skin feels the thud of the rotors, and if I look outside, I can see the mouth of the man hanging out the open door. The rest of his face is covered: helmet, ear phones, and goggles. Often there is a mounted machine gun beside him, and I prefer to think it is unloaded. It makes me think about these men, their helicopters, and communities elsewhere that they fly over, when everyone knows the guns ar...

I realize I have promised three weighty topics to you, including but not limited to free speech on blogs, more on healthcare, and kids and blogs. However, I have a full agenda of To Dos today and oh, yeah, I'm still sick. So I decided to take it easy today and figured you'd have no objections. I thought it was time for a true and real portrait of my life. This is me on the average day in my momiform and mode of transportation to and from school: I call it the suburban rickshaw. I believe people in the neighborhood set their watches by me. I also believe they count on the little chuckle they get when they see me. Here's how it goes: chuckle, glance at watch, chuckle again. I don't actually just suspect it: they'll tell me. "I see you every morning just pedaling away trying to beat the tardy bell," says a friend with a smile, "You're like the perfect suburban mom with that bike and trailer and your little momiform on. Gives me a chuckle every day....

It was more of a meerkat-y kind of feeling. When we arrived at the Zoo on Saturday, the parking lot was packed. Cars stalked pedestrians exiting the zoo like big cats starved for antelope. Families turned wary eyes to the cars skulking behind them; mothers clutched little ones closer, and fathers hunched protectively over strollers as multiple cars circled their herd. We drove slowly up each row, Ten minutes passed. Fifteen minutes passed. We'd long ago lost my sister's minivan. It was every vehicle for himself. "Go to the front rows," I told my husband, "The early arrivers will be leaving now." He took my suggestion and drove to the very first row. We turned down the row just behind a family who was leaving. We followed them to their car. Another car came from the opposite direction. We both paused, waiting. As the father loaded the toddler into the car seat, the driver of the other car rolled down her window and called the mother over. She slinked over to ...

Yesterday Jon and I got called in for a Parent and Teacher Conference. For Persistence. Age 3. The main point of the conference was to say we have a really bright, creative, independent, social, and cute kid. But then the teacher---who, by the way, is an incredible teacher---got around to what she really needed to talk to us about. That would be the incident between Persistence and the Priest. As you may or may not know, we've been lucky to send our kids to Catholic preschool. It's a wonderful, small, sweet, connected, caring, loving, welcoming church. The attached preschool is the same. (If you knew me, you'd know what a serious whiplash-like change in opinion this is for me. In Texas I learned to be very, very afraid of anything claiming to be remotely connected to religion. The mere mention of "God" or "Jesus" sent chills down my spine. And I am someone who always felt very connected to church, believed, had faith, so forth. I hesitate to even use th...