Chicken Diapers?

A few days ago my oldest walked up to me and said, "Mom, the next time we make something together, can we make a chicken diaper?"

chicken diaper on Mypetchicken.com

WHAT??!???

First, I must say I thought he was making this up. Who in the world has heard of a chicken diaper? Apparently, Emerson, my eight-year-old son has. He promptly went to the internet and showed me some pictures of chicken diapers. Amazing. The internet has everything.

"Why do you want to make a chicken diaper?" I asked him, still puzzled.

"So Brownie [his pet chicken] can come inside with us," was his answer.

It would be difficult to imagine my face at that moment.

Sure, we have chickens. Yes, I am fond of them. Yes, I keep chicks in my bathtub...sometimes.... But full-grown chickens roaming the house? That is a whole new level of chicken love. I'm not sure I'm ready for that level of chicken love. Apparently my son is.

I have tried to put him off, hoping he would forget about making a chicken diaper. Not only has he not forgotten, he has rallied the troops. Now ALL of the kids want to make diapers for their favorite chickens.

I am doomed. If one chicken starts roaming the house, guaranteed three will be THREE roaming the house and then what? The house becomes a barn? Probably. It's half way there already, as anyone with three or more children knows.

As long as I'm doomed, though, wouldn't you think I'd be able to find somewhere on the world wide web a well-illustrated tutorial on how to make a chicken diaper? No!

There is this video on making a chicken diaper:

 

But the obvious drawback of a video is that there are no scalable templates. And there are no little pieces of paper with written instructions and clearly laid out, step by step directions, like my favorite tutorial. This woman is magical in her abilites, but I need a whole lot more information...especially about the measuring part. How in the world am I supposed to measure a squawking and flapping chicken? The chickens in the video are much more sedate and cooperative than mine.

So far I have been able to stall the chicken diaper making by claiming I do not have the right size elastic. This is true. But my son will not be put off indefinitely: he has made me set a date for buying the elastic and fully plans to force me into my sewing studio as soon as the elastic has been purchased. I can see it in his eyes: this chicken diaper is happening, whether I like it or not.

I will let you know how it goes. Perhaps there will even be pictures. And if there are chickens in my house, there will certainly be prayers. Most likely the Serenity Prayer....

Oh, the children--they grow up!

People say it goes fast, but in reality it goes achingly slow. When you are up at 3am cleaning vomit, changing sheets and soothing a sick child, the next day grinds along at the slowest possible speed. When a small child is piercing your skull with their screamy whine, while another one is crying and yet another is racing around the house with the pounding feed of a rhinoceros, everything seems to be happening in slow motion. When you are out in public, having finally sat down to visit with a long-lost friend and your baby's diaper leaks, sending poo running down the side of your leg, off the chair and onto the floor, time stands still.

And so it goes for the years of your children's infancy and toddlerhood, even sometimes into their school years.

What makes people say that the time with young children "flies by" is not the fact that it goes so fast when you're living it, but the intense sadness you have when it's over and the powerful longing to bring it back.

Why???? When you were living it, it seemed endless, timeless, grueling, difficult, a test of your endurance and your ability to function despite extreme sleep deprivation.

But we are human! And part of the human condition, one of the more forgiving parts that makes life so much more enjoyable, is our ability to forget: our astoundingly short memory for pain. As our babies grow and begin to walk independently, to describe their needs and wants, to take care of their own bodily functions, to clothe and feed themselves, we in turn begin to forget the difficulties of having a baby, of trailing after a toddler, of constantly monitoring a being that has no common sense and a seeming death wish. We forget that hefting the notorious "bigger than an ox" car seat and two tons of baby gear gave us carpal tunnel and bad backs. We forget that not sleeping for more than two hours at a time led us to mistakenly place frozen food in the fridge and leave the front door unlocked and buy nothing on our grocery list and made us cry at 5:30pm when a pat of butter fell on the floor. We so easily forget all that, all the misery, all the difficulty, all the feats of endurance.

All we remember is that adorable baby, the one who smiled rakishly in the half million pictures and videos we took. We remember the weight of a newborn in our arms, the smell of baby powder, the crinkle of a fresh diaper, little hands that wrapped around our big fingers, knees that had the most delicious dimples, thighs so impossibly gorgeous....

And when we remember, it seems like we didn't enjoy it enough. We didn't "seize the moment," we didn't glory in every smile or delight in every baby laugh or laud every baby step enough.

This is a trap. A cruel mind game we play with ourselves.

I am here to tell you--and me, mostly me--that we did our best. We did absolutely the best we could do. Some days were better than others, some moments lasted forever and some were better forgotten. In the midst of all the challenges, we did enjoy our babies, our children, as they grew.

What we wish for is to remember it all, but remembering it all would destroy the gift we were given. That gift is the gift of remembering those things that delighted us, those spectacular moments, those beautiful pictures, those baby cheeks, those wonderful smells, the mercurial magic of childhood, without the bad moments. In our minds we stripped away everything else and remembered what was most important to us: the essence of each child's babyhood.

Today I am telling myself it's okay to be sad that my babies have all grown up from their babyhood. It's okay to mourn over the end of diapers, baby powder, tiny hands, pea-sized toes, gurgly laughs, wispy hair, faltering steps, exploratory touches, exclamations of first delight.

It's not okay to accuse myself of not enjoying it: I did enjoy it. And I also found it aggravating, annoying, terrifying, harrowing, painful, depressing and seemingly unending.

A few weeks ago I was outside with my daughter. We were looking for the chickens and I asked her where her chicken was. She turned to me and with a mixture of absolute certainty and pride, said: "He's over there, under that bush, doing his best!" Innately she recognized the importance, the higher purpose, inherent in doing one's best--even for an animal.

Now, when I have those days of sadness and self-doubt, I remember what my daughter said and remind myself that I'm doing my best. And it's really the very best that I can do.

Second Hand Clothes: The Beast of Burden

A friend of mine is having a baby. This little baby boy is a much-anticipated baby: he has been five years in the making. All of her friends, family and closest acquaintances are thrilled, as evinced by her baby shower of epic proportions. The food could have fed three or four times the guest list. The gifts had to be transported home in not one, but two trucks. The candy coated almonds, which matched the invitations in both color and theme, featured tiny hand-painted owl faces. The cookie table, a Pittsburgh tradition, would have shamed some weddings. It was astounding.

As I sat in my friend’s living room the other night, staring at baby paraphernalia peaking out from behind her living room furniture and spilling quietly into the dining room, she told me about another gift she received. A surprise gift, after the shower: four large garbage bags of baby clothes, sizes 0-24 months, from her cousin whose boy had long outgrown the clothes. My friend sighed as she told me about this “gift” and threw her eyes around the room, looking at all the baby stuff she already didn’t have room for. We looked at each other. I had the good sense to remain silent. For the moment.

“It’s not that I’m not grateful. I mean, I’ll have clothes for this child for a long time. But then my sister and my mother had to come over to help me sort through it all, pull out the ones that were too stained and put away the ones that were too big....”

My heart went out to her. One of the greatest gifts I received when I had my first baby was six boxes of hand-me-downs ranging in size from newborn to 7T. It was also one of the biggest burdens. I remember another friend gleefully handing me a huge, black garbage bag full of baby clothes a couple of months after my son’s birth. At my squeal of excitement and attempt to thank her, she replied, “Are you kidding me? I’m so happy to get rid of those you can’t even imagine! You’re the sucker!” I had no idea what she was talking about.

Now that I have three kids, I know exactly what she was talking about.

Don’t get me wrong--hand-me-downs are great and I have always been thankful to get them. On the flip side, though, they are a curse. And here’s why:

1.) That adorable pink outfit that a friend loved and can’t bear to give to anyone else’s child but mine is now so worn out that it looks atrocious. No mother would want her kid in it. This cannot tactfully be said to a friend. So I am forced to take the worn out pink thing (sometimes boxes of them), expressing my gratitude and remarking on how lovely the outfit must have been.


Then I do the work of giving the outfit(s) to charity. I see myself as the arbiter of loved items to Goodwill. An Ambassador of the Unwanted, taking loved things and doing what the giver cannot do: getting rid of them. 

That princess sleeper that your princess slept in until it is pilled and discolored and reeks of urine no matter how many times it has been washed? I have no use for that, nor does my child. I certainly will not treasure it like you or your child did. Either keep it forever or throw it out! But so many parents are unable to do this. They cannot take that final step of admitting that a beloved item of clothing has reached its limit of usefulness and throw it out or give it to charity. So I do it for them. As do countless other mothers/parents who take hand-me-downs.

2.) The lie of “play clothes.”
How many times have you heard this line, Mothers Who Take Hand-Me-Downs:
“I know it’s stained, but [your child] can use it for play clothes!”

Here’s the thing, though: clothes children play in are also clothes children wear when they go on an impromptu shopping trip or clothes children end up in when their father dresses them and doesn’t know the difference between play clothes and regular clothes. 

Play happens.

Play clothes are bullshit. 
If kids aren't supposed to play in their clothes, what are they supposed to do in them? All clothes are play clothes if you are a kid and that's how it should be. I don't want my kids so worried about their clothes that they are afraid to try new things, run in the grass, make mud pies, have squirt gun wars....

My kids have nice clothes that get stained or ripped or both. If there are clothes I don’t want them to ruin, I save those clothes in a secret place and only bring them out for church on Sunday. 
Don’t give me stained or otherwise ruined clothes because those clothes are...well...ruined.

3.) Hand-me-downs are not clothes I picked out. 

As a mother of three, I don’t so much care anymore if someone hands me a box of perfectly good, stain-free clothes for my children and the clothes aren’t exactly my style. But my friend--this is her first child, perhaps her only child. Her cousin’s idea of what looked cute on her baby maybe 7 years ago is not my friend’s idea of what is going to look cute on her baby in 2012.

4.) You only get to dress your child for 2, maybe 3 years.
If you are the kind of parent who enjoys conflict and is obsessed with how your child is dressed, you might be able to--with a great deal of anger, frustration and stress--manage it for 7 or 8 years. But there is going to come a time when your child refuses to wear the clothing of your choice. 

My daughter just turned three and if I put clothes on her that she doesn’t like, she takes them off and goes naked. I prefer her clothed. And I’d rather save my battles for the times I have to win, for the times that are really important, like dinner or not running the street.

When your baby is small, it is natural to want that baby to look adorable, to look the way your want him or her to look. Hand-me-downs stand in the way of this, unless someone with your exact taste and sensibilities bought the clothes and the clothes were hardly worn. This rarely happens.

The advice I gave my friend?

“Give away or throw out any clothes that are stained or otherwise ruined. Also give away all the clothes that you think are ugly or not your style or simply something you don’t want to see on your baby.
Because life is too short. If you wake up one morning, reach into the drawer and pull out an outfit for your baby that you don’t like, it’s going to be a bad day. And you don’t need another bad day with a baby.
You should dress your baby how you want. You should put only the clothes you think are cute on your baby. And never feel guilty about it. This is your baby.”