If clean unicorns live in rainbow clouds and frolic in colorful wildflower fields, then the dirty rebel ones live at the fair.  They can smoke behind the outhouses and gamble with the carnies, but they still have all the rainbow colors which they need to transform carbon dioxide into sugar.  Oh wait, that’s plants.
Okay, scratch that.

Hey, we went to the fair, and how ‘bout those colors?

A feast for the eyes, if you can ignore the fact that the fairground air is 78% nitrogen, 20% oxygen and 2% corn dog grease.  That and the bad t-shirts, this year’s WTF Award going to the guy at my picnic table whose shirt highlighted a map of Florida molded into a revolver with “Welcome to the Gunshine State” screen-printed above it.  Classy.

We focused on the colors though because we are highly trained in that area, and once again the fair delivered.

I love it all—the cotton candy, the lights, the lemonade cups, the way you can look up in any direction and see a framed picture—ferris wheel against sky, Fun Slide against sky, bundle of balloons against sky.  Nella grew into her fair-legs this year, landing right in the yellow zone on “Are You Tall Enough?” charts so that she could join Lainey on the kiddie rides and join Mom on the Fun Slide (“Again! Again!”). 

Appropriately timed toward the end of the evening when all patience had been used, energy exhausted and optimism levels shaky, Lainey lost her first tooth—something for which she’d been waiting a whole year (since kindergarten buds were bragging of their losses) and I’ve been waiting seven years.  I mean, I bought the beautiful pewter tooth fairy compact from a specialty store before I was even pregnant and have been waiting seven years to use it.  Anyway, it happened right outside the funnel cake stand after she bit into her corn dog and complained that her tooth hurt.  I looked in her mouth, saw the little tooth half an ax chop from Timber!, told her it was almost out and then she reached up to wiggle it.  Next thing I know, it was gone.  Blood-spattered overalls, full blown tears, corn dog flung to the ground and her first little tooth completely M.I.A.—its only possible location in the pile of dirt at our feet which was conveniently covered in thousands of white tooth-shaped bits of broken shells.

Alerted to the drama by—oh, I don’t know—the wails heard from space, Brett ran over to investigate.

“She lost her tooth!” I yelled, trying to dial down the drama as best as I could while sifting through the first of many handfuls of dirt and broken shells.  “It’s somewhere down here, help me!”—which, to a germaphobe like Brett, sounds like an invitation to swim in an open toilet.  He passed on the ground inspection, instead consoling Lainey with a few “there there”s and darting me a “Seriously?!” look which, in the heat of the moment, I mistook as “this is all your fault.”

“Oh, like I forced this to happen,” I snapped.

“I heard you. You told her to pull it out.”

Okay, maybe I did.

I’ll tell you one thing. I bet you any money people in Broward County heard “MY TOOTH! MY TOOTH!” carried across the grease-laden wind Saturday night. 

I love those stories of people who look for things for hours and then pray that God will help them find them—even if it’s something silly like keys or a missing earring or the corkscrew to open a bottle of wine (listen, I think God’s staying out of that one)—and then it suddenly appears (PTL!).  And so I prayed too because a first tooth is really special to a little girl, and certainly if God can help you find your earring, he could help you find a tooth or at least the toothiest looking of broken shells.  And I believed I would be one of those stories so much that I smiled as I sifted the ground for the forty-eighth time, thinking how cool this story was going to be when the little tooth showed up on the forty-ninth.

It didn’t.  But God works in mysterious ways—some of those including on-your-toes thinking for moms who need to quickly make up crap to soothe their six-year-olds.

“Listen Lainey—” (B.S. initiated) “—I hear the tooth fairy is super cool about this stuff.  She loves good stories, and she’s going to love this one.  In fact, she’s going to think this is so funny, she’ll probably tell all her friends.  So how about we grab a little shell piece that looks like a tooth and leave her a note telling her what happened.”

And she bought it (PTL!).

Lainey opened her mouth again so I could examine the tiny gum cavern to find a shell that was about the right fit, and together we picked one out and I tucked it away in the change pocket of my wallet.  We finished the night with a few fair games that won the girls a giant inflatable crayon. Combined with the overpriced bubble gun we bought, it seemed to completely make up for the missing tooth.  Nothing goes as planned in parenthood—not even the simple things like losing teeth.  In fact, once home, I couldn’t even find the pewter tooth fairy compact I’d been saving for so long, and so we tucked the little shell in a sandwich bag under her pillow with a torn piece of notebook paper Lainey had me script, and it was replaced without question with a crisp dollar bill.  The “first tooth” envelope in her baby book now holds the fool’s tooth, which my friend so lovingly pointed out this morning, isn’t even a good knock-off: “Jeezus, Kelle. It’s all yellow and dirty. Couldn’t you have at least found a clean one?”

But yellow and dirty goes so well with the story of where we lost it.  Behind the funnel cake stand, next to the Magic Maze, a few yards over from the man in the Gunshine t-shirt.  It all happens at the fair, folks.

*Note: I realize now that I prayed wrong. I am told God delegates lost things to Saint Anthony.
*Also note: My family specializes in tooth loss stories and tooth fairy recovery strategies, and I am nowhere near the esteemed rank my cousin holds in this area.  Her husband once donned rubber gloves to sift through—wait for it…a pile of Saint Bernard vomit to look for a lost first tooth.  And, her tooth fairy once left a note explaining that her several day delay in retrieving a lost tooth was due to the fact that she was in jail (not my actual cousin, but her fairy alter ego). Heather, I bow.  I have much to learn.

Because Pharrell’s “Happy” has a few more plays in it before it officially gains Overplayed status for me (with lyrics like sunshine, hot air balloon, clap along and happy, that might not be possible), I figured I’d use it for a colorful video of our fair fun.  Enjoy.  Clap along if you must.  And that fight over the inflatable crayon at the end?  Yer welcome.

Song: “Happy” by Pharrell

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I missed Friday Faves, so a few catch-ups:

Contributing this week…

At BabyZone with 18 Tips for Encouraging Close Sibling Relationships with your kids…

And at eHow, sharing tips on how we create day-cations and local family trips with Plan the Perfect Family Adventure Without Traveling Far

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And I’m sure many have seen this already, but my, my…this is beautiful:  A letter to parents expecting a baby with Down syndrome from 15 people with Down syndrome.

I had breakfast with my friend Andrea last Friday morning after an exhausting week of making decisions. Not all of them were critical, but there were enough of them stacked together for an already indecisive person like me to nearly crumble at the end of the week when my Starbucks barista asked me if I wanted whole, 2% or skim milk. I don’t know, okay? I don’t have the energy to contemplate the pros and cons of milk fat right now, so please, for the love of God, pour something hot into a cup and hand it to me. But I didn’t say that, of course. I smiled, said “2%” and complimented the barista on her adorable haircut because I overcompensate.

I sat with my friend as we talked about light-hearted things that quickly transformed to heavy-hearted things. Heavy-hearted things for us usually sounds something like: Our kids. We love them. We worry. How do we do this? This is hard. And last week was hard—a week I dedicated to worrying about Nella. I’m realizing we are getting there, that place we knew would eventually come when “Aw, what a cute little baby” shifts into “Fly, little bird, fly.” We’re feeling more the communication delays which transfer to challenges with expectations at home and following directions; and some new experiences (like moving her up an age group in ballet) bring those challenges to the surface. With preschool on the horizon and my girl at the edge of the nest, it snowballed together to feel like a looming cloud.

It all came out at the table last week—my worries about her future challenges, preparing for school, thinking about middle school and high school, feeling the weight of all that still needs to be done in the world of awareness and acceptance. “We have to think about this stuff, Brett. We have to prepare for her future. We have to talk about these choices.” Like always, Brett says, “We don’t have to decide everything right this second, babe.” Because my worry quickly translates to urgency, and someone needs to reel me in. He’s good at that.

I like to think of these worry periods as pit stops. I’m getting gas and new wheels, and while that’s happening, I unload. It’s amazing how quickly you refuel and hit the gas again when you realize your kid’s out there on the track.

For us, it’s difficult defining what behaviors of Nella’s are attributed to Down syndrome and what’s just manifestations of her own personality and growing pains. How much do we push her and how much do we let her be who she is? How do we balance high expectations with accommodations? As we made some decisions for her last week and talked about how to continue to nurture her toward more independence, I felt the frustration and the sadness that comes with this additional stuff. More roadblocks, more work, more thinking outside the box, more taming emotions because the sad demons love to use these decisions as an opportunity to lurk and make you feel bad. Deciding what’s best for Nella right now is challenging us. “It’s like putting a square peg in a round hole,” I told Brett.

But then, (Don’t you love “but thens”?!) I remembered Apollo 13. Have you seen it? The astronauts’ lives literally depended on fitting a square peg in a round hole. Technically speaking, the lunar module’s round receptacles didn’t fit the command module’s square filters for carbon dioxide disposal, and CO2 levels were near toxic. There’s this scene where these NASA engineers go into a room, dump everything to which the astronauts have access on the table, and are given the challenge of using what’s on the table to transform the round receptacle to fit the square filter. It’s an impossible task, but these people are solution-based thinkers and their friends’ lives are at stake. And they figured it out. They walked out victoriously an hour later carrying a contraption that was once a non-existent solution. They used duct tape and cardboard and creativity and determination and never once said “we can’t do this.” They did it because they had to.

Being sad and venting is important in acknowledging our feelings, but it’s a very unproductive place for me to stay. I want to focus on solution-based thinking—transforming round holes to square ones when we can. Using resources to change the outcome. Looking around and ripping things off walls, if necessary, to build what we need. We’ll do it because we have to. Because we love our kids, and when you love your kid, there’s no square peg you won’t take on.

And as if fitting a square peg into a round hole wasn’t problem enough, you know what else happened on Apollo 13? They had to conserve power on the shuttle to get it home, so they cut all their resources down. No cabin heaters, no instrument display, no guidance computer, no ground control. No map of where to go and no one to tell them how to do it. Sound familiar? It’s called parenting.

But they still did it. In radio silence, they navigated that spaceship home by manually locking their focus on where they wanted to go while the universe seemed to spin out of control around them. And that’s exactly how I deal with worrying about my kids’ future. Where do we want to go? Lock focus. Go ahead, universe–spin, spin.  

I ended my week at the Valentine’s Day dance Saturday evening, a welcoming place for all that I was feeling. That gym became my sanctuary and its people, my church.

I took all my angst from the week and channeled it into dancing and clapping and allowing myself to feel everything.  It’s very easy to feel everything when you walk in the door to the Valentine’s dance.

There’s a small group of tables on the side of the gym where most of the parents sit, and I watched these moms and dads the other night as they made small talk and occasionally stepped out to the dance floor to join the crowd. They’re the Square Peg Veterans. I thought about how many hard decisions they’ve made, how many worries they’ve combatted, how many once non-existent solutions they’ve invented. And talk about radio silence—these people did it without the Internet for years. And they’re here. Smiling. Happy. Shaking a leg to Billy Jean.

We’re taking one decision at a time.
As powerful as that universe spinning out of control around us seems to be sometimes, it can never compete with the greater power of loving your child.

Lock that focus, and you will always, always make it home.

I know within five minutes of waking up on a Monday where my take on the day stands—a chipper cheerleading “Yay Monday! (herkie, herkie) Blank Slate! Let’s go!” pep rally or a surrender to the little devil on the other shoulder—the one who wants to drop kick the high-kicking “Yay Monday” girl and drown her out with, “You. Have. SO. Much. To. Do. Stop with the happy.”
Monday Downer Devil is such a pom-pom stealer.

Internal scan during coffee and journal writing this morning reveals Pom-Pom Stealer’s in the house, a mutual feeling among friends today, confirmed with a few e-mails and phone calls. While I accept the fact that every day doesn’t look like “Go Team, Go!”, I’m at least going to make some efforts to resuscitate the kick-off to a perfectly good week.  (obligatory Super Bowl kick-off reference–did you see Bruno Mars last night? Oh my God, what an amazing performer!)

Operation Get Ma Pom-Poms Back today was a simple implementation of good choices.  We try and make good choices every day, but when I’m feeling like my pom-poms are M.I.A., I take extra efforts for a full Good Choice Juice Cleanse–flood the gates with good and detox the ick. Every time I implement this strategy, good comes flyin’ back like a boomerang, always a confirmation that there is something greater in this world orchestrating all of these beautiful little things, and it matters…all of it matters.

I gave some time to some difficult decisions today.  Knocked off a few procrastination tasks. I sent encouraging e-mails to people who needed love.  I turned my phone off for a good chunk of the day–like not just put it away, but swiped that little “power off” button.  I changed my Pandora station to Schubert and turned up the volume two notches so classical music drenched our home.  I read books on the floor with the kids and when Nella said, “Again,” I read that book for a fifth time and felt good doing it because it was juice cleanse day.  I went for a run with Dash and the jogging stroller tonight, and when we rolled back into our driveway after the run, we rolled right back out to keep it going because it felt amazing.          

Operation Get Your Pom-Poms Back, Act 1: Stare at sleeping baby and immediately feel peaceful and energized.


Operation Get Your Pom-Poms Back, Act 2: Go outside. Turn on Hose.  Smile at the sun.

And just when I was feeling all, “Uuughh, Internet,” I went through my e-mail box and smiled at all the reminders of good tonight–these wonderful connections we can make and the stories of love and determination that continue to show up.  There was a whole slew of little boomerangs in my inbox today.  Good begets good.  Always.

My Monday ended tonight with a sweet connection and lovely coincidence made through Google. It was an e-mail in my box, the subject “on behalf of a heartbroken friend” that followed with the story of a mom’s quest to replace the lost lovie of her friend’s child, Eliza.  Eliza recently turned five and has been accompanied for years by her faithful sidekick, Doggie–a favorite puppy blanket.  I speak fluent puppy blanket, so the e-mail got my attention.  The puppy has gone missing, the little girl has cried herself to sleep for the past two nights, and family and friends have scoured the Internet in search of a replacement to no avail. In searching, a friend did come across an old post of mine from 2008 that referenced Lainey’s favorite blanket–the exact same blanket Eliza had, the one that’s no longer available anywhere–and the fact that I mentioned we had a back-up dog that didn’t go over well.  She e-mailed the story to me today, attaching a picture of Eliza and her dog, referencing the old post and  kindly inquiring about the possibility that we still had this back-up dog.

We do.  It’s been tucked away in an old drawer.  I told Lainey about the story and showed her the picture of sweet Eliza who missed her puppy, and she smiled larger than life, excited at the opportunity to send our back-up puppy to soothe this little girl’s sorrow.  And then I learned it was Eliza’s mama’s birthday today.  And then she sent me this:

My dear friend reached out to you earlier today about our sweet 5-year-old Eliza’s missing doggy. We have been on an all-out social media blitz to try to find either the original doggy or a replacement – and my jaw dropped when Sarah sent me the link to your blog from 6 years ago, and said that you had written right back to her with the unbelievably generous offer to share your backup.

I’m also a photographer, and a mama of two girls. And your story on the Bloom video (complete with a quote by Mary Oliver – whose own words have helped me through my darkest hours) brought tears to my eyes. Amazing how the universe works.

Anyway, I just wanted to thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Yesterday I held my sweet girl while she cried herself to sleep with the first real sobs of grief I have ever heard from her – not frustration, or exhaustion, or sickness, or pain – but true loss. I had a sudden glimpse of the path unfolding ahead of her, knowing that there will be other nights when I hold her and wipe damp locks of hair away from her forehead as she weathers the storms of bigger and deeper losses, but that this one is the first. How we wish we could protect our babies from life. But how inevitable it is that it will just keep happening.

It is a relief and an unspeakable gift that she will still have a doggy to grow out of and stash away as a teenager and then drag with her to college and eventually share with kids of her own as a momento of who she was as a kid.
(story and photo shared with permission)

Herkie Girl was back and kicking.

A sweet silly coincidence but also a “yep, I’ve been there.”  We share this love-sick game of nurturing our babies, trying to make the world as beautiful as possible for them and yet accepting the fact that they’re going to cry a whole lot of tears, and that’s life. 

All of that goodness fell into place tonight. 
Translation:  I found my pom-poms. 
And good begets good.  Always.

Mary Oliver said it best.  Here’s a wonderful affirmation to start a Monday: 
(It works good for Tuesdays too.  And Wednesdays.  And Thursdays.)

“Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields…Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.”  

“Gagoo’s” doppelganger has been living the sloppy second life for years, and he’s about to be First Puppy again, thanks to a sweet little girl named Eliza.  Never has there been a stuffed animal redemption story since Corduroy.