Chicago Moms Blog

Hurtful Words

Saturday was a rainy day.  My husband and I took the girls and headed out to the suburbs to make a friendly visit to IKEA.  It was one of those outings that we weren't 100% sure about doing.  Traffic, rain, cranky kids, the chance of spending too much money on things we never knew we "needed" until we were there.  But off we went.

Walking into the store, my daughter decided we all needed to try the large revolving door.  We shared our compartment with a group of teenage guys.  My husband took our youngest daughter the open/close door route.

One of the teenagers thought it was funny to do the hokey pokey with the revolving door, he stuck his right foot in and out and our whole compartment started and stopped, started and stopped.  His peers reprimanded him.  Other people gave him dirty looks.

And then it happened. 

Another guy in the teenage group told the kid messing around with the door he was a retard.  He called him retarded two or three times.

And I felt a stab in my heart.  My shoulders stiffened.  I gulped and stared at the kid.

Eye Teeth

I have a confession. 

I slip my two year old daughter baby Tylenol sometimes when my husband isn't looking. 

After ten years of marriage, my Ukrainian husband and I have practically formed our own little country: Amerikraine.  Our cultural differences that caused for pathetic arguments at first... a skin tight rainbow striped hoodie picked out of the trash, worn while jogging (my beef about him), or picking salted, dried flesh off the bones of a fish (again, my beef, I'm sensing a trend), or, maybe, a lack of deodorant (OK, I am a brat) have fizzled out over time.

In essence, we've grown up together and have thrown out things from our cultures that aren't worth keeping (here's one of mine, simply HAVING to buy something because it is on sale, even if it's not the right size).  We create new customs that aren't actually Ukrainian or American.  We do things that work for us.

Except when it comes to medication.

A Silent Birth

They say that as soon as a women bares her child, she forgets the pain and struggle of the labor.  Because she gives birth.  She actually delivers life. 

I have given birth three times.  But the last time, I feel like I didn't really give birth.  I think it was taken from me.

It's the first moments of my daughter's life that, even today, as her little two-year-old self toddles around the living room, makes me want to climb the stairs and crawl under my bed and hide. 

Dinner was a Dream

Cooking is a sensitive topic for me.  Although if we were to talk about it, I'd play it cool.  I'm a modern woman, my husband and I share responsibilities in the home and with our children, I have a blog. 

I've been married for almost ten years and my husband has done the majority of cooking.  It kind of just worked out that way. 

We married young.  I remember standing in our third floor, one bedroom apartment on Chicago and Damen on a blazing summer day, staring at all the shinny metallic cooking utensils we received as wedding gifts.  I thought they were pretty.  I had no idea how to use them.  That day my husband picked up a spatula and made an omelet. 

Life went on.  I got a full-time job and put my husband through two more years of college.  We had children and then moved overseas, to his home country nonetheless.  Over there it was easier for him to walk 1/2 a mile to the grocery store to buy the needed ingredients to pickle fish.  Shopping and cooking while dealing with a foriegn language kind of stalled what ever cooking abilities and ambitions I had. 

Tutu Much

Last Saturday morning, I waited in a crowded Chicago Park District auditorium.  My oldest daughter rested her head on my lap.  I vigorously fanned her face with a white and pink colored program.  A silhouette of a ballerina danced across the program's page. 

The air was thick.  It was the kind of day when your shirt drenches simply from sitting.  A drum beat kept time some where deep within my head.  I was worried about our youngest daughter, the latest victim of the nasty flu that recently rushed through our little family.  She was at home with my husband sipping water and watching Signing Time videos. 

I thought about all the other things I could have been doing on a Saturday morning.

But it's a performance.  Your kid signs up for an eight week class at the park district.  At the end of the class there is a show.  You go.  That's what you do even if it is stifling hot in the beginning of June.  You go begrudgingly, stand in line way too long, fight other doting parents for aisle seats and worry that your daughter will be the only one in pink ballet shoes instead of white.  You think about how you drove around Chicago to buy those pink shoes before the instructor decided to change the costumes, again. Black ballet shoes are now tucked into a gray shoe box and placed up high in the closet at home.  Maybe, hopefully, they will be useful for a future child or a future class. 

A Make Believe Mother

I am hung over from Mother’s Day. I know it was over a week ago but my head is still spinning a little. My stomach aches.

Mother’s Day is one day in the year when people are not only supposed to stop their lives and notice that you are a mother but also congratulate you on the wonderful job you are doing.

The Mother at Children's Memorial Hospital

After our third daughter was born we were told she had Down syndrome.  Among other things, possible health threats bombarded our minds. In the last two years, Polly has had her heart tested, her eyes, her ears, her thyroid, her spine. At two months old, she was forced to drink chalky liquid for x-rays of her digestive track. Those first few weeks after her birth, I fought my imagination. I imagined her sick, plagued with heart disease, taking pills, and going to various specialists for check-ups for the rest of her life.

It’s true. Children with Down syndrome are at a higher risk of heart defects, thyroid problems, hypotonia (low muscle tone), hearing loss, even, unfortunately, Cancer.