Mr. Raehan was out of town for five days last week…but who’s counting.

To keep the girls from crying “I miss Daddy” every time they didn’t like what I had to say, I suggested we create a journal documenting what we did when he was away.

We started on day two.

DAY TWO

Dear Daddy, I really miss you. We went to _____’s party. Hannah had a cute little pony tail sticking up. She had a pink barrette and a yellow barrette that were shaped like flowers. The scientist couldn’t come. We don’t know why. Love, Rachel

DAY THREE

Dear Daddy, Mommy looked on the computer about spiders. Me and Hannah went under the sprinkler while Mama was putting water in the fountain. What was it like to be on your trip. Hannah went poo-poo in the potty. Love, Rachel

Dear Daddy, I love her [you]. I didn’t went to school and I went poop in the potty. I want to play with my toys in my bed. It’s not morning time. Love, Hannah

DAY FOUR

Dear Dad, On day four we went to swimming lessons. Then we went to the sprinkler park. I really miss you. Love, Rachel

Dear Daddy, I so much love her [you]. Go poop in the potty. There’s no more. Love Hannah

Dear Dad, Go poo-poo in the potty. I went pee-pee in the potty and poop. Love, Hannah

Dear Rachel, Dear Daddy, Know what to do. Anyway, I love Daddy.

DAY FIVE

Dear Dad, We did ring around the rosie in the pool and Rachel did swimming lessons. Love, Rachel

Dear Dad, Dear Mom, Dear Rachel, Dear me, I went to school. Swimming school. The swimming teacher is good. (Hannah)

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The thing about poop–the dirty little secret–is that it truly is a very big deal.

Ask not why mothers who blog write about poop, ask yourself where we find such restraint. If I gave you a realistic representation of the average day poop would be a main character.

I might tell you that when I told Hannah that she shouldn’t use the word “yucky” at the dinner table, she answered solemnly, “Yes. And not poopyhead.” Or when Rachel’s Dad gave Rachel a stern warning in the car to not say Poop one more time, she said quietly, “Pooh……..bear.”

I might talk about how Hannah’s breakthrough to pooping on the potty involved a vivid battle in the hallway between her refusal to put a diaper on and a fear of pooping without a diaper. It involved intense squatting, and sweating, and panic, and finally a surrender and throwing up of arms to let me grab her and put her on the potty. It ended with cheers and ice-cream. It reminded me of giving birth to Rachel, except nobody gave me ice-cream…and Hannah repeated the process about three times in that hallway that afternoon, so I suppose she had metaphoric poop triplets, or something like that.

I might tell you my many, many stories of using public restrooms with the girls. How anytime I try to sneak away to use a public loo, Rachel says, “I have to go, too” and Hannah follows. I might tell you how I never get to go first. I might tell you about the many times Rachel has requested that I face the toilet stall door while she poops. I might tell you how hard it is to keep Hannah’s hands off those sanitary napkin containers. I might tell you how when I can finally sit down and let loose, the girls start trying to unlock the stall door, and there have been times, when they have, yes, left me sitting there.

I might tell you what a scarring experience an automatic flushing toilet can be for a two year old, and about the time in the airport when Rachel was two and she kept wanting me to give her privacy, so I’d try to get out of the stall, but then the toilet would flush, and she’d scream and call me back in. And how this cycle repeated about ten times before the madness ended. I might tell you how this made her wary of public toilets for the next ten months.

I might tell you how, when I finally get some alone time in the bathroom, my dog pushes the door wide open with her nose, and walks away.

I might tell you how my quintessential worst moment as a parent involved a flu-ridden me and a constipated baby on a changing table.

I might tell you how Hannah poops EVERY SINGLE time she sits on the potty now (which is about eight times a day. We all should be that lucky.) and that this is a source of joy and pride to her.

You see, Ms. Poop would be this complicated, wonderful character if I let her be who she really is here. Instead, on most days, I write her out of our lives. She only gets to play bit parts now and then. The thing is, people can only tolerate so much poop talk. I’m not that stupid. I GET it.

So pooh……….bear.

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I have been married to my husband for fifteen years. I got married at 23, he was 26. Looking back, it was the best and wildest decision I/we ever made.

We got married with no money, had an interfaith service, flew to Scotland a month later to live off student loans and part-time jobs and pursue graduate degrees. We were Dr. Laura’s worst nightmare, considering she frowns on marrying young, with no money, and she does not believe in interfaith marriages.

Nothing ever came easily to us, though I think it sometimes has looked that way to people, because we have loved our lives. Our relationship is not smooth. We fight, we make up, we learn, we grow. We are happy. We remember who we were and appreciate who we are. We are truly partners in life. Our relationship is our foundation.

I still only wear a thin plain wedding band. Mr. Raehan occasionally asks me about buying a new ring, but I’d like to buy a good piano instead. (In fact we went piano shopping on the way home today). And my thin band has a lot of sentimental value to me. If I ever get a new ring, it will not be a “keeping up with the Jones” ring. It will probably be a gemstone ring with symbolic meaning. I haven’t figured out what I want that meaning to be. And I DO want that piano….and to finish my garden. The ring will have to wait. Something tells me there will always be something else that I want more. And besides, I destroy rings. I wouldn’t want to do that to a ring that’s worth a lot of money.

On our first anniversary we went to the western isles of Scotland. On our second anniversary, we went dinner in the Jewish quarter of East Berlin and to a movie. On our third anniversary we had fish and chips on the eastern coast of Scotland. And then we lose track. We don’t have clear memories of what we did on other anniversaries.

But for this annivesary (this week), we spent our first night away as a couple from the kids (last night). We hired a babysitter and went up into the mountains for 24 hours. We hiked; we dined; we slept in a room with a wood fireplace and the first sight I saw when I opened my eyes this morning was the sun rising over the hills and pines. I can’t remember the last time I’ve enjoyed twenty-four hours so much.

I was talking to a friend a few weeks ago who was visiting from out of town. She was thousands of miles away from her kids. I asked her if she missed them and she said no. I felt so jealous of her because I was in the middle of taking my intense course and at the end of a long day was always completely stressed from missing and worrying about the kids. I wanted to be more like her. Ahhhh….to let go. I wanted that.

But you know what? This weekend I didn’t miss the kids.

And they didn’t miss us. They had a blast and we (the big kids) were who we were again.

Only we were better.

And the two of us became enamored with our mountain. Each mountain is a life force of its own. It has a personality and depth and richness. Some people climb mountains. I want to have a relationship with mine.

(This is where I was supposed to post beautiful photos, except the battery on my camera was not charged. I’m borrowign one that looks a lot like a spot that we hiked in.)

See you next Monday, folks. I’m going to be playing around with my sidebar this week. I want to get my blogroll off of there and put up a few features like “Recent Conversation,” with little interesting snippets. Keep your eye out.