I saw a man that I know from the children’s school the other day. He was pushing one of those un-maneuverable racecar shopping carts with his two little boys gleefully air driving in the front.

When I commented on how sweet they looked he retorted, “Yeah, they can be sweet sometimes,” and I couldn’t relate more.

He continued to say what everybody says, “boys are high energy when they are young but girls give you hell when they become teenagers.”

“Really,” I said. “My sister’s and I were relatively easy on our parents,” right Melanie, Mommy and Tutti? (If you haven’t noticed yet, my family often comments on my posts)

He went on to say, “Boys just try to kill themselves by being reckless with their bodies, girls don’t listen and do things that can be life altering,” and that made me feel oh so much better.

The other night, Brevitt and I were wrestling together, he in his red footsie pajamas, a popular trend at school. We lay on top of each other laughing as he smooshed my face into “hilarious” positions and a memory of my sister, Michele, flashed into my head. Her now fourteen year old was five and he was lying on top of her soaking in all of her love and it reminded me that I must hold on to this moment for as long as possible because soon, real soon, Brevitt will not feel comfortable with feeling me so close to him. We lay there forever wrapped in each others arms as he told me a whole lot of insightful information about his friends, school and life in general.

The next day I went to my friends house to pick up my boys. They were playing their favorite sport, dodgeball, down in her basement with her two sons. It sounded as if a sacrifice was being performed. When I went down to check on them a speeding ball whizzed by and landed smack into Axel’s face, which didn’t seem to phase him.

I walked upstairs and asked horrified, “Is this how people feel when they visit my house? Stunned and psychologically disturbed by all of the noise and energy? It is no wonder why I don’t have many visitors anymore.”

As she sat there calmly reading the newspaper, she replied, “I love it….or at least, I have learned to embrace it.”

It is true that quite often I reach a breaking point with my boys and need to tell them that, “mommy is closed”. It is my dysfunctional way of getting a brief respite from all of the chaos.

But I will say this, when I am outside with the boys, or when we are indoors and they are being sweet and calm, they are my entertainment and my companions, filling the house with laughter and there is nobody in the world who I would rather be with.

In two to five years from now they will transform into different beings and I will have to connect with them on a different scale. For now though, I’ll embrace them and all of their energy and wrap them into my arms as much as they will allow, when I’m not reprimanding them for riding their bikes down the enormous ski ramp that Wade built in our backyard. Anybody care to share their Xanax with me????

Last Friday I put on my ski clothes, as I got the boys ready for school, and my adrenaline was pumping in anticipation of letting loose all of my pent up aggression as I skied through the freshly fallen snow.

If you live in a ski resort, you live for snow, lots and lots of snow. When it doesn’t snow and you’re dealt with bitter cold days without mounds of snow to throw your kids into and built forts with, than tempers begin to brew and foam and people find it best to keep to themselves lest the fists start flying.

“Our good Mommy is back,” the boys declared on our way to school as I blared their favorite radio station, 100.5 Radio Free Aspen, a station that plays the same top ten hip hop songs repeatedly to ensure that you learn every word to Akon’s “Sexy Bitch” by heart. Yes, I know, totally inappropriate but we love music and dancing so what are you going to do?

Picking up the girls down the street,  I watched as the little one quietly inserted her thumb into her mouth as her big blue eyes innocently took us all in. Being a fellow thumb sucker, until I was ten, I deeply empathized. I knew that the music was a complete departure to the songs that she was used to listening to on her way to school like, “This land is your land,” and I wondered if it was all too much culture shock for her.

When we arrived at school Axel began to whimper. He had dark rings under his eyes and complained of a tummy ache. I looked into his melt chocolate eyes with long dark lashes and I realized that I could not pump him up on Motrin & Vitamin C and send him on his way, not even with the superb combination of best friends and powder awaiting just fifteen minutes away.

I had to work hard to not show my frustration and resentment that my day had taken a turn but my perceptive little boy knew what was up and I saw him grow sad with the acknowledgment that I was wishing to be elsewhere when all he so desperately needed was my undivided attention.

As the day progressed Axel revealed to me his deepest thoughts and I made a pact to myself to allow these precious moments to happen on a daily basis. I absorbed every detail of his stories, how he got in trouble at school for talking when he was actually defending a student who was being made fun of and how his teacher did not listen to him when he tried to explain and so he just gave up.

We talked about the pain he feels when he hurts himself and he said, “I shake my body until the pain goes away but when somebody hurts my feelings, that is when I cry, even though I don’t want to.” Tears came to my eyes as I listened to my quiet little boy who has learned to keep his thoughts to himself because nobody seems to hear what he has to say.

Axel’s message was clear, I was just as guilty as his teacher’s who fall into the pattern of coexisting without communicating or connecting and I became determined to change that. As my mother always says,  these are the best times of my life and I need to appreciate them while they are here.

The boys are growing up quickly and I need to remain present or I will miss many a precious moment and I thank Axel for this reality check, the mountain can wait.

“What’s that smell?”

Walking around Aspen

Yesterday was not such a good day, at least when the boys were around. Brevitt went to sleep the night before with high anxiety over his inability to comprehend his math teacher and woke up feigning illness. I gave him a simple math problem, “Brevitt + no school = higher anxiety,” and lightly smacked his little bottom up the stairs to get dressed.

I have been making a concentrated effort to sleep more and woke up too late to think straight resulting in mass confusion. I herded the boys into the car ten minutes late and left the healthy part of the lunch behind to sit on the counter all day.

After school, Tucker’s preschool teacher said, “We supplemented Tucker’s lunchbox today with something healthy for him,” since all that was in his lunchbox was the processed snacks that I had bought for them when I had a weak moment in the grocery store because I felt badly that they always looked so longingly at their friends lunchboxes.

As for the big boys, they ended up having no lunch at all. For some reason the once a week hot lunch that is served at school, was not served yesterday.

So I came to school to greet hungry boys who did not want to ski, even though I just about killed myself loading the car with their equipment and warm clothes. They immediately began their whining about my “no more sugar” rule. “Never again?” they asked. “Even on special occasions?” “No, NEVER,” I returned. “The sugar fuels Axel’s migraines, Tucker’s temper tantrums and Brevitt’s anxiety so no more giving in to your constant pleas for the evil stuff.”

Life is a roller coaster and I am being tossed about with high emotions and sharp turns as I hurry up and wait to get my book marketed, work on my new business, Aspen Real Life, and love and nurture my three boys, husband, sisters, friends and parents (which includes my in-laws). I won’t even go into the time it takes to connect with my new friends on the internet who have become my support and my comfort. If only I enjoyed being hung upside down in a state of peril.

I should enjoy these crazy times and embrace them knowing that these unbearable moments will soon pass leaving me with the exhilaration that I just made it through another loop by sheer will, determination and positive thinking, “You are good, you will succeed, it is all worth it, even though Axel was in tears last night because he was looking at pictures of you smiling and said that you never smile or laugh anymore.”

And Axel is right. I have aged in this past year in my attempt to create the impossible. I am looking older and more haggard and even have had to get eyeglasses from too much writing on the computer. My muscles are softening and my bottom is flattening out from too much sitting and my energy comes in short spurts but, but, but I believe it is all going to turn around soon. It has to, and in the meantime I have decided to throw three sheets to the wind, which is probably another metaphor that I have messed up but don’t have time to research, and am going to do what I love to do more than anything else in the world, aside from being with my boys. I am going to bring my Taurean self up to the ski slopes and puff out all of my pent up aggression, as I plow through and in and above the powder only concentrating on my next turn and getting to the bottom of the run without stopping…ever!