Can We Love Our Second Children As Much?

One of my very first blogger buddies was Hart Johnson. We have Oregon and writing in common and as I got to know her through comments and blog posts, I realized we also have slightly wacky senses of humor in common too...which is why I'm so excited to have her here today to help celebrate and promote her cozy mystery, The Begonia Bribe. I read The Azalea Assault in, like, a day and I'm setting aside a summer day for The Begonia Bribe too.


So you know how when you have a baby you are clueless? You make tons of mistakes, and are totally paranoid and practice CONSTANT VIGILANCE and every single BEST PRACTICE so your baby will be perfect... or as perfect as it's possible to be, considering you are CLUELESS and trying to parent from a BOOK...

And then you have a second baby, and you figure, I'm an old pro. I've done this before. I've GOT THIS.

And then your second child is totally opposite your first, and the tricks learned the first time don't work. And the advice you'd learned to ignore because it DIDN'T work is now what you need to do... And your first child suffers for lack of attention and jealousy...

It's like that...

While my books in the Garden Society Mystery series were technically written 7th and 9th, they were the first and second published, respectively... And MAN, am I going through second time mom syndrome... I'm all relaxed when I ought to be panicking, totally forgetting certain details... And I'm embarrassed to shout to the world HELLO!!! I know you gave me the FABULOUS gift of love and support a year ago, but I need it again!!! Pretty please! And things that I did and were unnecessary the first time, I skipped and totally should have done this time around... The Begonia Bribe is definitely going to need YEARS of therapy.

And all the while, I can't help comparing my children... the first was so perky and personable... she got right out there in people's faces—on a Barnes and Noble TOWER in the peak book buying month—and I got pictures of her all over the world being held by various friends... This second child seems just a little slow to warm up. I'm not sure what to do about that. Maybe she resents that I didn't eat as carefully or watch my weight as well during my pregnancy.

Erm... okay, so that strains the metaphor a bit...

She's still on a tower... so that's something. But not nearly as many shipped. Oh, I know... it has to do with how many SOLD the first time—they are trying to match better, but I'm worried it will give her an inferiority complex!

And all in all, I ALSO had a much harder time getting this book written... second in a series... how much do I retell? What portion of readers will read the first first so they know already? What portion will read them out of order so I have to watch out for spoilers? Because these are in ORDER, but the murders stand alone... so the only REAL spoilers that matter are who died and who killed them. But those sort of matter, yeah?

I'm not sure why #2 was so hard and then #3 was relatively easy... In fact my beta readers both loved #3 best of the set, but there it is. They also say with parenting: When you have one, you spend all day just gazing at your child. When you have a second, you spend all day watching your first child to make sure they don't hurt your second. When you have a third, you spend all day hiding from your children... so there's that.

Begonia Bribe Blurb Roanoke, Virginia, is home to some of the country’s most exquisite gardens, and it’s Camellia Harris’s job to promote them. But when a pint-sized beauty contest comes to town, someone decides to deliver a final judgment … A beauty pageant for little girls—the Little Miss Begonia Pageant—has decided to hold their event in a Roanoke park. Camellia is called in to help deal with the botanical details, the cute contestants, and their catty mothers. She soon realizes that the drama onstage is nothing compared to the judges row. There’s jealousy, betrayal, and a love triangle involving local newsman—and known lothario—Telly Stevens. And a mysterious saboteur is trying to stop the pageant from happening at all. But the drama turns deadly when Stevens is found dead, poisoned by some sort of plant. With a full flowerbed of potential suspects, Cam needs to dig through the evidence to uproot a killer with a deadly green thumb. Hart (aka, Alyse Carlson) writes books from her bathtub and can be found at Confessions of a Watery Tart, on Facebook (author page, profile), Twitter, or Goodreads. Book links: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

While the Cat's Away...

As of Memorial Day weekend, I'm going to be a solo parent.

No, don't worry. There's no divorce pending, but there is going to be a separation of the job-enforced variety. I promised my husband I'd be fine with it...and I am, sorta, kinda.

Did I mention it's for the whole summer?

On its face the analysis makes sense. Of course, my kids would want to spend their summer in Portland with friends and family. The idea of hanging out by ourselves in a muggy, suburban, beltway town isn't exactly appealing.

My husband will be working long hours. The kids won't have any friends yet. And still, I'm tempted to end this sentence with a pouty, frowny face. But I'll refrain...barely.

I know that military wives do this on a regular basis. Single moms too. I'm impressed, inspired and amazed by their ability to raise and provide for their families on their own. Even so, I don't want to join their ranks.

Here's the good news. At least it'll be summer.

There won't be homework to wrangle or bedtimes to enforce. In fact, aside from my kids' summer swim team, we won't have much of a schedule at all. We'll be footless and fancy-free without even the reminder of "daddy's coming home from work soon," to whip us into shape.

It's possible there will be successive days where we skip all regular meals in favor of fresh-picked fruit from Sauvie Island.

 Have I mentioned before my kids think it's the Biggest Treat Ever to skip meals? They're weirdos! I know!! They get it from me, the weirdo part that is, not the skipping meals.

One of my summer schemes, concocted as an antidote to cheer two sad little daddy-missing faces, is parent for a day. Saturdays or Sundays, one kid will get to make all the important decisions.

"You can't expect me to decide everything all summer long. I'll get decision fatigue," I told them, which, unaccountably, cheered them up.

"Can we do the grocery shopping on our parent day?" my daughter asked.

"How about if I give you cash and you buy whatever you can afford?" I said. "I'll wait at the front of the store and read a book."

They both LOVE this plan. In addition to our strawberry-filled days, it's possible succulent treats like Cocoa Krispies and Lucky Charms will be on our menu (and by ours, I mean theirs).

It's only until mid-August.

Everyone says the key is to keep busy and we're excellent at occupying our time. As I write this, there's a made-up game of, Piggies Fly, taking place in the basement.

The important thing, I keep reminding myself, is how my husband is little-boy excited about his new job. I get to feel that way whenever I start a new book. It's intoxicating, delightful and I don't want to deny him the chance to feel the same way.

In the end, his smile when he talks about what he'll be doing, is the factor that makes all the moving, packing and alone time worthwhile.

Catharsis

The last week and a half I've been wandering through my house trying to figure out what to pack away and what to leave for my unknown tenant. Sometimes I wander physically and some days its more of a mental exercise.

In the dead of the afternoon, that wasteland of time called 4:00, when my brain doesn't work and the kids are being shuffled here and there I pack boxes and make decisions.

We've all been asked the question, 'What would you take with you if the house was on fire?' Now I'm asking myself the same question with a tweak. 'What could you never replace?'

I'm in the process of discovering most of the things in my home are replaceable. Of course, I've packed away my Great-Grandma Ruth's china and the photograph albums that predate digital pictures uploaded online. There's a chair that's very important to my husband. I've had to take down all the photographs in the upstairs hallway and my bedroom, which makes sense. Even though my children have great smiles, I can't blame my future tenant for not wanting to wake up to them.

What's more interesting is the stuff I'm not taking. My Grandma Peggy's china...didn't make the cut.

I should feel bad, I suppose. But I don't. Even now, as I write this post from my dining room, I can feel it glaring at me with accusations of neglect. The truth is I've never loved it and if a piece gets broken, my heart will remain intact.

The handsome antique clock on the mantelpiece; my parents gave it to us. It's sentimental, but I think it's going to stay and not keep time for my tenants. They too, can be amused when dinner party guests panic at its false advertisements of the lateness of the hour.

All this cleaning out and putting away makes me long for the days when I could move everything I owned in one or two carloads. I hate the way all these possessions press down on me. Sometimes when I'm making my mental tallies at two in the morning, I swear I can feel the physical weight of all the things in this house.

This weekend I packed two large boxes full of my children's possessions; things I think they'll want, but won't miss.

After that I filled two garbage bags with things they'll never know are gone. Just in case I'm keeping the garbage bags in the garage for a while, but the lightness I felt after I went through those things made me want to pare down even more.

Maybe our new house will be sparse and minimalistic!

Maybe we'll be able to control that human impulse to gather things, like squirrels gathering nuts for a long winter.

It's this size!

In the basement, lying in a crumple, is an enormous museum banner advertising 'French Impressionist Masters at the Morgan Library'.

It was a gift to my husband from a family friend. It's cover-the-front-of-the-house enormous with no practical use. It's been in our attic a long time and I'm wondering if it's recent appearance in the basement next to my overpriced pink flats that give me blisters means we're both ready to acknowledge the limited use of certain items and let go.

Torture, Cupids and Other Writerly Thoughts.

A friend of mine was distracting me with faux books plots on Friday; the kind of stuff that makes me laugh and cringe all at the same time.

They started out simple: The alien overlord is thwarted.

And progressively got more complex:

The beautiful Russian KGB agent was snatched by a secret criminal group along with the missing toxic gas formula with the capacity to destroy the world.

The hopeful boy wizard's new elf friend was enspelled by an evil creature and is about to stomp on the cutest girl in the boy's class who is also the object of his first crush.

The math teacher at an all-girls school finds out her fiancé has been shot down over German lines, but she still holds out hopes of getting her students a spot on the all-Europe math quiz show.

A boy scout troop on a nature hike discovers fields of marijuana grown for a Mexican cartel just as giant pinecones fall from demon-possessed trees.

Later in the day I was thinking about how some of these giggle-worthy plots could probably be successful books.

Which, in turn, made me think about the diverse nature of the people who create books.

Sure, writers have some things in common. We all know what it feels like to fill up a blank page with hope and ideas. We have our editing woes and the dreaded moments when we think we've saved, but haven't and the computer crashes causing us to lose a chunk of  our precious words. But those are just mechanical similarities.

What fascinates me most about writers is probably the same thing that fascinates me about life. Writers, like life experiences, come in every package imaginable. It makes sense, because we reflect our individual interests back to the segment of readers who share those particular interests.

So yes, I'm glad I don't write the kind of book plots my friend was using to torture me. But I know  somewhere out there, is someone who does. And for every person who writes a book, their soul mate reader is also out there, waiting to read it.

Kinda like love, on a literary scale.

We're writerly Cupids, shooting our book arrows to infect readers with our passion, and in the process we often get shot ourselves.

When you stop to think about it, it's perfect for everyone; writers and readers alike.

Judy Blume Moments

This is how we broke the news to our children:

Husband: You know how you guys have been begging for cable TV? Now, you're going to get it, just not in this house.

Kids: We're going to get cable?!? Cartoon Network and everything??

Husband: Yep, but it'll be in Washington, D.C.

My son pumped his fist in the air and shouted, "Go Redskins! Does this mean we can go watch them play?"

My daughter slumped down in her chair and gave me an accusing look. "You're ruining my life. Don't you know it's impossible to make friends in sixth grade? Everyone's all grouped up! My clothes are going to be all wrong."

Technically, it'll be Northern Virginia. Some suburb-y beltway town where the schools are good and big trees will cover our lawn with leaves in the fall.

And we're only going for eighteen months. It's a sabbatical year and a half, at least that's how I've been trying to sell it to my daughter. But she's a suspicious customer and not overly interested in purchasing my version of reality.

She is, however, interested in the shopping trip I've promised to alleviate her fears about fitting in.

The things is, I get it. Every woman gets it.

Part of the long-lasting popularity of Judy Blume books is due to their enduring themes of girlhood trauma. No one wants to walk into a room full of sixth grade girls wearing Keds when you're sporting Converse. It's a small, seemingly unimportant detail, but to my sixth grade girl it's more monumental than any of the actual monuments we'll soon be able to see on a weekend whim.

What's more, I completely understand my daughter's angst. Already I'm mourning the loss of my Saturday morning eighties step aerobic class with friends, followed by coffee and conversation that kickstarts our day and keeps us sane.

What am I going to do without that? What am I going to do without them? What if the women in my temporary suburban home don't want to have coffee with me because, you know, women of my age are already kinda grouped up. What if they're not taking on any new friends?

The kids have had almost a week to adjust to the news. There've been ups and downs. I've discovered the reason parents bribe their children is because it works. I've also discovered the parameters of bribes should be clearly defined.

Me (handing them a catalog): It's going to be so much fun! You can design your new room.

Daughter (after 20 minutes spent absorbed in said catalog): I'll take the room that looks like it has a connected bathroom, a window seat and a deck.

Me: I meant bedspread and curtains.

Son: Can I get a loft bed shaped like Darth Vader's head? And what about my own iPad? That would look good in my room.

Me: Let's just focus on bedspreads and curtains.

Other high points have been the realization we can visit Colonial Williamsburg and the Liberty Bell.

A low point for all of us, is my husband has to start work the first week of June which means we'll spend the summer sans daddy, but soaking in more time with our beloved Oregon peeps, both family and friends who feel like family.

There's no doubt it'll be an adventure. But we're still inching along the diving board and all of us, with the exception of Child #2, are a little bit nervous about the temperature of our new swimming pool.