I have never been one to try to investigate the gender of an animal if it's not readily obvious. I had just taken the kids' word for it that Nibbles was a girl. In fact, we took our cat Klaus into the vet a couple weeks ago to be neutered, and I was so afraid they were going to call me and say, "Um, Mrs. Slagter, Klaus doesn't need to be neutered. She needs to be spayed." The extra cost aside, I knew I would be embarrassed to have been found not knowing my own cat's gender. Thankfully, Klaus did turn out to be a boy, and we have the neuter bill to prove it.
Back to Nibbles... My husband, who grew up on a farm, was called in on this gender confusion issue, and quickly put it to rest. "Yep," he proclaimed following a quick examination, "he's a boy." Claire seemed a little proud of herself having been the one to discover the discrepancy. I must say, she is a tad more observant than I am when it comes to the pets.
Tonight, Claire and I were in the car alone together, and she said to me, "Does Nibbles sound like a boy name to you?" I replied, "Well, I think it could go either way." She said, "It sounds like a girl name to me." I asked her what she thinks a good boy name for a hamster would be, and she said she didn't know, but she remained unsettled just calling him "Nibbles", as if he might have been finding it emasculating all this time.
This made me think of "Arry Carlson". I sometimes listen to a radio station here in our local area. From time to time, a person named "Arry Carlson" will come on to give us the latest in local news. I don't know what kind of name "Arry" is or if I'm even spelling it correctly. However, after thorough listening, I have become quite certain that there is no "H" at the beginning of that name (which, by the way, would make him decidedly male, as I'm certain I've not known of any females named Harry). The disturbing part is that this person's voice sounds very high-pitched for a man or very low-pitched for a woman. This leaves me thoroughly confused. I know I shouldn't sweat it, but I like to be able to picture the person talking on the radio, and I have no idea if I should picture a man or a woman in this case. I wonder if anyone has heard him/her and could give me some insight here. I'm always afraid to ask anyone locally, thinking someone might say, "Yeah, that's my Uncle Arry or my sister's best friend Arry," and be offended that I asked the question. I guess I could just picture a "Pat"-like character. If you remember the 90's Saturday Night Live skit with the androgynous character named "Pat". In these maddening skits, there was a character who was impossible to pin down as one gender or another. I have started taking votes within our family though, and I think the general consensus is that, with regard to "Arry" - he is a boy.
These issues are very important in our house. Maybe it's because there are so many girls and so many boys and a competitive spirit between the two. Levi likes to introduce himself to strangers, and he also likes to introduce his sister Violet. He says, "This is my Violet. She's a grill." (She's not actually a grill, mind you, but rather a female g-i-r-l.) This never ceases to bring out the laughter of his siblings. A few weeks ago, I thought I had killed our male cat, Klaus. I shut the garage door, and he ran out at the last second getting pinned beneath the door. As I watched him squirm and struggle while trying to get the garage door button to work, my heart sank in despair that we would lose yet another kitten in a macabre accident. Happily, he ended up no worse for wear, but I think he is down to 8 lives now. However, a week later, our female cat, Wolfy, drowned in our pool on a rainy Saturday morning. This was heartbreaking for most of us. This means that the boys are winning now in our house. We have 3 human males, 1 male dog, 1 male cat, and, as it turns out, one male hamster. I'd put money on the fish being male too at this point. That leaves us females outnumbered at least 6/4.
As some of you know, I have been struggling through some health issues lately with regard to my back. I have been advised not to lift things or bend too far over, etc. I have had great difficulty with these "rules", because I have two children whom I lift several times a day. I lift them into bed. I lift them onto the counter. I love to hold and snuggle them. I think it's become even more difficult for me, because I'm realizing that I have difficulty relating to very young children any other way. I am ashamed to admit that I have minimal imagination and similarly minimal motivation to try to think of ways to engage my toddlers meaningfully. I am very focused on the schooling of my oldest three children, and I am often absorbed in that task to the near exclusion of much else. I have never felt particularly able to engage babies and toddlers or tend to do so on a level too mature for their level of communication. I do, however, have the ability (usually) to lift, hold, and snuggle the toddlers - which makes me feel more "able". Lately, however, as a good deal of that ability has been taken away from me, I have started to feel that sadness creep in - mother guilt - that I'm not having enough fun with Levi and Violet and that I am not a good mother to our littlest ones. I really want to relate to them better. I just have no idea how to get there from here.
Like so many other people, I am a perfectionist about certain things. I hate to even use that word, because I think pretty much every person has perfectionistic tendencies in one way or another. Perfectionists are always frustrated perfectionists. There is no one who can attain the standard for which they strive, if that standard is perfection. God alone sets and achieves that standard. However, I am admittedly an "all or nothing" person. If I can't get it all right, I don't want to try. If I can't believe in something 100%, I am all out. This translates into my relationships also. If I can't attain a high level of mutual satisfaction in a relationship, I am tempted to retreat from it, in order to not feel like a failure. I hate this about myself, because it has definitely entered into my relationship with my children.
Like other things, I decided to commit it to prayer. After all, I am certain that if I have a desire to have fun and/or relate meaningfully to any of my children, God has given me that desire. It's a right desire. I hadn't really thought of praying about it before, because I guess I just thought that if God wanted me to be good with kids, I would have been born that way. When I think about that, it seems silly. After all, I'm a lot of things God didn't make me to be - selfish, proud, impatient, etc. Sometimes, it's easy to believe that if we don't take to something immediately though, God just didn't intend for us to be good at it. Or, if we struggle with something difficult about ourselves, we should just let ourselves off the hook, because if God had wanted us to be perfect, he would have made us that way.
Anyway, I guess the good news is that tonight I sat on the floor with Violet. She brought me two bouncy balls, and we played with them for a long time. Levi joined in, and then Claire joined too. Before I knew it, we had played until bed time. I knew that it didn't have to be as difficult as I was making it, but I didn't know it could be so completely effortless.
Psalm 37:4-5 says, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in Him, and He will do it." I knew that God would give me the desires of my heart, but I didn't know that He would give me the desires of my heart. What I mean by that is that He took the desires of my heart - being comfortable, being selfish, being lazy... and gave me different ones. He gave me the desire to be a better mother, and He is showing me how to do it. It won't just fall in my lap. I partner with Him. We do it together, but I am so glad that He isn't just letting me keep my selfish desires - walking through life missing out on the joy of truly loving my children - grills and boys - with more than just my heart, with my actions too.
