parenting

Becoming a Family Cyclist

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

Text: "Becoming a Family Cyclist / We'll Eat You Up, We Love You So" Photo: Bicyclists standing in a group with their bicyclists in a park

Ants. So many ants. They were crawling all over the seat, fabric and metal bars of my bike trailer. I poked at the swarm with a leaf, but they just scattered. I sprayed them with Lysol, but that didn’t seem to faze them. Finally, after hearing many proclaimations of “Ew!”, Chris stepped in. After spraying the whole trailer with the hose and shaking it upside down, he declared that I would not be bringing Little Bird on his first ever bike ride that day.

Before I became a mother, I had dealt with a lot of problems on the bike, from flat tires to thigh-grinding hills. But never ant infestations. This was only one of the many times I’ve had to adapt one of my major passions after becoming a parent.

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Learning to Be Away from My Children

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Text: "Learning to Be Away from My Children / We'll Eat You Up, We Love You So" Photo: Airplane wing overlapping with a sunset.

Bing! The chime on my phone rings, indicating a new message. It’s a video from Chris, reaching across the country to me while I’m on a work trip in New Mexico. It starts focusing on Sprout, being a lump on the couch with his red velour blanket over his head. The camera then swerves to Little Bird, who is walking towards it. Walking! When the hell did that happen? At that moment, I realized just how long a week away is when you have young children.

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What I Told My Three Year Old About Death

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

What I Told My Three Year Old About Death (Photo: Gravestones in grass at sunset)

As I peered up between my legs at my ob-gyn, I learned that I couldn’t attend my grandmother’s funeral.

“You’re four centimeters dilated,” she told me.

“So I shouldn’t go to New Jersey on Monday then?” I asked.

“You probably shouldn’t travel out of state,” she responded.

She was right. My younger son was born that afternoon. Between not attending the funeral and the chaos of a new baby, I never told my older son about my grandmother’s death. He had only met her once, briefly, so it would have met little to him anyway.

But the whole thing made me realize how urgent it was to talk to him about death. That’s in part because my other grandmother is getting up in years. My older son (nicknamed Sprout) has met “Grammy” several times and knows her well enough. While her passing may be years away, there’s no way to know. Needless to say, I didn’t want finding out about her death to be his introduction to the topic.

But I had no idea where to start.

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What You Don’t See

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

“So what time do you get home?” I asked. I desperately wanted to know how my friends had managed to solve the conundrum of living in the suburbs with young kids – how to spend time with them while also getting them to bed at a reasonable hour. They had just told me that they got their one-year-old to bed by 7:30 pm, a feat that has never happened at our house.

“6:30,” my friend replied, shrugging. “We grab her something out of the fridge and do the bedtime routine.”

I blinked. They didn’t have dinner together. Or much time together at all on weekdays. I literally had not considered that possibility.

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On Little Bird’s First Birthday

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Photo: Baby lying next to a swaddled teddy bear; Text: "On Little Bird's First Birthday / We'll Eat You Up, We Love You So"

“Ah ah, come back here!” I yelp as my baby once again arches his back, flips over and stands up on his changing table. Somewhere between wrestling and tickling him, I finally manage to get a fresh diaper on. But that’s Little Bird at one year old – high energy and big emotions.

When he was first born, he was a touch over five pounds. He was just bigger than his teddy bear, swaddled in thin blankets. Still convinced that he belonged in the womb, he dozed in the pack-and-play even when his brother was sing-yelling next to him. At first, it seemed like he was going to be adorably sleepy and quiet.

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Storytime with Hop and Bun, the Imaginary Bunnies

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments
Photo: Stuffed white rabbit sitting on a bookshelf. Text:

This is actually Snowball, our “pet bunny.” But good luck getting a photo of an imaginary friend.

“Tell me a Hop and Bun story,” Sprout says, his pants around his ankles as he’s sitting on the toilet. Perched on the side of the bathtub, I look off into the distance, as if I can pluck an idea from the mirror above the sink. “Hmmmm, well,” I stall, wracking my brain. “Once upon a time, there were two bunnies, named Hop and Bun. They were best friends. One day…”

Eventually, I always come up with something. The plots have ranged from the hapless bunnies getting lost on the subway to saving up money and buying a scooter.

While I love telling Sprout stories – despite the odd circumstances – that’s not my favorite part of this routine. No – it’s the fact that Hop and Bun are utterly from Sprout’s imagination. I played no part in their creation. They aren’t drawn from a book or TV show. One day, Sprout just declared that he was a bunny named Hop and Bun was his friend.

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10 Ways a “Simple Afternoon” Can Go Awry

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

10-ways-a-simple-afternoon-can-go-awry

The afternoon stretched before me, ripe with potential. With Chris taking the car in for repairs, I had the kids to myself on a warm, sunny day. The park nearby beckoned. The seeds for our garden still needed starting, months before they could go in the ground. And we still had the make-your-own bird feeder activity I had promised Sprout that we would do since we got birdseed in church for some mysterious reason. Why not do it all? None of it would take very long, right? Silly me.

Here’s a few of the ways an afternoon filled with old-fashioned activities can go not-quite-as-planned:

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The Before and After of Motherhood

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 5 Comments

Text: "The Before and After of Motherhood / We'll Eat You Up, We Love You So" Photo: Woman climbing on the side of a cliff.

I was never cool. All of those things women lament about giving up when they have kids? I never did them. Instead, my transformation as a mom has been more subtle but no less radical.

I never went out clubbing. Okay, I did, but I usually complained that it was too loud or too crowded or played music I didn’t like. My husband worked nights and weekends for years and I wasn’t going to go alone, so it was a rare occasion at best.

I never dressed up in perfect makeup and stiletto heels. Mascara makes my eyelashes stick to my face. Lipstick makes my lips feel weird. I’ve never even tried to wear stilettos. The only time I’ve ever been in full makeup was my wedding; it felt like a mask.

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Being Present in the Dark

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

being-present-in-the-dark

The room is dark and my eyelids flutter. My baby, who is in my arms, squirms and calls out, shrieking, then whimpering. I startle awake and gaze down at him, taking in his round cheeks and elfin nose. His eyes are closed, but out of exhaustion, not relaxation. Cries of pain and discomfort slip from his mouth, no matter how much I hug or rock him. His teeth are coming in and even medicine isn’t quite enough.

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