He sits on a rock, reading, and I know already how this will play out, because he’s the one who asked to come here to the library playground, but that book is pulling him deeper into its pages, so my warning, “Five more minutes to play, Jadon,” goes unheard.
So when it’s time to leave, I’m already expecting that response, and I’m ready.
Except I’m not.
Because he tosses the book aside and is gone before I even blink, racing into the thin woods that surround this library.
Anger flames my face, but I do not follow because his brothers, littler than he, are still there on the playground. I do the only thing I know to do, walk his brothers back to the car and strap them in their seats and tell them to stay there until I get back, and then I crack the windows, lock the car and speed-walk the path through the woods so thin and close I can still see my boys’ heads in the backseat of the van.
Five minutes of calling his name, walking that path, and panic starts clogging my throat.
Is he hurt, lying somewhere unconscious that I can’t see and will probably never find? Did someone take him in those few minutes I didn’t follow? Did he run off for good like he always says he’s going to?
How do I ask for help and admit this failure? How do I keep looking alone, when panic has already blinded my eyes blurry? How do I tell his daddy he’s gone?
And then I see him, blue shirt flapping against his chest in the wind, standing beside our van like he’s waiting to get in, like he didn’t just run off and ignore my calls, like he intended to come home with us all along.
Anger trades places with panic.
He can see it on my face, this boy who perceives everything, and his eyes drop to the ground, but I only say, “Get in the car, Jadon,” and for once in his 7 years, he doesn’t argue.
“We’re going to talk about this at home because I feel too angry right now,” I say, backing the van out of the lot, and it’s the first time I’ve said those words, ever, because I am finally, finally beginning to learn how to control the tongue in those critical anger-moments, and most days I fail but some days, every once in a while, I win.
We pull into our drive, and I help his brothers out of the car, and he brings in all those library books that usually get left in the car, without my even asking him, and then he sits quietly in a chair, waiting. His daddy comes into the room because he wants to know what’s happened, how to explain a panicked text from me.
Our boy tells of how he sat on a rock to read and suddenly Mama told him it was time to go, and he felt angry, so he went to get some exercise (because the path through the woods has exercise equipment along its way), and as soon as he was done, he ran back to the car.
And then I tell him my side, how I saw a boy, angry, running off into the woods without one word, how I called his name and he didn’t answer and I searched high and low and couldn’t find him and thought someone had taken him or he’d run off for good, how I felt so, so, so scared that I had lost my beloved.
I hear it in the way he says, “I’m sorry, Mama,” how he means it, and I can see it in his eyes, what he has learned from this, and we spell it out for him, the consequence for this running off without using words. And even though I’d rather not have lived those five minutes of panic when a little boy seemed lost, I cannot help but think how valuable this has been for all of us, this getting a glimpse into another’s point of view and alternative experiences, how maybe this is a lesson in humility.
Because humility teaches us we don’t really know all there is to know about anything.
A viewpoint is exactly that, a view from a point, and we need each other to see wide and deep and sure.
There I was, assuming when my boy ran into the woods that he’d done it to punish me, because he knew exactly how scared I would be when I could not find him, but that 7-year-old had no idea how a Mama-mind works. My fear surprised him. He knew where he was. He was safe. He was in control. He could see me and his brothers and the van, too, from where he exercised.
But now he knows how a mama panics when she can’t find her boy, how his actions have a ripple effect, a phone call to a daddy, a scared little brother who thinks big brother is gone, a mama stuck and panicked and alone in those thin-but-still-dark woods.
This is valuable.
I wonder how many moments like this one I have missed because I let anger rule the day and did not seek to understand a child mind and heart, did not take the time to share my own mind and heart?
May we always see the wisdom of engaged conversation, even with the children. Especially with the children.
In this episode, I showcase a high fantasy series from Ursula LeGuin, Brene Brown’s newest book, the workout magic of Lindsay Brin and an inside look at my NaNoWriMo book, My Brother Oliver.
Baby you’re a wheel of death
You have stinky breath
You make me go “Ew ew ew
That smells like poo poo poo
Capital Cities’ “Safe and Sound:”
I can throw you up
I can throw up on the toilet seat and toot like a birdie tweet
You can be my luck
Even if the sky is going round I know that we’ll be poopy pound
Poopy pound
Poopy pound
Calvin Harris’s “Blame It On the Night:”
Blame it on my peepee
Eee eee
Don’t blame it on me
Don’t blame it on me
Blame it on my peepee
Eee eee
Don’t blame it on me
Don’t blame it on me
Owl City’s “It’s Always A Good Time:”
Whoa-oa-oh
It’s always a good time
Tooooo pooooop
We don’t even have to try
It’s always a good time.
Village People’s “YMCA:”
Young man
I have a disease
I said young man
I am going to sneeze
I said young man
You don’t want my disease
It’s a ba-na-na allergy
Before I launched my first self-published book, This is How I Know: a book of poetry, I spent hours poring over launch strategy and trying to figure out the best way to go about launching a book of entertainment, because even though writing comes naturally to me, marketing does not. Not even a little bit.
Much of the information out there has to do with launching a product like a course or a book that has a specific takeaway with it, and it isn’t really geared toward entertainment things like fiction or songwriting or something that is more a “want” than a “need” for people (even though, arguably, people need entertainment in their lives or they’re not really lives worth living). So, in a way, I felt like I was crossing into uncharted territory.
That’s what made me want to write down every single strategy we came up with for our book launch—because I knew that I’d be doing it again, and I needed to learn from my mistakes and tweak my process so that every subsequent book release would do better than the last. No one else would do that for me. No one else could tell me exactly what would work, because I was selling entertainment, which has a completely different value proposition than something like a self-help book. People aren’t learning something from my project. They are feeling something. That means I had to invoke emotion.
So I wrote the copy for a landing page and three videos that we used to promote the project, and I made sure that emotion was in every bit of it. And I think it was a pretty good effort—but as I shared in the last post, there were certain things we could have done better.
It’s important that every time we’re doing a product launch, we are analyzing and assessing our efforts and keeping track of what works and what doesn’t, because if we want to build a business out of this writing, we’re going to have to come out with more products. Which means we’re going to have to launch them. Which means we’re going to have to have a solid strategy.
I came into that first launch knowing that it would not be done perfectly. Maybe none of the launches will ever be done perfectly, but the one thing I can guarantee is that every one of them will be better than the last. Because I have come up with an evaluation plan.
It’s funny how we implement things like evaluations into other parts of life. What’s working in this parenting? What’s not working in the way our family eats dinner together? What can we do better.
And yet, when it comes to writing and running a business, we excuse ourselves from it, because it’s “just not for us.” We just want to be writing. We just want to be creating. We just want to use our time wisely.
But the thing is, we’re using our time wisely in evaluation. Not only in evaluation of our stories in the rewriting and editing processes, but also in the evaluation of our strategies behind things like book launches. This is what will monetize our business—and even if we’re doing writing just because we love it (which I hope we’re all doing), if we ever want to succeed as an author, we’re going to have to monetize it. It’s what agents will tell you when you pitch a book. It’s what publishers will tell you before they’ll buy your book. It’s what you have to tell yourself if you’re self publishing.
And the only way to get better at monetizing our art and launching our products is to evaluate and learn from what we have done before and from what others have done.
After my book launch was all over and done, Husband, who is a branding consultant and content marketer, and I sat down to analyze what we’d done and what we could do better. I shared a little about that in the last post. And as soon as we finished that, we began to plan the next release, which would happen six weeks later.
Because even though my poetry book only sold about 11 copies, because my audience is still relatively small, and an even smaller percentage of people will actually buy a book, I knew that the best way to keep growing my audience was to keep producing products. Keep writing books. Keep launching them out into the world.
But not without a plan.
Here are some ways you can be learning and refining your launch strategy.
Step 1: Research
Research is necessary for effective launches. There are always things we can improve on, and unless we have a background in marketing and product launches, we’re probably not going to be able to know everything there is to know about how to effectively launch a book into the marketplace. We can learn from people who know much more than we do.
One of the best resources on product launches, in my opinion, is Jeff Walker. He runs the Product Launch Formula, and he’s fantastically generous with his content and offers a paid course for those interested. I have not take the paid course, but as soon as there’s budget for it, I plan to.
Step 2: Assess.
Look with a critical eye on what went well and what didn’t. Unless we’re constantly assessing these things, they’re not just going to jump out at us. It wasn’t until Husband and I sat down and looked at stats and numbers of views for videos that we could figure out what might have gone wrong or exactly right in our strategy. And of course there will be some variables, because sometimes it’s just a bad time of year or a bad day of the week, and there’s not really a way to analyze why, but if we’re experimenting and keeping track of things like stats and response and sales, we can better know where to go from here.
Assess not only stats but also the quality of content you put out about your book. Sometimes there are tiny little things that could be tweaked to have a better result. It’s best to analyze these aspects with someone who isn’t quite as connected to it, because we can often be blind to our own work.
Step 3: Implement/tweak.
Once you’ve assessed what worked and what didn’t work, make a plan for the next launch that will implement and tweak the problem areas. If we’re not constantly improving, we’re either remaining in a static place or moving backward. Analyzing has not purpose if we’re not willing to tweak the places that need improvement.
Step 4: Experiment with the launch.
I try to keep in mind that every launch I do is an experiment. I’m probably never going to have this whole thing figured out. But I do expect to get better and better at it, and, eventually, I’ll develop my own solid strategy that works for me. I don’t know that there can be any formulas, per se, because each book will be individual for its own market, but I can constantly experiment with what works and then assess and tweak and continue doing research that will put me on better footing for the next time.
Step 5: Repeat.
These steps will be repeated again and again and again, as many times as we are laughing projects. And before we know it, we’ll get really, really good at them, so they’ll become more second nature. Before we even start a project, we’ll be thinking about how we might launch it.
These steps will guarantee we get better at every successive book launch.
Husband and my older boys have lately been trying to cram in some viewings of old Star Wars movies before the new one comes out. It’s important, Husband says, to introduce them to Luke and Yoda and Hans and, most of all, The Force.
I see his point. I mean, I remember watching all the Star Wars movies as a kid and enjoying the story, because it’s a good one, and even thinking that maybe, just maybe The Force was real, and I could one day do what Luke Skywalker did, if I could only find a light saber.
It’s just that when he says it’s important to introduce the boys to The Force, I take exception. Because my boys are already well-acquainted with The Force. It’s what they use to
1. Get their clothes in the laundry hamper…or not.
I know, I know. All the times I’ve come across their renegade pieces of clothing, smashed right up against a laundry hamper, it’s just because they’re still not that great at using The Force to get their clothes inside it. They just need a little more practice. That’s all. And when I come across a shirt or some pants or missing underwear on the couch or their bedroom floor or in the bathroom sink, it’s probably because one of their brothers did an arm fart in the middle of their putting-away-my-clothes-by-using-The-Force practice, and that’s why their aim is so far off. Fewer distractions, they need.
2. Put their dirty bowls, silverware and plates in the sink…or not.
It doesn’t matter if they’ve had three times every day for the last eight years to practice this skill, it’s just a really tough one to learn. I can understand that. Some things take time. Lots of time. I realize they really, really, really want to get those bowls and silverware and plates in the sink, but The Force isn’t strong enough to even pick them up off the table. Maybe The Force doesn’t work as well when it comes to wood and food. Force interference, they are.
3. Turn off lights…or not.
I get that this is a tricky thing to do, that flicking a finger from across the room to turn the light off in the last room they left. I’m sure The Force employs some intricately designed movement that requires motor skills my boys don’t have yet, because every time I pass their rooms at any time of the day, the light is blazing and no one’s home. When I point out the left-on light, they act like they forgot, but that’s just a ruse, because boys don’t always like admitting to what they can’t yet do. Better honed motor skills, this requires.
4. Set the table…or not.
I’m sure this goes back to The Force not working when it comes to things like wood and food, or forks and spoons and plates, because every time I ask one of them to set the table so I can finish up dinner, I turn around to put all those pots and pans on the table, and there are no plates and forks and spoons with which to eat, and they’re all in the living room reading or building a block tower or banging out an original melody on the piano, as if they thought this job was already done. Different kind of Force, this entails.
5. Shut the door…or not.
You would think this might be the easiest of them all. Go out the door, pull The Force along with you. Come inside, fling The Force behind you. But I guess I have some young Padawans who haven’t quite made it to Jedi status, because most of time, when they’re coming in or out, they don’t even seem to notice the door standing ajar and all the flies following them in. I wish there were a Force that could beat the flies, because they seem to love our house. So much so that the 6-year-old wrote an essay in school about how if he had a pet, it would be a fly-eating frog, so it could catch all the flies his mom hates. Which is why I really want my kids to master this closing-the-door-using-The-Force, because we don’t need kids’ teachers to know about things like that. More Physical Force, I demand.
6. Wash their bodies…or not.
I really wish I could help them here. If only words could pull enough of The Force with them to lather up the kids in the bath. Because “make sure it’s the first thing you do” is the same thing I say every single night when they get in the bath, and when that timer clangs and I tell them it’s time to get out, their hair isn’t even wet. I know they’re really trying to use The Force in between driving that car up the sides of the bath tub and pretending like they’re swimming in deep water. It’s not an easy thing to tell them it’s just not working, but somebody’s gotta do it. Intensified training, they need.
7. Put away the laundry…or not.
Oh, wait. That’s me. This is the one time The Force actually works for my boys, even if it ends up piling underwear in a closet and shoving hang-up shirts in the pajama drawer and crumpling jeans in the underwear drawer. I don’t even care. At least The Force put it all away. Better than I’m doing, it is.
Well. Now that I’ve written all of that out, I can better understand where my little Padawans are coming from. They just need a more skilled Jedi Master to help them hone their powers and teach them the intricate subtleties of using The Force.
Since it’s clear that The Force doesn’t work for Husband, either, I guess that means I signed up to be their Yoda. To work, I go.
I know, I know. They’re so cute and cuddly. The first time they smile and the first time they say your name and the first time they reach toward you and you know you’re surely and certainly loved, even without words, those are the best moments of life. The best moments of baby.
It’s just that I feel like it’s my duty to warn you: THERE ARE A LOT OF OTHER MOMENTS WITH BABY, TOO.
Take the picture above. That happened a few weeks ago, right after I dropped my older boys off at school the one morning Baby happened to be in a stroller instead of strapped to me with a Baby Bjorn (and thank God for that, because…). I know we could all say I dodged a bullet with that one, because at least all that didn’t land on me, but what you can’t accurately see from this picture is HOW MUCH PUKE THERE IS. And how many crevices an infant seat has. And how much of it ended up on my hands.
After I thought fast and made up a racing game to play with my 3-year-old twins, who, impressively, ran the entire half-mile home, I put Baby in a bath, cleaned him all up, let him play in his little activity seat and then set to work on that car seat. At first I tried using a towel, but you just have to understand. There was so much. So much. So I took it out back, sprayed it with the water hose (It took a full 15 minutes to get all that puke out. So much.) and let it dry in the sun, which was probably better for it anyway.
And then, more recently, there was this:
Maybe you can’t tell as well from the picture, BUT THAT’S POOP. Because what’s in a baby’s diaper doesn’t always stay in a baby’s diaper, unfortunately. This little stank accident happened without my even knowing. I happily carried Baby upstairs, like I always do, without a clue that every time his cute little butt bounced on my arm was another opportunity for that nastiness to break out onto my skin. Once I put him down in his crib to go get a diaper, and I found this.
It was all up his back, all in his shirt, all over his legs, all over me. What’s weird is that it didn’t smell. Or at least not enough for me to notice. Or maybe it’s just because my house smells like a swamp anyway, because boys aren’t great at flushing the toilet.
Just after snapping this picture, I pontificated aloud to my twins about how this was an impressive smear and, astonishingly, a first in these years with six boys. They didn’t listen until I came to the word “poop.”
Twin 1: Let me see it, Mama.
Me: See?
Twin 2: Ewww!
Me: Want to smell it?
Twins, simultaneously: Yes!
Me:
Twins:
Me: Um. No. I was just kidding.
In spite of all the gross things that could possibly happen (and there are definitely more than these. We haven’t even broached the subject of snot.), I totally think babies are worth it. I would clean up a thousand of those for one of these:
I bet you would, too. Just don’t ever say I didn’t warn you.
My husband tidies downstairs, puts every single little stray toy back where it goes, tosses all the left-them-where-we-took-them-off jackets and scarves back upstairs, and walks an endless path up and down the stairs to deliver books out of place.
I work on the upstairs, picking tiny pieces of crayon paper from the carpet because the 4-year-old likes to tear then off his crayons during quiet time, re-shelving the ten thousand books on the floor of our library (because boys have a hard time keeping that three-books-down-at-a-time rule), hanging up the stack of 2T clothes one twin decided looked like a nice jumping-in pile.
I don’t really mind all that time, though, because I’m listening to an audio book and I am alone.
I don’t really mind it, that is, until the boys have undone all that work and clothes litter the floor again and books have fallen from shelves and crayons lie there, dumped out yet again.
I quit. You guys figure out how to live in a pig pen.
That’s what I want to say. But then I remember: I have to live here, too.
Sometimes the gift of having more-than-the-national-norm number of children is the continual stripping of my control over things like clean and tidy.
I like my house tidy. I work best when it’s tidy. I function best when it’s tidy. I flourish and love better when it’s tidy.
At least, that’s what I like to yell when it’s completely out of hand. The reality is, tidy means control. We try to control the mess, but children, if they come with anything at all, come with mess. Which means we’ll go clinically crazy if we don’t let this go.
They take their clothes off and leave them where they stripped, and even if I remind them today to put those shirts and pants where they go—laundry or closet—they will forget tomorrow and do it all again. They leave their books just inches from the shelves, and they take out all their socks to try to find just the right pair, and they forget to put their backpacks on those hooks we attached to the wall for this very unclutter-the-school-clutter purpose.
And, yeah, it’s important for them to know these things, how to put clothes where they go and how to re-shelve books and how to hang backpacks on the proper hooks, but when the only words I’m saying to my children are, “Don’t forget those clothes you just took off.” “Hey, hang your backpack where it goes.” “Only three books at a time down,” maybe there’s a little bit of control that needs a little mess-fire to burn it clean away.
Because it’s more important that they unknot this knot that gets my heartbeat quickening and my face flaming and my words twisting, and it’s more important that I see them as more than inconvenient frustrations to my clean-house expectation.
Messes, they become memories.
You see? There are the clothes he stripped off as soon as he got downstairs so he could put on that Wolverine costume and save the world, and do you remember how he flew from couch to couch and did that amazing flip to the floor?
And there are the books we read for the day’s first story time, the ones he kept with him because he wanted to remember the way that story about knights and dragons and living a thousand years ago made him feel strong and mighty, and do you remember the words he said, how you were his princess and he was your knight?
And there are the socks he wore on his hands today for the slippy-slide across the kitchen floor, and remember the way he laughed at the fun of it?
Every single one of those messes tells a story.
And so, when the oldest steals into our room, after he’s supposed to be in bed and even though it’s against the rules, when he leaves that book he brought to show me on the floor, I bite my tongue.
Tomorrow, when I climb from my bed and trip over it, I will remember.
I will remember the way his hair, still a little wet from his bath, smelled like citrus mixed with cedar, and I will remember the way his hand felt, warm and soft in mine, and I will most of all remember that voice,” I want to show you this, Mama,” and the way I listened and really heard.
In this episode, I discuss new books from Daniel Handler and Katherine Applegate, platform guru Michael Hyatt and choosing to write even though no one seems to be listening.
Me [holding up something indistinguishable. Is it food? Trash? A little of both?]: What in the world is this?
Husband: I’m not really sure.
8-year-old: I volunteer to eat that.
Me:
Husband:
8-year-old:
Me: Nope.
6-year-old: Mama, will you sign me up for soccer?
Me: …
Translation: Mama, will you sign your life away to me?
(Sorry soccer moms. It’s true.)
8-year-old: Did you hear that stomping noise?!!!
Husband: Yeah. Was that you?
8-year-old: Yeah! Last week I weighed myself, and I was 62 point something pounds! And today I was 63 point something!
Me:
Husband:
8-year-old: [grinning]
What Husband and I are thinking: I wish we were that excited about gaining a pound.
Me: There. I’m done with my makeup. How do I look?
6-year-old: Wow! You look beautiful! [singing] That’s what makes you beautiful. [chuckles to himself.] Yeah. Makeup.
Me: What? I’m not beautiful without makeup?
6-year-old: Wait. You’re beautiful all the time, Mama.
3-year-old: Mama! I don’t want to eat beans.
Me: Well! You’re going to have to eat beans. It’s what’s for dinner.
Husband: Yeah. It’s what’s for dinner.
3-year-old: Stop copying me, Daddy!
Husband: I’m not copying you.
3-year-old: Yes you are.
Husband: No I’m not.
3-year-old: Yes you are.
Husband: No I’m not.
3-year-old: Yes you are.
Husband:
3-year-old:
Husband:
3-year-old: You are, Daddy.
Husband: You are, Daddy.
We are settling into earlier mornings and sleepier breakfasts and homework instead of free play in the after school hours. We are settling into shorter bedtime windows and showers in the morning rather than at night and schedules that line up with when they need to be at school and when they can come back home.
Though it means 5 o’clock mornings, I always look forward to the month after school starts, because it means we have begun to stretch into those familiar routines that we left behind all summer.
I enjoy those summer days that are not bound by places we need to be or a clock that rules us or tasks we need to finish before the deadline, but there is something about getting back into a routine of carefully measured activity that feels refreshing.
Routine is life-giving to me.
I used to think this made me boring. I wanted to be the fun, spontaneous type who could make plans or drop them with no more notice than a call. I tried to be her for a while, but I was miserable.
That could be why, when we had children, I slipped so easily into routine. Feed the baby, let him play, put him to sleep, do it all again. Feed the toddler, read to the toddler, put the toddler down to sleep, repeat. Feed, play, feed, play, feed, bathe, read, snuggle, sleep.
My life runs like one great routine. My boys know exactly what’s coming and where they are in their days because of the routines we have practiced since the day they were born. They could do it with their eyes closed.
It’s no secret that I have a large family. Six children is four more than what most people consider the norm. Which means we often get interesting questions about our large family—but the most frequent one I hear is, “How do you do it?”
Usually, when people ask this question, I tell the truth: I don’t do it. I don’t even come close. My house hasn’t been cleaned in you don’t want to know how long. The laundry is still sitting on the banister like it was three weeks ago, so the kids have gotten used to living out of a pile instead of a closet. The yard has more weeds than grass because there’s just no time to tend.
But another truth is routine.
Routine helps me do it. Every Monday morning I water the plants. Every Tuesday I do laundry. Every Wednesday I shop for groceries (and hope they’ll last all week).
Routine helps my children do it, too.
Something I’ve learned in my eight years of parenting is that routine has a way of settling children. It has a way of making them feel more secure in their constantly changing lives. It has a way of communicating love and intention and joy.
Routine has a power that pulls families closer together.
What I remember most from my childhood are the every-evening stories my mom read to us. I remember getting dressed every morning for school and inevitably opening my closet to find my sister asleep on the floor, still in her pajamas. I remember riding bikes and roller skating the bumpy road out in front of our house while my mom whizzed past on skates of her own.
What my boys will remember in the years to come is not how crazy this household was or how often a brother made them angry or how much food they swiped from the fridge when we weren’t looking. They will remember the routines. The chapter books we read together during our read-aloud time. The flower we stood in the middle of the table and told everyone to sketch, and how each of those drawings came out looking completely different. The snuggle time just before lights out.
Routines offer us stability and structure and sanity.
Mostly they offer us love-filled memories.
How we can incorporate routines into our daily lives
1. Establish a time when everyone sits down at the table together for at least one meal a day. This doesn’t have to be dinner. It could be breakfast or lunch or dunch (a cross between dinner and lunch—which might work for older kids who have crazy evening practices and games). It doesn’t matter what time. Just sit down at the table together and open conversations or play dinner games or name your gratitudes. The family that eats together stays together.
2. Before you leave the house, breathe. We do this with our children in the mornings. Before walking to the school down the road, we stop at the door, take three deep breaths and then get on our way. Sometimes we say a mantra, like “I breathe in love. I release love into the world.” Sometimes we just breathe silently because it’s been a rough morning. This routine helps us slow down and think and claim just one calm moment out of the many rushed ones.
3. Read a story together. Kids love the routine of reading together. People ask me all the time when I think my boys will stop enjoying this time. The answer is never. Mostly because we read long, involved chapter books that take months to finish. I don’t think kids every outgrow stories read by their parents.
