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what’s the frequency, ernie?

Illustrating this post with gratuitous twin cuteness just because I can.
Illustrating this post with gratuitous twin cuteness just because I can.

I continue to be amazed by the response my “Not a Hero” post is getting, and am super grateful to everyone who has read, shared, and commented on the post. Today, it’s featured on WordPress’s Freshly Pressed page, which is bringing a new influx of readers and commenters. To new folks: welcome, thanks for reading, I promise to moderate comments as quickly as I can.

The newest crazy piece of news that I am totally fangirling out over is that I’m going to be on NPR’s Tell Me More tomorrow. Check your local public radio station to see if they air the show, and tune in if you want to hear what my accent sounds like in real life. I will be doing my level best not to talk too fast or bring shame upon my family. If your local station doesn’t air the show, you will likely be able to listen after the fact on the show’s website or podcast.

I’m actually beyond excited about this because I’m a huge NPR fan. I’m also super excited to get to talk about my amazing kids, and about the responses I’ve received to the post. This wouldn’t be happening if it weren’t for people like you (listeners like you? Am I on NPR already?) reading and sharing, so again: thank you. And thanks for cheering us on through this whole twins/spina bifida journey– it’s meant so much.

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Sarah Sweatt Orsborn: writer

See what I mean about this child being a ham? We were in a quiet art gallery and she was shouting words at the top of her voice just to hear them echo.
See what I mean about this child being a ham? We were in a quiet art gallery and she was shouting words at the top of her voice just to hear them echo.

A funny thing happened to me this week. Inspired by a conversation with a friend, I sat down and wrote a blog post about my sweet, stubborn, ham of a daughter who happens to have spina bifida. That’s not the funny part. I could write about my messy, magical children all day long, and I do write about them pretty darn often. But that post in particular resonated with some people, who shared it on Twitter, where it was re-tweeted and shared some more.

Here is where I should mention that this blog is pretty small potatoes. An average post gets a couple to a few hundred views. A really good post may barely clear a thousand. Rarely, when WordPress has featured my content on their Freshly Pressed page, I’ll get several thousand. So, I was pretty proud of how that post was doing when it got over a thousand views on its own, with no one else featuring it.

I was proud not because I’m making money off of clicks or something (to date, I have earned a few free meals and one grocery gift card from this blog), but because I write to connect with people and when people start sharing my work and tweeting about it, I know that something has struck home. I happily showed my stats to my husband and felt warm and fuzzy inside.

And then, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but an email from a HuffPost Parents editor in my inbox, asking if I’d be willing to let them syndicate my post. Thrilled, I agreed. In the process of getting the post ready for HuffPost, I had to write a little bio. No big deal, right? I have Pinterest and Twitter and Instagram and blog bios and profiles and about me’s, so surely I could just use one of those. But none felt right. And what am I, anyway? A stay at home mom, since I’m on an indefinite hiatus from grad school?

What I came up with was this: “Sarah Sweatt Orsborn is a writer living in Little Rock, Arkansas with her husband, twin daughters, two dogs, and one not-so-Tinycat. Her work is most frequently found on her site, The Adventures of Ernie Bufflo.”

And then I thought…who are you to call yourself a writer? It’s not your job. Nobody’s paying you to do it. Are you even good enough to claim to be a writer?

But you know what? I am a writer. Writing is just part of who I am. It’s how I make sense of the world, it’s how I process the things that happen to me, and it’s how I figure out what I really think and feel. Before there was an internet, I was writing letters and journals, because it’s just what I do. I even pray best when writing it down. I don’t have to be paid or hired or titled to be a writer, because I am one, always have been. It’s how I connect with myself, with God, and with others.

This realization and reclamation of my identity as a writer actually reminded me of a time when Mary Steenburgen gave a talk at my college. We all know her well as an Academy Award-winning actress, but what she shared was her reclaimed love of painting, a passion she has returned to as an adult after many years away. She pointed out how as children, we are encouraged to dance, sing, and make art. But somewhere along the way, we say, “I’m not a dancer. I’m not a singer. I’m not a painter.” Because we think others dance, sing, or paint better than we do, or because we feel like we aren’t good enough to claim the title. But if dancing, singing, painting, or writing gives you joy or makes you who you are, you’re a dancer, a singer, a painter.

I won’t shy away from being a writer anymore. Are you a writer? A dancer? A painter? What titles or passions have you shrugged off that could use reclaiming?

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my child with a disability is not my hero

IMG_0128When we first began our journey with spina bifida, I didn’t know anyone with SB or anyone whose kid had it. One of the best things that has happened over the last two years is I have found other people who are going through the same thing, bloggers whose kids have SB, and message boards full of parents whose kids have SB. This community has been helpful and informative, but most of all, it has let us know that we’re not alone. Still, some things have become apparent as we’ve delved more into the special needs community that make me uncomfortable, and one of them really crystalized for me yesterday when chatting with a friend who also has a toddler with SB. Basically, as my friend and I agreed, it’s this:

The tendency of parents of kids with special needs and disabilities to say their kids are “heroes” makes me deeply uncomfortable. 

On the one hand, it makes perfect sense. We see our kids go through so much more than most typical children deal with– surgeries, therapies, challenges, and pain, and we see our kids thrive and survive in spite of it all. We’re impressed by their resilience, and we want to express that. Also, in a world that marginalizes and devalues many people with physical and cognitive disabilities, we want to affirm the worth and value of our kids. I see no malice there.

But what concerns me is that calling our kids heroes is just another form of dehumanization and marginalization. Our kids are KIDS, first and foremost. They’re people, human beings, whose value lies simply in the fact of their personhood, not in milestones or hurdles overcome. When we put them on pedestals and call them heroes, we make them something other than human beings. And we give them a standard that, at times, may be hard for them to live up to. They might not always feel like being heroic. Sometimes they might just want to be kids, people, frustrated and fed up and overtired and hungry and in a bad mood and all the other less-heroic stuff we feel from time to time.

Having twins, one of whom has SB and one who doesn’t makes this really apparent to me. Both of my kids are just people, existing in the bodies they were given, facing any challenges that come their way. To borrow a phrase that I learned from Sesame Street*: having spina bifida is normal and natural and fine for my daughter. She’s not heroic for existing in her body any more than anyone else is, because she has always been this way. Calling her a hero is just another side of the coin from feeling sorry for her, and I don’t want people to do either. I want her to have the beautiful freedom to be a complex, complicated human being who both overcomes challenges and makes mistakes, who can be joyful and angry and every other emotion there is, with no pressure to be anyone but herself. She’s no hero, she’s something much more magical and mundane: a little girl, full of untold potential, just like her sister.

*We recently watched an old episode of Sesame Street which featured a young man named Rocco who happened to be blind. He is introduced to Elmo, and when Elmo finds out Rocco is blind, he says “I’m sorry.” Rocco tells Elmo he doesn’t have to be sorry, because being blind is normal and fine for him, just like being able to see is normal and fine for Elmo. I really loved it. Plus, Rocco is a great singer.

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finally finished: my blue willow inspired dining room

A few years ago, I inherited from my grandmother a collection of blue and white plates, some of which my grandfather had sent home from WWII to his mother. I have loved and treasured them in a cabinet for several years, but knew that the next time we owned a home, I wanted to decorate a room around displaying them. Well, we finally bought a house last summer, and all these months later, I’ve finally (mostly) finished our front/dining room.

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It’s a weird space, because it’s the first room you enter after walking in the front door, and there’s a strange freestanding closet that awkwardly sits in the middle of the room, I’m guessing because there used to be more walls that were removed, but the closet had to stay for structural reasons. I think the weird closet contributed to this house being on the market as long as it was, because it was hard to picture how furniture would go and how the room would be used. For us, it’s more of our formal living area, because there’s a big den in the back of the house where we have our giant sectional and TV and all of the girls’ toys.

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I made pillow covers (using this tutorial) in various blue and white prints to tie the plate wall into the sitting area, and I have plans to reupholster our couch and to recover the dining room chairs. I’m thinking solid colors for those, so let me know if you have ideas. The round table was a Christmas gift from my mother, who gave us her dining table after she heard me say I wanted a round table that expanded– this one has four leaves and can seat 12 with them all in place!

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Another recent project, designed by me and executed entirely by my husband, was the remake of a thrift store end table.

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The real showstopper of the room, though, is the plate wall.

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In case you’d like to do a plate wall yourself, here are my plate wall tips: After asking some friends who had hung some plates, I settled on the metal spring plate hangers. I rolled out some extra wide wrapping paper on the floor and laid out the plates on top of it. Then, my husband and I traced around the plates, photographed the arrangement, removed the plates, and hung the paper on the wall. From there, we nailed hooks into the paper, and then ripped it down, leaving the hooks behind. I then referred to my photos to hang the plates on the hooks.

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I love the way it turned out, and keep finding myself wandering into the dining room just to stare at the wall. It feels like something that belongs in the home of someone way cooler than we are.

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my airplane angel and the kindness of strangers

Is the glass half full, or half empty? Are people terrible, or are they good? These questions, like just about everything, depend on what sort of data you’re working with, which examples you’re focusing on, and where you’re looking. For me, I have to say, I just keep getting smacked in the face with the full and the good.

Us, traveling with twins last year.
Us, traveling with twins last year.

I wrote about dreading our holiday travel with twin toddlers, for example, but our flights ended up going swimmingly. TSA agents gave the girls stickers and smiled and chatted with them while scanning our liquids and swabbing our hands. A family wrangling just one baby called us superheroes as we struggled to fold a stroller and sort out a backpack with a toddler strapped to each of our chests. We sat near people who smiled and told us how cute our kids are instead of huffing that they got stuck near two small children on a flight. And I was seated next to an angel. I mean, her name was Mary and she’s a sheep farmer, and her son’s name was Christian. That’s some pretty heavy symbolism, right off the top. But she also held my toddlers, let them play with her jewelry, showed them pictures of her dogs and her sheep on her camera, and let Claire nap across her lap. Her middle school aged son closed the window shade without asking to keep the sun out of little eyes, and happily watched Pixar movies with us on the iPad. They made the flight to Colorado a pleasure, and finding them as my seatmates again on the way back felt like nothing short of a miracle.

This sort of kindness has been happening to us again and again lately. My iPhone was stolen on our vacation in Florida, which would seem to be a data point in the “people are terrible” column. But then a woman I have never met outside of Twitter offered to give me her old iPhone for free, refusing my offer to pay, saying it was just sitting in a drawer since she had upgraded. I accepted it gratefully, doubly thankful for the blessing of being reminded that for every thief, there is also generosity and kindness.

And then, last week, a crazy thing happened. I got a friend request on Facebook from a stranger with whom I had only one mutual friend. Around that same time, that mutual friend shot me a text: “Missing a wallet?” A delivery driver for a local restaurant had found my wallet run over in the road, picked it up, and given it to the owner of the restaurant, who, used to tracking down people who leave their wallets in the restaurant, set about finding me via Facebook, and, seeing that we had a mutual friend, through him. Not a single thing was missing from my wallet, which I had apparently left on the roof of my car while buckling my kids in. And it was returned to me in a fashion only slightly less miraculous than that time my husband left his iPhone in a Costa Rican taxi cab and it found its way back to him.

Even my casual day-to-day ventures into public with twin toddlers are usually characterized by people holding doors, waving at toddlers, and asking if they can help.

And it’s not just my data set that suggests that people are really good and kind. Today, my friend Kerri has a post up about a random act of kindness she got to participate in. (And I must say, Kerri happens to be one of the kindest, biggest-hearted people I know.) And another friend tweeted about dropping her kid off at daycare for the first time, where a stranger she called an angel gave her a hug and told her “It’ll be OK.” And then another friend on Twitter sent me a link to this piece from the Today show about strangers showing kindness to parents with kids out in public. And yes, I know, there’s a whole lot of terrible and hurt and meanness that also scrolls by my feed and through my life, but in the face of so much good, that’s the part I’m trying to choose to focus on.

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I didn’t have kids to make me “happy” (Thank God!)

A fun little piece of obvious news crossed my radar today: couples without kids report that they’re happier with their relationships than couples with kids! 

To that I say:

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OF COURSE THEY ARE. You know who’s happy? People who get a full night’s sleep most nights. People who can eat a meal without getting up approximately 9 times to fetch things for people who fling food at them, spit out mouthfuls of fully chewed food for no reason, smear food in their hair, and inexplicably like/hate pineapple from one day to the next. People who can just go out of town for a weekend trip. People who regularly get to go to the movies. People who don’t have to schedule sexy times. People who don’t have to wipe any butts but their own. Let’s be real.

The good news is: the ultimate goal of my life isn’t “be happy.” And my ultimate hopes for my kids aren’t “as long as they’re happy.” Happy is fleeting, and happy is an illusion, and happy just isn’t a realistic goal for much of anything. 

Here’s what I want: I want to be satisfied. I want to be challenged. I want to be grateful. I want to be loved. I want to love. I want relationships. I want to have a legacy. I want to make an impact.

All of those things are much more realistic goals for a life, a marriage, parenthood. 

Thank God I didn’t/don’t expect my kids to make me happy. That’s far too much of a burden to place on another person. I do think they’ve already made me a better person, though, and I’ll take that.

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Claire WALKS!

By now, you have probably seen me shouting this from various social media rooftops, but my Claire Bear took her first independent steps with her PT today:

This is HUGE. She has been so motivated and has worked so hard to get to this point. All day at home, she grabs us by the hands and says, “Wanna WAH!” I think she knew she was super close, and now she’s finally done it. And she couldn’t have picked a better day– this morning I logged into Facebook and saw the Spina Bifida Association going on about birth defect prevention awareness and how it’s folic acid week. Stuff like that always makes me a little ragey, because I wasn’t folic acid deficient. My kid just got spina bifida anyway. It happens. It’s not my fault, and it’s not anybody’s fault. By all means, if you are a woman of childbearing age, take your folic acid, to prevent all sorts of possible problems in the event that you should become pregnant. But please don’t labor under the misapprehension that all neural tube defects are preventable– I’ve even heard of misinformed DOCTORS saying things like, spina bifida is 100% preventable, and blaming mothers for their kids’ disabilities. (Best estimates I’ve read say that folic acid could prevent about 60% of cases of spina bifida. It would still exist even if everyone had plenty of FA.)

But today, today there is no raging about folic acid. Today there is just rejoicing and celebrating that my beautiful girl has finally achieved something she has been working SO HARD to achieve. She’s stubborn and tenacious and hopeful, and I truly believe nothing can hold her back.

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merry crazy magical christmas

This week, the Christmas and the Crazy have taken over. We’re about to leave for a week with family in Colorado. I’m super looking forward to it, because I’m excited for everyone to see how much the girls have grown, and to watch them get loved on, and to see them finally able to play with their 2 year old cousin, and to spend time with people we don’t see often enough. But I’m also dreading a bit all the prep it takes to get us out the door and onto planes and through the plane ride, and sleep disruptions that come with traveling. Last year’s visit was amazing and also awful because the girls were both sick the whole time and did not sleep at all. This year, they’ve picked this week to cut their canines AND some molars, Etta’s started coughing in the last 24 hours, and Claire’s nose is running like a faucet.

Meanwhile, I realized yesterday, when Claire’s preschool teacher gave me a list of all the kids’ names, that I was meant to bring some sort of Christmas Thing for all the kids. I’d planned and prepared to gift her three teachers and three therapists, but the kids threw a wrench into my plans. A quick jaunt to the store (well, as quick as any jaunt can be with a toddler who wants everything she sees) and I had clearance jumbo crayons and holiday coloring books for all the preschoolers. I also dipped my toe into the Crazy Pinterest Mom deep end by using my phone to edit a pic of Claire in her Christmas jammies, send it to Walgreens through their app, and pick my prints up an hour later, ready to turn them into custom gift tags. I must say, it made all the gifts look super cute for less than $5.

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At the same time, yesterday was just a truly hellish day on the toddler front. Etta was teething and cranky and on a nap-strike all day, and then Claire came home ready to cry at the drop of a hat. I seriously fantasized about just running out the door and down the block and on and on and on.

But then, the magic started to happen. We went to our Happy Place, a local Mexican restaurant where they know and love us and give us our usual table. We drank margaritas and the girls ate cheese dip. We got them to bed. I got to attend a Christmas party with some of my dearest friends. The girls woke up happy, and we had a little mini-Christmas so we could do it just the four of us, before we head off on our trip. We all opened our stockings and sipped egg nog and just enjoyed a morning together. Etta napped (glory hallelujah)! Claire came home happy from preschool! Sesame Street-as-babysitter allowed me to finish sewing my last three gifts! I got Claire snuggled and to sleep, and then got a rare 20 minutes of holding my sweet Etta baby (who is usually go go go), just smelling her hair. By the time I had both babies in bed tonight, my world had turned a complete 360 from yesterday’s insanity.

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I’m starting to realize, early enough to have it matter, I hope (because, ha, seriously, I have it easy with toddlers, there’s no school programs or class parties or dance recitals or required outings yet), that Christmas is not about making the magic for my kids, even as I have to make magic happen in the form of last-minute gifts for bunches of preschoolers. Because my kids are the most magical thing I’ve ever seen, when I stop to see it. Christmas, really, is about a magic, miraculous, mundane thing: babies are born every day, but the Son of God is only born once. God picked the most normal thing in the world and used it to transform everything. And in the process, even the mundane becomes magical and miraculous. Christianity talks a lot about God giving us a new heart, a new life. But I think lately what I need the most is new eyes to see what’s already around me all the time.

Things like: the day before yesterday, I stopped at a light next to a man begging. The light turned green, and I drove away. But a verse popped right into my mind: Give to anyone who asks of you (Luke 6:30). Later, somehow, that same guy approached me in a parking lot a mile away. With my new eyes, I saw it as an opportunity to fulfill the verse that had popped into my mind and heart, and I gave him some money. I don’t know if I should have, I don’t want to debate giving money to strangers, and I don’t want to brag or let my left hand know what my right is doing. All I know is, in that moment, I truly felt I was being given another opportunity to do the right thing.

Later, irked in traffic, head and sinuses pounding, I looked up and saw a bumper sticker on the van in front of me: “Good Happens.” Message received. It does.

I want to be the good that happens. I want to see it. I want to hold it and smell its hair. And I can, all because of a baby that was born. Because of a new heart. Because of new eyes. That’s what this Christmas seems to be all about, for me. It’s my first to be acutely aware of the Crazy and the Busy. But it’s also my first with two magical little people who are old enough to be starting to see the magic. I want to see it too.

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nativities and festivity

While I am a huge fan of Thanksgiving and staunchly oppose Christmas Creep, I am becoming more and more of a BIG GIANT CHRISTMAS CRAZY PERSON. A few years ago, I happened to be unemployed and childless at Christmas, so I went origami crazy and decorated our whole tree with handmade papercrafts. This year, I have toddlers, so when a kid-free day opened up during the week of Thanksgiving, I went ahead and put up the tree, BEFORE DECEMBER. Starting on December 1, our constant soundtrack has been my playlist of some 250 Christmas songs, much of which is hipsteriffic remakes of carols accompanied, I’m sure, by mustachioed dudes playing banjos, possibly while wearing vests, obtained free via Noisetrade. I’ve been working like an elf on homemade tree skirts, cinnamon ornaments, felt garlands, and lots of handmade presents.

Our tree, which was (gasp) up before Thanksgiving this year.
Our tree, which was (gasp) up before Thanksgiving this year.
I made this tree skirt, inspired by one I saw from The Land of Nod.
I made this tree skirt, inspired by one I saw from The Land of Nod.

But the surest sign that I’ve gone round the Christmas bend is the nativity.

Rachel Held Evans has a hilarious post today about the conundrum of a childless progressive couple trying to choose a nativity scene. Where to find a biblically accurate, fair trade, child safe nativity? It seems such a fraught decision. Pre-kids, the nativity I chose was a fair trade Peruvian one which features llamas. Perhaps not biblically accurate, but it makes me smile.

Post kids? Well… Enter the Little People. Here is our main nativity now:

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Yep. That’s a plastic, light-up, noise-making nativity, in the home of the lady whose rules for her kids’ toys include avoiding plastic and things that make noise. And I don’t care. I love the Little People Nativity. My kids can’t break it, they love to play with it, and when you press the Baby Jesus and he lights up (?!) and the whole thing plays Away in a Manger and Silent Night, well, my kids dance and sway and clap their hands and the entire thing becomes more than worth the $20 I spent on it in the Fisher Price Labor Day sale.

And can you spot my favorite part? Yep. The purple hippo. Strangely not included in the original set, my children decided the purple hippo from their bath toys really needed to be present at the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It kind of reminds me of the nativity scene lobsters from “Love Actually” and definitely reminds me of my sister, whose favorite Christmas song is “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.” It makes me smile. How much has changed. How far I’ve come. But you know what, if they coulda, I’m sure the hippos would have followed a star all the way to Bethlehem too. They could have hung out with the lobsters.

Hours of fun with the plastic, noise-making, non-historically-accurate but much-beloved Little People Nativity.
Hours of fun with the plastic, noise-making, non-historically-accurate but much-beloved Little People Nativity.
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holiday gift guides for toddlers

Are there small people in your life that you’re shopping for this holiday season? For ideas for infants, check out this post. For ideas for toddlers, here are some of the things the Bufflo Gals are into lately, and some of the things on their own wish lists. As always, these toys follow my “rules,” are wooden or metal instead of plastic when possible, don’t require batteries or make noise, and facilitate imaginative play that stimulates development. Also: this post is not sponsored or full of affiliate links or anything. It’s just stuff I think kids will like or stuff my own kids like.

One thing the girls are definitely getting for Christmas is an Ikea play kitchen that I bought while we were on vacation and shoved in the trunk with our luggage– it barely fit! But if you can’t access an Ikea, the other one in this set is available on Amazon, along with zillions of other options. Kitchens and play food are great for toddlers of all ages and genders.

Food Play Gift Ideas for Toddlers

Another great area of play for toddlers is babies and baby dolls. After I noticed the girls fighting over one random little dollar store baby doll, I got them a couple of real baby dolls, and they have LOVED them. They are getting these Land of Nod prams from one of their grandparents, but the one below is a great choice too. I really covet these Moover ones, but they’re twice the price. Along with baby dolls go cradles, high chairs, and doll carriers. Note: you may think baby dolls are for girls, but the baby dolls are by far the most popular toy with kids of all genders in Claire’s preschool classroom. They like to mimic their parents, and they want to care for the babies like their moms and dads care for them.

Baby Doll Toddler Gift Ideas

And finally, there are a few other great types of toddler toys you might consider: blocks and building toys, bath toys, active toys like slides and rockers, puzzles, cars/trucks, and creative toys like easels.

Toddler Gift Ideas