Momma Says the F Word

Pink vs. Blue

2012-02-03T14:00:00.000-06:00

No, I'm not pregnant...

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Phook's transition to a life that includes school attendance has been pretty seamless. The panic I felt in deciding whether or not to send her this year turns out to have largely been a waste of emotional bandwidth. Other than being extra tired for the first month or two, it's just been a natural thing. She enjoys school very much, and is sad on days she doesn't go. Frankly, I'd send her more if I didn't have to pay for it.

But I have noticed one thing. And that thing is gender-related mayhem. Some of it is very simple stuff like running through who in our house (including pets) is a boy and who is a girl. Or sitting at the table and randomly announcing things like, "There are 4 girls and 3 boys at this table!" These frequent expressions tell me that she's thinking a lot about the division between the sexes.

But then there is more in-depth stuff. Awhile back, she led Bigs in a game in which they sorted their approximately 200 stuffed animals into piles. One pile for girl animals and one pile for boy animals. I had my back turned to this game as I worked on the computer and they built the piles right behind me. I heard things like, "No, that one is a boy!" and other relatively innocuous statements. I thought close to nothing of it. And then I turned around when they were finished and kind of gasped in horror. There were two mountains of stuffed animals. One was full of animals with pink and purple colors on them, and the other was full of animals with red, green, blue, etc. colors. And Phook was instructing Bigs that he could only play with the "boy" animals and she could only play with the "girl" animals.

I guess, above all, I was shocked. I've made a pretty conscious effort to not get gender-hyper in this house. When I paint Phook's toenails, I paint Bigs's too if he asks, and make no comment about this being considered atypical (although 90% of the people who then see his painted toenails do comment). For Bigs's 2nd birthday, I got him a baby doll, as I was expecting Parkie and thought he might like a baby to play with and to practice the whole idea of being gentle. Bigs wore a tutu over his clothes for the better part of a year, and no one ever indicated that he shouldn't. Sometimes Bigs has worn pink, flowery stuff inherited from Phook that I considered too expensive to replace in a more male motif, such as a sleep sack or something. Never has Big K or I identified a particular game or activity as something boys do or girls do. Their clothing, most of which has been purchased by family members, does largely conform to gender norms, although Phook has never been dressed in an especially girly or pink-centric wardrobe. I feel like we've consciously tried pretty hard not to push particular traits or expectations along gender lines.

But there they were. Gender norms. On the floor of my office. Totally weirded me out. It is just strange that children somehow attain the knowledge of boy vs. girl just by cruising around in society. I don't know why it freaks me out, but it does. Maybe it's just the disturbing affirmation that the things I think I am teaching in my own house can be pretty easily trumped by the larger world.

More disturbing than the simple sorting of things by a perceived gender is that Phook is clearly starting to pick up a "girls rule, boys drool" sort of attitude. The first kid she ever really connected with as a friend was a boy, and in general prior to attending school, I would say that she was more drawn to boys overall. But that has now changed. She pretty much talks exclusively about the other girls in her class, and if she mentions a boy it is pretty much only in passing or to report something naughty a boy did. When you ask her to name her friends, it is all girls. When she and Bigs are playing, I often hear her say things like, "No, Bigs, this is only for girls! Boys can't play this!"

The other night, Big K was at a meeting, so I was putting the two of them to bed (they share a room). I read them a story and tucked Phook in, and then I was taking Bigs back downstairs with me for a few minutes of his "special time." As we were leaving, he said he wanted to kiss Phook goodnight. She got upset and said, "NO! A boy can't kiss me!" I said, "But Bigs is your brother, and it is very nice of him to want to give you a goodnight kiss." She continued to scrunch up her face in distaste and finally said, "Fine. He can kiss my knee over the top of this blanket." Which Bigs did. It totally broke my heart.

I don't know why this is so upsetting to me, but it really is. I get that gaining an awareness of gender is very normal, and I'm certainly not advocating for this sort of thing. I just don't like that Phook is including her little brother into that category of yucky boys that has recently developed in her psyche. And it feels like the next logical step is going to be stuff I REALLY don't like, like her resisting or refusing to participate in physical or academic activities that she considers male.

I don't have a minor in Women's Studies, so I need someone to throw me a bone here. Give me some words that I can use with her around this that might actually make sense to a 5-year-old brain. I don't want to google it, because it'll probably make me cry and/or just make my brain explode. Quite honestly, I think it is futile to try to teach her that pink frilly ruffles can be just as applicable to boys as they are to girls, because society will resoundingly overrule me. But I sincerely wish to have her be comfortable accepting affection from her brother and including him in her games. I want her to feel comfortable hanging out with boys and having boy friends, although anecdotal evidence suggests to me that this would be an extreme rarity at this age. But most importantly, I do not ever, ever, ever want her to think that something is not an option for her because she is a girl, with the possible exception of writing her name in the snow with a stream of urine.

I would love it if others would share their experiences around this issue with me, and throw me some assvice. Thanks in advance, yo!

JFTR

2012-01-26T09:03:00.005-06:00

Without going into a dissertation about it, suffice it to say that while I enjoy many of the benefits of modern technology, the general trend of the world as we shift our focus from human connections to technological connections scares the ever-living shit out of me. The downfall of the handwritten letter is, in my opinion, a tragedy. Keeping my children unplugged is one of my many (futile) goals.

I insist that we maintain a land-line phone against my husband's will. We have a set of 4 phones that are linked together (I don't know the actual term for this if there is one), with one in our bedroom, one in the kitchen, one in the living room, and one in the basement. I really like this setup because the phones have an intercom system. So while I'm languishing in my bed reading something in the semi-comatose state I enter every night around 7:30 and my spouse is in the basement doing god knows what in his frightening den of nerd-dom, and one of our children needs something in their bedroom, I can call the manimal on the intercom and have him come upstairs to tend to the child. (Yes, I am 10 steps away from the child and he is 3 floors away from the child, but that's neither here nor there.)

Anyhow, the other night I was lying in bed and needed to tell Big K something. I picked up the phone to use the intercom feature. And that's when I found myself thinking, "Man, I wish I could just text him on this thing."

Rock bottom, baby, rock bottom.

It's bad enough that I am using an intercom feature to communicate with my spouse in my own home. But when the burden of conversation became an inconvenience and I spontaneously felt the wish enter my brain that I desired to just text the man sitting directly below me in our living room, I felt an immediate rush of "ick" followed by a prolonged period of self-loathing mixed with just a tiny twinge of mild amusement at the absurdity of it all.

This shit scares me. I like technology and the conveniences it brings into my life. But every now and then there is a moment where I wonder if we really are all turning into cyborgs. Which is less than ideal, IMHO.

Inked

2012-01-23T13:36:00.000-06:00

The other night, Big K and I were having a conversation, and I don't even remember how we got on the topic, but I found myself saying, "If one of our children got a tattoo, I would be completely devastated." Big K did not share my sentiment.

I have two tattoos. So does Big K.

Which got me thinking unpleasant thoughts about things I have done that I don't want my children to do. How can you ask your children not to do something you yourself have done? Sure, you can make wind-baggy arguments about how you want them to learn from your mistakes or spare them the pain you are sure a certain choice will bring, but kids, knowing you did the thing you are advising them against and lived to tell the tale, are pretty sure to find your arguments hollow. Which really sticks in my craw.

My relationship with tattoos is complicated. When I went to college in the fall of 1997, people were tatting like maniacs. Rarely did a day go by when someone didn't run down the hallway of my dorm yelling, "We're gonna go get tattoos! You wanna come?" No, I did not want to come. I saw fresh ink on nearly everyone in my hallway that semester, the ultimate expression of being able to do whatever you want when you're no longer under your parents' roof, and yet I had no interest.

I can't fully explain it, and I don't mean to be a weirdo, but I feel like God does not want us to tattoo ourselves. I'm not basing this on any scripture or the teachings of a religion. It's just a gut feeling I have, that doing something that permanently alters the perfection of our bodies as we were created is just, well, not right. I am pretty sure this is my most conservative viewpoint, and I'm not sure I've ever stated it publicly before. Don't hate me.

And although it is my gut feel on the subject of whether or not tattoos are a good call, I obviously didn't even listen to myself on the subject. I got inked, with MY OWN MOTHER, when I was 24 years old. My mom, my sister, and I were going on a trip to Vegas with my dad and Big K, and before we went we hatched a secret plan to all get inked together. And we did. We went out "shopping" together and came back inked. Which my sister revealed to my father after about 17 gin and tonics while he was entertaining us and 20 of his business associates at an upscale restaurant. My dad was instantly viscerally infuriated and stated through clenched teeth that my mom needed to find somewhere else to live upon their return to Wisconsin. He was only able to reign himself in on account of the fact that 20 people he does business with were in the room watching this go down, so after a very tense couple of minutes, he had to at least feign good humor. In truth, I think this incident might have led to the most serious drama my family ever experienced, had this gone down in any less public of a fashion. It's faded into a funny bit of family lore, but there was a moment there where I thought our family was going to go down like the Titanic. I mean, my drunken sister had ordered an elaborate Baked Alaska dessert and there was a waiter standing there with a torch. That shit could have gotten real in a hurry.

In 2009 I got tatted again. I did this with my sister, while Phook and Bigs WATCHED!!! WHO DOES THAT???? And then in 2010, when I was a few months pregnant with Parkie, I hid this fact from the tat guy and lied on a form I signed re: my status as a parasitic host in order to get my tats touched up. This blatant rule-breaking is such an anomaly in my life as to possibly qualify as a singular incident. I do not believe I have ever in my life at any other time lied on a form of any kind and signed my name to it. I don't lie, on forms or in person. I follow rules. I am, really, pretty anal about that kind of stuff. And yet there I was, knocked up and getting inked in front of my toddlers.

So what gives? I don't know. Why would I do this to myself--twice--if my gut feel on it is that it is just, well, wrong? I don't know. Well, I do know. I have a complicated inner monologue that convinces me it's okay and allows me to justify myself in the moment. (This inner monologue is a bedfellow of the asshole who talks me into eating bacon all the time.) And guess what? I like my tattoos and I have plans for an eventual third tattoo, which I would say has about a 75% likelihood of becoming a reality. I like tattoos on other people, and don't judge them for their tats. (Unless they're, well, dumb.) But overall, I appreciate good ink. I have seen some deeply sweet tattoos on people. I particularly like my husband's tattoos, and would be totally cool with him getting more. What I'm saying is that I'm a tool whose brain resembles nothing more than soggy grape nuts.

Getting back to my initial point though, if one of my children ever came home and revealed a tattoo to me, I would be emotionally brutalized. I am just so obsessed with their little, perfect bodies. I can't imagine them taking that perfection, created by God and delivered to earth by me, and permanently painting Smurfette or something on it. I am deeply protective of and enamored with their physical bodies. Once when Phook was my only child, she fell asleep with her face pressed against a crocheted blanket. When she woke up, she had this deep impression from the blanket imprinted on her face, and when I first saw it, the indentations in her face looked pretty much identical to the scarring of someone who had been severely burned. Even though I obviously knew where the marks came from and I knew they'd fade in a matter of minutes, just the sight of her that way was deeply upsetting, and then I felt even more upset because I was shallow enough to get upset about it. As weird and uncomfortable as that realization was/is, that incident illustrated to me the pain I would feel if one of my children was ever significantly altered from the way they arrived here. And that includes tattoos.

What this story illustrates to me is the complication that lies ahead in parenting. As the burden shifts from physical demands to intellectual and moral ones. Of course I know my kids could make a lot of decisions that are WAY more horrific than a tattoo. But there are so many cases like this where my own logic is muddy and sometimes ridiculous and pretty impossible to explain to a skeptical adolescent or young adult whose mission in life it is to separate themselves from me. I am left to wonder how the heck anyone does it. I'm a big tool. I have just publicly stated that I have a deeply held moral conviction that I have not myself upheld. How can I raise non-tools? How can I convince these children to express themselves with some temporary blue hair instead of an inky display of barbed wire on a pristine body part that I have personally cared for and cherished since their first breath?

Man. There is so much chance and hope involved in this game. And the realization that these things are made infinitely more complicated by my own dumb-assery is a hard pill to swallow.

And on that note, I gotta go get some pie.

Dang it feels good to be a Boose Car

2012-01-13T10:05:00.006-06:00

How was your Christmas? Ours was real nice. The krazy was minimal, which is key to any holiday enjoyment. Don't know how we managed to keep things low key and manageable, but it actually happened. Out of approximately 4200 attempts, this was the best shot I got this holiday season of all 3 of my children. Yeah. Better luck next year.

January is now happening. It's going quickly, which is all I can hope for for January. As well as February. March, however, can take its sweet time, because that's the month I go to Florida, and I want each of those days to feel like a month.

I wanted to take a minute to post about Parkie. Park Rat. The baby. Who I guess has an actual name, but that's neither here nor there. In the K household, she is referred to most commonly as the "Boose." Sometimes Boosey. Sometimes Boosey Bear. Sometimes Boose Car. Sometimes, well, about 80 other names. Because I like nicknames. All of us here at K appreciate a good nickname or 30.

So, this post is in reference to the Boose.

Specifically, in reference to the fact that we love her.

I mean, of course we love her. She's our kid. But as they tell you when you're pregnant with your second kid and you don't know how you'll ever love the varmint you're harboring as much as you love the first one, hearts just sort of expand to love whoever shows up. I think you do love each one differently, whatever that means to you. The neat thing about having a 3rd kid, for us at least, is that our love for her could be described most accurately as fun.

With the first kid, the love was awe-based. And fear-based. With the second kid, we learned what it meant for us to love someone differently. And we love that guy in what I would describe as a tender way that hurts sometimes.

The Boose is just fun. Of course adding the 3rd child is the one that puts you over the line into insanity, when you get outnumbered and the logistics just go bonkers and, really, in some ways you can't keep up no matter how fast you run. But, dude, there is just no stress with the Boose as a person. Sure, she's climbing on shit and being a nutball and we have to structure a lot of our days around her needs, but somehow that all seems kind of easy in isolation from the whole of managing our family. We know to give the sleepless, snotty child ibuprofen and a humidifier. We aren't standing there panicking, going, "What do I do with this sleepless, snotty child?" We just handle our bidness.

And that really frees us up to love her and enjoy her. She has a clowny personality, always trying to be cute and funny on purpose, and working her charm at every angle. This morning she had a sucker at 7:41 a.m., if that tells you anything. The other night the two bigger kids finished their dinner first and were excused to the living room, and Parkie was still in her booster seat eating with Big K and I. And we sat there and smiled and laughed at her and marveled at her charm like two googly-eyed first time parents. Only without the clueless sleepless stress of first time parents.

We are really enjoying her. Just plain enjoying her. When Big K gets home from work he goes right for her and gnaws on her. He is carefree with her in ways he never can be with the other two kids and he bonded with her earlier. With the first two kids he is like "I'M THE BOSS. SUBMIT TO MY AUTHORITY." With Parkie, he's like, "Yup, she's the boss. My bad." Which entertains me to no end. Parkie can be pretty clingy to me when most people try to extract her from me, but she'll usually dive-bomb for Big K. I love watching this.

She is the no pressure kid. As long as she's healthy and developmentally normal, there is nothing to worry about that is under our control and we know that. She will be just fine. She can be what she wants to be and do what she wants to do and I'm not up googling baby milestones to make sure she's outpacing her peers. She just gets to run around and be funny.

What a blessing for her. Really. To be the kid your parents aren't stressed about or projecting on. To be the kid your parents just enjoy. Phook is the 1st so there will always be some nervousness on our part as she embarks on new adventures. Bigs is the boy which makes him the 1st in his own way and also makes him the object of his father's projections for greatness. Parkie just gets to run around in a diaper and yell, and we laugh at her. I'm not saying I'm gonna pat this kid on the back when she brings home a D in math, but I'm just really casual about her. Which is really just nice. I love having her here. I love watching her run around with her hair inexplicably spiked up. I love watching her bring up the rear.

Having 3 kids so close together is a level of gonzo that cannot be underestimated. But this 3rd kid is currently the biggest well from which I draw joy in my life. She is my joymobile. Watching her act like a crazy nutter is just so much fun. I'm so glad she's here. I'm glad they're all here, all 3 raging maniacs that we have created:

So I don't know. I just wanted to record my thoughts about Item the Third while I was having them. I love her. And now you know it.

Christmas, you have been HANDLED

2011-12-16T16:42:00.000-06:00

Dudes, I have my shit together from a holiday perspective with over a week to spare. I cower in fear, knowing that while I'm dreaming of lounging around next week with my kids and taking leisurely drives to neighboring towns to look at Christmas lights, with my karmic history I am almost guaranteeing myself appendicitis. But until my white blood cell count skyrockets, I'm feeling pretty...calm. Which is a state I haven't experienced in a solid 6 months.

It has been an intense time, the sum total of 2011. I cannot believe how busy I have been this year. The third kid getting mobile, man. My kids being old enough to participate in lots of shit. My kids being young enough that they can effectively do nothing for themselves. My job hitting the rocket boosters (by my very part-time standards). The fact that someone in my family has been at least marginally ill EVERY SINGLE DAY since Phook started 4K on September 1. The fact that I spent several months canning myself a fallout shelter full of preserved food. (I hit a new record this year. I honestly think I topped a thousand jars of stuff. I gotta get you a picture.)

A couple weeks ago, I was curling up in the fetal position just thinking about my holiday to-do list. For reals. I was actually feeling kinda depressed as I ruminated about all that loomed. But then I put one foot in front of the other several trillion times, and I cannot believe it, but I have handled my bidness.

The (appallingly wordy) holiday letter has been penned, envelopes have been addressed and stamped, and I have my spouse on the hook to stuff the envelopes with the letter and photo card tonite.

I have purchased largely thoughtful gifts for all my loved ones, and excepting the few still in transit from various online purveyors of goods that prey on us varmints living in The Woods, they are wrapped.

I have made 13 kinds of Christmas cookies and candies. And they are fucking festive. I am taking the following tray to a holiday get-together this very evening:

I had help of course. These manimals have been involved:

This crazy bastard walked around in dough:

My 285-pound spouse put on an apron with a chicken on it and owned the cookie press - HOT!:

Parkie discovered frosting, and her navel:

Phook decided she was in charge of dressing the whole family and is in some major denial that we live in Wisconsin and it's December. They're all like on spring break and shit:

My girlies helped me put up the tree(s):

My spouse expressed the depths of his love for me by operating a magenta glue gun to repair a Victorian fan ornament:

We took in some Packer domination over some junior high team that somehow got into the NFL:

Parkie, being a mere 15 months old this very day, has begun to suffer from such an overload of festivity and subsequent sugar-fueled insanity that she decided to kick it up another notch and celebrate Mardi Gras early:

She also grew horns at one point with her sister:

And of course she is rocking the mega-hat:

But not willingly for very long:

And if the other photos in this post haven't confirmed for you that my baby is completely crazy (Hint: she is), I leave you with this:

Dudes, I hope you are feeling festive, as I suddenly am. I didn't think I was gonna pull it out this year, but I have arrived at Destination Festive against all odds. Now I just need 36 inches of snow in this brown-earthed wasteland and a bigass grasshopper.

Cheers to you, homies!

P.S. Is it just me or is my baby wearing just a dipe a disproportionate amount of time?

Yo

2011-11-16T14:09:00.005-06:00

My life + my blog are clearly becoming somewhat incompatible. Which sucks, because I have psychotic mayhem occurring every day in this house that is blogging gold. I have evening meetings constantly it seems, and I am pathologically addicted to reading right now. I do these things instead of blog. Lame, me.

That being said, my sister and I were spending some quality time together, and we hatched an idea for a shared blog about food, which we think will be witty and charming and funny, if we ever have the time to get our sh*t together and do it. We're excited enough about it that it could actually happen. Look forward to that amazingness, sometime, in some alternate universe where we have free time.

Being as behind and neglectful as I am, I wouldn't want you to miss this:

And I must include another shot to make sure you see the extent of my husband's dedication to this costume. I did not ask him to wear underwear on the outside of his pants, no I did not. That was Big K, all the way.

Also, the one thing that I am feeling some particular self-loathing about re: my lack of blogging is the fact that I have not shared much about Parkie, except that she exists. That's too bad. Because the kid is, as my mother says, a "god damned circus ape." No, Grandma J is not the cookies and dentures kind of grandma. She is the grandma who shows love through profane endearments. We wouldn't have her any other way. But in regards to the g.d. circus ape, it is an apt characterization. Parkie is a climber. Now all my children have been physically ridiculous at an early age, but this one is taking the cake. The big cake. You turn your back, and that kid has scaled something. Something large and inappropriate. Tables, stairs, coffee tables, whatevs. If she can get a foothold, she can climb it. Actually, I think she has sort of suction cups on her extremities, allowing her to scale even flat, slippery surfaces. I don't know. The kid's a hosebeast. She turns 14 months old today. She should maybe be mastering walking. Um, no. This one is running, climbing, and upon reaching some household summit, she turns to everyone, screams/grunts, bares her teeth, and snorts. Maniac. I don't know. She's a good natured maniac, but I'm not kidding, she really is a maniac. I present the following evidence of her spunk:

Dude, really, this kid is hilarious. For now. She's gonna turn me really gray really fast. I'm not gonna be able to get away with getting my hair colored every 3 months for very much longer. Dude, for reals. Maniac baby. Is there some sort of tax write-off for that?

Also, I have to state that we were in this weird belt of precipitation last week that resulted in like 5 inches of really slushy snow landing in The Woods, and sticking there for several days. Our schools were even called off at noon one day. I was horrified. As a result of really poor decision-making, I found myself going for a walk that day with the children, and it took me 40 minutes to get them in their outerwear. I shit you not. Really, I'm a 4-season person. I don't dislike snow on principal. But it is some kind of cruel and unusual punishment to have to ready small children for extreme weather. The fact that at least one of my kids has been leaking snot since the first day of school on September 1st pales in comparison to the freeze-sweating, writhing, mitten-jettisoning hell that is getting little monsters appropriately clothed to endure winter weather. In mourning, I found myself cutting some barely surviving parsley from a snowbank. I'm just not ready for winter. I won't be ready for another winter for many, many years.

Okay, that's all for now. Keep your fingers crossed on that food blog w/ Auntie Hode. We're planning really fun stuff like talking about the game we play where one of us names the entree and the other names the side dishes that must go with it in Grandma J's kitchen. It's something we do to pass the time on road trips, and we think it will go over huge in the blogosphere. It will potentially get us disowned, but we're hoping for the best.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving. I am just hoping for an upgrade from last year, when we gave thanks for the stomach flu. Or not.

XOXO,
Big W

Happy Halloween from Walter Sobchak

2011-10-30T21:19:00.001-05:00

A letter to Phook for her 5th birthday

2011-10-04T08:12:00.004-05:00

Well, Phook, you're five. Slap my face and call me Skippy. You're five. I am not going to expound upon it but girlie, I don't know how the heck this happened.

When you were born, I did my fair share of reading baby books and surfing websites to assure myself that you were developmentally advanced. You had to sit up, roll over, crawl, and walk faster than other babies. And you did. And I took great pride in this. Of course my baby had to be an overachiever. I am an overachiever and I had to have an overachieving baby. I think a lot of modern parents are this way. I mean, if your kid isn't bilingual by age 3, they're pretty much a lost cause, right?

In these 5 years though, something has changed. I have spent a LOT of time around little kids, both my own and others'. I know gifted kids and super-athletic kids. I know kids who struggle socially, physically, or academically. Their parents tend to hinge a lot on which of these categories they fall into. Who wouldn't? But as I've spent these years in a kid-immersion lifestyle, I've come to realize what kind of kids I want.

Nice ones.

That's it. I want my kids to be nice kids. When people talk about my kids, I don't want them to say, "Hey, did you see that K kid at the spelling bee! What a whiz!" Or, "Hey, did you see that K kid smacking the crap out of the t-ball?" Or, "Hey, I overheard the teacher saying that K kid really struggles with reading." You could be any of those kids or none of those kids. So could your siblings. But at some point between confirming the fact that a baby who walks at 10 months is indeed advanced and now, I've smoothed out my crazy and determined that you are and will be many fabulous things and many challenging things throughout your life. Just like every other human. But that one thing that I so deeply want my children to be, well, you are.

You are a nice kid.

I think people who know you would describe you that way, and it makes me so proud. I can hear people saying, "Phook K. is a nice kid." Simple as that. I am so proud to be the mom of a nice kid. Whatever else you are and will be, you are that. A nice kid.

Phook, I love you and I think you are so amazing. You seem so grown up to me. You are oddly responsible, reasonable, and manageable. After the tumult of your two- and three-year-old years, I am just in awe of how rational you are. If we have a difference of opinion, there can be an actual conversation to arrive at a resolution. I wouldn't have believed this state could exist when you were two, and I'm kind of in awe of it. You make responsible choices, and are rarely opportunistically naughty. The rules I have taught you seem to just be sticking inside of you, rather than me having to constantly shepherd you to follow them. You look out for your siblings and enforce rules and basic decency with them. You are a nice kid.

You are so eager. You love any and all new experiences. And old experiences. If I tell you we are going to the beach, you say, "Yeah! I love swimming! This is the best day ever!" If I tell you we are going grocery shopping, you say, "Yeah! I love shopping! I can't wait to go to the store!" You are so pumped to learn academically now that you are in preschool. You ask me in advance what you're going to work on in school. You come home singing the songs you learn. You remember everything you are taught. Your teacher described you as an "eager learner." You are excited about new information and you ask for it continuously during your waking hours. You can't read yet. But you love books. Your teacher at school describes you as "cooperative and helpful." You're a nice kid.

You love nothing as much as projects. Oh, your projects. The other day, you asked me for a brown paper lunch sack. I gave you one. You then sat down in your art area (half our house), and proceeded to color, cut, and glue for about 45 minutes. Then you came out and showed me the lunch bag with a head, beak, legs, and wings you had cut out and glued to it, making a puppet. Which you informed me was a chicken. But since chickens can't fly, you had also cut out a triangular cape, colored an insignia of some sort onto it, and glued it to the back so that the chicken was a Super Chicken, enabling him to fly. And then you turned on the ceiling fan in the living room, stood on the couch, and launched your chicken into the breeze of the fan for a good long time. What did I do to facilitate this whole thing? I handed you a lunch bag. The rest was you. That amazes me. Just absolutely floors me. You are your own art director and you rock it. I don't know if you will end up with a particular artistic gift, but I know you love art. Several of your special projects are taped to the cabinets at your school, because you wanted your teacher to have them. You're a nice kid.

As has always been the case, your speech is still a work in progress. At a screening thing I took you to this summer they told me you were on track, but we're still waiting for a few sounds to come along, like the "th" sound and sometimes the "l" and "r" sounds, depending on the word. Maybe you'll need speech, maybe you won't. Regardless of the sounds you're able to make, words are not a problem. When there is a big word or a small word to choose from, you pick the big one. You talk in this earnest, expressive, excited way that is truly noteworthy. Most people who have a one-on-one conversation with you comment on it. Your teacher this summer when you went to a little summer session at your preschool said, "Phook has such a way of saying things. She is one of the most expressive children I've ever met." I am going to stand up right now and give myself a little credit for that one. Expressive. That is a trait whose origins can fairly reliably be traced to this writer. You sound a little funny, but you talk neat. You're a nice kid.

Phook, I love you. Being your mom is a joy. You have your uncool moments when you're really tired, but by and large, parenting you helps give me the energy to parent your younger siblings, the ones who still ride an unpredictable emotional roller coaster and/or cling to me like barnacles while I'm trying to use the bathroom. You give me hope that someday in the future I'll be able to start the day with an earnest attempt at personal care and maybe even accessorizing. Probably a pipe dream, I know. I'll be extracting your brother from the light fixtures until he leaves for college. But really, Phook, you're just a nice kid.

So at age 5, that is who you have become. And of all the things I'd imagined I'd wanted in a child before I had them (the words "savant," "prodigy," "overachiever," etc., come to mind), I realize now after having a few little creatures and immersing myself in a world of them, that what I want for you is that simplest of things. I look forward to watching the other parts of your grown person emerge, don't get me wrong. I hope you do find the things you most especially love and that you do put your energy into them and excel at them. But I already know you are the thing I most want you to be.

Phook, you are a nice kid.

Thank you for teaching me that my expectations for this baby:

Couldn't compare to the way I feel about this kid:

I really, really love you.

~Mom

The real deal

2011-09-21T16:45:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I read blogs and I feel like I am browsing through a catalog that contains only items I could never afford. Everything in the "snapshots" looks perfect...from the house to the kids to the mom. And then the mom always says, in reference to the perfection, "Sorry everything is so messy in this picture!" I always think that's rich. Usually though I guess, when I post pictures, they're nice ones of my kids or my family that generally give off a "I've got my shit together" vibe.

It's fair to say that they are a tad misleading.

So I'm really busy right now. I have a shitty cold so I've been slacking a little to survive. I have been at work events, trainings, or other obligatory places for like 12 of the last 14 evenings after Big K gets home from work. The past few days, I've been working all day from home with a co-worker in a similar stew of young children and mayhem as we try to revitalize the formerly shitteous website for the do-gooder coalition that employs us. It is fair to say I have neglected my housewifey duties to accomplish this. So I looked up from the mayhem a few minutes ago, and my first response was to panic at the disaster surrounding me. I mean, I've pretty much copped to OCD here, people. As a rule, I am pretty friggen' tidy. But instead of panicking, I started laughing. I just couldn't not. And then I busted out the camera to share it with you.

Firstly, the state of my living room. This could be a lot worse, I know. But it's still pretty awesome.

Here we have Phook occupying herself with a project. Phook and her projects are going to kill me. That kid wants to build a scale model of the international space station out of marshmallows, raisins, tinker toys, and a glue gun on a daily basis. When she's feeling lazy, she does decoupage.

Let's take a closer look at that kitchen counter:

Another (huge) reason my crap is gonzo is the canning. We will survive a nuclear winter in this house, I guarantee. Here is one pile of it, as yet to be put away in the basement, which represents approximately 2% of what I have put in jars this year:

What's all that crap on the dining room table off in the middle distance there? I once thought it was the most expensive object of furniture in my home, but it turns out that that dining set is the squatting grounds of the artiste that is Phook:

Now where's that baby? Don't you have a baby, lady? Um, yeah, I do. I just found it, having stolen my almost-empty pop can and wielding a metal baton:

What's Bigs up to, you ask? Oh, I think he's in the toy room. At least when I called his name into this hovel, I think I heard him tap out something in Morse code:

I wasn't sure it was him though, so I called in a search party and I'm pretty sure I can count 3 heads in there:

And me? Well, I'm all like, "Woof. Glad I got that IUD!"

I'm not kidding you. I took these pictures in a span of less than 10 minutes. This is it. for reals. The only catalog these images are going in is the advertising pamphlet for the mental hospital. Yup.

And on that note, I have to go find something to kill that I can feed us for supper. Party on, friends.

A letter to Parkie for her 1st birthday

2011-09-18T09:32:00.003-05:00

Dear Little Parkie,

You turned 1 on Friday. As far as I can tell, about 45 minutes elapsed between the doctor saying to me, "One more big push!" and the day I woke up and had a 1-year-old. Really, truly, frighteningly. But 1 you are.

With Phook and Bigs to chase, you've already been hard at work ditching the baby thing. You took your first steps a little after you turned 10 months old. At this point, you're a maniac, tearing around the house at warp speed. Now you're working on climbing things like stairs and other obstacles. The year of chasing you to keep you from hurting yourself while you grow some instinct for danger officially began early. You are keeping me busy.

You are a funny baby. You like to laugh and smile and charm people. You love your big siblings and they tote you around and play with you in ways that would have thrown me into a full blown panic attack, had someone played with Phook that way when she was a baby. You're into it though. You love them. You want to be with them and do what they are doing. When I let them outside to go on the swing set, you stand at the window and yell at them. You growl-laugh. Primarily at Turbo and the cats and in situations where you're really deeply amused, you make this hilarious weird combination of a growl and a laugh that is so spontaneous and priceless and I think it's my favorite little thing you do.

You are starting to say a few words. "All done." "More." "Cat." And definitely "Da Da" and your favorite, "Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma MAAAA!!!!!" It is fair to say you are attached to me. You follow me around and yell at me all the time. I think you'd like it if I had a kangaroo pouch you could ride in. You would have liked to be a firstborn who had me all to herself, I think. But you're doing all right in those efforts as a thirdborn. Grandma J has been known to say that you've got me right where you want me. Which is to say, wrapped around your little finger. And Daddy too. He said that if you ever grow up a bit and say, "Daddy, can I have a pony?" he'd have a hard time turning you down. Babies have special powers in a family. You're well-suited for that.

You're a good eater. You can feed yourself with a spoon and you appear to have the fine motor skills of a neurosurgeon. You'd gnaw through a brick wall to get to a peach. You're flexible and pretty comfortable anywhere, being used to a house that was already barreling along the tracks like a runaway freight train when you showed up in it. Your sleep has been a little rough. Naps have been hard to come by and a little shorter than seems like a good idea to your tired mama. You're currently dropping your morning nap, earlier than your siblings did, but that's okay because it makes us a little more flexible with our daily business and has you wanting a little earlier bedtime. You sleep pretty well at night, but you still like to wake up between 4-5 a.m. to come in my bed for a nurse and a snuggle until morning. Which is one of those heaven/hell dichotomies that seem to exist a lot in parenting. I have no inclination to change this habit right now because in 20 minutes you're going to be in kindergarten. As always, your Daddy can get you to sleep easier and you sleep far longer than when I have anything to with the process. He is the Daddy Sleep Whisperer. We love him for that.

You're a Sweetheart, too. You like to cuddle. You show affection by pressing your forehead into me. It's like a weird little forehead kiss. You like to put your head on my shoulder and nuzzle in. I am really surprised by how well you are still nursing - you would probably do it a whole lot more if I actually sat down once in awhile and invited it, which is different from your siblings who had weaned themselves by their birthdays. I'm okay with this and I'm going to go with the flow on it. You're the baby, after all.

I'm not sure who you are yet. When I picture you as a 3-year-old, I picture you wearing a princess dress and a hard hat, standing at the end of the driveway with dirt on your face and a magic wand, stomping your feet and hollering after Phook and Bigs to say, "Mom said you had to take me with you!" I guess I picture you as funny and bossy. We'll see. Soon.

When I think about having had 3 children in under 4 years, I can't help but reflect on how fast we went from a husband and a wife to parents rolling out of the maternity ward with you in an extremely well-worn car seat. It is true that as you add children, you simply have a little less of everything to go around. A little less time. A little less money. A little less patience. There is, however, an exception. And that exception is love. Love, it turns out, is infinite. Falling in love with you over the past year has been as wonderful and amazing as it was the first time around. Watching you start to turn into a little person has set my heart on fire all over again. You are precious to me and my heart is yours.

You, like your sister before you, are already off and running as you turn one. You're ready to go, ready to grow.

I can't lie. I'm a little melancholy about your babyhood coming to a close. But as with your siblings before you, I am struck with the feeling that I was put on this earth for no reason other than to watch you chase the sun.

Momma Used to Say the F Word

2011-09-08T20:58:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago, Auntie Hode and I went up north and stayed at a lovely little cabin nestled in the woods, the real woods, of Northern Wisconsin. My cousin who I grew up with owns it, and had graciously invited the Hodies to partake of its loveliness. My children were also in attendance. I had splurged on some steaks for the occasion, and Hode had grilled them to perfection. We were all assembled on the deck about to enjoy this lovely meal in a beautiful setting overlooking a lake. Hode stuck a fork in one of the steaks and set it on my plate. I looked at it with carnivorous glee.

And Phook stood up in her chair in a burst of excitement, leaned over the table, and yelled, "That's the biggest damned steak I've ever seen!"

**************

The other day, I was canning some tomatoes. (Really, all I've done for the last 6 weeks is put shit in jars.) I was gonzo-crazy-been-on-my-feet-for-9-days exhausted, and I was chopping these tomatoes and dumping the seeds/juice into a junk bucket and the good chunks I wanted to can into a big bowl. In my haze, I accidentally dumped a cutting board full of good tomatoes into my junk bucket. And then I yelled, "Shit!" Phook heard me from the other room and came out to investigate.

Very innocently, she said, "Mom, why did you say 'shit'?"

I stifled a giant guffaw and said, "I just did something I didn't mean to do and I am frustrated with myself."

Phook pressed, "Well what did you do you didn't mean to do that made you say 'shit'?"

I said, "I slid some good tomatoes into my junk bucket and now they are junk. You know you shouldn't say that naughty word that Momma just accidentally said, right?"

Phook replied, "Oh. Yeah. I know. I know I should not say 'shit'. I will never say 'shit' again. I just wanted to know what you did that made you say 'shit' so I had to say, 'Mom, why did you say, 'shit'?' But I will not say 'shit' ever again."

I said, "Okay."

**************************

Phook and I, on Labor Day, happened to find ourselves in the grungy bathroom facility of our local school system's bus garage. (Long story.) So Phook is toileting. I am standing in the grunge potty with her, observing and making sure she doesn't run into a freak of the bus garage variety. I reached across her body to throw a Kleenex into the garbage can next to the toilet.

She said, "Did you just throw something in the potty?"

I said, "No, I just reached over you to throw something in the garbage can."

She said, in reference to an event that happened about six months ago, "Oh. Do you know that one time Bigs put a bunch of newspapers in the potty?"

I said, "Yeah. I heard about that. Daddy told me. That was very naughty."

She said, "Yeah, it was. Daddy was really angry. He said, 'Bigs, you do not put fricken' newspapers in the potty!' And I knew it was naughty for him to say 'fricken' but I did not say to him, 'Daddy, it is naughty to say 'fricken',' because I knew that would make him really mad and he was already really mad. But I will never say 'fricken' because I know it is not a nice word."

*********************

The child is attending a preschool called Little Lambs. It's only a matter of time before my little lamb says "Bastard!" while learning about the hijinx that went down in the Garden of Eden.

Momma needs to get her shit together. I mean, I have reigned it in considerably since motherhood struck, but it's time to get on the profanity abstinence bandwagon.

But why is it so funny to me when children swear? Or when anyone swears? Dude. I know there are people who feel really strongly about the evils of profanity, but I confess I love it. I just think things can be said best when sprinkled with liberal amounts of jaunty cussing. I learned this from my own mother, who when I was about 12 years old once hit her head really hard on something in the basement and yelled out, "Cock-suckin' mother-fuckin' blue-balled sonofabitch!" And then she acted casual as my sister and I stared at each other, wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

We remember it fondly.

Lucky me

2011-09-06T21:23:00.000-05:00

We have been busy. Things have been good.

Ah, summer. You've been nice.

News from the Big Top

2011-08-11T14:05:00.000-05:00

Some of you may be aware that I have a bit of a phobia. A clown phobia. A raging clown phobia. It ain't funny. But it's kinda funny.

One time, when Big K and I had been dating for awhile, we found ourselves at a parade. Big K, knowing of my phobia in theory but finding it silly and probably overblown, took the opportunity to summon a clown to my side as a big funny joke. He said, "This girl loves clowns!" The clown, basking in the glow of my love, reached out and gave me a big clowny hug, and put a big clowny sticker on my shirt. The clown didn't seem to notice that I burst into silent, hot, horrified tears the moment he got within 10 feet of me. But Big K did. You could say he felt kinda bad. Since then, he has not underestimated the clown phobia.

Unfortunately, at our wedding, some of my friends decided to capitalize on the funny-ha-ha of my phobia. During the grand march at our reception (apparently the grand march is much more common in Wisconsin than elsewhere - it's basically a big thing where the wedding party gets announced and trots out doing something at least marginally stupid while the guests watch), someone decided it would be funny to dress all the groomsmen up like clowns when they were announced. So there I was, standing in front of pretty much every single loved one I have, when 6 clowns came charging at me. You'd think that I would be able to focus on the fact that the clowns were people I knew, but I could not. They were just clowns. And I was seriously terrified. It took everything I had not to start screaming and freaking out in a very real moment of terror. I had to go to my happy place like never before. It was horrifying. People who watched it thought it was funny. I did not. I wasn't mad, because I don't think anyone was trying to be mean. I just don't think other people are necessarily capable of understanding fears that they don't have. I, for example, don't understand my husband's fear of heights, because I don't have it. I scrounged up an old photo of that event, and although the clowns are dark and set in the back, you get the idea:

These are just a couple highlights from my rich history of people fucking with me re: clowns. But it's okay. You know, I'm a grown-up. I can usually avoid clowns pretty easily.

Until now.

The children. The children have discovered the concept of a clown and are delighted by them. Once we were at a local festival celebrating bison (why not?), and the children spotted a clown and wanted to go chat her up. And oh that clown was chatty. And I was trying to drag my kids away from the clown while the clown busted out bubbles, hula hoops, balloons, and God knows what other kiddie crack to keep them amused and delighted. All the while I'm gagging back vomit, wiping cold sweat from my body, and claiming we have to go RIGHT NOW. That was rich.

So the other day, Phook asked me to draw her a picture for her to color. Auntie Hode started a pleasant little pastime of drawing a picture with a black marker and then letting Phook color it in, like a homemade coloring book. Now, Auntie Hode can draw, and she whips up lovely barnyard scenes, underwater wonderlands, and the like. I, um, cannot. But Phook was insistent. I said, "Buddy, I'm not very good at drawing." And she said, "Yes you can mom. I know you can. It's easy. You can just draw me a clown." I then recoiled in horror while pretending to do anything but recoil in horror. I came up with 87 excuses for not drawing a clown, but Phook would have none of them. She went all cheerleader on me and was like, "Mom, you can do it! I know you can do it! You just draw a funny guy with a big round nose!!!"

I caved. I drew the kid my best shitty Bozo. I was shaking and almost crying, but I did it. The things I do for these children.

As soon as I finished it, I left the room and told Phook to have a swell old time coloring that clown. I was in the kitchen pottering around while Phook joyfully colored. And then she started hollering in and asking me questions. "How do you spell 'from' mom?" I told her. "How do you spell 'love' mom?" I told her. So she toiled on her project for a solid 20 minutes. Then she came out to deliver it to me. She handed me a packaged up envelope-looking bunch of papers. She said, "This is just for you, mom! I made this for you because I love you!"

The first page, with Phook's real name obscured:

The middle page (she thought I said "b" when I said "v" as I spelled love).

The masterwork:

Yup. Yes. Indeed. The child made me a clown-centric love note. I faked the funk and praised it aggressively. I tried my very best not to show fear at my own drawing. I tried to suppress the urge to flee, cry, shake, panic. I did okay. I tried to change the subject as quickly as possible, and while Phook sensed something was vaguely amiss, I think I navigated the situation without scarring her for life.

It is, to say the least, highly inconvenient that I am terrified of a children's amusement. There are many years between now and the time when I will be able to adequately explain the concept of a phobia to my progeny. Many, many clowny years.

********************

Tonite, a traveling circus is performing in our town. Grandma J called and volunteered to take the whole lot of us. The children are going. Big K is going. Everyone is very excited.

I happen to have a dentist appointment. I can guarantee you there has never been a more celebrated cavity in the history of dental work.

July seems to have occurred

2011-08-08T09:03:00.000-05:00

I received a catalog full of Halloween costumes for kids yesterday. And then I puked a little bit. This has been the fastest summer of my life. We have just been so insanely busy. I didn't anticipate it when the summer started, but here we are, buying a backpack for Phook's official first day of preschool on September 1st.

The lack of well-being expressed here has improved drastically. There are still moments of extreme frustration--typically at times like when I'm late to somewhere important and my son is refusing to put on his shoes--when I just want to walk off the job. But I guess I can expect that to continue for the next lifetime or so, and I just need to do my best to care for myself enough that I can tolerate it without getting really gonzo.

I took the advice of some of you who commented on that post referenced above and I took a break. With just my sister. I'd love to go somewhere with just Big K sometime too, but that will have to wait until the baby is a little older and I can con a non-parent into watching all 3 of them for an overnight. But Big K gave me his blessing and allowed me to board an aircraft to New Orleans with Hode. Although our hotel was on Canal St. one block down from Bourbon Street, we did not patronize any strip clubs or bars. Instead, we ate. That was pretty much it. Highlights included this and this. We ate like bastards. We slept like bastards. We lounged around and read like bastards. It was amazing. We had fun:

I am so glad we went. The children missed me, especially the small, unweaned one. But they were well cared for and they were fine. I had made enough food to feed them for 6 months before I left and had taped a series of notes written in hot pink sharpie on every conceivable surface to assist their father in finding things he would need to keep the household running in my absence, up to and including his own cranium. It was only 4 days. But they were some great days. I missed them and that was hard, but I needed to remember the experience of just walking around responsible for my own needs (what? I have needs?) and wants (what? I have wants?). I cannot believe how easy it is to go through airport security responsible solely for my own person. Dude. So, yes, I blew town and it was a wonderful prescription. I read a quote on a blog the other day that said something like, "It is possible to love your children with all your heart, but not with all your time." Yes. And please remind me of that when my next crazy post comes.

There has also been a lot of camping. Taking this show on the road, in the woods, is no small feat, but it is really worth it. The K's do their best work when covered in a paste of sweat, bug spray, and sunscreen.

There has also been Vacation Bible School. T-ball. A weekly playgroup. A weekly co-ed softball game for Big K and I. A million meetings and work obligations. A million trips to go swimming. A million trips to the park. A million errands. A million pages of fiction that I have been reading compulsively. A million cucumbers turned into pickles. A million everything. Life, flying.

And there is no stronger reminder of that than the fact that my newborn daughter is taking her first steps.

What's that you say, she's not a newborn? Oh, crap, you're right. What the hell has happened to the 10 months since this child was born??? I don't know. I just don't. I do know that this baby is a cute one. She seems to be suffering from a hair shortage, but a cutie nonetheless. Here she is taking in a Brewer game:

I love her. I love 'em all.

XO,
Big W

P.S. As insurance to help guarantee that I don't let this slip by undocumented, I want to inform those of you that know about my clown phobia that I have an amazing story for you. Coming soon.

Sibling rivalry, thou art the engine that fuels my children

2011-07-06T22:01:00.000-05:00

I knew my kids had a tendency to compete for my attention, but what occurred this afternoon at my home has me seeing the power of sibling rivalry in a whole new light.

Ok. So Bigs had been cruising around here on a tricycle. Phook had been cruising around here on a little two-wheeler with training wheels that we got for Bigs for Easter. We had gotten her a bigger bike for Easter too, but the training wheels on it sucked and she just kept crashing and getting frustrated, so since Bigs couldn't really ride his two-wheeler yet, she was using it.

Until today. Today Bigs hopped on his two-wheeler with training wheels and started pedaling around the driveway on it. And I was really proud of him. He had kind of struggled to get the pedaling motion down on the trike up until recently, but today he randomly hopped on his big bike (the one Phook had been using), and started ramming around. So I screamed and made a big deal of it and hopped up and down and said he was rad and did all that stuff, and he thought he was cool and it was all positive. Check him:

Phook observed.

And then Phook came over to me, and asked if she could try her original little bike, the one we had planned to jettison when we got her the bigger one for Easter. We had removed the training wheels from it because Big K was getting antsy about the whole matter, what with her being all of 4. He had spent about 15 minutes trying to get her to ride the thing without training wheels sometime about a month ago, and she just couldn't get it or wasn't ready to be that fearless. She was a little shaky about the idea of ditching the training wheels and a little frustrated, but it wasn't much more than a blip in one random afternoon. So today when she asked to ride it, I reminded her that the training wheels were off of it. She said, "I know, I want to try."

Now, I had just sat down for the first time in 47 days because I've been really busy with some work shit and life shit and shit shit, and the baby was happily sitting there gnawing on something and I was reading a recipe for Reuben dip in a cooking magazine and trying to figure out how I could justify making a whole slow cooker full of the stuff, so I was not inclined to chase the wobbling child on the two-wheeler she couldn't ride. However, she was being her typical polite/intense self, so I put my dip fantasy aside and got the bike out. Then I gave her a 30 second lesson on how to launch herself on the bike, and just sort of shoved her off. And she rode the damned thing.

It took her like 5 minutes to get her sea legs and then she was just riding the thing around like a princess-biked badass. The child can now ride her little two-wheeler. Why? Why? Because I got excited for her brother, and she had to outdo him. Can I get a side of holy shit with my plate full of what the f***? Dude, really. I mean, I know sibling rivalry is an intense thing, but the clarity with which it showed its capabilities today was off the chain.

So of course I was even more excited that Phook was riding the two-wheeler with no training wheels (I mean, come on...that's a huge childhood milestone right there), but I didn't want Bigs' happy happy joy joy to get washed away so I was running around the yard like a maniac screaming for both of them for like half an hour. I hope the neighbors enjoyed it.

When Big K came home, he was all proud and delighted, and I have to admit I was feeling a little smug about my progress here on the homestead today. But really it had next to nothing to do with me. It was all these crazy little suckers, butting heads. Or wheels, as it were:

Dude, intense. Can't wait for the year she's in 8th grade and he's in 7th. Pass me that hefty bottle of spirits, please...

A letter to Bigs on (the day after) his 3rd birthday

2011-07-05T14:30:00.001-05:00

Dear Bigs,

Oh Bigs. Man oh man. My little firecracker is now a 3-year-old firecracker. Typically in these letters I say I can't believe you're already the age you are turning, but really what I can't believe this time around is that you're ONLY 3, given the depth of your person and breadth of your capabilities and my sense that you have just always been here.

You are a magic kid. People are drawn to you like a moth to a flame. At your uncle's wedding in Texas, a middle-aged woman who had been watching you on the dance floor, a stranger, came up to me and told me that she was in love with you, and that you are destined to be her husband in her next life. So maybe that's a little weird, but my point is that everyone falls in love with you. Strangers fall in love with you. Someone observes you for a little while and almost inevitably I hear them muttering, "I love that kid." You are that kid.

But you don't know it. You're inclined to be hard on yourself. You're inclined to shy away from attention. You're inclined to cover your eyes and say, "You can't see me!" if someone is getting in your face about some aspect of your radness. You have no clue. No clue whatsoever that you are turning heads and stopping hearts at the freshly minted age of 3. I don't see this going away any time soon. I only see myself having heart attacks over your dating future.

This year, you became a big brother. And you have grown into the role in wonderful ways. I watch you playing little games with Parkie. Being concerned if she fusses and trying to make her feel better. Offering her a little cracker. Being patient with her and with me as I care for her. Growing up.

This year, I have struggled to convince you of how awesome you are and how loved you are. I have struggled to help you channel your physical gifts and the boy-ness I am so unfamiliar with into positive actions. I have struggled to keep you from feeling scared of things. And when I step back and look at these challenges, it all just makes me love you more. Even those things that sometimes make it hard for me to do a good job as your mom are manifestations of all the beautiful parts of the blindingly beautiful you. You are a chocolate covered pretzel. Or pretzel-covered chocolate. Some days you're sweet but salty on the inside. Some days you're salty but sweet on the inside. Either way, you are a delicious mix of contrasts.

You are funny. You are silly. You are imaginative. You are sensitive. You use huge words and a huge vocabulary while speaking with the sweetest of lisps. You tell me earnest, exceedingly detailed stories with wide eyes. You ask if you can stay up a little longer to snuggle (yes, you can). You have a sweet tooth and ask if you can have treats a lot (yes, you can). Right now, you love 3 things above all else: 1) Dinosaurs 2) Baseball and 3) Fishing. You like to hang out with me, no matter what I'm doing. You are cool. Just cool.

Regardless of all of these things I know, there are some things I feel like I don't know about you yet. Whereas with your big sister I feel like I am looking at a force of personality that will be there, essentially unchanged, when she's 70 years old, I'm not sure about you yet. I'm not sure which parts of your personality are truly you and which parts are functions of your age. As you grow and mature, it will be fun to see which pieces of sweet and which pieces of salty end up in the final recipe.

What I do know for sure about you, now and always, is that I love you with a fierceness and intensity that leaves me feeling completely vulnerable and almost scared. Whoever said that having a child is to have your heart walking around outside your body must have had a kid like you. You are a magnet for my love. Whatever you turn out to be, you will always be that. And no matter which pieces of you are here to stay and which pieces of you are just parts of being a little guy, I hope you find whatever it is you're fishing for.

I love you, my little yellow-hair, I love you.

~Mommy

The tie that binds

2011-06-28T10:39:00.003-05:00

The other night, Big K and I determined that we would spend some time in each other's presence after the children went to bed. Feeling saucy, I suggested we work on the 1000-piece puzzle we started sometime in 2006. We have something like this so you can preserve and store a puzzle while you're working on it. Now, I am a long-time lover of puzzles, and pre-kids I'd occasionally get obsessive and knock out a 1000-piecer by myself in two days. Big K is not a particular fan of doing puzzles, but he occasionally joins me under threat of violence.

So we're doing the puzzle. He swallows his pride and asks me for tips on finding pieces. I give him said tips, barely able to hide that I am gloating to have been asked. He is searching for one particular piece for at least half an hour, and getting really pissed about it. I look up from the area I'm working on, instantly see the piece he needs, and plop it into the glaring hole that has been chapping his ass for the better part of our recreational experience.

He groans. He snorts. He finally sputters out, "Glory hound."

I was quiet for a minute, reflective. And then I said, "Do you think competition is good for our marriage or bad for our marriage?"

Big K was quiet for a minute, reflective. And then he said, " I think it is our marriage."

Upswing

2011-06-20T09:53:00.000-05:00

It's the weirdest thing. I tell you something. I admit it. And it immediately starts to lift. This happened when I wrote the post about my internal strife over sending Phook to school. After I got that out and subsequently read everything people said, the burden of it lifted. I still cared and thought about it, of course, but it became so much mentally lighter. It has happened again with my admission of hitting rock bottom. Since I wrote that post a few days ago, the following things have happened:

1) My husband found a way to reliably get the baby to sleep without her screaming. She is now going to sleep without incident, taking actual naps, and sleeping from her 7 p.m. bedtime until 4:30 in the morning without waking up. Last night, she slept from bedtime until 6:00 this morning without waking up. Don't tell anyone...you'll jinx me.

2) My son, who has resisted potty-training with the force of the world's combined military strength, has decided he is a willing participant in diaper-free toileting. He finally got past the poop fear he had been harboring for the better part of a year and has successfully used the potty since I wrote that post, with a couple minor pee accidents. Yesterday I tried to put him in a diaper for his nap because I was too lazy to find a pull-up and he rejected it, saying, "I don't wear diapers anymore." Don't tell anyone..you'll jinx me.

3) I dropped Phook off at school this morning. It's the first time in her 4 years, 8 months, and 20 days of life she has been in the care of someone other than a parent or relative. The little church pre-school across the street from my house is having a 2-week summer session - every morning from 8-noon, and Grandma J offered to spring for it. So I acted casual and signed her up. I was freaking out a little when we all walked her down to school this morning, but when I left I gave her a hug and she just excitedly said, "See ya!" And then I walked out the door and started sobbing like a clown. When I walked back in the house, I felt the absence of her energy in a really weird way, and as I sit here now I am feeling like a limb is missing or something. Not painfully so, but there is a distinct missing element. I told this to Big K and he said, "Just wait until it's Parkie." And then I heaved and sobbed a little more. But it's okay. The child is, in a word, ready. She is just ready to go do this. If she can grow up, I guess I can too. Phook on the steps of her little school this morning:

A byproduct of this development is that I am currently sitting here with Bigs. Just Bigs. Not Bigs and Phook playing rock 'em sock 'em robots. So Grandma J may have inadvertently saved my life, for two weeks at least. This fall, Phook will be attending the school 3 mornings per week. And it will be okay, because she's ready. She just is. Turns out you can keep a little kid home for the first few years of their life and not warp them into a maladjusted barnacle on your hip. Good to know.

So thank you for your comments on my previous post. For putting it in perspective. For helping me remove my very large head from my very large, well, you know what. For sending positive vibes my way which succeeded in teaching my baby to sleep and in potty training my son. Those are some powerful vibes. I may survive.

Not the mother I want to be

2011-06-16T00:01:00.000-05:00

If there is one thing that lies at the center of who I want to be as a mother it is this: I want to enjoy and appreciate my children. Since having Phook, I think I have been largely successful in doing this. This blog basically serves as a testament to that mission statement.

Until now.

This is a problem. A very big problem.

I am in a bad place. It's weird, because I feel simultaneously like I am trapped in this place but also like I am the one who puts myself here. Like I should be able to control it but I just can't get it under control.

I'm a mess.

You know how in the movies, there are scenes meant to illustrate the insanity of a household with children, and it's over-the-top stuff like they show two adults talking and in the background you hear glass breaking and kids screaming and unidentified cacophony and then the dog runs through the shot and he's been painted blue or something and a pot is boiling over on the stove and then a window breaks? I feel like that is every minute of my day. And not in a funny funny ha ha sort of way. More like I am crawling up the wall and wishing someone would walk in and rescue me from my own life.

I have never felt like this before. I feel like since I had kids I have run into about 10 billion moms who feel this way, and I've never been able to relate. In all honesty, I've been horrified. I think to myself, "Why did you even have kids if all you're going to do is complain about them?" And things that are way bitchier than that.

But for the first time since becoming a mother, I am not enjoying my day-to-day life. Oh sure, I certainly had bad days and untimely stomach flus and big emotions and rough patches and all that noise since the beginning. But the bottom line was that on the whole I was still happy as a clam. The past couple months though, I am not happy as a clam. I'm rotten shellfish.

I've been stewing around for some time now, making morose comments and feeling shitty, and the other night I finally had a long drawn-out talk with Big K about this, and he helped me find a little bit of clarity in it all. He's rational. He's kind. He's supportive. So he dissects the situation and helps me realize that there are real, definite reasons that things are hard right now, and there is an end-point for all of them in sight. So, of course, things will get better. And they will. But right now, well, rotten shellfish.

Here's the thing. Phook and Bigs are sincerely engaged in an unending battle with each other. When I wrote this tear-jerker about poor Bigs, I was operating under the assumption that he was struggling because I went and threw the Park Rat up in his grill. But I'm pretty sure I was wrong there. Of course having me distracted with the baby couldn't have helped matters any, but in my highly unscientific experiments involving different combinations of children in the care of different combinations of parents it became astoundingly clear to me that his root issues are not with the baby, but with Phook. When Phook is out of the picture for some obscure reason (exceedingly rare, but it occasionally happens), Bigs turns into a different kid. The crazy behavior, the random yelling, the wild/violent tendencies are instantly gone. He morphs into the sweetest child the world has ever seen, even when Parkie is still there. My new theory is that he is pissed off that he (in his perception) is a second class citizen to Princess Phook. As the oldest child, she directs their play, and after spending the blissful time of the first two years of his life being a good sport, he has had it and now chooses to sabotage their play. He wrecks games she has set up. He aborts whatever was going well and randomly starts chasing her with a toy chainsaw. Then she screams. He screams. Someone hits. Everyone wails. And I've been upstairs trying to get the baby to sleep for half an hour when they come bulldozing up the stairs both crying and wailing and freaking out about what one of them did to the other one. Which wakes up the baby who has just fallen asleep. Which, at this point when my baseline frustration level is chronically on red-alert, generally throws me into an embarrassingly obscene rage and I scream at my kids. And then I want to puke and die because I am a horrible mother.

Which is why I am no longer enjoying my day-to-day life. I don't feel like I am parenting. I feel like I am juggling grenades. The fact that I am still regularly taking these children to parks and zoos and libraries and museums and restaurants and swimming pools and on playdates and to the grocery store is a testament to some kind of superhuman drive that I didn't know I had. Because, really, I want to lock them in a safe room and just take a damned nap.

I can't believe I just admitted that. I can't. This is not my style. I am not this person. I am not this fucking person.

But right now, I am.

So bad.

The variables are many. The first is that Bigs is in that volatile age range that is just friggen' hard. I have some amnesia going with how Phook was at that 2-turning-3 time, but my therapist Dr. Big K reminded me that she used to refuse to talk to anyone she didn't know really well, and I was horrified about that and sure there was something wrong with her. She used to randomly lash out and smack Bigs when he was a baby, and I was horrified about that and sure there was something wrong with her. She used to come upstairs and march in on me trying to get Bigs down for a nap regardless of my earnest warnings and I'd go insane. Her behavior and wacko emotions turned out to be age-appropriate and not a harbinger of a personality disorder. Bigs is just so capable that I have a hard time remembering his calendar age and letting him be that age. Instead, I expect him to behave like he's Phook's twin just because he can hit a ball farther than she can and because his vocabulary is bigger than that of 90% of the adults that live in The Woods. I can't expect him to be going on 5 when he's not even 3. But still, he randomly makes a weird roaring sound at a restaurant and my parents both yell at him in simultaneous horror and I go home and want to cry because my son must certainly have something diagnosable going on for everyone to be so horrified by him. I tell this to Big K and he informs me that he didn't stop roaring inappropriately in public until he was 25, and boys are just different. Since we were dating when Big K was 25, I know he's not kidding. But still. Bigs is challenging right now. He may turn out to be challenging forever or he may turn out to be a two-year-old boy who sometimes roars inappropriately in public when he's been sick and sleep-deprived and has energy to vent but no good way to vent it.

Then there's the baby. God bless that beautiful sweet child because I love her with my everything and she is the sweetest bird that ever landed in this nest. She really is sweet. She really is easy-going. But her contribution to this bedlam is that she has been a pain in the rear on the matter of sleep. I haven't bothered to say a whole hell of a lot about it because it's my third kid, I've read all the books, it's temporary, blah, blah, blah what more is there to say? But the child is not a great sleeper. She's by no means a nightmare, but over time even relatively unremarkable sleep disturbances can start to turn a mother into a worthless bag of hair. I could write 40 posts about this alone if I really wanted to, but the short version is that the child has resisted naps her whole life and, once finally asleep, rarely naps for over 20 minutes. Which means I have spent a huge amount of time the last 9 months trying to get her to sleep and very little time with her actually sleeping. It is not horrific but it wears on you. It's like having something screwed up with your car so your tires wear funny. At first you don't notice but after awhile you can't drive straight. And at night, well, she has gotten up at least twice to nurse--if not more--for her whole life. She's 9 months old today. So I fall asleep and then an hour later I'm up and then I sleep for a couple hours during which time my other kids shuffle in and out of my room having peed the bed or seeing a monster or whatever it is and then I just get back to sleep and then the Rat is up again and then I just fall back to sleep in those blue-light early morning hours and then Bigs is bouncing off my forehead because it's morning. I sleep 4 hours a night, not in a row, and they all suck. Given that I don't sleep when I'm pregnant, I'm now at 18 months straight of utter bullshitfest non-sleep, and, well, I was pregnant or nursing someone else for 4 years before that even started. So I'm a crazed animal prowling around with zombie eyes and I think I'm technically insane from sleep deprivation.

And the hormones. My God. This is where we get into too much information and you should probably tune out if you're not into that. Parkie is still nursing really well and I have yet to return to regularly scheduled programming of the menstrual variety. But for the last couple months I have felt certain I'm just about to get my period because I feel pre-menstrual. Like, I'm positive that I must be about to finally get a period and sometimes I get a day or an hour of spotting but no actual period has occurred. So I feel like I'm in some weird hormonal purgatory and my teenager skin confirms it. Due to the intensity of my personal breeding program I have only had about 5 periods since the end of 2005 (not a typo), so it is gonna be a winner when it happens but I seriously wish it would just friggen' show itself so I can get on with resuming some hormonal equilibrium. As of right now I feel like I'm a really temperamental volcano and I'm sending out a lot of signals to indicate that an eruption is pending, but I just sit here simmering away and never blow. So while the last thing on earth I want to experience is the return of menses and the likely blood transfusion I will require when it finally does happen, I'd really rather be done with premenstrual syndrome in perpetuity. I also have yet to shed my pregnancy hair. I fear for our local sewer and water utility when I finally do begin to shed because the offerings of my drain will likely have an impact on local ecosystems, such will be the quantity of hair when I finally do shed. My crazy childless hairstylist keeps commenting with shock and horror at the thickness of my hair before she busts out her crazy razor thing and starts screaming, "We have to GET RID OF SOME OF THIS BULK!" and I try to explain that you don't shed your hair when you're pregnant and I am still not shedding but it is all noise to her and she just grabs chunks with abject horror and attacks me with her little razor machine. And I want to ram her face through the mirror. Thereby confirming the diagnosis discussed in this paragraph.

And there is one other thing, which is its own topic and deserves better treatment than I can give it here, but there is something happening in my person that is another new feeling for me and a contributing factor in all this. In short, it is a longing for myself. Me. The person. The person who existed before I became a mother. The person underneath the person who has essentially been pregnant or breastfeeding a baby for almost 6 consecutive years. I mean, I still have the same hobbies and personality traits as I did before, but there is the fact that my children don't know my name and they are the people I spend all day talking to. When I ask them what my real name is, they say, "Mommy K---." There is something beautiful in that but there is also something painful there. The people I spend all day with do not know my name and do not even consider that I have one, because I am just the creature that gets them a bowl of grapes. It turns out that the grape-fetcher might be wearing a very stained uniform but when she takes it off there is a vibrant person underneath that many people used to enjoy for her own merit. I miss her a little bit. For the first time, I miss her. I reveled in casting off all the corporate pressures of my pre-kid existence and when motherhood came to me it was like I jumped into a golden pool and became beautiful for the first time in my life. I found peace. Happiness. Joy. My true self.

I found myself here. And now I feel like I may have lost myself here.

I yell at my kids. I lose my patience with my kids. I wish for their bedtimes. I complain about my kids. And then I feel guilty about all of it.

I am not the mother I want to be.

I love them more than anything. I feel like I don't deserve them. I feel like I am actively failing in the most important job on earth. I feel like it is indulgent, pathetic, petty, weak, and possibly even morally bankrupt to be this big of an asshole.

I've been thinking all this for months now but just sat down at the computer on my way to bed and blurted it all out like a drunken teenager sobbing over her diary. It is a gross error in judgment to publish it. But I have very clearly just made it very clear that good judgment escapes me these days, so here goes...

My family went to Texas, and all we got was this lousy picture

2011-06-09T22:29:00.002-05:00

Seriously. I asked someone to take a picture of us while we were on a dolphin-watching boat trip. She took this one shot, declared it "great," and handed me back my camera.

As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as a decent photo of a family of 5 that is rocking a 4-year-old, a 2-year-old, and an 8-month-old.

More later. I just wanted to throw that out there.

We did see a ridiculous number of dolphins. Which was nice.

Crying over lost blogs

2011-06-01T23:24:00.000-05:00

At the time I started blogging, I stumbled onto a bunch of other blogs that I really really liked. I checked for updates frequently, thought about the writers all the time, felt connections to people through blogs, and generally considered the whole business (my blog included) to be a major part of my life.

I just accidentally started puttering around on the internet, and found myself realizing that the great majority of those blogs are now dormant or downright gone. It got me kind of emotional about the whole business for some reason. I mean, there are 5-year-olds running around out there who are still 2-year-olds in my head because that's when their moms stopped blogging. A big deal in the grand scheme of things? No. But still kinda sad. It's like not being able to finish a book.

I don't want to be one of those blogs. I don't want this to be my very last priority. But dudes, that is obviously where it is tending to end up. Which is lame.

For me, three kids (and in particular, three kids born in just a hair under four years) is the point at which I have to let some shit go. Every single day of my life I am literally spinning through my day until the moment it ends. I am just so busy. The hands-on care my children require is incredibly intense and time-consuming. Phook and Bigs have spent the last 6 months looking for opportunities to beat each other and I am growing excessively weary of day after day spent managing their misbehavior toward each other and my inability to tweak the overall dynamic. I have a new-ish boss for my wee job who has actual goals and expectations (a good thing), but it translates into having to sneak more actual active work (meetings, calls, in-person contacts - all difficult with no formal childcare arrangements at my disposal) into an already insane day. When I have a little time right before bed and I want to relax, I've consistently been turning to reading and really enjoying it. I mean, I have always been a voracious reader, but sometimes I just burn through books, and I've been in a long stretch of that lately.

Sometimes, I leave dirty dishes sitting in the sink for extended periods of time.

Sometimes, I can make myself sit down (by which I mean I involuntarily collapse) before I have tidied the house at the end of the day.

Sometimes, I skip a week on scrubbing the bathtub.

Who gives a shit? Well, no one. And I know this stuff isn't a big deal. But for me, they are signs of an easing. Because I have to. I am operating at maximum capacity.

Now I know that all kind of sounds like a prelude to a breakup. But it's actually not. It's just kind of an explanation. A starting point. Something. I feel myself hitting a transition point, and that is when I need to blog. This blog was started at a transition point, at the birth of Phook. Possibly the biggest transition point there is. And although there is not an obvious transition occurring for me that the world can see, I feel one inside me, and I know I will need to blog it out.

It's a lot of things. It's moving toward acceptance that Parkie is the last baby. It's the beginnings of starting to itch to find some (or return to some) more me in my life. Not me the mom, but me. Just me. It's a changing perspective on parenting. On life. It's some things finally becoming comfortable. It's other things starting to become uncomfortable. I don't know. Something in the pot is stirring. And I want to talk about it. Right now I could probably brainstorm a list of 100 blog post ideas in less than 10 minutes. Maybe I'll just do that as a blog post right there. I don't know.

I'm not promising anything. In fact, I am writing this post by accident. But Big W feels like writing. So I'm going to try to do that.

And I owed you updates. The stupid kidney stone. That sucker is gone. I don't know man. I went for my follow-up appointment and my jaw hit the floor when urology dude declared the procedure a victory. Who knows. I caught virtually nothing in my sieve of doom. Whatevs. I'm happy.

We went to Texas to see my brother-in-law get hitched. I can definitively state that flying small children across the country is preferable to driving small children across the country, having traveled a billion miles by each mode of transit within a two-month span. (See, that's a post right there!) The children did get a little tweaked out by the wedding-related demands and sleep-deprivation and general mandatory dicking around on the trip, but overall it was good. There was a moment of intense horrific exceedingly dangerous get on your knees and thank God for the safety of your child horror with Bigs while we were there, and that kind of colored my ability to speak positively about the trip in general, but thankfully it was an almost-disaster instead of an actual disaster. (Definite post, if I can get up the guts.)

The baby can stand. And wave. And clap. The baby generally chooses not to sleep through the night. And I choose to baby her and let that be okay. I love that baby. I hope she never asks me for a pony. Because I'll say yes. Which will require buying a new house and some land on which to put that pony. Animal cruelty aside, I'd probably spray paint her pony pink if she wanted a colored one. She is my sweetest sweetest sweetest thing.

When we got back from Texas, we all got the stomach flu. Memorial Day weekend was supposed to include a picnic on my parents' sweet deck. I settled for the sweet nectar of 7Up, once I could hold it down. In my next life, I will eradicate rotavirus.

So I don't know. I just logged on to tell you that I don't want to be a lost blog. If you could send a Big W clone over here, that would help me in that endeavor quite heartily. But, consider yourself warned. I feel like I might be needing you.

BOGUS

2011-05-09T14:52:00.000-05:00

Each time I've had a kid, I've followed it up by giving birth to an evil twin. A kidney stone, that is. People. Seriously. One kidney stone per baby. Here's how it went down after I had Phook. And then this shit happened when I was pregnant with Bigs. Park Rat's stone, which I was hoping to escape, reared its ugly head the other day. And its head is particularly ugly.

Seriously. Have you ever had a kidney stone? I hope not. The pain is kinda like having a baby. The output is far less cute. On the plus side, they don't cost a quarter million bucks to raise to the age of 18. But that's about the only plus side I can think of. Kidney stone pain hurts like a sonofabitch.

This stone is ONE CENTIMENTER around. You probably don't have to be a urologist to surmise that something spherical but quite pointy in parts that is the size of a penny is not going to fit out your pee-er. It's gonna try to come out, but it's gonna get stuck. And it's gonna make you sweat and pant and have a blood pressure of 188/120 when you show up at the doctor's office begging for narcotics and/or euthanasia.

Yeah. A week ago Friday I had a big date planned with a friend. We were gonna hit a citywide garage sale in a nearby-ish town and talk ladies down to 25 cents per item for clothing with other kids' stains on it. And have lunch. I was pumped. I had my dad on the hook to watch my big kids, and I was only gonna be rocking the littlest varmint, which is like a vacation. (Funny how I wouldn't have considered just watching a baby anything resembling a vacation when I only had one baby. But now it's like going to the Bahamas for a long weekend.) Anyhow, I was excited. Except instead of hitting garage sales, I turned around and hit the hospital. It was cute.

They shot me in the butt with some mega-anti-inflammatory. I wished I had worn different underwear. I had a CT scan. I dropped my baby off with some random at an info desk and said, "Here's my baby. Her name is Park Rat. Here are some puffs to shove in her maw if she starts yelling. I am gonna have a CT scan and I don't want to nuke her. I'll be back in five." And I walked away. And that is an exact quote, excepting Park Rat's pseudonym.

I would NEVER have done that when I had Phook. NEVER. For like 10 million reasons. I wouldn't have left my baby with a stranger. I would have been feeling ashamed and trashy for having no childcare. I would have felt unspeakably guilty assuming that a business-y person would be willing to take a few minutes out of her day to watch my kid. I would have worried that the kid would cry. I would have been freaking out like a maniac and screaming at Big K on his voicemail.

The other day? I didn't care at all. Not a wink, snort, or kerfluffle. If there is a nuclear hailstorm in my ureter, I can officially let go. This is a good progression in my parenting life. I am kicking into survival mode more easily and more often. It's just necessity. People, it turns out, are willing to help you if you ask them. Or if you stun them with your audacity.

So the CT scan confirmed the existence of Stonehenge in my plumbing. Big K was finally able t0 extract himself from the cess pit of endless, thankless responsibility that is his career in the sack-punching public sector and took me down to the big city to see a urologist on the quick. I had some more x-rays, blood work, narcotics. At this point the pain got itself together. That's the funny thing about kidney stones. The pain can come and go with no warning. It can rage and slay you and then just go away with nothing perceptible happening. It just depends on where the little sucker is lodged and to what extent it is blocking the flow of your fluids. It can do a little shimmy and get itself comfy and then you're back to feeling normal even though it's still in there. Total bastard.

So I was scheduled for a procedure last Tuesday to shoot the thing with shock waves non-invasively. They put you out with general anesthesia and shoot you up to 4,000 times (literally) through the back with their magic shooter, and hope to break up the little interloper before they cause internal bleeding. The biggest downside of this is that at 3 p.m. the previous day, I had to quit eating (WTF?) and begin a bowel cleanse. I don't want to talk about this. I mean I do, but I won't. I will say it was hella bad, and leave it at that.

So I went in, got the sleepy meds, got nuked, came home with a prescription for prostate medication (not kidding), and now I strain my pee and try to introduce some clear liquids into the river of Coke Zero that flows through my body. The bummer is that due to the location of the thing in its happy little nest, there was no room for it to physically blow apart in there, so they can't tell visually if the procedure is a success right after having done it. They simply hoped to have put enough cracks in the rock that it will gradually crumble and make its way out. I find out on Thursday when I have an x-ray at my follow-up appointment. Based on the small quantity of stone I've caught in my sieve of doom, I'm really pessimistic. Which is craptastic. I have no time for further medical interventions. My husband has no sick time to support me in further medical interventions. We are going to Texas for Big K's brother's wedding next week. There is no room in the calendar for this nonsense. It's a total crock. I am frustrated by my inability to control the entire universe. I'm just trying to hope the thing was so pulverized it is sneaking through my sieve, and that I'm painlessly peeing out huge chunks in the middle of the night when I'm in a coma and my aim is bad.

Dude.

On a positive note, I had a nice Mother's Day. We went to brunch with the grandmothers and then just dicked around. I took a nap. I ended up spending some time alone with each kid, through circumstance rather than pre-planning, which was a nice unexpected gift. Also, we had attended the wedding of my cousin the previous night, and the Park Rat was so exhausted by the festivities that she slept through the night on Saturday (7:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m.) for the FIRST TIME IN HER LIFE. Of course I was waking up panicked and going in there to check on her every couple hours due to the absurdity of her radio silence, and last night she woke up again for a 2:30 a.m. snack, but it was a nice gesture on her part nonetheless to throw me a bone for Mother's Day. Also, her thighs are huge, which is nice. Also, she is crawling around so much she has given herself calluses on her fat knees, which is also pretty charming.

And that's about it. As the kidney stone turns. (I wish it was like sand through the hourglass, but I'm thinking no.)

Crapper. I'll keep you posted.

Another post in which I casually declare my insanity

2011-04-28T12:19:00.000-05:00

My name is Big W, and I'm addicted to babies.

Seriously, friends, seriously.

The other night I was nursing my baby before bed. My 7-month-old baby. I was relaxed and enjoying the company of my little marmot, and my mind started drifting around. And where did it land, friends? Baby names. Yup. Baby names.

And the funny thing was, as I sat and rocked and nursed and considered baby names, I wasn't doing it as a theoretical exercise. I was sincerely considering what I wanted to name my next baby. (It's a tall order, because my kids' names all start with the same letter, and it ain't an easy one.)

The thing is, I'm not having another baby. At least on purpose. Barring a major change in my husband's opinion on our family size, that is.

You see, Big K is done. He was actually done after we had 2 kids, but easily consented to a 3rd for me, on the condition that I not beg for a 4th. I agreed to that deal. But now I want to beg for a 4th.

I think if I had 4, I'd beg for a 5th.

I think if I had 5, I'd beg for a 6th.

Seriously. I am one of those people who will never be comfortable with the concept of my "last baby." I do not feel that my family is "complete," even though I want to. Many of my friends have had their children, arrived at this sensation of feeling complete, neutered someone, and moved on with life. Not me. I don't know if I will ever be able to permanently end the fertility of myself or my husband. I might have a heart attack and die during the appointment. At the very least, I'd need heavy meds or therapy.

I just love babies so so so so so much. Their sweetness. Their chubby bodies. The way they nestle into me and fit like a puzzle piece. Their smiles. The way they change every day and master something new and explore and grow and become funny little people. Watching this happen is my greatest joy. I love babies.

Don't get me wrong. There are moments where I am surrounded by mayhem of the highest order and I think, "I can't do this anymore." And there are moments where I literally have not been away from my children for an entire month and I think, "I would sell my soul to the devil for a meal by myself in a quiet restaurant." There are times when my husband and I are tense with each other for no reason other than our utter exhaustion and our inability to give anything to each other because our tanks are so incredibly empty, and I think, "We need to move on so we can have something left for each other."

You'd think that those thoughts would have me setting up my husband for a vasectomy for our anniversary. But no.

The thought of 6 kids loudly wrecking shop around a messy crowded dinner table remains oddly appealing to me. The thought of someday having a gazillion grandkids all sneaking candy from my cupboards is delightful for me. I am a nutcase. A true nutcase. Who would wish to continue the kind of insanity my life has become for a single second? Yeah, me. I would. I really would.

Oh, babies. I love babies.

My husband makes the point that I will have to go through the "last baby" experience sometime, and it will be painful for me whether the last baby is my third or my thirtieth. I guess he's right. Even if I Duggered up and kept breeding like a maniac until I ceased to be fertile, at some point the last baby arrives.

I have friends who have had one child, two children, or three children, painlessly declared themselves "done," and after that declaration they felt really positive and comfortable with their choice. I have other friends who share my baby mania, who mourn the milestones even as they celebrate them and who know they will always miss having a baby. I wonder what causes these divergent perspectives. But you can spot these types in older women too. The middle-aged woman who holds the door for you at the store and says, "I remember it well" as she looks wistfully at your kids and wears remembering on her face like a pair of glasses. The old ladies who seem compelled to touch your baby, like it's an uncontrollable impulse, who tell you to enjoy it because it goes so fast and seriously tear up as they say it. Ugh. I'm totally gonna be those ladies.

You can tell me how much it costs to raise a child to the age of 18. I don't care. You can tell me about the carbon footprint created by a single human. I don't care. You can tell me I have one bathroom in my house. I don't care. You can remind me how utterly awful I feel during pregnancy. I don't care. Practical considerations don't play a role in the way I feel about this. It is pure, raw emotion. I love babies. I will always want another one. I wish there was a magic trick to get past this. If you have one, send it my way.

I love babies.

There are times right now when getting through the day is so hard, I feel like I can't breathe. How on earth is it possible that I could wish to add to this mayhem? I don't get it. Usually I feel like I can figure myself out, even the dark mossy underbelly of my thought processes, if I care to flip the rock over. But this one I can't figure out. Why? Why am I afflicted with this addiction?

It is so depressing. Watching Parkie grow is so beautiful but so sad. She is crawling. The Park Rat is crawling. It's a matter of minutes before she's in kindergarten. I love her so much.

The one practical argument that does hold a little weight with me in terms of capping the size of my family at something that can't net us a reality show is simply seeing my existing children want me. Seeing how they crave my attention, and will go to insane lengths to get it. They want so much of me, at least right now. And as much energy as I have and as devoted as I am to them, I can't put more hours in the day. I can't actually clone myself. It is an indisputable fact that each time you add a child, each of your children gets less attention. That one little thing, especially for my needy man Bigs, might keep me from really going off the deep end over this.

I recently ran into a kid who was, at 20 years old, the oldest of 9 children, and his mother was pregnant again. I asked him how the heck she did it, and he said, "She always says, 'If two children take up all your time, 9 can't take up very much more.'" I understand that perspective and oddly relate to it. Through my community building work that I do a few hours a week, I've stumbled into this vein of homeschoolers that live in my area. Many of them have 5 or 6 children or more. You'd call them crazy. But there is a little part of me that wants to join the club. They are all in. They are not concerned about "me time." They do everything from scratch. I bet half of them like slaughter pigs and shit while their kids nap. They are just totally wrapped up in their families, and at least on the surface, appear to be really happy with their lifestyle. I'm too selfish to ever be one of them, but there is a little part of me that is attracted to it. I feel crazy when I start romanticizing that life, but sometimes I do it anyhow. I want to live in the woods and raise a ton of kids and milk goats and shit. Something about it appeals to me so strongly. Luckily I have a husband who is a big fan of McDonald's and video games and embraces typical American middle class life wholeheartedly. If not, I might already be off the grid, learning how to use a spinning wheel or some such shit.

This job is so stinkin' hard. But I love it so much. It has transformed me from someone who was always looking forward to the next thing into someone who spends their time taking in what's already here. I'm happy here, in this place. It's a crazy life, but it's who I am now.

Maybe that's it. Maybe I'm scared to leave behind this place where I found such happiness and purpose and, above all, contentment.

But I think even more than that, it's the babies. As long as my heart is beating, it will long for another baby.

Phooktastic

2011-04-17T21:45:00.000-05:00

First off, I want to say thank you to everyone who left me a nice comment on my last post. And a double thank you to anyone who read it and disagrees with my politics and decided to hold their tongue. It was hard and a little scary for me to write. I needed the support, and I thank you for it.

Now, I was thinking the other day about this blog, and how I used to tell every little funny tale that occurred during my days with Phook. And every one of her little baby developments was detailed and recorded for posterity. And then I started speed-breeding and blogging less and blogging more about myself when I did blog and, well, I certainly don't have every little detail about my kids recorded here anymore. Which is okay. I don't have time to notice most details anymore, let alone write about them. But I want to talk about Phook right now. You need to hear about Phook.

Phook is the cat's ass. Seriously. She's currently 4 1/2. I would say that for the past 6-9 months, maybe even a full year, she has been on a streak of awesome sauce the likes of which I could not previously have imagined. I have hesitated to tell you this for fear of jinxing it, because up until this last stretch, she had made a habit of going through pleasant and unpleasant streaks, each lasting maybe 3 months before alternating back to the opposite general demeanor. When she hit her last awesome patch, I was excited and pleased, but I started bracing for the defiant/dramatic/naughty shenanigans to return. They haven't returned. The child has been a song for as far back as I can now really even remember. I am almost allowing myself to believe this is her real personality emerging. But it feels like bad karma to make such a bold declaration.

Nonetheless, her good nature, good spirits, good behavior, good big sister-ing, and good listening are a shining light in my life and one of the few reasons I'm not completely insane. The child listens to me. The child can be reasoned with. The child is helpful. The child is kind. The child is responsible. The child is enthusiastic about any and every activity. The child is social. The child is engaged with anything and everything she touches. The child is patient. The child is madly in love with her baby sister and can be counted on to entertain, soothe, and provide little baby cares for the Park Rat. The child is, well, a gem.

I don't know if this is a magic reward that all parents get for enduring the tumult of toddlerhood, or if this is just a longer phase than what I've seen before and dark days are right around the corner, or if this is just the age that this particular child has hit her stride. I don't know. She's my Exhibit A. Anything could happen in the future. But I'm gonzo for this kid and I feel so lucky to have her.

In her early days (okay, years), the kid was a little salty. She didn't like to talk to people she didn't know. When strangers addressed her, she would get shy or downright irritated. I worried about this. A lot. Now, that kid talks to anyone within earshot. If someone mildly regards our dog from across a parking lot, she yells out, "That's my dog Turbo. He's a BASSET HOUND!!!" She will carry on a conversation with anyone of any age who addresses her. She's amped about other kids and plays really nicely as a leader of younger kids or as a follower of older kids. She understands and enforces taking turns, sharing, and the like. She is joyfully social. When she was two, I would have bet a solid million bucks and my left arm that she would never be the kid she is today.

She is wildly inquisitive. She understands everything after it has been explained to her once and she remembers it all. Today our elderly neighbor and her elderly sister-in-law pulled up in their driveway, and when Phook saw them she declared she was going to go talk to them. She walked over, casually said hi, regarded the woman's plants, and then proceeded to explain that they were starting to bud and soon they would produce leaves and flowers because it is spring but it is going to be summer and that means it is will be warmer out during the day and during the night, which is what helps things grow. And on and on and on. And the old ladies just stood there kind of stunned and charmed. And then Phook wrapped up her socializing and came back over to our yard and asked for a picnic blanket and proceeded to make herself a pretend picnic in the yard where she amused herself solo for a solid 45 minutes.

None of this may be exceptional to parents with older kids, but it is exceptional to me, because it's the first time I've seen it. Seen a kid come through the mayhem of freaking out because they want the red cup no the blue cup no the green cup with some milk no lemonade no water no I'm not thirsty I'm hungry but I don't want a carrot I want some pretzels we don't have any pretzels I'm gonna go lay on the floor and cry for 10 minutes and then I'm gonna randomly kick something.

Man, it's nice. I never would have labeled Phook a particularly difficult child, but the first couple years of a kid's life are just really insanely hard in physical and logistical ways. It is so nice on the rare occasions when I leave home with just her, and there is no diaper bag. I don't have to carry her or even lift her into or out of things. I'm not worried she's gonna lose her shit in a store and I'm gonna have to manage undesirable behaviors in front of strangers. I'm not worried about some unpredictable disaster of emotion or clothing or miscellaneous goods. I'm not worried she's going to dart out into traffic. I'm just gonna take the kid someplace, and it's gonna be fine on all levels.

Certainly, she still has the occasional hard time or the occasional moment of naughtiness, but those things come almost exclusively when she is exhausted or pushed to the brink by her brother, whose behavior continues to be a challenge in these parts. She is just swell, man. Swell.

And another funny thing has happened. I have chilled out to the point of catatonia on comparing her to other kids. When I first had her, I just constantly compared her to her peers. Is she walking/talking/running/jumping/throwing/learning the way that kid is? Faster? Slower? Blah, blah, blah. I think that tendency was largely based in fear of the unknown as a first-time parent with no experience whatsoever with kids, whereas now that I've got 3 specimens and seen them develop differently I get that there is not just 1 path to mastering a skill, and they will all get there when they get there. It's kind of nice. I don't care if she can do her little tricks faster or better than her peers in gymnastics. I just want her to have fun at gymnastics. I don't care if she can do the art project at storytime perfectly, I just want her to enjoy working on it. I don't care if you can tell what she's drawing, I just want her to rock out those markers. I don't care if she's fast on the monkey bars, I just want her to reach. As in other areas of my life, I'm finding that shit just goes better if I give up a little control and trust that things will turn out. Perhaps this process is the mission statement of my thirties. Because I definitely spent my twenties trying to control everything, and now I think I'm seeing that a) that is a futile quest and b) sanity is a little easier to hold onto when you're not engaged in a futile quest. So, yeah. Phook on, Phooker. You do what you do. Have fun. I'm cheering for ya, no matter what. I'm not watching who you're passing or who's passing you, I'm just watching the happiness on your face while you run. That is my gift to you, kiddo. The thing I will always struggle to give myself is the thing I will give of freely to you.

So Phook. There she is. She's happy as a clam. She wakes up every day and enjoys herself fully and wears herself out so completely that I swear she is asleep before her head hits the pillow. She's just a real neat kid.

I mourn my kids' aging like a wall-climbing nut job. I do. But things are so rad with my big girl right now that I might grant her permission to continue to grow up. It turns out that discovering Phook the person is an amazing reward for letting go of Phook the baby. When Big K and I engraved our wedding bands with the words "The Luckiest," we couldn't have known we were talking about her.

Decent

2011-04-13T16:48:00.000-05:00

So in my last post, I made mention of the fact that the K Family has been struggling lately, largely as a result of Wisconsin's current political debacle and the fact that we are very directly impacted by the policies of the clown leading our state. I kind of want to get into it here because this is my personal place to vent, but I kind of don't want to get into here because I don't have the energy to get into any fights here - I want my happy place to stay happy.

But I will say that the experience of having my state's future in the hands of politicians with whom I could not disagree more strongly has been really really soul-sucking (Really, clown, you're going to cut funding for recycling? Recycling? I mean, it's one thing to label public servants as greedy and overpaid, but how in hell do you justify sticking it to the planet?). Ahem. I got into it a little bit.

Anyhow, combine that with the personal financial implications and the fact that people are okay with looking me in the face and saying, "I want your family to have less" - well, hell, it's been a trip. There is no way it would ever be acceptable to look an accountant in the face and say, "Accountants are lazy/greedy/corrupt/overpaid, and I want their families to have less money." But in Wisconsin's current climate, that is what people are okay saying to one another. It is not fun having people say that to me, especially people I am related to and/or actually like. The counterargument is that public employees are fair game because tax money pays their salary, but I would argue that we all pay each other's salaries, in that we take our dollars and buy the goods or use the services of people employed in private sector fields. You pay me with your tax dollars and I pay you with the money I earn, and never in a trillion years would I look a farmer in the face and tell them I want their crops to die or tell a restaurant owner that I want the health department to find a rat in their kitchen or tell a corporate employee I want the business they work for to suffer or fail. People don't do that to each other. They just don't. We should, I think, want each other to prosper. But that has not been the case for public employees in Wisconsin of late. Are times tough? Absolutely. Does the system have flaws? Yes. I'd argue that we can do some serious weeding in the public sector and save boatloads of money. But this? This is Agent Orange. Last time I checked, that's a bad call.

It has been painful. My neighbors want my crops to die. They may think they are making comments solely about taxes and public policy, but they are not. They are saying they want my crops to die. At least that is how I have been feeling it, to the extreme detriment of my mental health.

I really haven't been okay. That's the simplest way to say it. Not okay at all. I spend a lot of time imagining disaster scenarios. Not for myself, but for my wee little struggling town and for my state. And then there's an earthquake/tsunami/nuke meltdown and I'm really feeling like I'm living in the end times. I'm not joking or being sarcastic. I spend a shitload of time thinking it's the end of the world.

As a Christian, I know I'm supposed to be pretty amped to go to heaven. And I am. But that is an area where I admittedly struggle. I want to go to heaven, but not until after I've seen my children grow. I like it here. I like earth. I like this life. I want to see how it all plays out. If the end of the world is next Tuesday, I am unhappy about that proposition. I know I'm supposed to be really jazzed to leave this imperfect life for the perfect one that waits for me in heaven, but I'm intractably greedy for the one I have here. I should probably pray about this rather than blog about it, but, yeah, I have been struggling as I look around the world close to me and the world oceans away, and wonder how bad it can get before it all just goes up in flames.

Man, that is depressing.

But there is good news. I actually wanted to blog about the good news. Not doing a good job so far.

Anyhow. The other day my Dad took my kids and I out for lunch. And afterward he ran into an acquaintance and inevitably their discussion turned to politics and recall this senator and hang up this sign and blah, blah, blah. And I was sitting in my car just feeling like hell that you can't even get a grilled cheese anymore without having to think/hear about the political bullshit du jour. A few minutes later, I pulled into my driveway and got my mail and I was just stewing about how I hate every single politician on earth of every single political leaning because they are all corrupt pigs who are looking out for no one--NO ONE--except their own sorry selves. (Still doing a bad job on getting to the positivity.)

So there I was, stewing.

And then I started leafing through my mail as I was getting the kids out of the car and I saw a small envelope from an Amish dude who started a CSA around here which I decided to join. It's super affordable and I am in general feeling excited about it. I had asked him to mail me a receipt for my payment, so I assumed that is what the envelope contained. I opened it up as the kids ran out into the yard and found the receipt I had asked for. He also enclosed the following handwritten note:

Dear K's,

Produce season is almost here. It will soon be time to start working in the fields for the produce and other crops.

We got plants in the greenhouse that will soon be ready to put out.

We will let you know when the first produce is ready to go. And you're welcome to stop in whenever you want.

Thank you.

So as I read this, tears started streaming down my face. I don't think that even if I fret over this paragraph for 2 weeks I will be able to accurately convey why, and I'm guessing people will leave this post thinking I'm psychotic, which is fine and not necessarily inaccurate. There was just something about the fact that this guy took the time to write me a personal note that got me started. But the content. The simplicity of it. The realization that no matter how mad and hurt and apocalyptic I am feeling, there is a guy who started his seeds and he is going to put plants out and grow some vegetables just the way people have done for generations and generations in good times and bad times and good times and bad times and good times and bad times. There was something about his note that was, quite simply, decent. Decent. Decency. That thing which I feel has been abandoned, to some extent, by all of us, as we strive to get ahead and waste huge amounts of energy on our petty complaints in life. Let us be decent to each other. My God, we can't control tsunamis but we can control our ability to be decent to one another. We need to look around at the people we see every day and be their neighbor. Not a person who shares space with them, but their neighbor. We are all in this together. Let us at least be decent.

And ever since I read that note, I have felt so much better. Strange, really, but true. I took its utter simplicity as a sign that I had to let go and let God. It is working. A huge weight lifted off my shoulders by a brief note which took the author minimal thought and time to compose. Because the writer is decent. It did not take significant effort for him to write that note. He did it out of basic decency. And the fact that someone on earth extended that to me went a long way toward cleansing me of how awful I have been feeling lately. He treated me with decency. He is growing vegetables. Just as people have done for generations. In good times and bad times and good times and bad times.

And good times.

It's alive!!!

2011-03-30T15:35:00.006-05:00

Sorry. I really am. I just looked at this blog for the first time in FOREVER and I saw all your nice little inquiries as to which side of the grass I am on and now I feel like a dick. Because I am. A dick.

So much has happened. So much bloggable stuff has happened. But I haven't been able to blog it because, well, I don't know. Work has been busy. My kids have kept me insanely busy. Wisconsin's government has been set ablaze by a fascist which, in short, has things looking really poor for a) the well-being of everything I care about in society b) the actual survival of the small town I live in and c) my personal income. That is the shortest way to explain the fact that I spend at least 3 hours a day talking about/screaming about/crying about/actively protesting in some way against the political mayhem that is occurring here. I can't talk about it more than that, because a) my soul is already sucked dry by it and b) I don't want to get into political fights in my happy place. I get in enough of them in real life and it is turning me into a hermit as it is.

There was something positive that occurred though. I went to Florida for my annual trip with my best pal and her family. We drove. Only about 1500 miles each way. It wasn't too bad, but it wasn't too good. The baby cut her first tooth on the lid of a Pringles can between Macon and Atlanta, if that tells you anything. Our families stay together in a rental house with a pool, eat a lot of sandwiches, and throw shells and sticks in the ocean. And that's about it. Perfect.

So I don't have it in me to say much more right now, but I will throw some photos at you. Especially of that baby. My newborn. My newborn who is now over 6 months old. Time, you are a thief. You are stealing my baby. I dislike you strongly.

I present the following:

Okay, and I just love this picture of her for some reason:

And this one:

And this one:

And this one:

Dude, really. My husband and I may look like Sloth from The Goonies, but we make cute babies. These ones are pretty cute too:

They stayed active:

And can I also say that Florida, or at least Lee County, takes their parks seriously. We went to some of the most amazing free parks I have ever seen. Just off-the-chain playground equipment and trails and weird family-size bike rentals and just everything you can imagine. I mean, in Wisconsin, you have your basic playground repeated 1200 times. In Florida, they build giant spider webs for people to climb in. And we did:

Big K came along, even though his soul spent most of the trip feeling like it was being boiled alive on account of the staff he's going to have to lay off thanks to the cross-eyed, mouth-breathing slayer of democracy who sits in our governor's mansion. Ahem. But, yeah, his body was there, and at least faking the funk:

Oh, and if you were holding out hope that one of your shorties was going to someday pair up with one of mine, I need to announce that Phook is my only remaining child on the market. The other two are paired up in some arranged marriages that my BFF and I have orchestrated via our well-timed tandem birthing:

And then it was over. We were standing on a dock in the last moments of our trip, all tan and happy and seriously considering relocating to Florida:

And then the sun went down and it was time to come home:

So we're in Wisconsin. We're struggling with a lot of mayhem. But the children are beautiful and everyone is healthy and dudes, I am trying, trying, trying to focus on the positive.

I will be back here soon. I have to record some of this mayhem in my life, because it is going by so fast...I need to write it down to remember this blur.

Great Expectations

2011-01-27T22:00:00.001-06:00

The other day, my son was standing on the couch. He then said to Big K, "Watch me, Daddy, I am going to fly off this couch!" and proceeded to spread his arms like wings. He then launched himself off the couch, and, sadly, returned to earth. But here's where it gets interesting. The child then got upset--at himself--for his inability to take flight. He grew sad, hung his head, and said dejectedly, "I guess I can't fly."

I have a two-year-old who beats himself up, routinely, for failing to meet his own unrealistic expectations for himself. It is utterly heartbreaking to watch. And as much as I am a believer in the power of nurture, I have to give some props to nature for this one.

I believe I have stated before, possibly a thousand times, that my husband was one of those weird freaky genius kids. He removed his own training wheels when they pissed him off as a child, and proceeded to teach himself how to ride a bike. His mom didn't know what to do with him at home anymore, so she had him tested for early admittance to kindergarten and he went when he was 4. He put himself in the weirdest little kiddie pressure cooker you can imagine, and was just furious with himself for any failure, perceived or real. He remembers an incident in the first grade when he couldn't find the word "grape" in a word find and just started losing his shit, crying in class because he was so upset with himself for not being able to find the word. (He's 34 years old and he still remembers the word in question, people.) I'd like to be able to report that he has found some inner calm, but he's still pretty much that guy, only now in grown-up world. There are many ways in which the man is a slovenly savage, but in the things that matter to him, he is still the little kid banging his head on the desk because he can't find "grape."

I think Bigs is the same kid.

Within the past few months, there have been an increasing number of incidents in which Bigs attempts something and cannot do it to his standards. And then he gets upset. These things are very wide-ranging. One time he claimed he was not very good at Candy Land when I was playing it with him and Phook. And he got sad and just sagged in his chair and would not play anymore even though I was giving him all the encouragement I could. There are times when he's trying to do something like remove the thin paper backing from one of those tiny foam sticker things, and he can't quite get it, and he just looks like someone stole his best friend when he declares he's "not good" at getting the back off the sticker. Okay, people, I can't get the backing off those damned things. And there are times when he sort of randomly declares that he is not good at something kind of ridiculous, like baseball or reading or whatever.

The kicker? If you're looking at developmental norms, the child is a rock star by pretty much every measure you can think of. He is insanely verbal. I really can't remember a pre-verbal Bigs. Around age 1, he just started talking. All the way. No baby steps, no stumbling to put together sentences. He just had all the parts of speech and used them. He knows words, particularly in terms of things like obscure animals, that stump his grandparents. He's charmingly lisp-y, but there are virtually no limitations on his speech in terms of vocabulary or sentence structure. We've been pretend sword-fighting lately with the pirate swords that were part of the kids' Halloween costumes, and he's been known to say that he is going to "eviscerate" me. Physically, well, I can't quite even describe the level of coordination and physical insanity this child possesses. He is left-handed, and I have to tell him to back up whenever he wants to play catch with me so he doesn't actually injure me, because the kid has a freaking cannon for an arm, with laser-like precision. I mean, seriously, it is not normal. I hang out with kids a lot. I have a few. This kid is abnormally physically gifted.

Okay, I am going to stop going on in that vein because I don't want it to get too annoying, but suffice it to say that he is a bright child who can do things far beyond the reach of most two-year-olds.

And yet, there he is. Disappointing himself. Wearing the look of a world-weary middle-aged dude with two mortgages and a shaky employment status. It kills me. Really. When the child declares himself a failure at something ridiculous and starts to wander away forlornly, I am looking for the cyanide tablet in my space suit, because this is not a planet I want to be on.

I just love that kid. Watching him feel the way he is feeling--alone in a little bubble where he's sure he's not good enough no matter what anyone says--is the saddest thing in the world.

He turned two and a half on January 4th. The child has been on earth less time than some of the things have been on the shelf in my pantry. How could he have feelings this deep and this personal and this unwavering at such a young age?

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, wondering what I did wrong to make him this way. I think about how I've parented him, and what could have led him to think he's not good enough. I feel like I've done some honest soul-searching on this, and I'd be pretty willing to beat myself if I could pinpoint the blame anywhere near my person, but I just can't crack the code. I have been amazed by him and insanely in love with him forever. I have cheered for him and snuggled him and expressed love for him, both verbally and physically, in the largest amounts I could possibly dispense. When he was born, my father and husband both worried that I was favoring him over Phook, so intense was my love for this little boy. I have been bragging about him and gushing over him for as long as he has been in my life. I have many failings as a parent, but conveying to this child that he is not good enough--in any way--is decidedly not one of them.

But I did do something. I brought him home a baby sister. And while Phook embraced Parkie and began kissing her and loving her within a day or two after her arrival here, Bigs has been much more standoffish. He has never been aggressive toward Parkie, but he doesn't ask to kiss and hold her the way Phook does. He has rarely gotten upset or angry in direct response to me giving the baby attention (for example, he generally doesn't get mad or upset in the moment that I am nursing Parkie or otherwise tending to her directly). But I would say that his sadness and general demeanor of being hard on himself roughly coincides with the arrival of the baby. The last month or so, he has begun warming to the baby more, getting excited when she does something and trying to soothe her when she cries, but I would say that the addition of the Park Rat has been harder on Bigs than the addition of Bigs was on Phook.

He wants to snuggle. This incredibly physical child will stop whatever he is doing, with rare exception, when I invite him to snuggle. His greatest delight seems to be physical affection from me. He wants his back rubbed and his hair played with. There are times he is so upset about something that I'm not even quite sure what to do, but when I pick him up and just hold him, he softens, and he puts his head on my shoulder and cries and cries. His mood is best when I direct every ounce of available energy I have left (plus some I don't) to him.

So I guess I feel that on the one hand, this is just some part of him that is emerging at this young age, something that I cannot counteract no matter how hard I try. I can encourage him and I can cheer for him and I can help teach him coping skills to deal with his frustration, but I can't make that essential part of who he is go away. And that will have to be okay, regardless of how heartbreaking it is to watch. And then there is the part of this that seems to be just him wanting me. Wanting to fold himself up into his smallest possible shape and melt into my body. And having to compete with an infant for that. And hurting because the reality is that oftentimes, the infant has to win.

(As an aside, dear reader, please refer me to this post when I start going nuts about wanting another baby a year from now. Because it will happen.)

Now in addition to the sad, frustrated little guy I have just described, I have to also state that sometimes his frustration turns physical. He has a lot, lot, lot of physical energy. I think that's normal for any little kid, and especially for a boy. When I've compared notes with my friends who have children of both genders, they all seem to agree that boys just physically treat objects differently than girls do, and I have seen that in my house for sure. If there is anything stick-like, such as a bat, a toy golf club, a broom, whatever, Bigs' instinct is to pick it up and swing it wildly and bash it into anything and everything. Phook's instinct would be to swing a bat at a ball that was intentionally pitched to her, swing a toy golf club at a toy golf ball, and to use a broom to sweep. Bigs is just gonna bash everything. So I don't know how much of this to attribute to him being a cooped up little boy with a lot of physical energy and how much to attribute to frustration, but the child has moments of physical wildness that are quite stunning to watch. He just starts running around with an object, brandishing it like a cave man with a club, sometimes chasing Phook, sometimes chasing the dog, sometimes in what looks like a spirit of fun, and sometimes in what looks like a spirit of anger. But the little man can get crazy, and it can be a challenge. A highly unpleasant challenge. I do my best. What else is there?

The flip side to this, interestingly, is his astounding capacity to describe his emotions. He is better at this than Phook. I'm on the bandwagon of trying to get my kids to describe what they're feeling rather than expressing it by beating their sibling over the head with a fistful of Lincoln Logs, so I try to help them come up with words to use when they're pissed. Bigs' favorite phrases include, "I am REALLY FRUSTRATED!" and "I am having a HARD TIME!" He also frequently states that he is mad, sad, or angry. He uses words to describe his emotions in situations where Phook would just throw herself on the floor and cry in misery. He actually uses words to describe his emotions in situations where I would just throw myself on the floor and cry in misery. It's kind of amazing to watch this miniature little dude try to do something, get himself riled up, and then express himself so capably while under duress. We always praise this, of course, and it is the bright shining hope for the future that he continues to grow this skill set in favor of the physical expressions of frustration.

I don't know. I'm trying. I swear I am trying. I am trying to give him as much attention as I can. I don't want him to hurt. I don't want him to be hard on himself. I don't want him to feel left out. I don't want him to be anything but happy. But there is no magic wand here. This parenting gig. As children age, the burden shifts from a physical one to an emotional one. In moments when I feel like I am covered in barnacles shaped like my children while I'm just trying to brush my teeth, I sometimes catch myself longing for that burden to shift, because, my god, it just has to be easier once you can reliably brush your teeth without people hanging on your body. But, you know, I think I'm wrong. I don't see easier coming anytime soon. Not when I've got this little guy, walking around like he's got the weight of the world on his shoulders when he shouldn't have a care in the world.

He's the one. He's the one that rips me up. I could release Phook into the wild and she'd come back having gained five pounds because she would have extorted candy from passers-by on the strength of her own cunning. If I told Phook that 2 + 2 = 4, she would fight me to the death if she thought it was 5, such is this child's confidence level. Not Bigs. Bigs will be solving theorems in the 2nd grade and he will be mad he can't do it faster.

Do you know what he calls it when he puts on his apron (a.k.a. cookin' suit) and helps me in the kitchen? Cheffing it up. As in, "Hey, Mom, can I chef it up with you?"

Yeah buddy, you can chef it up with me. Anytime. Please, little man, when you turn into a slightly bigger little man, and you are mad about things that matter a little more than peeling the backing off of a foam sticker, please come chef it up with me. I will always, always be here to chef it up with you. When you are mad at yourself, please come chef it up with me. It will always be safe here. I will always let you try to crack an egg when you ask, even knowing how it will end, at least for now. It will always be okay with me when that egg spills all over the kitchen. Some day, you'll get that egg--the whole thing--in the bowl. But every day until then, every time the egg spills to the counter, the floor, all over your socks, it will be okay. We will laugh about it and clean it up and move on to the next ingredient. You can chef it up with me. You can always chef it up with me.

While you were sleeping...

2011-01-18T08:23:00.006-06:00

...I was not.

(Okay, that's probably unfair for the large part of my readership that has young children/babies, but you get the point.)

My husband reminded me yesterday that since I made that 2 posts/week declaration back at the end of NaBloPoMo, I owe you at least 8 posts. And then I felt really bad.

But friends, after I spent the first half of December fighting off locusts, boils, hail, frogs, and gnats, I had to spend the second half steam-rolling through Christmas. It was a LOT to get done in very little time. We really did have a nice Christmas though. Everyone stayed healthy and despite the time crunch, it managed to stay fun instead of tipping toward crazy. I'd love to show you it in idealized Rockwellian images, but all I have are about 400 pictures that look like this:

I cannot get a decent picture of the 3 of them to save my life. Maybe next year.

So then it became January, and the inevitable crisis point came with the baby's sleep. I don't even want to blog about it because it is just so exhausting to even think about. But the Cliff's Notes version is that she couldn't go to sleep on her own with me nearby rubbing her belly or patting her butt or otherwise attempting to console her or whatever without significant crying. And she wouldn't go to sleep in her swing easily anymore either (my fallback for naps). And she started waking up every 60-90 minutes all night long, and would not go back to sleep for HOURS if I withheld feeding and tried to rock her or otherwise soothe her back to sleep. Of course, as always, we have had to work through boob issues. Three kids, three pacifier shunners, three boob addicts, three babies who have had no inclination to go to sleep without nursing to get there.

So we had to do some sleep training. It simply became time. We are still in the midst of it to some extent, but some of the major battles have been fought. She can now go to sleep on her own after being laid down in her crib. The last 2 days, she has done this without crying at all. She is still a cat napper (my kids tend to be until at least 6-7 months), and she is taking 3 catnaps/day that are between 30-50 minutes long. She is on a good routine now of sleep, then eat, then play, repeat. She has an incredibly long night though, going to bed for the night at about 6 p.m., because she is truly really tired by then. She then goes until midnight or 1 a.m. without a feeding, although she is still waking up between 9:30-10:30 to ask for one, which sucks. Then she usually goes until about 4 a.m., at which point I bring her into bed with us, because it is my favorite thing to do. And then she sleeps with me until Big K leaves for work at 8 a.m. If I wasn't such a pathetic cow and actually got up with her at 6:30 or something, I'm sure her naps would be longer. But my kids tend to take care of that on their own once they want to crawl and are no longer willing to lie there and snuggle, so I've only got a couple good snuggle-months left. And I'm gonna savor them.

That's the thing. My parenting instincts are dirty hippie all the way. I want to live in a tent with just my immediate family and all snuggle together on a big pile of blankets forever. I want to wear my kids around and nurse them whenever they want to nurse for as long as they want to nurse. The practical realities of my actual life, however, make this impossible. How do you lie around and snuggle a baby all day in a nest when you've got a 2-year-old whose "play" instincts tell him to push a chair over to the counter, grab a potato masher, and then practice his swing against the drywall? How do you keep your infant physically attached to your body all day when you've got a 4-year-old who needs you to set up Play-doh, then art projects, then a movie, then a snack and a drink, then CandyLand, and on and on and on all day? You don't and you can't, even if you want to. I could die.

So that's where I've been. Trying to teach my baby to sleep. We have a long way to go before we get to that "sleeping through the night" thing people started asking me about when she was 2 weeks old. And I'm okay with that. As I believe I've said before, when the nighttime wakings are just for a quiet feeding and a quick snuggle and then right back to sleep, I consider them to be precious time alone with the baby that you never get during the day when you've got older kids. But there has been a lot of very un-quiet time in the past months, and sometimes when I am in quiet, my ears are still imagining a wailing baby. The crazies. For real. There has been a lot of crying (by Parkie, and me), a lot of beating people up (me, myself), a lot of guilt (more me), and a lot of exhaustion (count me in). I never lie...I find it pretty much impossible to do. But I think when people start asking if she's sleeping through the night, I might start lying. I just hate that people are obsessed with whether or not babies are sleeping through the night, and babies are deemed "good" if they do this early and "bad" if they do this late. Plus, the clinical definition of "sleeping through the night" is, I believe, a 5-6 hour stretch, not a full baby-length night of sleep. So, yeah, I think I might try out lying.

Baby amnesia will kick in, and I will never remember this. Guaranteed. But it hasn't kicked in yet, and I'm a little cracked out right now. Not gonna lie.

In other news, I started giving the Park Rat some cereal last week. She is 4 months old now, which I know is a little younger than you're supposed to start food these days, but I'm pretty much not caring. If my children are not born sleepers, they are born eaters. One spoonful of cereal and they're like, "What took you so long? Can I get some pot roast?" For real, when you're feeding your 4-month-old off a spoon for like the 5th time and you're pretty sure you could do it without a bib, you know your kid is ready to eat. After battling some constipation issues with Phook when she started food and then dealing with it to some extent with Bigs, I am taking the proactive approach with Parkie. We're doing baby oatmeal (less binding than rice cereal) with a couple spoonfuls of baby food prunes mixed in. She's processing nicely. Her horrific every-third-day pattern of blowouts continues unabated and continues to require a full change of clothes and a bath for her, and sometimes me. It's pretty horrifically awesome, this kid's butt. I live in fear of it, actually. (The small sliver of a filter I might have once had is officially gone.) You couldn't tell it by looking at her though, the charming little sucker:

(Dude, really. My kids just keep getting cuter. (The small sliver of modesty I might have once had is officially gone.))

So, yeah, that's where it's at. We spent this past weekend battling colds with a bonus component of fever/chills, and we're still snotting and hacking and probably will be until the Spring thaw. Winter in Wisconsin with small children is just a long string of illnesses, punctuated by the occasional decent day of sledding or an adventure to a museum or something. I need to accept that as fact and not expect different. The good news is that this year, I am just too busy to be too pissed about the long winter. The days are ripping off the calendar at an unprecedented pace. I am running around like a chicken with my head cut off and it's gonna be Spring right after lunch, so at least there's that.

And that is what I've been up to. Making my husband wish we had a spare straitjacket lying around.

***
And as a motivator to my own inner blogger, I am going to state that my next post will be about my little man Bigs. He is, in his own words, "having a hard time." Poor dude. So you can look forward to me virtually beating myself to a bloody pulp on that topic soon.

A Christmas reminder from Phook

2010-12-19T19:17:00.002-06:00

Last night, my healthy (yay!) family went on a little excursion to celebrate our first day of healthy togetherness since, well, the weekend before Halloween. We drove to a nearby town and had a delightful meal at a family-friendly restaurant. All 3 children behaved impeccably and I ate my meal using utensils. The angels were singing.

Then we drove a few miles to another town that we thought would have a lot to offer in the way of Christmas decorations. It did not disappoint. We drove around, the big kids excitedly pointing out the lights they liked, and the baby sleeping. Then we happened upon a house with a huge front yard. The entire yard was filled with decorations, but it wasn't your standard fare. The lights were these huge homemade designs on giant pieces of wood, and there were probably at least a hundred of them. There was a train with wheels that looked like they moved. There were ice cream cones. There was a cactus. There was a penguin, a snowman, a toy soldier, a santa, gingerbread men...everything you can imagine. Of course the kids loved it. We basically parked in front of the house for 15 minutes to gawk.

As we were driving away, Phook started yelling, "Bye, train!" "Bye, ice cream cones!" "Bye, penguin!"

And then she saw a manger scene. So she yelled, "Bye, Jesus' family!"

And then, as we rounded the corner and drove away from the house, she called out:

"Enjoy your babies!"

Indeed, Phook, indeed.

Coming up for air...

2010-12-09T22:28:00.001-06:00

We left the house today. Not Big K. No, he was home sick still today, fighting off weakness, aches, fever/chills, stomach cramps, and a miraculous near-miss on vomit. (He really does have a legendary capacity to not spew...oh how I envy the iron guts that can actually will away chunk-blowing.) He's feeling much better this evening though. Which I think means that as I type this, our collective health is the best it has been in a month.

Anyhow, the shorties and I left the house today. Hode is teaching her students about child development in her psychology class, and, given that in my mental illness I created a complete set of subjects by producing 3 kids in just a pinch under 4 years, my offspring were invited to come in and dick around and be themselves to help the students understand the various stages of being a little kid. They basically drew and cut and glued some junk, played, and ate a little makeshift picnic I'd packed for them while 20 adolescents watched. Other than an incident involving Phook tipping over one of those chair/desk combos and smashing 3 fingers under the weight of it and herself, it was a success. (And the way she handled the adversity was actually helpful for the purpose of the class, if you want to get all academic about it.)

But anyhow, there was a lot of oohing and aahing over my children by all these kids. Many statements about their cuteness, charm, and smartness. You know, the things you forget when you have literally spent weeks doing nothing other than handling the stew of their bodily fluids without respite. So in that environment, I was also kind of an observer. And I was able to actually see them again for a minute instead of just feel their burden on my body/psyche. It is terrible to admit that I had gotten to that place, but indeed I had. So when someone asked Bigs a question and he lisped his little response to them and they kind of gushed over him in a melty sort of way, I did too. When Phook went over to a kid and asked to see the bouncy ball he was packing, she said 'please' without being reminded, and she was confident enough to do it with ease...not something that would have been true even a year ago on the latter part especially. And I was proud of her.

Man is this job hard. This last stretch has been especially hard. So, so hard.

But today, I feel a little better. Not all the way better, but a little better. A little light at the end of the tunnel at least. And really hopeful we can pull off getting a tree on Saturday morning...despite our forecast of 8-10 inches of snow.

This evening, I kind of crashed the home of my parents after I had to turn around on our way to Phook's gymnastics class (on account of snow). I bought some pizzas and invited us over for dinner, and left Big K at home to convalesce (by which I mean play Gran Turismo). The kids were really well-behaved, and there was no mayhem. The baby sat around and farted and smiled. (As an aside, you can all look forward to an upcoming post about this baby and her farts. It's in utterly despicable taste, but it is going to happen as soon as I get around to it. Documentation of this baby's farting cannot be neglected.) Anyhow. So, yes, we were out of the house for dinner too, and then I got everyone home and we racked them all without incident. It was just basically pleasant and incident-free and I saw something other than my godforsaken stained blue 300-year-old carpet. It's the little things, man.

So while I was at my parents' house, I picked up one of my mom's magazines, and it included this quote:

"Let us be thankful that we have something to be thankful for. That pumpkin pies are once more in fashion. That turkey is cheap enough for the poor man's table. That the cranberry crop wasn't ruined by the frosts. That the country is still quite safe in spite of the politicians."

The quote is from an 1888 edition of Good Housekeeping magazine.

If I had read it when I was alone, I probably would have had one of those moments where you just start crying uncontrollably but silently, where tears just gush down your face even though you are completely still and calm. When it just pours out of you in release, like you have been slapped and are stunned. I don't know why, but that quote combined with its agedness just got to me. I like things that remind me that each and every one of us has been in the same place. I like things that remind me that it will all be okay. I like things that tie the past to the present. I like things that remind me to stop. Just stop. Stop and think.

And I like that I have a big turkey defrosting in my fridge right now, for no particular reason.

Update from the 9th level of hell

2010-12-07T22:39:00.000-06:00

Hi everybody. Thanks for all your good wishes on my last post. Unfortunately, they didn't work, because approximately 3 hours after I hit "Publish Post" I started vomiting profusely. It was neat. Real neat. I didn't just puke and call it good though. No, no, no I didn't. I puked and puked (and did other things incoherent people do when they can't control their bodily functions anymore) until I got to the very pit of my stomach where there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LEFT BUT BLOOD.

At 7:00 yesterday morning, as I languished in the bathtub with a pail trying to raise my body temperature above polar, my children came down to discover me. They asked me what was up and I told them I was really sick. The act of telling them this was so straining that it induced another round of worthless scream-heaving. Phook took this opportunity to throw a toy turtle, a cup, and a bathtub crayon in with me so I'd have something to do. Bigs inquired repeatedly about whether I needed to puke more. I then told Phook to go wake up Daddy and she said, "Okay, enjoy your tub!" in the most chipper little voice you've ever heard.

Big K came down, laid eyes on my corpse and declared me requiring of medical attention. Not wanting to infect other people we actually like (it would actually be convenient to have a trustworthy babysitter that we didn't like, now that I think of it), we loaded up all 3 kids and tried to get me to the car. The effort of raising my head off the kitchen table resulted in a horrific display which was where I got down to the blood in my entrails. Good times.

I first got sick at 1 a.m. right after feeding Parkie. When she woke up again between 3-4 a.m., I tried to nurse her but I was no longer producing breastmilk and the effort of trying to feed her made me throw up. Big K defrosted one of the very few bags of pumped milk I had in the freezer, and she got through the night on that, even though she's not loving the bottle. But it freaked me out. Seriously freaked me out. I am pretty sure that all those teeny-boppers out shagging their boyfriends without birth control are not thinking about having to care for other people while they are DYING OF THE STOMACH FLU as they engage in their reckless behavior. Because, seriously, if they were, there would be no teen pregnancy. There might not be any pregnancies, ever, actually. Anyhow, yes, such a bad, hard, terrible night.

So Big K ditched me at the entrance to the E.R. in a wheelchair, as I didn't think it would be good for the kids to enter that germ pit (wait, they are the germ pit...), and I didn't want to have to parent from my death bed. The doctor came in and decided I needed a shot in the ass. So they gave me some anti-nausea medication in the bum and said I could leave. (I was surprised there was no I.V. rehydration, but apparently they were rotating us pukers out of there as fast as they could to make room for more...the doc had been on duty for an hour and had already seen 3 people who were in for the same thing.)

The med took effect and I sipped my way through a cup of ice chips and a shortie 7Up while I laid there, and damn was it good. I could almost technically walk when I was discharged, but I was so incredibly weak and feverish and bad I thought I'd die in the car on the way home. I don't know what happened yesterday afternoon, but I'm pretty sure it involved Parkie attaching herself to me in bed and not letting go for 4-6 hours. By yesterday evening, I felt confident I could hold down some ibuprofen, so I took a few of those and the body aches got under control.

I cannot believe this happened. I mean, I can, but I can't. It just seems really bogus. I mean, who am I to ask the universe for anything, but COME ON!!!

So today I felt weak but I was able to conduct my daily business. When I stepped on the scale this morning so as to have myself a chuckle, I was down 9 pounds from the previous time I weighed myself a few days ago, and that was AFTER a full 24 hours of rehydrating. So I'm gonna put this at a 12-pound flu. I'm a roomy gal, I know, but COME ON!!! Did it have to get that ugly???

In other news, Parkie's eye is slimed shut with crud not unlike her brother's was last week (or was that last year...I seriously have no clue anymore?), and Bigs has an interesting rash-like thing on his chin that I've never seen before. And right now, I'm not quite sure that my pre-existing cold symptoms aren't traveling into my chest.

Also, Big K was able to take Bigs to that pediatrician appointment while I languished in the E.R., and the doc did not seem particularly concerned with the condition of Bigs' lungs. She used the term "a little asthma" and said that at that juncture, he sounded good. She changed the way we are to use his inhaler, but didn't give any indication that we need to start bowling through the medical system with a battering ram to get him additional/different care. So I'm gonna let that ride on out of my freak-out file, at least for now.

The only bright spot is that Phook tonite declared that she had tired of Parkie's actual name and was re-naming her "Junior." That was nice. And also she (in good humor) called her father a "Beast Hog," after he called her a goofball when he was helping her put on her jacket. We applied no disciplinary action whatsoever. We laughed and enjoyed the creative non-profane name-calling. Because, seriously, on this thin of ice, I am not gonna go all super-parent and bust into a lecture on how some names might make people feel bad when we all just needed a laugh, and, well, that shit was funny.

This is turning out to be the Christmas season that wasn't. Man would I like a tree.

A special report from the epicenter of cold and flu season

2010-12-05T21:55:00.000-06:00

Imagine an elaborate design made out of dominoes, with each domino representing a nasty illness. Imagine November 1 being the day you flicked over the first domino, starting an unending chain reaction of dominoes toppling each other that continues even through today. That is my home right now. Unrelenting illnesses for over a month. I need respite. Deeply.

In the beginning of November, Phook and Bigs got a cold that resulted in nasty snot, sore throats, and hacking, with Bigs of course hacking longer and nastier, as he is wont to do. I myself had mild to moderate cold symptoms throughout the month of November, as did Big K. The baby was basically stuffy throughout the month, not draining slime but necessitating a good shot of nasal saline and a date with a bulb syringe about 3 times per night to keep her from sounding like a freight train during slumber.

Everyone started to clear up right before Thanksgiving, although Bigs was still rocking his patented hack. On Thanksgiving day, we had the good fortune of being exposed to a child who had been vomiting 12 hours earlier. At 2 a.m. that Saturday morning, Phook blew and proceeded to blow throughout most of the day on Saturday. I expected more victims, but we were blessedly lucky there.

This past Monday, Bigs and Phook presented with a fresh crop of snot. On Tuesday (or was it Wednesday...I am no longer capable of tracking days with any accuracy), Bigs decided that his eyes should turn bright red and begin oozing green awesomeness. This resulted in a diagnosis over the phone of pinkeye, but on account of a snafu with our local pharmacy closing at 5:30 p.m. and the mayhem of trying to get a hold of a doctor in the practice where we are seen, I ended up talking to another doc who thought it was a secondary infection from the virus they had been rocking for weeks. So I don't know if that still technically counts as pinkeye, but it most certainly counts as gross.

Throughout the latter half of this past week, I was giving Bigs eye drops to clear up his nasty eye funk, and it went away fairly quickly. However, both Bigs' and Phook's coughs escalated mightily again, peaking with an uncontrolled episode of runaway hacking on the part of Bigs on Thursday night that lasted well over an hour, despite being treated with a nebulizer of albuterol and an inhaler. In the midst of this episode, at around 4 a.m., Phook declared that she was not tired and would be taking to her bed with a Highlights magazine and a flashlight. Given that I was otherwise detained lying in the adjacent bed with her brother to ensure he wasn't, well, dying, that wish was granted. Big K decided to get up for the day at 4:15 a.m., because he decided that that would be less frustrating than getting 8-minute increments of sleep in the middle of tending to our flock of children.

I believe I fell asleep for the night on Thur/Fri at 6:30 a.m. on Friday morning. Big K had to leave early for a meeting a good distance away, and the kids crawled in bed with me at around 7 a.m. The next thing I knew, my mother was standing over me saying, "Are you okay? Are you okay?" She had dropped by on her way to work at about 7:30 to drop off some pants she'd hemmed for Bigs, and found Phook on the toilet and Bigs attempting to get the cap off of some arthritis cream so he could brush his teeth with it, while I lay comatose in my bed with the Park Rat. So to add insult to injury, I'm guilty of child neglect. Case closed.

I woke up having a crisis related to Bigs' breathing issues, because the previous night's episode had jarred me. His regular doctor who he sees for well-child checks is a family doctor who is my doctor, has delivered all the kids, and is their primary doctor. However, it occurred to me on Friday morning that not only had she never seen Bigs when he was acutely ill in the entirety of his life, he had NEVER even seen the same provider twice in his life during illness. He had seen 3 different doctors and 2 different P.A.'s. They, in conjunction with his regular doctor, had made various commentary on his tendency toward wheezing when ill, thrown the word "asthma" around, and thrown various prescriptions at us, but I woke up from my stint as a child neglector having an existential crisis centered around the fact that my son was slipping through the cracks of the medical system. So then I spent an hour on the phone with the practice where he is seen, getting offered visits with various P.A.'s, which I rejected, instead insisting he get an appointment with the one actual pediatrician on staff. Unfortunately, she was out of the office until Monday, so I took her first available appointment for then. (That would be tomorrow morning.)

I got off the phone, frustrated with the clusterf*** that is the care my son has received, but relieved I had actually stuck to my guns on getting the appointment with the pediatrician who states on the practice's website that asthma kids are her bag. Getting jocked around is okay for a hearty kid like Phook, but I really think that Bigs needs to be consistently seen by someone who can give us valid info on what we are dealing with. I want the kid to have the best treatment we can get for him.

Friday proceed to be a horrific screamfest of exhaustion on everyone's part.

I had big plans for Saturday, hoping to get some Christmas trees and decorate them. Instead, Big K presented with congestion, body aches, and exhaustion. I canceled plans to attend a baby shower I had planned to attend sans kids, which had been the focus object of my psychological well-being for the previous week. Big K canceled plans to attend today's Packer game with my dad. We hunkered down, I slammed some doors, the kids hacked.

Last night, my own congestion worsened into a sinus pain/pressure that was so severe it made tears roll down my face when I leaned forward to pick up the baby from her bassinet to nurse her.

But I forgot about that at 4:30 this morning, when Bigs trotted into our room and said, "I just puked all over my bed." Indeed he had. Big K (bless him) handled the vomiting child, ultimately taking him downstairs for a camp-out with a bucket, which he used off and on throughout the early hours of this morning. He last reversed some Sprite about 11:30 this morning. He also felt feverish, so he lunched on some Tylenol. He went down for a nap at around 1 p.m., stating that he would, "Carry his puke bucket" up to his bed. We had to wake him up at 5:30 p.m. During the entirety of the nap, he continued to hack off and on, although at least he did not hork.

During this nap window, the still achy and feverish Big K napped on the love seat. Me and my sinuses napped on the couch with the also-napping Park Rat. And Phook alternately sat on one or the other of her corpse-like parents watching PBS Kids stuff off of Netflix, mixing it up with some drawing of elaborate maps with markers on a tray table we had set up for her. And somersaults. When she, the only functional person in this household, had extra energy to burn off, she'd just get up and do 20 somersaults or so across the living room floor, and then re-perch on one of us and request some more Dinosaur Train. Total survival mode parenting. If you can even give us credit for parenting.

At 5:30, I declared that we needed to leave the house. So we loaded everyone up, even poor un-exercised Turbo (who incidentally also had a vomit fest a couple weeks ago and required veterinary care in the form of antibiotics and anti-nausea medication), and drove to a nearby town to look at Christmas lights. Bigs was packing a popsicle and an ice cream pail, should he find the need to expel his hearty diet of, well, that popsicle. (He did not.) Phook was packing a chicken sandwich and a banana from a convenience store for dinner and an outrageous propensity for alternate lyrics to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Big K and I had cappuccinos and stale donuts from said convenience store. It was ridonkulously pathetic, but we needed to get out of the house without exposing ourselves to the rest of humanity, so that's what we did. And it went as well as it could go.

Of course, all 3 kids were passed out by the time we got back home, and now it's now, and they are all tucked into their beds.

It would be really, really nice if no one woke up spraying vomit out their eye sockets tonite. Most especially me. Because I am trying to keep the wheels on this out-of-control car, and I can't do it while I'm ralphing. And my husband is out of sick time for the year, what with that fun knee surgery we threw in for giggles on November 1. I seriously could use a paid staff person just to handle the volume of laundry this whole thing has created. Thank God I have my spaceship and its sanitize feature.

Did I mention that I severely sprained my ankle in January (11 months ago, that is) while playing volleyball and that it still hurts, cracks, pops, buckles, and essentially fails to function as a joint? And that after giving it one quick twitch when I brought up the issue at my postpartum checkup a couple weeks ago my doctor said, "Um, yeah. You need to see someone for that. You're going to need an MRI. And probably surgery." Good times.

Also, have I mentioned that I have an infant? A two and a half month old infant? Yeah, those things tend to have needs. In fact, some people even go on record and state it is hard to have even just one little infant. Ha! The thought of just caring for Park Rat right now is roughly akin to the level of difficulty I would have placed on going on an all-inclusive resort vacation 10 years ago. Can I just officially thank the gods that this child is settling into contentedness and good humor in a way that I will be eternally grateful for? Oh, she is not one of those magic sleep through the night at 6 weeks babies...a far cry from it...but she sleeps a couple hours at a time, and I have made great progress in teaching her to fall asleep on her own in the past couple weeks (this opposed to being put to sleep with every (one of my) infant's best friend, The Boob). Seriously. I love that sweet little fuzzy-headed Parkie.

I think I also forgot to mention that in the middle of this week there was a snafu related to my grant-funded employment that had me informed my hours would be cut by 2/3. In a meeting in front of 10 people when I had no clue it was coming. While I nursed the Park Rat under a blanket. It has since been resolved, but my wee salary is not quite wee enough that it wouldn't have mattered to us, so I spent a few days freaking out about that, pondering whether I would rather stock shelves at night at the nearest Wal-mart or waitress at the nearest fish fry joint on the weekend. Both options looked exceedingly attractive, if by attractive I mean that I would sooner slide down a banister of razor blades into a bucket full of lemon juice than pursue either of those options.

I have eaten nothing but Dr. Pepper and chocolate in a month.

Friends, this is hard stuff. Unrelenting. I have been so absorbed in the care of others of late that I suspect that when I walk past a mirror I no longer even have a reflection.

Christmas is on hold. No trees (postponed indefinitely), no family picture (rescheduled for Tuesday, with any luck), no baking (who the hell would eat anything coming out of this house?), very limited shopping (but my thanks to amazon and etsy for existing so I can at least obtain a few things before Christmas Eve). I was nervous and anxious about this a couple days ago, but I've moved on to catatonia.

This too shall pass, but I would love for it to pass a little more quickly. Except Parkie. Parkie needs to slow it down, because I want her to be my little fuzz-head forever.

So please send me and mine your positive thoughts, especially Bigs if we are all well enough to get him dragged to the doctor tomorrow. And detergent. Send detergent too.

All this being said, my Christmas list is really, really short. I want just one thing.

A break. Please.

XO,
Momma

25,632: A NaBloPoMo Retrospective

2010-11-30T23:01:00.000-06:00

Friends, I have written 25,632 words for you this month. For the record, I think that would count as a thin novel. So I hope you liked at least a few of them. That's right, I successfully got something up on this here blog for 30 consecutive days. You don't have to applaud me, but I'm gonna go ahead and applaud myself. (Clap, clap, clap.)

I don't know. I'm pretty pumped I did it even though some of the content was bunk. I thought some of it was good though, and worthy of my time. I said I was gonna do it and I did it, and that is what Big W is about.

That being said, all this blogging came at the expense of essentially all other solo leisure activities in which I normally indulge. I have extremely limited time in a 24-hour period when I can sit and do the leisure activity of my choice, alone. So this past month I watched probably 3 or less hours of TV and read far less than I normally do. I've got a lot of Cougar Town stacked up on my DVR, and I'm really excited to melt into my couch tomorrow night and watch it. Sometimes your brain just needs to be turned off. All the way. So daily blogging is not for me as a permanent proposition. I need to vegetate more fully more frequently. Because, buddies, I run my ass off all day long, every day. I am the mom version of Inspector Gadget. Seriously, my body does that shit.

However, I believe that this exercise reminded me what I like about blogging. One of the things is that it allows me to have adult conversations (albeit largely one-sided ones) with the audience in my head. During the day, not so much. So that is an important feature. I also like the family archive this creates, even though my children will probably murder me in my sleep if I ever let them read this at any point between ages 11-30. I also like just working through the stuff I'm going through and have experienced. It's therapeutic just to get some of this stuff out, even if no one answers and most of you think I'm insane. I guess that whether you are there or not, I usually feel like there is at least one person out there shaking their head in agreement, going, "Yes, it's just like that." So, imaginary person, thank you.

So I'm glad it's over, but I'm glad I did it. I am going to resolve to post at least twice a week going forward. That seems like a more manageable pace that will theoretically allow me the benefits of blogging and the benefits of more complete vegetative experiences.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for your comments. Thank you for listening.

Golden Oldies

2010-11-29T22:51:00.001-06:00

Seriously, I am old. I am so, so old. I'm embarrassingly old.

This morning I made a rather impromptu plan with my mother to go on an excursion to get my kids their Christmas outfits tonite after Big K got done with work. I needed to get their festive gear in advance of the festive photo we are having taken this weekend. No problem. I was kinda pumped to get out of town, however briefly, with only the un-weaned child in tow.

But as this afternoon crept by and darkness crept in, I started to get sleepy. And then it started to drizzle a bit outside and get really dark. And by the time Big K got home at 4:30 (early, I'll note, so I could go on said excursion), I had convinced myself I was a little bit insane for leaving the house so late in the day. Like I was kind of pottering and pacing and fretting like a crossword-obsessed, bird-watching retiree who gets uncomfortable whenever they get more than 10 paces from their recliner. I just kept thinking about how LATE it was and how I couldn't possibly go out and do something when it was already getting so LATE.

Dude, seriously. 4:30 p.m. I am ready for Shady Acres.

So then I picked up my mom and we drove to a town that sells things, went to 1 store and bought said things, ate a quick dinner, and drove home. By the time we pulled into the driveway, I felt like I'd been out all night dancing and getting ham-cocked. Not in the sense that I felt wasted, but in the sense that I had pulled an all-nighter. Like, I was just so wild and crazy for what I had done.

I looked at the clock.

It was 8:54 p.m.

Seriously, I am a pathetic old cow.

I think it is fair to say that I am sensitive to my daylight intake. I think it is fair to say I haven't slept more than 2 hours straight in well over a year.

I am a pathetic old cow.

I think the only thing I can resolve to do at this point is to become really, validly wild in my actual retirement. I'm thinking bad karaoke on cruise ships, cackling to my old biddy friends that "It's got to be noon somewhere," as I start throwing back margaritas at 10 a.m. Stuff like that.

But for now, I am a pathetic old cow. Moo.

It's go time

2010-11-28T20:11:00.001-06:00

Thanks to Big K for the totally random post yesterday - I'm sure all you readers in New Zealand enjoyed reading about a Wisconsin college football team. Ah yes, Phook had given us the gift of a bout with the stomach flu the previous night and yesterday, and I was rocking a migraine on top of it for sport. She is better now, excepting the blown blood vessels in one of her eyes, which she managed to blow up in the midst of her barf-o-rama. Poor little sucker. Now I pray, pray, pray that no one else comes down with it. I feel like I can handle any and all illnesses, excepting the stomach flu. Yuck. So bad.

Anyhow, what I was really going to post about today was the impending gig that is Christmas. I really feel bad for Thanksgiving, getting shorted on the holiday appreciation list, so I really try to not think about Christmas until I've downed my pound of turkey. I want to look forward to Thanksgiving and enjoy it, and I just don't think it gets its due if I've already skipped over to Christmas. So after I take down my Halloween decorations, I put up a few Thanksgiving decorations, and I stick to those suckers even as it seems like Christmas decorations are popping up earlier and earlier around me.

But then it's the day after Thanksgiving, and I feel like I might have a mild to moderate panic attack as I realize HOW CLOSE it is to Christmas, and how I've done nothing to prepare. (Now this particular year it was moderated by my severe panic attack about impending stomach flu, which I knew was coming because a family member had so charitably informed us about an hour into the Thanksgiving festivities that her young son had spent the previous night barfing...so I admit I was putting my worry in that bag o' tricks more than the Christmas shopping one this time around, but you get the point.) But now that we are done with that (or at least in a down cycle before the next volcano erupts), I'm transitioning worry over to the Christmas to-do list. I've gotta put it somewhere, you know.

The to-do list basically boils down to decorating the house for Christmas (including my regular tree and my famous food tree), shopping for Christmas outfits for the kids (would have been done this weekend if not for the vomit-a-thon), hauling us somewhere for family photo (scheduled for next weekend), writing a long-ass Christmas letter and mailing it to 125 people with some version of some photo taken somewhere, buy and wrap gifts for about 20 people, and make a dozen kinds of cookies and candy.

I can't decide if that's a nightmare or totally do-able. I mean, I know it's do-able, because I'll do it. But dude, I don't know. I'm waffling on my Christmas emotions this year. I had consistently felt positive about Christmas all my life, until the year I had Phook. That was a rough one. The next year I got really pissed about what the retail marketing cycle does to the holiday spirit, and I guess I'm feeling that way to some extent this year too. The year after that was better, but this fun shit happened last year. But then I went and asked Big K to go ahead an impregnate me again, so it wasn't a total loss. (Oh, funny that I went and said that. At least I didn't blog about it.)

So here we are again. The big month-long push to Christmas. A bunch of shit to do when I should be doing nothing except enjoying my recently expanded family. I'm gonna just make a list and plod on through and try try try not to let the list diminish my enjoyment of the season. Because I tell you who is pumped to enjoy the season the right way. Ms. Phook. Holy balls is that kid excited for Christmas.

As soon as decorations started popping up she started getting jazzed. She freaks out with glee when she sees one sad little string of lights. The other day we were driving through a nearby town and a dude was putting up holiday lights on lamp posts on the main street and you would have thought we had just seen Big Foot. It was a hoot, man. She has said like 20 times, "Man, this is gonna be the best Christmas EVER!!!" And she means it. She is just so excited.

The neat thing is that she doesn't tie her excitement to gifts, except when talked into it. (One reason could be that she already has everything a kid can have, courtesy of being part of the only set of grandchildren on either side of our families.) She is excited primarily about lights and other decorations. She is excited for snow. (Even in the middle of summer when enjoying the best a kiddie pool can offer, she says winter is her favorite season when she is asked...weirdo...). She is excited to eat dinner with lots of people and spend lots of time with Grammy and Grampy and Auntie Hode. She is excited about some holiday cookies she saw in one of my cooking magazines and she said she'd really like to make them. The spirit of the season is in that kid. Purely.

Bigs, on the other hand, is in the phase where all things are "scary," "yucky," and "junk," so he's essentially claiming that Santa can shove it. Which in and of itself is pretty hilarious and enjoyable for me in a twisted sort of way. Santa shouldn't feel too bad though, because Bigs also informed me that pumpkins, trick-or-treating, and candy were junk during the Halloween season. (Funny how when Phook went through a similar phase in her two-year-old year, to which I will give the umbrella term "The NO phase," I was pretty sure she had a personality disorder and needed toddler therapy. This time around, I'm actually laughing at the ill-tempered little shit. Ah, perspective...)

And Parkie. Parkie is excited. Parkie is pretty excited about everything these days. She gets pumped and shrieks a lot. And I am excited about Parkie. The other day, I was lamenting the early dark, the long winter, the constant illnesses, and the general disaster that is winter in Wisconsin with small children. I said to Big K, "I think I might need Prozac to get through this one." And I meant it. But then I revised my statement, as I looked at the pink-cheeked little Park Rat I was holding, and I said, "Actually, no, she is my Prozac. She will get me through." And I meant that too. Because, officially, babies can be so unbelievably impossible it will make tears stream down your face and you will howl at the moon with crazed sleep-deprivation in the middle of the night. But, ultimately, for me, I love a baby. I really do. That warm little bundle that wants nothing on earth other than me for a brief moment in time. To be the only thing another creature wants is both impossible and irresistible. But, for me, in the end, irresistible wins out. Her warm little cheeks and her soft little fuzzy head are going to get me through. I love that Parkie. Oh I love her.

So this post has rambled and veered, and this is where I'm going to end it. Praying for no more flu, hoping for more fun than stress this Christmas season, and in love with a bunch of kids.

Lame Guest Blogger

2010-11-27T19:04:00.002-06:00

Ok, so with no fanfare and even less warning, I've been called in to pinch hit for Big W tonight. The given reason was, "So I don't [mess] up NaBloPoMo.

Big K has just been given the keys to the Ferrari er, minivan as it were. Since the honor was won just minutes ago and awarded with words of caution about not writing anything controversial all I've got on tap is a college football update.

As one would imagine, the Woods is the domain of many football fans. Since the NFL game is too sterile for me, I prefer college ball and as such I bleed Cardinal and my white blood cells are White. Well, I suppose that defines most of us but the Badgers are my team. Especially this year. Especially this MONTH.

Since I don't feel like doing research, I'm not going to brag about how unusual a season like this is in major college football. I'm also not going to make the case they're better than your school, etc. It's been great watching them this fall. JJ Watt is playing so well that at one point tonight I exclaimed (without knowing this floor would be mine), "JJ Watt is such a stud that [insert masculine male star of your choosing here so I don't peave anybody off] wants to have HIS babies." Scott Tolzien also gets a ton of respect from me. This season turned when the Badgers decided that occasionally they would throw the ball downfield and Scott has been great.

If the cards fall the right way, and the pollsters do not want to see TCU in the title game, there's a tiny chance that Wisconsin could end up with a shot for all the marbles. It's tiny, but the fact that it's there makes this a great season to be a Badger.

Rather than ID everybody on the roster who is playing ridiculously good football, I'll tell you why I am in the box tonight and not Big W.

It turns out that when Phook gets the stomach flu the combination of losing 4-5 hours of sleep, stressing over whether or not the other ones will get it (not yet x 4), stressing over Parkie's newness and thus likelihood to be vulnerable to nasty strains of flu and other circumstances associated with Phook's illness will wear a person down. Especially a person like W who really prefers things to go well and will bust her rear to make them OK for everybody else when the situation is generally going tats up. I had sick kids and stress today too; I'm typing because she's beat from taking care of all of us. Thanks, honey.

The right way

2010-11-26T21:33:00.000-06:00

When I was a kid, probably about 12 years old, I took a Hunter's Safety course. It is something most kids just do around here. I (of course) got the highest score in the class on the written examination. I had shot guns at targets on occasion with my Dad, and I thought it was borderline fun. I planned to go deer hunting the fall I took my Hunter's Safety class, and I pretended I was excited about it.

And then, when it came time to do it, I couldn't. I could not imagine putting a scope on a deer, pulling the trigger, and ending its life.

I think I might have previously mentioned that I like animals more than I like humans. There are some exceptions, but that's pretty much the rule. My squishy inner core is dedicated to an extreme love for animals. I pretty much think that all mammals (and some other animals too) have emotions and inner lives and I value them on a level that is hard to explain.

Which makes the fact that I am a carnivore a serious mess for me. If I see a truck hauling cattle on the highway, 99% of the time, tears roll down my face, because I know they're not just going to another farm. And yet, yum, pot roast. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this, and despite my love for animals, I just don't think vegetarianism is in my future. So there is a major major major mental magic show going on in my head that allows me to (most of the time) separate my love for animals from my love for eating meat and just press on. It pretty much boils down to denial. I separate the cow I want to pet and talk to when I see it in the field from the cow part I am putting in the crock pot.

Of course I know that this chess game in my head is a train wreck. It is all wrong. And maybe some day I will come up with a better way. But for now, this is it. We eat probably 80% fish and poultry to 20% beef and pork, and we eat no baby animals. When I can, I get organic/local meats, but I'm not great at it right now for financial and logistical reasons. That's the best I can do right now for reasons I'm to tired to further defend or explain.

So today, my sister called me and excitedly told me that she had shot a pretty nice buck. In years past, I would have kind of half covered my eyes and begrudgingly checked the thing out and felt terribly, terribly sad that an animal had died. But this year, I walked out to the truck and looked at that buck, and I felt really, really positive about it. I felt proud of her.

My sister got up at the crack of dawn this morning, went out in the woods in the freezing weather, sat silently and patiently and communed with nature, heard this animal wandering around, gathered the strength to humanely end its life, expertly shot it, gutted it herself with her bare hands, and dragged it out of the woods.

She deserves to eat it.

I am not kidding. I am quite sure that my thinking on animals has reached a new level of maturity, because a few years ago, I would have been utterly incapable of this thought process. But if we as humans are going to eat animals, this is the right way to do it. There is nothing but respect for nature and God in what my sister does when she goes hunting. That deer woke up this morning, walked around in the woods, and his life was ended in a painless nanosecond by someone who respected him and will not put his body to waste. He will not go hungry this winter. And neither will my sister.

In this way, on this day, I am totally comfortable with humans eating meat. That's the first time in 20 years I have been able to make that statement and believe it all the way down to its deepest level.

I don't normally take such strong stances on such potentially controversial topics on my blog, but I am just gonna let this ride. Something about seeing my sister's blood-stained hands today made me so insanely proud of her and in the purity of what she does in the woods, and I am going to go out on a limb and share it with you.

I am thankful

2010-11-25T20:04:00.002-06:00

For these turkeys...

Gamer 2.0

2010-11-24T19:46:00.002-06:00

My husband received the long-delayed Gran Turismo 5 video game today. It was a birthday present from his loving wife. He was so excited when he got home from work, it would be fair to state he was like a kid on Christmas morning.

This evening, I put down the Park Rat for bed, and he put down the big kids. He finished his task about 30 seconds before I did. When I walked down the stairs, he crossed my path on his way from the kitchen to the living room.

He was carrying an entire 12-pack of Diet Mt. Dew.

He stated the following:

"Now all I need is my bedpan. I'm gearing up for some hardcore nerding tonite."

I rest my case.

Gamer

2010-11-23T20:22:00.000-06:00

My husband is a gamer. I think we've discussed this already. If not, well, that's probably for the best.

So tonite, Big K turned on our rarely-used Wii so he could set it up to stream Netflix so he could move our PS3 (which is our normal streaming device) to hook it up to his upstairs triple-monitored computer gamer station so I could (gasp!) use the TV tonite for a little bit. (We only have one TV and he usually plays PS3 on it after the kids go to bed, so my request necessitated a reconfiguration of our technology to facilitate his little "hobby.")

If you could even follow that, congratulations, you either are a nerd or you're married to one.

Anyhow, he turned on the Wii. (I could have just said that, I guess, but that's not my style.) Now back in my own adolescence, I deeply enjoyed playing Nintendo. My own evolution as a gamer ended with Mario 3 and Tetris, however. But when Big K turned on the system, and a minute later I heard the ting-ting-ting sound of Mario coins, it activated my 13-year-old self, and I said, "Give me the controller, I have to play it!"

So I played some Mario 3 for a few minutes, while Bigs danced to the little tune and Phook sat, fixated, watching Mario run around and shoot vermin. She was seriously into it, yelling, "Mom, don't forget the coins!" and stuff like that.

Alas, this happy little fun time with the novelty of Mommy playing Mario 3 was very brief, as the baby needed to go to bed and was getting vocal about it. Bigs had also thrown a wrench in things by sharting himself. So Big K started changing Bigs and I grabbed Parkie to take her up to bed. When I got to the stairs, however, I heard Mario un-pause.

Phook (who has never played a video or computer game in her life and has very rarely even seen them played) had picked up the controller. I started yelling, "She's going to kill my guy!" and Big K yelled back that he was clearly unable to stop her, given the task he was efforting.

Not to worry.

She got to the end of the level and elected to use a warp whistle.

Are you kidding me? How is that even possible?

K Family DNA now apparently passes on a preternatural understanding of gaming.

I am disturbed.

Punt

2010-11-22T22:48:00.000-06:00

It is day 22 of NaBloPoMo and I have to punt. I have nothing for you friends and I'm sorry. Today was very, very busy. Started it by taking my barfing dog to the vet with 3 shorties in tow and ended it by hosting one of those at-home parties for which my sister is a sales woman. And now I am comatose.

So I'm gonna give you two dip recipes from my party this evening, to celebrate the fact that I am a dip and that people need more dips in their lives. One is a healthy-ish little option and the other is a junk-in-your-trunk special, but they are equally excellent, and perhaps they might come in handy for your upcoming holiday festivities. Both are very easy and very do-ahead friendly.

Hot Parmesan-Artichoke Dip (for slow cooker)

1 1/2 cups mayo
2 (12 oz.) jars marinated quartered artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
2 (4.5 oz.) cans chopped green chilies, drained
1 (7 oz.) jar roasted red peppers, drained and chopped
2 cups freshly shredded Parmesan cheese2
4 garlic cloves, minced
Toasted baguette slices or assorted crackers

Stir together first 6 ingredients. Spoon into a 3-quart slow cooker.
Cover and cook on LOW 4 hours. Stir well before serving with baguette slices or crackers. Makes 6 cups.

***************

Lemon Fruit Dip

2 cups reduced-fat sour cream
1 package (1 oz.) sugar-free instant vanilla pudding mix
1/4 cup fat-free milk
4 t. lemon juice
1 t. grated lemon peel

In a bowl, whisk all ingredients until blended. Serve with assorted fresh fruit. Makes 2 cups.

So make some dip in the name of Momma Says, and I'll try to do better tomorrow...

Did someone move that coffee table a quarter inch to the left?

2010-11-21T21:55:00.000-06:00

This afternoon I was out of the house with Phook and Parkie at some friends' house for a book club gathering.

When I returned home, all hell had broken loose.

By that I mean that Big K had rearranged our living room furniture in my absence, without prior consultation with me.

I started freaking out. For real.

Our living room, like all the rooms in our 100+ year old house, is small. We have an entertainment center that is designed to wedge into a corner. We have a recliner that was claimed by Turbo the day he moved in. We have a love seat and a standard couch. We put our coffee table in the basement when Phook got ambulatory 3.5 years ago, so she'd have more room to cruise around the limited floor space without cracking her head open, but we do have one end table that we use. Really, with the windows and the doorways, there are very limited options for arranging this small number of things in the small room.

When I returned home, I found that Big K had brought the coffee table up from the basement and put it in the corner, moved the love seat so it was no longer centered under the window, and put the the end table (which had previously been where the coffee table now was) between the couch and the love seat.

Had I found him slaughtering a pig on the carpet, my reaction would probably have been milder.

I had a visceral physical response to unexpectedly finding my living room arranged differently in a way I didn't like. My heart rate shot up, I started shaking and sweating, and I started yelling, "This is not okay! This is not okay!"

It was not okay. For real.

If there is an area where my psyche tips toward the not okay, it is in the value I place on the orderliness of my household and my ability to control it. I truly felt violated by the fact that my love seat was not centered under the window where I wanted it centered. I was not cool with it at all. My reaction was not appropriate for the situation, and it felt beyond my capacity to reign it in.

My house is never pristine. I have 3 small children and a husband whose natural tendency is to make filth. My house is also old enough that it sort of has some built-in filth factor, and we really need new flooring throughout the downstairs. The carpet is in seriously bad shape in both the stain and wear departments, and the kitchen linoleum is an abomination. It looks very, very lived in. With the amount of people and animals in here and the standard American amount of stuff we own (which is to say too much), there are unsightly things like a big bin of shoes in the laundry room. It's never going to be perfect, and that's okay.

That being said, I like to have things non-messy and I have a place for pretty much everything. I like my towels folded neatly. I like my Rubbermaid storage containers stacked by size. If the soap and lotion on the bathroom sink are askew from the angle I like them pointed at, I fix them. I have a very hard time leaving the house without doing the dishes and straightening up first, because it really stresses me out to walk in the door to a mess I left. I will go out of my way to drop off a random item that is in my house temporarily, because it bugs me to have stuff sitting around that I'm waiting to give to someone the next time I see them.

And I like my love seat centered under the window.

Really, it was pretty bad. It took everything I had not to go really balls to the wall gonzo about it, and the thread I was hanging by was only stopped from snapping because my kids were in the room. And even with that, I was visibly freaking and raising my voice and not responding rationally.

Big K had some legitimate reasons for what he was attempting to do with the tables, and he got defensive, and all in all it wasn't awesome. We ultimately got ourselves cooled down and were able to set things up in a mutually agreeable way after dinner, but I seriously feel like I have been to hell and back after the whole thing.

I know that sounds crazy. Because it is.

It's all about control and feeling safe. I cannot control when my kids are going to go off the rails and jack up something I care about, but I can control the location of my socks. I cannot control whether a semi is going to veer off the highway in front of my house and through my front window, but I can control the ability to position things in my spice cupboard so I can read the labels on everything. Straightening things soothes me. When I am upset, nothing calms me down like organizing something, because I can go in, arrange things the way I like them, and then walk away with the job well done. There is nothing complicated, unknown, difficult, or scary about a sock drawer.

Big K, albeit without malice, took away my control of my sacred space today and it was seriously bad for me. We have agreed that there will be no more rearranging of rooms without collaboration. And that was that. (Just so no one recommends that I have myself checked into an inpatient mental health facility and put into a medically-induced coma immediately, I should probably clarify that it's not like I'm having meltdowns over where the salt shaker is placed or something like that. This was me unexpectedly finding an entire room re-oriented without warning, and I would call the more extreme dynamics of what occurred today an isolated incident rather than part of a pattern of me losing my grip on reality.)

So I don't really have a nice conclusion to this post. I just kind of wanted to work through what happened with some late-night typing and further reveal the depths of my flawed person to you, because that's the way I roll. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoy a good episode of Hoarders, because it's just so neat to watch other people combust.

I got nothin'.

2010-11-20T18:20:00.002-06:00

So today was a wild one. We had friends over - two families I adore, the moms of which I worked with back in my days of gainful employment in software company gonzo world. Each family has two kids each, ranging in age from 3-7. So there were those 8 people here, my family of 5, my 4 pets, plus an extra dog. That's 18 mammals.

I really didn't know you could do that to a toy room. (Should have taken a picture.)

My dog vomited twice. Indoors.

No, seriously, it was a great time, catching up with old friends and being reminded to see them more despite the distance and how busy everyone is. It's nice to be with people you can be at ease with, even when you haven't seen each other for a long time. I did several tours of duty in a corporate pressure cooker with these women. We've tied each others' tourniquets, and we've thrown ourselves on grenades to save one another. I think if I ran into them after an absence of 40 years, it would be just like we didn't miss a beat.

I like being with people like that.

So it was good, and the toys are cleaned up, and now I am exhausted.

Cheers to friends, man.

So Walter Matthau tuned up her dipe at quastics.

2010-11-19T21:01:00.000-06:00

Did the title of this post make absolutely no sense to you?

That's the point.

The title of this post is an actual sentence I spoke to Big K last night at the dinner table. And he understood every word of it.

I speak invented nonsense languages with Big K, with Hode, and with my kids. They are all a little different - dialects, if you will - but there is overlap. There are so many times I say something and then laugh at myself knowing that the particular combination of words I just strung together has never been uttered before in the history of man. I like that. I'm pretty sure my sample sentence fits that description.

I will translate.

So my sister thinks that Parkie, like Phook before her, resembles Walter Matthau. (And also Winston Churchill, while we're at it...). Walter Matthau then is code for Parkie (which is code for her actual name, but never mind that).

"Tuned up" is a phrase that Big K and I use to describe mayhem. As in, "Watch out, Bigs is really tuning up. We have to get him down for his nap."

Dipe is a simple slang word for diaper that I feel like I invented but I'm pretty sure I didn't.

Quastics is the way Phook used to pronounce gymnastics when she started taking a class and her speech was even more jacked up than it is now. I liked it, and it stuck. We simply go to Quastics on Thursdays now.

So my sentence means that Parkie took a really nasty poop in her diaper while we were at gymnastics. (The fact that this was worthy of sharing at the dinner table is another issue we will tackle at another time.)

I know that a lot of people have words with secret meanings that they share with loved ones, but I'm proud to claim that I take this shit to an entirely different level. My sister and I can speak almost entirely without using English. My kid picked up something off the carpet the other day and told me it was a pink "fuzzle," which is a word my mom invented (I think, at least) to describe a little ball of lint, and which I have now passed on to another generation.

Naming things, for example. My cat Lucy (bless her dear departed heart), was known primarily as Shib when she died. Why? I can't even trace the linguistic trajectory that got me there, but somehow that cat just had become Shib in my mind. One of my current cats is technically named Snoot (which in and of itself is rather psychotic), but he now answers mostly to Uncle Growler. I like to play a game with my two big kids where I list off nicknames I've given them, their father, and their little sister, and they point to the person to whom the name applies. Phook is of course Phook, but also Peekerton and Bub. Bigs is of course Bigs but also Bagganz, Baggy, Bigsy, and Pig. You get the idea. And the kids are never wrong. They're totally picking up what I'm laying down.

And Park Rat. How did I come up with Park Rat? Well, I can't explain why I actually looked at my newborn daughter and decided to call her Park Rat. It's just what came to me, just like Snuffle Pig came to me when Bigs was born. But the Park Rat story dates back to a tale my sister told me about this group of kids in one of her college roommate's hometowns. They always hung out at the park, so people called them Park Rats. Except one of the kids apparently specified at some point that they preferred to be called a Recreational Varmints. And I thought that was really funny, so it lodged both Park Rat and Recreational Varmint in my mind, and, you know, staring at the perfect little life I created, Park Rat is what bubbled up out of the nooks and crannies of my atrophied brain and when I talked to her I just heard myself calling her Park Rat. Makes sense, right? No? Okay then.

So I just think this is funny. And I'm pretty jazzed about how my kids are gonna rock their teachers' socks someday with the fact that they're already bilingual.

Snapshot

2010-11-18T19:55:00.000-06:00

My husband is a terrible photographer. I don't think I've ever discussed this with him, so he's probably aghast as he reads this, having this accusation hurled at him publicly. (Not that he's a stranger to me hurling accusations at him publicly, but usually I've been hurling them at him privately for at least a decade before I blog about them.) At any rate, I learned several years ago that handing him the camera at an important event (Christmas morning, for example), is going to result in there not being a single decent photo salvageable from that event. Not that I am a great photographer. I have almost zero skills in this department, actually. But my husband is utterly terrible. He doesn't seem to understand that you can't just take a picture of the entire room that contains the item you actually want to photograph. That actually describes his photography disability perfectly. You ask him to take some shots during a kid's birthday party, and all you will get are random images of bodies with their heads cut off, half a dog in the corner, and yes, maybe somewhere in about 30% of the images, you will be able to at least somewhat safely assume that the child whose birthday is being celebrated is included in the photo. You will never, ever, ever get a picture of the child, alone, looking at the camera while opening a present. Or blowing out candles. Or doing any other thing, the memory of which you might wish to preserve.

(He's going to read this and get huffy about it and claim I'm wrong. And then I'm going to dare him to open the images saved on our computer of any event during which he was the primary photographer, and find me a decent one. And then he'll think about it, have a mental fight with himself in which he just can't believe that he really sucks at something (he usually isn't bad at things, so this is hard for him), and after a few days or possibly even weeks of reflection, he'll come to terms with the fact that he's a terrible photographer. But it'll take some convincing on the part of the Big W voice in his head before he admits it. Just in case you were curious about how that would go down.)

Anyhow, the other night our beloved son appeared in the living room wearing a pair of pink-lensed Elton John-esque sunglasses that Phook has had for years. He was acting casual about it, which made it all the more hilarious. I was nursing Parkie, so Big K ran and grabbed the camera to document the moment.

I present to you the resulting image, which is supposed to be a picture of our son:

When I first uploaded these pictures, I got a little irritated that Big K had so badly shanked the opportunity to capture an image that I wanted to preserve. He had instead taken a classic Big K photo, which is to say there are miscellaneous unidentified body parts involved and a lot of other noise that is in no way relevant to his actual subject. But the more I looked at this picture, the more I decided that I liked it. Not for what it was supposed to be (clearly an epic failure on that count), but for what it is.

It so completely captures the random wackiness that is my household, were you to take a snapshot (while you were on crack) at any given moment. Okay, obviously we have Bigs, who is not only wearing sunglasses with pink lenses, but is carrying his sword from his Halloween costume, with his baseline outfit being nothing other than a dipe.

In the background we have Phook, who for no apparent reason is wearing a lei. She is also looking at a Curious George book, and seated next to her is her pile of guys. (The original Sleep Guy having expanded into a family that includes Momma Sleep Guy, Daddy Sleep Guy, Green Bahnkie, Pink Bahnkie, Baby, and a hot pink stuffed dog that was named Fluffy last week but was re-christened "Magenta" on Saturday.) Further to her left (your right, I think...I'm directionally impaired) is a pile of play food that I presume she had just dumped out of the Easter-themed ice cream pail lying on the floor in front of her, because everyone needs rations on their journey through bizarro world.

The small black item with a tube running out of it in front of the love seat is Bigs' nebulizer, which we use on him nearly every time he gets a cold, because nearly every cold he gets goes into his lungs and makes him wheezy. (Does Bigs have asthma? If so, will he outgrow it? Just some of the fun questions that keep me up at night.) So, yes, we are rocking the cough/hack/snot/wheeze scene here, and that fact is nicely caught in Big K's "panoramic" image of Bigs wearing sunglasses. (I guess the sheen of snot on Bigs' face is also a clue there.)

In the lower lefthand corner, you will observe an enormous unidentified man-calf, which I will claim as mine. You will note that it is bare, meaning I was either wearing shorts or outright pantsless in mid-November, as is par for the course. (Have I mentioned that I hate pants? I have to have mentioned it in 4 years of blogging. But if not, consider it noted now. Pants are my nemesis. I prefer to be pantsless at all times. I actually even hate the word "pants.") You will see also that I am wielding a remote, so I'm probably starting up an episode of Wonder Pets on Netflix for the kidlets to enjoy in an attempt to wind them down before bedtime. (And can I just say that Wonder Pets might be my all-time favorite kids' show? I sense that it is probably the kind of show that most adults utterly loathe, what with the lisping duck and all, but I seriously love it. The whole premise just speaks to my inner child. And my kids sound just like that duck anyhow, so I have a soft spot.) You'll also note that I'm wearing this season's latest accessory, which is of course a nursing infant. That's right, that thing swaddled in blue is Parkie, and she's doing what she does best. (How random that Big K managed to NOT catch any boob in the shot. He's clearly either actively seizing while he takes the photo or he is the most aimless photographer of all time.)

There are also pillows strewn about, pajamas next to me on the couch that someone is procrastinating putting on, and a general sense of mayhem. So I don't know. While this picture isn't what it was supposed to be, I decided that I like what it is. A total snapshot of my life. That's pretty much it, my whole world right there. Kids absentmindedly doing weird stuff without recognizing it, a nursing baby, evidence of things that are hard, an atypical pants deficit, a vaguely psychotic dude behind the camera. And that's it. That's what's in the snow globe of my life. I can never decide if I like it better shaken or stirred, but either way, it looks good to me.

3:1

2010-11-17T23:31:00.002-06:00

The title of this post is the ratio that indicates why the act of buying a loaf of bread is currently difficult enough that I feel like I should have some sort of star chart, rewarding myself with a sticker every time I get my children through a task that involves me solo-parenting them in a public setting. When I have amassed a certain number of stickers, I should get to fly to Vegas all by myself and stare at the fountains in front of the Bellagio for as long as I want. (I don't know, I love those damned fountains...sue me.)

Anyhow, today marked the most extensive public outing I have undertaken without additional adult reinforcements since I had Parkie. I was going to tell you every last detail of the day in true Big W fashion, but I have spent the past several hours since the kids went to bed filling out paperwork to refinance my mortgage. This is a HUGE pain in the ass in the paperwork department (you'd have to be near-suicidal if you didn't have all your paperwork organized, because I am a total file cabinet nerd and I would seriously be downing a bottle of scotch right now if I had one). It is also just plain stressful to essentially create a balance sheet on your household. On the plus side, however, if this thing goes through, my mortgage will be paid in full when I am 46, possibly in the exact same month Phook goes off to college, which means I just might get that kayak while I can still paddle it.

Anyhow, I was going to go into the whole excursion and give you the play-by-play, because damn it was awesomely difficult and hilarious, but now I'm wasted. (On exhaustion rather than scotch, sadly.) So instead I am going to give you the brief version and share the two most awesomely bad moments of the day, which both feature the character that is none other than Bigs. (Bigs is the child that is going to be famous when he's in college because he's going to imprint himself in the drywall in every house on campus. Have I mentioned that?)

Okay, so, the short version is that my microwave broke and I can go about, say, 20 seconds without missing a microwave. I felt it imperative to replace the thing right away, and since I live in the middle of God's country, this involved an hour-long drive to a town with a Sears. I specifically wanted to get the same Kenmore microwave I was replacing, which sounds counterintuitive since it had just blown up in my kitchen 20 months after I bought it, but whatever. I loved that microwave. Until it blew up. And now I'm gonna let them fool me twice.

So this morning it took me exactly 1.5 hours to get everyone in the clothes I had set out the night before, get myself (pre-showered the previous evening, I'll add) ready and dressed, grab the bags I had pre-packed last night, feed the infant, and get out the door. That's right friends, 1.5 hours just to leave the house with everything technically ready to go before I started. We then drove the hour to the big city, got through a quick run for some crap at Target with only one incident involving Bigs' recent penchant for pulling Phook's hair, got to Sears, and selected a microwave. (Bonus highlight: Phook very forcefully stating that she had to pee and she COULD NOT HOLD IT while the baby cried and Bigs repeatedly threw his Sleep Guy off the front of the stroller for sport while I was in the midst of microwave-related discussion with the young, seemingly non-dad sales guy.)

I then somehow got everyone (and I do mean everyone) fed lunch in the food court of the mall without any noteworthy incident. (Miracle. Sticker.) This having gone well, I decided I would press my luck and venture into one of my favorite stores, Barnes & Noble. Chain bookstores may be the devil, but I've got to be honest - I could spend a week's vacation in that place. Sadly, I didn't get any time to peruse the Mommy books, because Phook was making an unstoppable beeline for the children's section. (I sort of wish I had a 3-kid stroller just for containment purposes in settings like these, but alas, no.) She had been pretty much a gem all day, so I just went with it. I was feeling sort of generous and told Bigs and Phook they could each pick out a book. This resulted in much excitement, and I made the mistake of letting Bigs out of the stroller so he could do his shopping. (Retrospectively, this is already full of bad ideas.)

Anyhow, they were playing and looking at books in this little stage area in the children's section, when all of a sudden Bigs started climbing over stacks of books with a force of will that could not be quashed. He was actually standing on a stack of Elmo books, sort of going gonzo to get back into a nook created by the confluence of a large floor-to-ceiling structural pole and a cardboard display holding up a rack of Grinch books. As soon as I saw him trying to execute this, I gasped and told him to stop, and he aggressively yelled, "Don't get me!" This could mean only one thing. The child is in the magic special pre-potty-training phase where one must hide to poop. You can only understand this if you have witnessed it yourself, I am sure, but it is not uncommon for children to develop this weird thing where they hide to do their business, and it is a serious offense if you interrupt. That is what was happening. Now, clearly, I couldn't let the kid just destroy store displays, but this little privacy-in-toileting thing he is rocking is very serious to him and I don't want to give him weird ass phobias. So I was very afraid. Knowing that he could probably smell said fear, I stuffed it down inside myself and just grabbed him and attempted to extract him from his ascent while muttering calm, soothing statements about finding another suitably private locale in which to fill one's diaper. And that child grabbed the enormous structural pole and held onto it like I was a tornado trying to pull him from his home. He was not letting go. And he was very vocal about his opposition to my plan. "Don't get me! I need to go POOPIE!!!" And then the baby started crying and Phook escaped out of my line of sight. Getting him out of the Grinch corner, into some other safe locale for his business, saving Phook from abduction, calming the infant, getting everyone into the bathroom and changed, paying for my merchandise, and getting out of that store to the car alive took a solid 7 years off my life. But I did it. Sticker, please.

The other highlight was that I decided to be extra-nice momma and get the children a scoop of ice cream on the ride home. (We don't get out much...this was a big day, man. My children experienced pizza delivery for the first time at Auntie Hode's house last weekend and they're still talking about how a pizza delivery dude just drove up to the house and DROPPED OFF A PIZZA. It's the little things for most people, but it's the freckle on the little things when you live in The Woods.) Anyhow, they each got a scoop of vanilla in a dish. Everyone was eating quietly, so I decided to unsafely place a call to Big K and tell him we had a microwave and we were en route home. While I was talking, Bigs said, "Mom, there is some ice cream on me. Can you get this piece?" So I reached back behind me and handed him a single napkin without looking, thinking it was no big deal. He repeated his statement. So I handed him an additional napkin without looking at him. And then he said, "Mommy, this is not working." And then I looked. The child had managed to get his entire scoop of ice cream out of the dish and squarely betwixt his thighs. At that point I screamed and essentially hung up on Big K, jerked the wheel and got us into a gas station, dove out of the car, picked up his ice cream with my hand and dropped it back in his dish, attempted to clean him and his car seat with some baby wipes while singing in an attempt to keep Parkie asleep, dove back in the car, and burned off half my tires peeling out of there.

Hee-haw! (Sticker.)

So, hell yeah, good times. As an aside which could be a whole additional post, I would also like to state that people really look at you like you're flying your freak flag when you roll up with a 2-month old and a 2-year-old in a double stroller, with a bonus 4-year-old walking sidecar. I am considering tattooing "Yes, I did this on purpose!" on my forehead.

And on that note, word to Big Bird. I gotta hit the rack. Parkie's gonna be up for her midnight ham sandwich shortly.

************************

One more thought...

My mom used to occasionally call me "Patience" on account of my marked lack thereof.

I didn't raise my voice once today.

This breaking news just in from all of us here at Momma Says the F Word: officially, people can change.

************************

Post edit:

Upon re-reading this post after I published it, I realized that I did in fact raise my voice in the ice cream incident. But I'm not going to let that invalidate the conclusions of my highly scientific studies in human behavior, because it was a general involuntary vocalization rather than an act of verbal aggression toward another human. In case you were concerned.

Next week, I think I'll come straight home

2010-11-16T21:34:00.000-06:00

Last week, this. Tonite, after volleyball, I stopped to get a few groceries. While passing the aisle containing crackers, I overheard a conversation between a man and a woman that has got me convinced it's not really even safe to leave my house after 5 p.m.

The woman was holding a can of spray-on cheese. Easy Cheese is I believe the proper name, but what she was holding was the generic version. She was talking about her son's diet, and I distinctly heard her state, "Let's get some of this for [kid]."

The man looked a little uncomfortable and said, "Um, I think that's some sort of weird processed cheese. I don't even know if it is cheese."

And then the woman delivered her smackdown. She said, "Whatever. It's good for him. Besides, it's the only way I can get him to eat cheese."

I didn't breathe for 4 minutes after I heard that.

I mean, whatever. People struggle with getting their kids to eat healthy. I get that. People (including me) knowingly eat crap food sometimes because it tastes good. I get that. What I don't get is that we live in a world where someone can argue that CHEESE IN A CAN is actually good for their kid.

When retelling this story to my sister, she said, "Hode, somewhere Michael Pollan just died." Exactly. This is a sign of impending apocalypse if I've ever seen one.

Wave your flag

2010-11-15T20:45:00.000-06:00

I don't know if any other stay-at-home-parents are with me on this one, but I find that the last hour (or two) before Big K gets home are the most horrific time of my day. He generally walks in the door around 5:30, and we eat supper right away. So between 3:30-5:30 is the roughest part of my solo shift; I call the time between 4:30 and 5:30 the "witching hour." The kids are getting worn out, I officially am worn out, I'm trying to get supper prepared, playdates or any other fun stuff we did that day is long over, and now--heaven help me--it is dark out. Pre-darkness, we tried to spend this last chunk of the day outside as much as possible, but with the sun setting so early and the resulting chill, the opportunities we have to do this are getting rarer and they are going to become obsolete within a couple weeks.

The survival tactic I've found myself employing this last week or two is to whip out assorted art project materials just when things are about to go nuclear. Not that kind of art project. Generally, I just get out assorted kinds of paper, a couple pair of kid scissors, some glue sticks, stickers, pens/pencils/crayons/markers, whatever, and just let them do what they want to do. Today I busted out some little Halloween stamps that my mom had given them in their trick-or-treat goody bags, and those were a (messy) hit. Today we rocked this scene for a solid hour and a half before Big K rolled up. The kids had fun and it was good, even if I will be finding little pumpkins stamped on surfaces in my kitchen until 2012.

And Phook made something that I consider to be wildly awesome, so I'm going to share it with you. Now I am a little self-conscious here because I'm truly not that up on my developmental norms for stuff of this nature. So I don't know if I'm showing you something that makes my kid seem a little slow-going here and I'm a moron for not knowing it or if I seem like I am bragging because of her amazing rad skill and making other parents puke because I'm that kind of jerk. I really don't know. I just want to put that disclaimer out there.

And then I am going to state that I am totally freaking impressed by what she did today with absolutely no guidance whatsoever from me. Okay. The child started by drawing a rectangle on a piece of construction paper. Then she colored it in with her pen, militantly staying in the lines (boy does she get pissed that that little savage Bigs absolutely REFUSES to color in the lines.) Then she cut out the rectangle. Then she cut out a long, skinny piece of paper. Then she glued the two together. Then she handed them to me and said, "Here Mom, I made you a flag."

And she had:

(Yes, I know it looks more like an axe, but still.)

I am just going to say that I think this is really, really neat. That's the word. Neat. I think it is neat that my kid is at the age where in her own little goat brain she is thinking up stuff like this and doing it. The other thing she was doing was taking pieces of white paper, stamping Halloween stamps all over them, folding them in half, and writing our family members' names on them, and she then stated that they were invitations to Halloween that she would be sending out. I can't show you those because she managed to write her siblings' names on them pretty legibly. Also neat. Just very neat. She sat and worked on them and had them all in a little stack like she was getting ready to mail them. And then she went and got her toy laptop that she has and put them all in front of the keyboard and proceeded to say that she had "a little more work to do" on them, and looked back and forth from the stack to her computer and typed and messed around with the mouse for about 5 minutes. (I believe this to be an imitation of me addressing things, because I keep all my addresses in a spreadsheet on the computer and that is exactly the way I sit and address things.)

Isn't that just neat?

Man, I sure think so. I really like this part of parenting. Watching what they build and create with absolutely no guidance. It's fascinating. And if this is how I feel about a flag that looks like a weapon, well, hell, I can't imagine how I'll feel about the things she'll bring home from school a few years from now.

So that's it. I just think that my kid is neat.

*****************************************************

To get back to the idea with which I kicked off this post--that being the general idea of plunking down art supplies as a means to live through the difficult hours--I would hereby like to ask you good readers if you have any suggestions for art supplies I may not have thought of that little hands would like to mess with. I am a little slow on the uptake in terms of what rad things are out there that weren't available when I was a kid, being that I live 60 miles from the nearest town with a shopping mall and I have no kids in school to bring home news on the latest and greatest. Please share if you have ideas on any neat-o art supplies or quasi-art supplies from around the house that you would advise offering up to shorties. My basic requirement here is that this has to be stuff the kids can mess with with me in the room, but it cannot require extensive hands-on involvement from me. I am generally making dinner for 4 while actively feeding 1 more every seven minutes or so, so suggestions that keep those logistics in mind would be great. I am fine with messy, although the non-permanent kind is preferable. Thanks, yo!

Untitled

2010-11-14T19:20:00.003-06:00

Untitled

2010-11-13T08:29:00.002-06:00

Name that baby

2010-11-12T09:21:00.000-06:00

We have had some modest success in the baby sleep department in the past couple days that I'm kind of excited about, and I woke up this morning thinking I was going to blog about it and maybe share some baby sleep thoughts and tips (an area in which I am far from an expert, but I feel like I've gotten enough kids to sleep now that I could share a few things that might ease the panic attacks of new parents). But then I decided that that was just inviting a stomach flu to destroy my household, and I know enough not to mess with karma like that. So no reflections on baby sleep today.

Instead, some photos...

Everyone asks who the babe resembles, and the answer, at least for me, is that she looks like Phook. The neat thing is that their birthdays are only 11 days apart on the calendar, so if their growth tracks similarly, I'll always be able to put the babe in Phook's clothes and confuse my future self endlessly as I look back at photos. Anyhow, I have some photos of Phook and the baby, who, okay, I am just going to officially blog-name today. In real life I find myself calling her Park Rat or, the cuter version, Parkie. So I'm naming her the cute version for the blog so as to not horrify newcomers. Parkie it is. The baby is officially Parkie. So, yeah, see if you see the resemblance.

Phook '06:

Parkie '10:

I think their features and coloring are very similar. Parkie has 11 days of additional meat on her bones (and seems to be taking to growth-chart shattering weight gain more like her brother did, to be honest), but I think these girlies look a lot alike.

So there it is.

The babe is officially christened Parkie. Discuss.

So I was thinking...

2010-11-11T09:38:00.000-06:00

Last night, I was on a walk with the hound and the baby after the big kids went to bed. It was about 7:45 p.m., and as I was walking down one stretch of residential area in The Woods, I thought about how quiet and still it was. Absolutely silent, even as I walked down this row full of houses, most with their lights on. Then I thought about how quiet the world gets in the evening. Then I thought that that wasn't necessarily true. I thought that maybe just my world gets quiet in the evening. Then I thought that at that moment, in Miami, there were lots of clubs that were probably barely even open yet, but that those places wouldn't resemble the street I was walking down in the least. I thought about people getting crazy and partying in those clubs in ridiculous clothing. I thought about the cast of Jersey Shore partying in Miami, actually. And then, since I was thinking about Miami, I started thinking about the ocean, which is my favorite thing to think about. And then I started thinking of all the places I've dipped my toes in the ocean, and how indescribably happy and calm the ocean makes me feel. And then I thought how weird it was that at that moment, the water was lapping at the shores of those special places where I like to dip my toes in the ocean, even though I wasn't there to feel it. (But I could feel it, just a little.) And then I thought how strange it was how it seems like the only place in the world that exists is the place where you actually are, but really, every place you've ever been is carrying on simultaneously, even as that fact is the furthest thing from your mind. And it made me glad the ocean was able to do it's thing every day, just waiting for me to come visit again. And then, as I was sort of power-walking, I thought about all the retirees in their cute, coordinating fitness gear that have retired to the ocean, and the fact that every morning, they get up, put on their moisture-wicking fabrics with built-in SPF, and power-walk down the shore. And then I felt jealous of them for a minute, and decided that I absolutely have to retire to an oceanside location some day. And then I thought that as much as I'd like to do that, I'll want to be near my kids (and presumably grandkids), so it won't be a viable option to just up and buy an oceanside condo. So then I decided I'll have to be a snow bird. And then I wondered if I'll ever get bored when I'm retired. And then I remembered that I never, ever get bored, because I always have enough stuff going on in my head--real and invented--that boredom can't find any space to get in. And then I thought about how when I was retired and spending time near the ocean, I'd walk around a lot and swim a lot and get a kayak. And then I imagined my gray-haired retired self kayaking, and I wondered if I was imagining my 70-year-old self kayaking or if I was just wishing my current self was kayaking, and I really wasn't sure. And then I thought that I'd like to be the kind of retiree who power-walks and kayaks, but there's a chance that I'd be the kind of retiree who would pick their retirement destination based on the accessibility of medical care. And then I thought I was pretty sure I'd be the kind of retiree who kayaks. And then I thought of my best friend, and how we would kayak together when we're old and retired. And then I thought of how we would travel to all sorts of fabulous places together and take cooking classes abroad and things like that, and leave our husbands behind. And then I thought about making little retired-person meals for me and Big K, and imagined myself making a big production of cutting a grapefruit in half for me and Big K to share for breakfast, and setting it out using decent dishes on a little table with a modest vase of flowers on it, and how I'd tell my friends, "Well, Big K and I split a grapefruit every morning," in the way that old people tend to make conversations out of sharing the mundane details of their lives. And then I thought that Big K would never let us retire to anywhere oceanside year-round anyhow, because he gets too hot if it's over 65 degrees. And then I looked up to the sky, and saw how bright and clear the stars were, and felt happy that I lived somewhere that I could see them so well. And then I thought of Miami again, and Snooki and Pauly D partying it up down there, and how I bet they never saw the stars. And then I walked into my driveway, got the mail, and saw I had a Real Simple magazine in there, and when I got into the house, I opened it up and read a quote on the first page, which said, "I am younger each year at the first snow. When I see it, suddenly, in the air, all little and white and moving; then I am in love again and very young and I believe everything." And then I was struck by how perfectly that captured the way I feel every single year when I see the first snow. And then I felt unbelievably content.

And that is why I take walks.

No hassle rewards

2010-11-10T08:55:00.000-06:00

Just when I think my blogging material might be getting a little lean in this month of attempted daily posting, the heavens open up and pour some crazy on me, just so I can share it with you. Gotta love it.

Okay, so on Tuesday nights, I get to leave the nuthouse for a couple hours to go play in a women's volleyball league in a town about half an hour from The Woods. It's highly enjoyable. I think that if I survive this winter, I'll write the park & rec department that facilitates the league a thank-you note, because that's gonna be a key element in making it through.

Anyhow, after I throw myself on a gymnasium floor for an hour, I'm usually pretty hungry. I'm exclusively breastfeeding a baby who I am estimating is already weighing in at about 13 pounds or so, and I can't do much of anything without requiring re-fueling at this point. So I did what any disgusting savage would do, and I pulled into a chain restaurant known for providing Mexican specialties that really don't resemble food in the least, and I ordered myself some nachos to tide me over until breakfast.

I pulled up to pay, and mindlessly handed the drive-thru employee my Capital One credit card, which we use for all purchases big and small so as to facilitate flying our family of 20 to Florida every March for as close to free as possible. The employee, a late-middle aged woman who I will charitably describe as unhealthy-looking, glanced at the card and said, "So, hey, is this a pretty good credit card?"

I sorta just shrugged and said that I was a satisfied customer. She then said, "Does it have pretty good rates and stuff?" At that point, I was already feeling a little awkward and violated, but I said, "Yeah, they're fine. We use it for the rewards." And she said, "You mean like flights and stuff? Is that all you can use it for?" I told her that we used it for flights, but you could redeem your rewards for all kinds of things.

And this is where it turned really awkward. The woman looked at me and said, extremely casually, as if she was asking if I wanted hot, mild, or fire sauce, "So you must have pretty good credit to get that, huh?"

What do I say there, really? Is that a conversation you have with ANYONE, let alone a COMPLETE STRANGER IN A DRIVE-THRU??? I was stunned and just sort of muttered, "Um, yeah, I guess so," while staring at the dude wielding the sour cream gun and willing him to just call it a day already and wrap up his little dairy product Picasso.

But she didn't stop there. No she did not.

She followed that gem up with the following speech:

"Yeah, well then, I couldn't get that card. I need to file for bankruptcy again. I got some problems because of these bills that I don't ever remember getting. I mean, I really don't ever even remember getting them. But they say there's nothing I can do about it now, because there's already judgments against me. So I guess I'm going to have to just go ahead and file for bankruptcy, and then a year later, my credit will be fine again."

I'm staring, slack-jawed, wishing a heat lamp would just violently explode and kill us both, when she puts the nail in the coffin. She said..she actually said, "The only problem with filing for bankruptcy is that then you can't file for bankruptcy again for another 7 years. Oh well, at least they're safe from me for that long."

Now I don't know what makes a sweaty, mom-looking lady driving a minivan through the drive-thru at 10 p.m. for some nachos look like the person to whom one should confess this grand financial plan, but boy I can guarantee that the next time I need an edible food-like substance, I will be going for popcorn chicken instead. Holy balls. Really? Really? Really?

I don't know what part of this horrifies me the most. The fact that someone would divulge this information to a complete stranger with utter casualness or the fact that this is actually someone's financial plan. I mean, hell, I'm no fiscal conservative, either personally or politically, but this is in a league of insanity and irresponsibility that I had liked to think people were just making up. But there it was, handing me a bag of nachos and wishing me a pleasant evening. Wow, wow, wow. I mean, I can imagine about 9,000 scenarios in which life circumstances/tragedies/bullshit lead someone to either a personal or business bankruptcy which they in good faith need to pursue. But just sort of planning for one every 7 years because you can? Woof. I feel like I'm wearing wet wool just thinking about it.

All the way home, I felt like I had Bell's palsy or something, since I had lost control of half my face. It was just sort of stuck in a contorted, confused expression with one eye refusing to un-squint. I could not (cannot) believe that there is a person wandering around this earth so willing to bare their utter insanity to a random nacho purchaser. I could not (cannot) believe that I am that lucky nacho purchaser.

Wow. Just wow. That really happened. Against all odds, that really happened. And all I really wanted was a spork.

YAR!

2010-11-09T08:56:00.000-06:00

As you may or may not be aware, Halloween occurred. The K's enjoy Halloween. A good way to enjoy Halloween is to dress your children up like crazy pirates.

Very cute, crazy pirates...

And if you happen to have a spare baby, I recommend dressing it up like a parrot to go with your pirates...

Then get them riled up and take them trick-or-treating...

Instruct the most vicious of your pirates to stab anything that moves...

And reflect on the fact that if you thought it was hard to take a decent picture of two young children, try three...

Oof. Yeah, that's not happening.

So, there you go. We enjoyed Halloween, most especially Phook. She was majorly into it this year. Very much a big kid about the whole thing. Bigs, who is a bit of a 'fraidy cat anyhow, was scared of various items throughout the evening, including a kid with a white mask on that we couldn't lose and anything resembling a scarecrow. I encouraged him to go to every house Phook did despite his scaredyness, because you never know who is giving out Reese's peanut butter cups...and those are important to the diet of his mother during her 2 a.m. snack break. He got into it more and more as the experience went on and all in all I'd say he enjoyed it. Despite the incredible logistical mayhem that is getting 3 children costumed without someone exploding, we managed to do it and had a nice, pirate-y Halloween. I hope you had a good one too!

If you can can can...

2010-11-08T09:03:00.000-06:00

Since I've been sharing horror stories, let's switch to something a little lighter and less emotionally draining. Let's discuss the fact that my family could live for 6 months in my basement. Yes, friends, despite the EXTREME lack of energy I experience for all except the middle two weeks or so of my pregnancies, I busted it in the canning department again this summer/fall. I pretty much skipped all other optional activities and saved whatever energy I had left for canning. And when I'm canning, I'm not blogging. So that explains why August and September are pretty routinely slow blog months for me. Here's what I did this August and September:

So I'm feeling pretty proud of my work this year. The funny thing is that my canning has gotten a lot more practical as I've added children. When I did this pre-kids, I made a few staple items like applesauce and salsa, but a lot of what I did was experimental jams, jellies, relishes, odd fruit salsas, etc. There were some winners (Roasted Red Pepper Jelly) and some big, bad losers (Peppery Pear Salsa - gack!). Now instead of focusing on experimental stuff in small batches, I find that I am putting up an actual winter stockpile like grandma (and probably more and more, great-grandma) used to do.

Word on the street here in The Woods is that Big W cans, so I end up being a repository for a lot of people's garden "problems." If you have a garden, you probably know the woe of having more of a certain item than you could ever conceivably use. (Zucchini being everyone's favorite over-producer, of course.) But anyhow, it is not uncommon for me to come home and find anonymous produce on my porch. I love this, and it's one of the reasons I really do like being here in The Woods. I also have one particular aunt and uncle who have a garden that really is more like a small farm, and that ol' veggie truck pulls up on a pretty regular basis here. I also have a lot of friends with big gardens, and they get to the point where they call me and say, "If you'll come pick it, you can have it!" So that happens a lot too. The short version is that I am blessed to get a lot of free food.

So when people have cucumber problems, I make pickles. When people have tomato problems, I make salsa. When people have zucchini problems, I make relish. That sort of thing. I also order fruits by the bushel from our local Amish population (pears, peaches), get apples from a local orchard, and buy cherries for my pie filling from an orchard in Door Co., WI. I grow as much as I can in my own little garden, but my garden space is pretty limited so I can't sustain my own operation at this point. I do have a lot of random types of hot peppers, various tomato varieties, green beans, herbs, lettuces, cucumbers, etc. growing every year, but it is never enough to really be the mainstay of my canning efforts...we eat a lot of it fresh...usually with the dirt still on before it gets into the house actually.

But as I was saying, the vibe of my scene has become more practical. I do a ton of fruits...I actually can't remember the last time I bought a can of fruit in the grocery store. I do a ton of salsa...can't remember buying that in years, either. I do dill pickles and bread & butter pickles, taco sauce, a few kinds of jelly and jam (I also do strawberry and peach freezer jams in addition to canned jam), pie fillings, tomatoes, bruschetta in a jar, cranberry sauce, and I don't know what else. But mostly actual staple stuff; I find myself schlepping up and down the stairs to get a jar of something or other several times per week.

My biggest experimental project this year was jalapeno jelly. I had a lot of jalapenos in my garden and the spirit moved me to try this. I had been at a party where someone had a jar of a hot pepper jelly just spilled over a brick of softened cream cheese, and then you just ate it on crackers. And I found it to be rather enjoyable. So I efforted that, and if you invite me to any sort of holiday party this year, that's probably what I'm bringing.

The other thing that bears special mention is the salsa I make for my husband. The man has a tolerance for Scoville units never before seen on a man whose ancestors are primarily from Poland. I mean, the guy can eat stuff that might literally send me to the emergency room if I got enough of it in my eye. Every year I make him special man salsa based on a jalapeno salsa recipe from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. For reference, your standard salsa recipe is going to call for a pretty large quantity of tomatoes (say 20 cups chopped) and a pretty small quantity of peppers (say 5 cups of heat-less bell peppers and maybe 2 cups of moderate-intensity chopped hot peppers, always seeded and with the membranes removed). So the ratio is skewed very heavily toward the tomato in the vast majority of salsa recipes that humans find enjoyable. The jalapeno salsa recipe, on the other hand, is a 1:1 ratio of tomatoes to chopped jalapenos. And if that's not bad enough, Big K requests that I leave the seeds and membranes IN. And if that's not bad enough, he asks that I add further heat by throwing in additional unseeded flamethrower peppers, such as super chili peppers and habaneros. It really is a culinary monstrosity. And also a health hazard. I seriously BURNED THROUGH 3 pairs of latex gloves chopping these things this year. By that I mean I felt the burning sensation through the latex and had to switch gloves 3 times. And when I was cooking it down on the stove, I had an extended coughing fit from the fumes, and I could not breathe with 100% comfort for about 4 days afterward. I am truly not exaggerating here. And my husband actually eats this stuff. Totally uncool. I label it "B.A.D. Salsa," which stands for Black Angel of Death Salsa. I must love him to throw myself under the bus so violently for him...

Now the thing that everyone wants to know when they see the products of my canning or hear about it is how do I manage to do it with the kids. There are two primary factors at work that make this possible. The first is that my kids are very, very used to seeing me in the kitchen and participating in what I am doing in there. It is normal for them to have me be in the kitchen for relatively long periods of time. They either watch and "help" me with what I'm doing, or they dick around with their toys, or they watch Wonder Pets off of streaming Netflix for two hours. Whatever floats their boat. Kids, in my limited experience, get comfortable with whatever they are used to seeing a lot of. My kids are used to me screaming from burning myself while I fling tomato peels all over the house, and thus they don't see it as an occasion to freak out.

The second factor is that I do things in steps using the chunks of time that I have available to me. So if it is a chopping-intensive project, I chop for an hour in the morning, an hour during nap, whatever. And then when the kids are in bed for the night, I actually do the part where I am cooking ingredients on the stove and jarring things and using the canner. That's how 95% of my projects get done. I do the prep work of getting the jars ready, the pots out, any dry ingredients measured and ready to go, and peeling the produce or chopping or whatever it is during the day, and then I get ugly with burning pots of magma after they're safely in their beds. I would not, for example, make cherry pie filling with them awake during the day with no other adults around, because that stuff could seriously melt the range hood off the wall if left unattended for 10 seconds at the wrong time in the process. But in most projects, there is plenty of prep work that lends itself to starting and stopping and that is the bulk of what I do when they're awake. So that is how it is possible. (The third ingredient, to which I probably didn't give due credit, is a touch of OCD. That doesn't hurt.)

Sometimes, at 11 p.m., when I'm losing consciousness over a boiling pot of applesauce, I do find myself wondering why I do this. I mean, applesauce is not expensive, so it's not a money-saving thing for the most part. I guess, on the whole, it just feels good to me to do this. I find playing with food pretty soothing, most of the time. I like the idea that either me or someone I knew grew most of this food. I feel some strange, satisfying connection with my foremothers, saving what is so delicious now for a much colder later, and knowing that a few decades ago this was the only way you could ever eat a peach in winter. But the biggest thing is that when I open a jar of this food for my children, I feel happy and proud. I never ever open a jar of food that I canned without feeling a little burst of happy and proud when I do it. It can be a very dreary day indeed and I can feel just a little bit better by opening a jar of something for my kids that reminds me that I work really hard for my family and I care a lot. I guess that's it. It feels good to me to do this, so I do. And there you have it.

3 for 3

2010-11-07T07:29:00.000-06:00

Yeah, I had another cute one...

And that is all...

In which I passive aggressively attack a library volunteer

2010-11-06T09:26:00.000-05:00

I take my kids to our local library nearly every Friday morning for story time at 10:30. I started going when Phook was a wee marmot and I wanted to get her used to sitting still and listening to someone else every now and then. So I've gone fairly religiously for a couple years now. At times, my children have pretty much been the only children attending. However, for some reason there is currently a bumper crop of attendees (two home-schooling families with 4 kids each doesn't hurt). So it is a little room in a tiny library packed with many, many kids and moms. It's kinda a sensory overload at this point for me, but I want to keep going even though it makes me a little twitchy to be around that many little people who seem to always have hacking coughs. I remember the library being a fun, exciting place when I was a little kid, and I want that for my kids. (Who knows, one of them may learn to construct profanity-laced run-on sentences just like Mommy!)

So anyhow, we go. If we get there early enough, we look at the weird, white, fully-aquatic frogs they have submerged in a fish tank for a little bit, scream when they move unexpectedly, and then pick out our books. If we don't get there early enough, we start with some coloring. They always have crayons and printed out pictures that loosely match some sort of theme of the stories that day. This is good. Coloring is good. So far, we're good.

Then we move on to the actual story time. This involves each child whipping out a carpet square and jockeying for position on the limited floor space. Then a random selection of moms and older kids attempts get everyone a juice box and a snack, and then Capri Suns start shooting everywhere, and approximately 15 minutes later the story gets started. The stories are fine. The kids enjoy them. Usually it's only about 2 books, which is totally appropriate for the attention spans involved. The littlest mobile children generally ram around the place, and the older children do a decent job of staying in the vicinity of their carpet square. This part is good clean fun.

But then we move onto the art project. The godforsaken art project. This is where it gets ugly.

Okay, what they are attempting to do is provide some form of artsy-craftsy project for the kids that is related to the stories they just enjoyed. So if the stories were about bears, there is some project about bears. Or if they're doing something seasonal, the art project will match.

But here's the thing. 99.9% of the time, the art project is completely age-inappropriate. We are talking about cutting that requires the fine motor skills of a neurosurgeon. With child-safe scissors, which as far as I can tell, are only meant to rip the paper. Those things don't cut. Anything.

Now, I'm not opposed to art projects. Phook has in fact shown a great love for all things art-projecty, and I'm all aboard with fostering that. She likes to color, and she can stay in the lines quite admirably. She likes to cut, and she can cut out simple shapes quite well, as long as they are larger than, say, a nickel. She likes to glue, and she can operate a glue stick. She is, you could say, quite capable of doing art projects that showcase the skills of a child who just turned 4. Bigs likes to color, poorly. Bigs likes to cut, poorly. And Bigs likes to use a glue stick, messily. So he's on board with doing art projects that showcase the skills of a child who is 2.

Unfortunately, the people at the library apparently have a very skewed view of what toddler and preschool-age children are capable of in the art project department. Because the art projects they are coming up with (by which I mean finding via a google search for "art projects") are seriously so far beyond the skill set of their intended projecteers that it is just becoming ridiculous. And it is making me lose my mind.

Okay, so the lady who is doing story time is actually not a library employee, but rather a volunteer with some local literacy group. She takes over the story time from a library staff person in November. So this most recent one was her first in a few months. (However, I'll note that the library staff person who had been doing it rolled exactly the same way.) Anyhow, she is an elderly lady. Very nice. Seems to enjoy children if a bit uncomfortably. Seemed quite overwhelmed by the suddenly explosive turn-out, compared to last year when it was just my two kids and the occasional random stragglers.

So the theme at our most recent story time was dinosaurs. Fair enough. The art project consisted of making this dinosaur wrapped around a toilet paper roll. Each child got a print-out of all the teeny, tiny dinosaur body parts, which they were to color. Then they were to cut out the tiny body parts and affix them to a toilet paper roll, which was the dino's body. When I saw this art project, I truly had to suppress a scream. It seriously would have been time-consuming, tedious, and difficult if I was sitting there in a one-on-one situation patiently helping my oldest child complete it. But not only do I have Phook, but Bigs (who was busy glue-sticking the whole craft table), and the baby (who was crying pretty much uncontrollably unless I swung her in her infant carrier). So I had one arm with which to attempt to assist the two big kids in making the world's most detailed dinosaur on a toilet paper roll.

Here's the thing. I want my kids to be able to enjoy doing an art project. There are several other mothers there who I noticed today just checking out the project and then casually directing the kids into the other room to pick out books or whatever. They skipped it because they knew they couldn't help their 2, 3, or 4 young children complete this thing without everyone going nuts. And I should have too, because it was beyond my parenting (and cutting) skills as well. But Phook likes art projects and sat down and started diligently coloring these tiny, tiny dino arms. Bigs started scribbling on his. When I say tiny, I'm not kidding. The detail on the claws that I was supposed to cut out was the approximate size of a piece of Nerd candy. Tiny. (And funnily, I wrote that "I" was supposed to cut that out. Actually, my 2- and 4-year-old children were supposed to.) There was a zig-zagged piece with approximately 25 zigs and zags, each of which were approximately a quarter-inch in length, that were to be cut out and then glued to the dino's back to be his spikes. The dino's tooth detail was fine enough that I can't actually come up with an object to compare them to in size. It was utterly ridiculous, and also technically impossible, given the child scissors, which as far as I can tell are inadequate for a task as simple as cutting a standard piece of paper in half.

I did not handle this well.

I actually started seething when I saw it. I broke into a sweat, started to breathe hard, and I could feel my pulse in my forehead. This is a rage that has literally been building for years, and those tiny little dino teeth (coupled with the crying baby, I admit) were kind of a breaking point. It's like when your husband does 8,000 disgusting little things involving toast crumbs and dirty socks and empty pop cans around your house and you suck it up and don't mention it and don't mention it but get a little angrier every time he does it, and then one day when you find the filthy dish rag wadded up in a moldy little ball behind the coffee pot, you go absolutely batshit crazy on him for being a pig. And he doesn't get it at all, because he thinks you are really that insanely mad about the dish rag, when really you're insanely mad because this rage has been simmering and simmering FOREVER and this was actually just the one thing that popped the top on that pressurized can of rage. (Or is that just me? Cough, sputter, choke. Anyhow...)

So, yeah, I was not doing well psychologically from the get-go. And I started acting like an asshole. I could not control the escape of my inner asshole. I mean, really I am usually pretty good at faking the funk even when I'm upset about something. In short, I can act okay when I am not. But today that failed me. I started by saying, directly to the volunteer, "Wow, that is a lot of cutting." She cheerily agreed and moved on. I then attempted to direct both my children to start coloring the 9 trillion tiny dino body parts. Phook diligently and happily (and painstakingly slowly) did this. Bigs did a few scribbles and then started getting inappropriate with the glue stick, abandoning the dino parts. I then scribbled the color all over the entire page of dino parts with my left hand for him while swinging the baby with my right hand. Then I started attempting to cut out the dino parts. At which point, I lost my shit, wadded up his dino-part page in a ball, and chucked it in the trash, saying, "We are only doing one of these today." Bigs did not care, as he was happily cutting up some random t-rex picture from the earlier coloring time. He was rather uninterested, it turned out, in a project that required a skill set his mother had not yet developed.

I don't really know who was watching or listening to my tirade. I was standing between the 2 craft tables with my back to the majority of those in attendance, including the volunteer. There was one dad helping his approximately 3-year-old daughter across from me, and he largely ignored me, only once saying, "I don't know. I can't follow these directions. I'm just winging it here." But I was just kind of snarling and trying to help Phook and swinging the baby and trying to prevent Bigs from doing anything out-of-the-ballpark inappropriate.

And then I heard the volunteer behind me say, "This is really, really working on those fine motor skills!"

And then, as I was cutting out the jagged impossible zigs and zags of Phook's dino's spikes, I heard myself say, "Actually, this is just stupid."

I am not sure what my decibel level was, and I didn't turn around to check if anyone (most importantly the elderly volunteer) had heard me. It was somewhere between a mutter and a low growl. It wasn't at the volume of my normal speaking voice, but it is entirely possible that she heard me. At the time I said it, I was in the throes of my own frustration and rage, and I didn't dwell on it. I just hustled Phook through the rest of the project, skimping significantly on the cutting detail, and attempted to keep the other two children from going off the rails.

But it was one of those creeper moments, where 5 minutes after the fact you find yourself reflecting on what just happened and thinking maybe you behaved in a way that was not awesome. And then 10 minutes out you're chastising yourself and nervously wondering who heard you. And an hour later, after the boiling rage of the moment has passed, you're pretty sure you're the spawn of Satan and you in effect just yelled at an elderly volunteer for doing a shitty job of trying to amuse your children out of the goodness of her heart...and then you're suicidal. (Just me having this experience? Again?)

So that is what occurred. I'm still feeling really, really terrible about the whole thing. I have no idea if she heard me, but I really hope she didn't. It was inexcusably crappy of me. If I thought the project was age-inappropriate for my kids, I should have just taken them to check out the weird frogs some more. But man, I just wanted Phook to have the chance to do the art project because she does get amped about them, and I was just so, so frustrated that it was so far beyond reasonable for even my oldest child. And I was also so, so frustrated about 84 other things that are almost all directly related to the stress and sleep-deprivation of having a 7-week-old child who spends what seems like 23 hours per day breastfeeding, along with the bonus compounding factor of having a husband who has been on the bench for the past week due to knee surgery. You know, on top of my regular life, which includes two other very small children, a part-time job, and a household to maintain. And a basset hound with anxiety issues.

Sorry, library volunteer, it's not you. It's me.

It's hard. It really is pretty hard right now. It is doable and I am doing it, but I can't deny that it is hard. And I was a big dickhead today because of it.

I have been thinking about this incident pretty steadily and have been trying to find something positive from it. And what I have come up with is that it is a reminder. It is a reminder to take every opportunity I have to do things that will keep me sane. For me, this primarily takes the forms of exercise and fresh air...unfortunately with it being November in Wisconsin, my opportunities to obtain those things easily and comfortably are waning. But still, those are things I need to find ways to get. Mommy's sanity has got to be up there on the list of priorities for our family, because everything else remaining healthy and good is contingent on my sanity being intact. I need to stop, reflect, breathe, and recognize that this is a very hard marathon-length sprint through the first year of a baby's life. It is okay to let some stuff slide. It is more important to take a minute to just breathe, breathe, breathe. Just breathe. So that is what I'm taking from this. I need to slow it down, dial back my own intensity, and breathe.

And maybe skip story time next week...

You win some, you lose some, you totally freaking shank some

2010-11-05T09:56:00.000-05:00

The question of the hour/day/week/month is, "So what's it like having 3 kids?" Actually, it's not. The actual question of the hour/day/week/month is, "Is she sleeping through the night yet?" After that question, I start foaming at the mouth and convulsing, and then people awkwardly switch over to, "So, um what's it like having 3 kids?"

I will probably put up a lengthy dissertation as an answer to this question at some point this month just for giggles, but the short version is that it's pretty much exactly like I thought it would be. It is extremely difficult and exhausting and it seems like there is not a minute of my day in which I'm not doing a minimum of 3 things simultaneously while at least one child cries or whines, but I knew what I was in for, and I can do this. I need more hands and I need more sleep, but I am, for the most part, keeping it together. We are getting out and about. We eat dinner that I make every night. The house isn't falling down around us. The kids are occasionally bathed. You know, we are getting through this extremely busy phase of new babyhood day-by-day, and sometimes minute-by-minute.

But as much as I feel like, on the whole, I am keeping it together, there are definitely moments where it really is utter bedlam. I say bedlam because it's almost always at least a state of mayhem as a baseline, and I'm considering bedlam to be a few clicks closer to the apocalypse. That's what I'm trying to describe here. Moments where I am teetering on the brink of a parenting apocalypse.

I had one on Wednesday. It was the closest to falling into the gaping maw of the earth's center I have been since I hatched Item the Third.

Here is how it went down. Bigs was napping and Big K is still home on the bench post-knee surgery, so he could at least theoretically supervise the slumbering child. I took this relative easing of my burden as an opportunity to leave my property in the form of a walk with the girl children. And the fuggin' hound. It was pretty nice out for November. Sunny, breezy, and I think in the 50's, but it felt nice and toasty in the sun. We took a pretty nice walk around The Woods. It occurred at the end of the school day, so we made a pit stop up by school where Hode teaches. We finished our walk and arrived home with no fits, crying, or mayhem from any of the parties involved. It was really rather lovely.

We arrived at home and Phook asked if we could stay outside and play for awhile. I said sure. So she dicked around in the yard while I held the baby and all was good. And then Phook said she would like a pickle. She asked if I could go in the house and get her said pickle. I said sure. So I put the baby in her infant carrier seat thing, left her on the patio, and ran in the house for what was to be the 20 second chore of obtaining a pickle for my daughter.

As I was getting the pickle out of the fridge, I heard Bigs wake up from his nap. He's going through a phase where waking up from his nap is highly unpleasant, and most days he comes down the stairs wailing with big tears flowing down his cheeks crying something incoherent about ghosts, monsters, or Phook taking his toys. So he thuds down the stairs in this mode. Upon greeting him, I ask him if he wants to go play outside. He settles down and says he does.

Okay. All is still well, and I've been in the house about 1 minute. Then I tell Bigs that we need to change his diaper, and of course put pants, shoes, a sweatshirt, etc. on him. So I'm attempting to hustle him through this, and while he was basically cooperating, this is not an instant thing with a two-year-old.

As I was getting him into his new diaper, I heard a familiar sound. The sound of the outside faucet where the hose attaches turning on. Phook knows how to do this, and throughout the summer had used the hose to fill watering cans, etc. Except earlier that morning, I had put the hose away for the winter. So it was just the spigot, which shoots water at a 90 degree angle from the back of the house. Directly to our patio area.

Do you remember what I'd left sitting on the patio?

Yeah. A baby. a 7-week-old baby.

Phook, in her shock at the velocity with which the water was escaping the spigot, attempted to turn it off. Only what she had succeeded in doing was turning the water on 100% full blast. At the baby.

Approximately 20 seconds after I heard the faucet turn on, I turned my head to see what was happening. And I saw it. I saw an absolute fountain of water blasting across the back of the house and very squarely dousing my helpless infant.

At that point, I started screaming and left the half-naked Bigs lying confusedly on the floor of the kitchen. I ran out to the sounds of Phook hollering, "I don't know how to shut it off!!!" I grabbed the utterly soaked baby and moved her to safety, and then ran through the fire-hydrantesque cascade of water and shut it off.

Holy balls.

So, the baby never cried throughout this fiasco. When I got to her, she was just blinking repeatedly trying to clear the water from her eyes, and sort of gasping and wondering what insanity she was being subjected to. Phook and Bigs were more upset than she was. For my part, I just felt terrible. I was standing there basically panting and beating myself mentally and telling myself to not yell at Phook, even though it felt like someone should be yelled at. (I guess that would be me.) Oh, that poor little innocent thing.

But here's the kicker. This stuff is going to happen. Inevitably, this stuff is going to happen. I am sure that even parents of one child have left the room for a very short amount of time and come back to find a shocking amount of mayhem and destruction has occurred in an impossibly short period of time while they were absent. There is an exponential factor involved in these possibilities as you add children, I think. It's not an addition of mayhem, it's a multiplication. That's the tricky part. Each child opens you up to exponentially more mayhem, and even if you're trying to do something as innocent as fetch a kid a pickle, that mayhem can utterly erupt when you least expect it.

So, that's kind of how it is having 3 kids. Mayhem at best. Bedlam when you least expect it.

Shiny

2010-11-04T10:21:00.000-05:00

There is one thing I can't do as a parent. (Okay, I'm sure there are many things I can't do as a parent, but let's not get hung up on the details...) But the thing. The thing I can't do is disappoint my children. CANNOT DO IT. For me, being on the verge of disappointing my children makes me that guy who got stuck in a canyon and had to amputate his own arm to free himself and survive. I'd pretty much amputate my own arm to avoid disappointing them.

I'm not talking about when a kid throws a fit because the craisins are gone. I'm talking about legitimate spontaneous sad awful disappointment. I cannot stand to see them disappointed in its pure child-like form. Like this one time we were visiting friends in a city across the state that has a little zoo. And we decided we were going to go to this zoo. And we told Phook. I think she had probably just turned 2 when this happened, although maybe it was 3. At any rate, it was November or something, because we pulled into the zoo that my kid was all amped to visit, and it had recently switched from being open every day to being open only on weekends. And I had to tell Phook the zoo was closed. Phook did not throw a fit or act like a brat...she was just doe-eyed sad and so so so disappointed. That is the scenario where I'd cut off my arm to make it okay. I get that disappointment is a part of life but it is so difficult for me to see it in full force on the faces of my children. I can handle anything but that. Perhaps this is weird, but it is about a million times easier for me to see them in physical pain than it is for me to see them let down with disappointment. I am actually getting uncomfortable as I imagine it while writing this.

So let me tell you about my recent bad act that resulted in me disappointing my little Bigs. Oh man, man, man was this a bad one. I don't know why I want to share this, but it was just such a sad, sweet little moment and for some reason I want to remember it. And it's NaBloPoMo, so you're gonna get stuff from the archives of my emotions here.

It went down like this. A couple weeks ago, our family was on our way to meet another family at an orchard/pumpkin patch place a little over an hour from our house. On the way, we had to pass through a town with actual commerce (unlike The Woods, where you can't procure exotic things like, say, pants). My kids both needed new tennis shoes, as I had used an entire canister of PAM spray to wedge them into their shoes that morning. I asked Big K to quick pull into the parking lot of a store that I knew carried children's shoes at reasonable prices.

I ran into the store and as quickly as I could, I grabbed new sneakers in my kids' sizes (which are a 12 for Phook and a 9 for Bigs, if you're interested in the hugeness of my children while we're at it). They were both pretty standard-looking shoes and I was pretty much aiming for something that would match as much as possible in their wardrobes. That was it. In-grab-pay-out.

Big K picked me up, and I said, "Hey guys, Mommy got you new shoes! Do you want to see them?" They got moderately excited and said that they indeed would like to see the shoes. So I whipped Phook's pair out of the box, at which point I saw the tremendous error of my ways. Her shoes lit up. A lot. Soles, velcro straps, sides of the shoe...these shoes put on a damned light show. I didn't realize this in the store. Now someone once sent me an e-mail forward claiming that light-up children's shoes are poisonous and have killed millions of children worldwide (or something like that), but that concern was not what was ailing me. It was the fact that I had unknowingly bought rad light-up shoes for my daughter and my very observant, sensitive, precious little man was about to have a pair of boring navy blue sneakers unveiled for him. I could not put Phook's back in the box...it was too late. They had both seen the lights. I knew it would be bad. It just wasn't the kind of bad I was expecting...I thought it might be some kind of crying fit, which in itself would be hard enough to handle. Because, really, in my opinion a two-year-old should not be asked to handle getting the shaft on uncool sneakers with any degree of maturity. But that's not what he did. No. Instead, he croaked out, in the saddest little sweetest voice I've ever heard, the following:

"Do mine shine too?"

Are you crying right now reading this? Can you hear the pain in that little sweetheart's disappointed little heart? Because I can.

Shine. Shine. Something about that word choice makes it so much worse. It is the sweetest possible word choice to use in that situation. It was like there was a zipper from the top of my head to the tip of my toes and someone unzipped me and everything inside of me just fell right out. I was emptied, deflated, crumpled...you name it, there it was. So bad.

Disappointment. What is it about the combination of disappointment and innocence that is so heart-wrenching? I don't know, but man is it terrible to cause it in a person you love with such completeness.

I did the only thing I could do. I told him I had bought the wrong shoes and that his new light-up shoes would be coming in the mail in a couple of days. And when we got home, the first thing I did was log onto Zappos.com and order him these:

They cost almost twice as much as any other shoes I've ever bought for the kid. It's not my m.o. to soothe wounds with consumerism, but I would have taken out a second mortgage to buy that kid a pair of shoes that shined. Or cut off my arm. Or something. I mean, he was running around in his sister's giant shoes, stomping and hopping and squealing with glee at those shiny, shiny shoes.

When they came, I made it seem like Santa had just arrived with a sleigh full of awesome just for him. We celebrated those shoes. We ripped open the box and tried them on immediately. And then we slam-danced for as long as we could to activate the shining and marvel at their shiny shininess.

Man. Really. Do mine shine too? Really? What kid would say it like that?

Bigs would.

He's one of those kids. One of those kids who shines.

What will they remember?

2010-11-03T09:22:00.000-05:00

Every now and then, when I feel like punishing myself for being a sub-par parent, I let my mind worry about what my children will remember about these early years. Phook especially, at age 4, is forming some permanent memories at this point. I of course hope that they will only remember the good things, not the days where everyone is cranky and someone got 47 time-outs and we didn't go outside and it all is just one horrible march through the trenches until bedtime.

Thinking about this, the thing that soothes me is my own memories of my early childhood. As I think about it, what I remember more than anything are the things that were routines and traditions. Lord knows I don't remember my own terrible two's and how my mother got frustrated with me. I don't remember my sister arriving, or how hard it was to be potty-trained, or really anything that as a parent of a young child I consider to be difficult. I actually have very few negative memories of my parents from when I was growing up, and the vast majority of those few negative ones are from much later in my childhood and are now actually pretty funny (like the time my dad lost his shit and threw a VCR tape into the wall in front of all of us). I mean, I think my parents did a pretty exceptional job of not being idiots, but I hope there is something universal about remembering what was routine rather than the random bad day when Mommy burned dinner and went off the rails.

So for no good reason other than to amuse and pacify myself, I am going to tell you some of my early childhood memories. I am restricting these to prior to age 6, which is a time I can definitively mark in my mind because we moved into a different house that year, so I can sort the memories by location and thus age.

I remember eating grilled cheese and tomato soup with oyster crackers off of a TV tray as a special lunch and thinking it was the cat's ass.
I remember being in the top bunk in the room I shared with my sister, looking out the window that was at the bed height. My grandma's house was right out that window, and I remember so wishing I could go out and play when my cousins from an hour away arrived to visit my grandma after my bedtime.
I remember pretending there was a moat around my house because it had sort of a retaining wall around it with rocks filling in the space between the wall and the house, and pretending that the little decks that led into the house were draw bridges.
I remember sitting on the front deck with my dad and my sister late at night, all 3 of us bundled up in the green afghan my grandma had made. We'd watch cars and discuss random shit, and then my dad would say, "Okay, it's bedtime when we see the next blue car." And then a blue car would come and my sister and I would say it was some other color so we could stay up longer. And my dad caved every time.
I remember that my mom had a policy of not cooking on Fridays. We had frozen pizza every Friday night, which we often got to eat off paper plates in the living room, and I totally loved it.
Every Sunday, my mom made a big dinner in the middle of the afternoon, and then we'd have popcorn for supper made by my dad. Awesome.
I remember playing airplane or some other similar game with my dad and something occurred and I fell and we crashed foreheads and both got big goose eggs. And then I sat on his lap in a big chair and we watched TV in the dark with ice packs on our heads.
I remember watching the Dukes of Hazzard.
I remember getting flat 7-Up when I had the stomach flu, and my mom restricting it to some regimen like a sip every 15 minutes...but I would sneak to have a little more if she wasn't watching. (And then I'd usually throw it up.)
I remember being amazed by the way my mother could color so neatly. She always traced around the border of what she was going to color and then filled in the picture.
I remember that I had a really little two-wheeled yellow bike that was called the Racy Rabbit. My dad taught me to ride it without training wheels when I was 3 years old, patiently following me up and down the sidewalk for an entire day.
I remember taking naps in my parents' bed and hearing the beep-beep-beep of the county's maintenance trucks backing up, because the county shop where they were based was right around the corner.
I remember that we had an enormous squirrel who always raided the bird feeders on our deck, and we named him Fatso and we loved him.
I remember that my parents said there was a guy named Yahooty who turned the refrigerator light on and off.
I remember that my sister got a tick in her armpit and my dad got it out by burning it with a match (WTF?) while she was sitting on the toilet seat, and I could not believe that shit was actually going down.
I remember my mom cutting up bananas and letting us eat the slices with a toothpick and calling it hors d'oeuvres.
I remember wanting a cat terribly badly and praying for a cat every night. And then one day a stray showed up and we kept her, and I decided I believed in God because he brought me a cat.
I remember running through the sprinklers.
I remember when a candle exploded on top of our dresser in our bedroom one night, and then we never had candles anymore.
I remember watching Sesame Street and Mister Rogers every day before my nap, and then pretending to be asleep on the couch when my mom came to move me so I could try to sneak some more TV-watching through my not-quite-closed eyes.
I remember playing in the tractor tire sandbox in the big human pen we had in the backyard for my sister and I. And that we had a giant bell in there that we would ring so my mom would come let us out if we needed to go to the bathroom.
I remember hearing the movements of the tenants in the apartment in the upstairs of our house.
I remember that we had a psychotic dog named Gus and we had to give him away because he was aggressive and psychotic.
I remember playing with random shit like big cardboard boxes that my parents' converted into playhouses for us.
I remember the plaid carpet in my bedroom.
I remember being measured against a wall and my dad marking my height and the date with a pencil, and being very upset about leaving that when we moved.
I remember my dad lifting my sister and I up at the same time to put the angel on the Christmas tree together.
I remember sneaking in my parents' bed in the morning.
I remember being upset when my dad put something on the dandelions in the yard to kill them, because I loved dandelions.
I remember that the walkway leading from the sidewalk to our front porch curved, and thinking that it looked like the yellow brick road.
I remember having ice cream with chocolate syrup, and my dad mixing it up with a spoon so it was like a chocolate shake in a bowl.
I remember watching the annual holiday specials on TV (like the Great Pumpkin and whatnot) and it being a really big event that we got really amped about.
I remember my mom using an adding machine to do bills and thinking she had some kind of magic powers to make her fingers move that fast.
I remember loving to play with all my cousins.
I remember liking to take baths with my sister because my parents spiked our hair with shampoo and did weird shit like that to make it fun.
I remember going to Sunday school.
I remember when the aforementioned cat had kittens, and we got to keep one.

And that constitutes the majority of what I remember of my earliest childhood. When you look at it, it's almost all completely mundane. Just the feel of my little life, which consisted of being fed and loved, playing, having a little routine, and the special little things my parents did for us and quirks of the way we were raised. I find that really soothing, and I hope that my kids are left with very similar memories. (With any luck they will, because I carry on some of these exact same routines and traditions myself.)

You know, you really can't ask for your kids to be left with more than a sense of feeling safe and loved when they were little. That's what's important. I need to remember that providing that is my only real job, and the rest is just destined to fade away. By that standard, I should probably cut myself some slack as I fret over the little decisions in parenting and the daily failures that are really more of a byproduct of being a human than examples of crappy parenting. Modern parents (myself included) can really kind of be idiots about the way we over-think and over-worry and over-research and over-fret about every aspect of raising our kids. Our parents gave us tomato soup for lunch, a cardboard box to play in, and plenty of love and called it good. And it was. So there, I've affirmed myself (and hopefully you) for the day. Now go slice up a banana, stick a toothpick in it, and know that you're doing more than enough.

Now for that birth story

2010-11-02T10:00:00.000-05:00

I waited too long. This is getting hazy already. No wonder people are able to breed repeatedly.

Also, note that this is a birth story. Which means it is largely about my cervix. If you're not into that scene, you might want to skip this one and come back when I've posted something like a great crock-pot recipe.

So, okay. As I explained here, my doctor wanted to induce the fetal person out of me and I felt shitty and scared about it. I went in for the extraction at 7:30 on the morning of 9/15. As is the norm for my pregnant self, my body had shown no real signs of wanting to rid itself of its tenant. I had been having little contractions on and off for weeks, but they were surely just my body laughing at itself. My body, in its childbearing history, has never had a contraction without the loving encouragement of its friend, Pitocin. Devil's water, that is.

So, yeah. I roll in there, 4 days before my due date. Given that this was my third child, it should have already fallen half out, according to the anecdotal wisdom of the inhabitants of The Woods. Unfortunately, the baby was very, very, in. She was happily floating around somewhere up by my armpits, I think. My cervix was very much not in the mood to do things conducive to birth. So, hey, let's get that baby out of there anyhow, right?

We started with some Cytotec (don't google that unless you want to read horror stories of what a bad idea it is to use for labor induction), which is supposed to turn an inhospitable cervix into a hospitable one. Around 9 a.m., some of that was "placed" in my person. I then laid on my back for 2 hours to let it do its thing. I felt some mild contractions during this time and was vaguely optimistic. Then I got to wander around the hallways of the hospital for awhile, encouraging my body to get the game on. My husband took this opportunity to leave the hospital to go to a local restaurant chain and procure himself a Pumpkin Pecan Concrete Mixer, which is a 40,000 calorie shake available only seasonally that he loves quite passionately. He then jovially walked around the hallways with me eating this thing while HR ladies and random women in the hospital burned holes in his forehead with their flaming hate on my behalf. I really didn't mind though. I'm actually pretty nice when I'm trying to have a kid, which is a surprising change-up on my regular personality.

Anyhow, I walked and wandered and around 1 p.m., my doc came in to check my business. My business, after 4 hours of contractions, was decidedly still closed. And we're off to an awesome start. Another chapter in the Big W Labor Induction Textbook...the doctor wants to meet the kid much more than the kid wants to be met. Ugh. At that point, my doc said she'd normally do another Cytotec to encourage my vicious, vicious cervix to change its bad 'tude, but since this was my third baby, we'd just get rolling with the Pitocin. You know, liquid fake contractions straight from hell that have nothing to do with your body's actual progress toward delivery. (Do I sound bitter?) We rocked that scene for a few hours and the contractions hurt. Not horribly, but it was no picnic. My doctor came back around 6 p.m., found that I was almost maybe dilated a "fingertip," which is to say less than 1 centimeter. Encouraging. Or not. And she said, for about the 4th time that day, that my cervix just didn't feel like that of a woman who was having her third baby. But, hey, since my cervix was bound to get the memo that this was its third go-round any minute, she stuck the neato crochet hook up through that tiny, tiny little opening and broke my water anyhow.

At this point in the process, I was still optimistic, since the breaking of the water during the birth of Bigs had kicked things into gonzo mode and actually put me into a real labor pattern that my body seemed to be involved in. So I was kinda thinking that a similar outcome could be expected with the Park Rat (still tryin' out that name...). But no. I kept waiting for everything to just go batshit and for my human form to shapeshift into a braying animal at any minute. This did not happen. Instead, I just bounced around on a birth ball having strong but tolerable contractions while nurses randomly shuffled in and out, upping the Pitocin and marveling at that lady having her third kid who didn't really seem to be having her third kid.

So they upped the Pit and upped the Pit and upped the Pit and it hurt and hurt some more and I moved around and moved around and moved around and got dilated to about 2 centimeters (on the optimistic side), by about 10 p.m. Not so much the labor of the third kid who was supposed to come flying out on roller skates before I could get my pants off. At this point I was getting exhausted and frustrated and, um, bitter. And then I bitched out and said that if I was going to be having fake contractions for the next 73 days that were just gonna rock my uterus very unkindly and produce no baby, well, hell, let's just throw another intervention on this un-natural medical hell we have created and shove a catheter full of anesthetic in my back.

(Holy shit, I really am sounding bitter.)

(To recap my previous births, I have attempted to get an epidural with both prior kids on account of my strapped-to-the-bed-for-monitoring-Pitocin-fests. With Phook, I now know that I had no functioning epidural during her labor. With Bigs, I had one epidural that did not work and they removed it, and then another one that sorta worked. I was in a car accident at age 19 that jacked up my back and I had a disc in my very low back removed surgically in 2002. I also have a congenitally narrow spinal canal. I wouldn't want to be the anesthesiologist trying to deal with that mess either.)

It is fair to say that my pain-relief history during labor has been spotty at best and a pretty major source of frustration during my births. But, hey, whatever. I explained this whole shittin' works to the CRNA doing the epidural, and she actually listened to me. She was very determined to get me a functioning epidural. She was one of those hardcore looking chicks who is attractive in a very pointy-faced overachiever sort of way. And I loved her for it, because that woman did it. She actually successfully relieved the hell of the Devil's water. God bless her, because, to be honest, I was getting kinda pissed. Or bitter. (Was it bitter? Yeah, I think I was feeling bitter.)

At that point, they really started slamming me with the Pitocin since I was "comfortable," and this made them pretty sure that at any moment my body was going to indeed receive word that this was my third child, and therefore, I was supposed to be, um, birthing it. Do you know where this is going? Yeah. The night passed with fluids and Pitocin getting dumped into my body and throughout the night I made no cervical change. As shifts changed and various nurses checked me and every time reported, vaguely stunned, that the third baby was all hiding in the upper right-hand quadrant of my ample torso, I was starting to get worried that I was headed for a c-section. But I didn't want to get all crazy, so I didn't let myself think about it much. I just rested and rolled around and hoped something I couldn't feel was going to miraculously start happening.

Around 7:30 the morning of the 16th (yup, friends, 24 hours after I got to the hospital), my doctor came in and checked out the situation and the situation was indeed becoming a situation. I was dilated to 2...maybe 3 if she was being generous. She put something inside me to monitor my contractions from inside my uterus to ensure they were "adequate," authorized the nurses to exceed some hospital maximum quantity of Pitocin, and told me that if it wasn't happening despite all that, it wasn't happening. She had a meeting, she said, and if I had made no change upon her return, I'd be enjoying a c-section for "failure to progress."

She left. And I felt bitter. I harbor no prejudice against c-section deliveries as being an inferior method of getting a vulnerable little human into the world. I really don't. But I sincerely feared having major abdominal surgery on top of having a newborn, a 2-year-old, and a not-even-4-year-old to care for at home. I had had extremely easy recoveries from the 2 previous vaginal births, and I was really counting on that for survival this time around. So when it looked like I was going to be having baby via door #2, I kind of went into a bitter little trance. You could call it giving up. Yeah, that's what it was. I was tired and disappointed and scared of what I was about to go through. And I just felt like I should have pushed back harder against the induction. Or at least pushed back about the aggressive nature of the early stages of it, when my body was clearly not responding favorably. I just wished I would have done something to make it be different than it was about to be. My gut feeling from the get-go was that the baby was not ready to be born. But my fear of the "What if?" had definitely won out, as it always, always will when a medical professional is telling me what to do. I just have the gene for listening to the doctor rather than questioning the doctor. I suck in this regard. Mega-suck.

Anyhow. So I was all tranced-out exhausted and mourning the whole show and trying to figure out how in the hell this was gonna fly once I got home. It was actually somewhat emotionally traumatic to be in that place. I was feeling very selfish about the whole thing and robbed of what was "supposed" to happen...this had been my healthiest pregnancy and I was really hoping to go into labor on my own to see what my body could do when left to its own devices. That was certainly not the experience I was having. And, to some extent, I was also worried about the baby. I've actually not mentioned my emotions re: the baby very much throughout this process. I of course thought about the baby and my ears were very in touch with the constant galloping of her heart tones over the continuous monitoring, but it really felt much more like a very long clinical procedure than a birth experience. Which is weird. No one was talking much about the baby...just the willfulness of my cervix. (Which, really, had been a pretty good quality in a cervix until it was expected to open up and let its little hostage escape.)

So emotionally and physically at this point, I was a bag of smashed jelly donuts on the delivery table, and Big K was all, "Why don't you try one more position change?" And then I harnessed the hate beams of all the hospital's she-staff from when he was guzzling that shake the previous day, and I was like, "Why don't you try a position change? Like maybe you should put that IV pole in your eye a few hundred times until you find a position that works for you!" No, actually, I didn't say that. (I'm nice when I'm in labor, remember?) But, yes, I was vaguely irritated. I listened to the man nonetheless, because, well, he just still sounded so encouraging and optimistic in the midst of the trainwreck of non-birth. So I listened to him and I hauled my pathetic corpse up and I sat with my legs kind of pushed up in this weird sitting/squatting position that I had already tried 36 times. That was at about 8:30 in the morning, and I knew my doctor was supposed to be back by 9:00 to pronounce me failed.

You know where this is going, right? I sat there for a few minutes and I heard this whooshing sound over the monitor and I thought, but did not say, "I wonder if the baby finally turned." (There had been speculation throughout that she was positioned oddly and her head was therefore not able to fully drop down and apply pressure to my cervix to, um, open the damned thing.) I allowed this positive thought to percolate in my brain briefly and then moved myself away from the seduction of optimism. After maybe 15 minutes I laid back down in the bed and called it good and waited for my fate to come slice open my pristine bikini-ready abdomen. (That description involves lies, FYI.)

As I was lying there waiting for the pronouncement of impending scalpel at about 8:55 a.m., I felt some pretty terrific pressure in the baby-exit zone. Being resigned to my failed labor, I assumed this to be anything other than a baby announcing itself, but I mentioned it to the labor nurse anyhow. With the next contraction, I found myself very, very suddenly in excruciating pain of the childbirth variety. The nurse checked my cervix and found that I was--holyshit--fully dilated. This was at 8:59 a.m. With the next contraction, I rolled onto my side, gripped the bed rail, and tried as hard as I could to NOT push a baby out, because no one was there to catch it, should it shoot right out like a third baby is supposed to.

So Big K was wildly excited, and the entire OB staff came running in ripping open trays full of birthing necessities and basically freaking out. Someone asked me if I minded if a male nursing student who had never seen a birth before came in to watch, and I basically indicated that he could deliver the child if he would like to. I mean, really, this kid was being born. Right then. My doctor came flying in from her meeting, threw a gown on over her nice clothes, and got ready for the big show. I then pushed twice, growled/vocalized once, felt as if my body was exploding from the inside, and forced a child into the world. At 9:07 a.m. What I am telling you people is that NOTHING HAPPENED FOR 24 HOURS AND THEN I GAVE BIRTH IN 8 MINUTES.

It was intense. It was awesome. I was euphoric. Totally, insanely euphoric. Big K was euphoric. Suddenly it was all about the baby and it was wildly intense. I just kept saying, "Thank you for being born. Thank you for being born." I was so, so, so happy and relieved that she made it through door #1 after all. And there she was. Pink and hollering and perfect. It was the best. She was a girl, and I was happy. Probably exactly the same amount of happy I would have been for a boy, but happy was it. She was beautiful. It was beautiful. There was so much relief and joy and awesome in that room, I can't even describe it. There was a bright, sunny, clear, beautiful morning streaming in the window, and all the nurses and the doctor and probably even that shell-shocked nursing student were just beaming happiness at us, and my part of the world glowed and pulsed with a new life. I was no longer bitter. No I was not. It was a sweet, sweet, sweet birth. And there she was. Our daughter. Our perfect, perfect daughter.

So that is how she arrived. Reluctantly, but spectacularly.

***************************************

As sort of a post script, I want to say that no matter how many times I have told that story (or an abbreviated version of it) to family and friends who have asked, I have tried to keep the bitterness out of it. I really have. I start saying, "But all that matters is that I have a healthy baby," but then I find myself sounding bitter again as I share parts of the experience. I wish I could tell it more positively, but I guess it is what it is for me. My doctor has been my doctor since I was a teenager and I actually have a good relationship with her and like her very much. I guess I just wish that the current trends in the OB world (by which I mean interventions of questionable necessity) weren't what they are, and I wish I had enough faith in myself to buck those trends. I hope this whole thing doesn't make me sound like a big dickhead, but it probably does. Ah well.

Well. We're all stll alive.

2010-11-01T16:44:00.000-05:00

Friends, friends, friends. I have been a terrible blogger. I owe you a birth story and 9 million other posts. I have had so much blog fodder since the babe debuted...I am always thinking, "I need to blog about this." But the amount of free time I have right now is so minute that I don't think it can be measured on a standard clock...so when I get a nanosecond, I tend to toilet instead of start a blog post. Yup.

To make amends, I'm gonna try to do NaBloPoMo. It's a crazy idea...virtually undoable for me right now. But a lot is happening and I don't want to forget it so I'm going to challenge myself even though I know it'll end up stressing me out at some point because once I say I'm gonna do something, well, it's hard for me to let it go. But I'm saying it, so here goes.

I'm easing in here though, so today all you get is e-proof that I'm alive and just the casual mention that we rang in November with Big K having his 5th lifetime knee surgery this morning. Yeah. He ripped up some cartilage right after the babe (still no Code Name...although Park Rat is the front runner right now for reasons I don't know if I should even attempt to explain...) was born. So, yeah, just a little housekeeping of the joints under general anesthesia. Right now he's upstairs mainlining tapioca pudding while hiding from our children and I'm counting the minutes until the bastard can help the big kids brush their teeth at night again. (His first knee surgery resulted in an outpouring of love and tender care from me. With #5, it's all selfish plotting of how I can get his ass back in the parenting game faster. Desperate times, man, desperate times...)

Oh, okay, one funny kid anecdote, and then I have to go. The phone is ringing off the hook and I'm not answering because I have a baby (a Park Rat?) asleep on my left arm while I type this. Someone probably thinks I'm dead. (Note to readers: If you call me, I don't answer anymore. Ever, really...)

Back to the funny kid anecdote. Okay. So on Saturday, Bigs was running around in just his dipe post-nap. Phook was doing art projects which basically meant I had unleashed a box of markers, pencil crayons, glue, scissors, and construction paper on her and let her go to town. The Park Rat (just trying it out...) was in some mechanized contraption that she pretty much disdains but is forced to spend time in every day on account of being third-born. I had managed to fold some laundry and decided to take it upstairs to put away while everyone was not screaming. I was upstairs for approximately 4 minutes. When I returned, Bigs' entire body was covered in marker writing. At first glance it looked like standard kid body art, but then I realized it was something more.

Upon realizing what I was looking at, I asked Phook if she had drawn on Bigs. She said she had not; to the contrary, he had drawn on himself. Unfortunately, she hadn't considered the utter incrimination of the evidence she had left behind.

Yeah. She had written her name across his chest. Backwards. I have a picture. If I wasn't still clinging to a shred of anonymity here, I'd post it, because it's awesome. Perhaps I should have cracked down on her for lying and thrown Bigs in the tub in a display of "thou shalt not color on the human body," but instead I just kept him decorated until his father returned home and called it good. I also laughed until I peed a bit. And that, in a nutshell, is how I'm rolling these days.

(And a bonus anecdote: In the 3 minutes it took me to write the preceding paragraphs, I busted my son rubbing a glue stick (yet another art project gone awry) on the wall. When I informed him that glue only goes on paper, he informed me, with utter charm and not a hint of snottiness, that I was a "silly girl." This place is a MAD HOUSE right now, buddies. MAD HOUSE!)

All right. So there it is. I am gonna try my hand at this blogging thing again because I miss it and I think I need it right now, because my relationship with sanity is a bit tenuous, and I find swearing out into deep dark void of the interwebs therapeutic. If anyone is still checking in on me and has an interest, feel free to post blog topic ideas in the comments. I'm game for some shenanigans.

XO,

Momma

A letter to Phook on her 4th birthday

2010-09-27T20:35:00.000-05:00

Dear Phook,

Dude. You are 4 years old today. Four seems so old, so far removed from baby. And, indeed, you are so far removed from being a baby I can't even wrap my brain around how far we've come. Child, you have been on a tear of insane maturity, patience, and largely good behavior for several months. It has been wonderful. You have been wonderful. Things with you have always gone in big huge peaks followed by some low, low valleys...but this peak you have been cruising on for awhile now has been perhaps my favorite. That's not to say that there haven't been hard moments and rough days, but overall, in recent months you have been a big plate of awesome with a healthy serving of awesome sauce, kid.

There is something about you. You just get it. Whatever "it" is at the time, you get it. You require one brief explanation and you know how to handle yourself in almost every situation, as if you've already lived 10,000 lives. The first time you were ever on an airplane, you authoritatively wheeled your carry-on down the aisle headed for your seat, and three different people said, "Whoa, she looks like she's done this before!" to me. No, kid, you hadn't. You just knew how to do it. You're like that. You operate in the world like you own it. I love that about you.

A neat thing that has happened this past year has been your social evolution. This blog is full of references to you being "slow to warm up" and "shy" and "standoffish" and things like that. Well, you continued to grow in that regard this year even more so than last year and I believe that, officially, none of those characterizations continue to apply, except maybe in the oddest circumstances. You are now the kid who goes up to every visitor to our home, and no matter how unfamiliar they may be, you say, "Come check out my toy room!" You talk to random people all the time with quite a good bit of confidence. It's awesome to have seen you come to enjoy social interactions more...yet another thing in your development that I apparently worried about for naught.

You also really enjoy playing with other kids now. You met a special friend who you especially like to hang out with more than any other kid, and you get really excited whenever we are going to have a playdate with any friends. You participate in the more elaborate make-believe games that older kids invent, and then when you come home, you copy them. You are good at sharing, good at taking turns, and good at following directions when you play.

You are very interested in learning to write, and you can write most of your letters now. You like art projects, and most of your drawings are recognizable as what you say they are. You get very involved and serious with some of your projects and some of the games you create, and there are times when you enter your own little world of play and can entertain yourself for hours in what you are doing.

In the 11 days you have been a big sister for the second time, your attitude has slayed me. For the first couple days, you were definitely weirded out, but you didn't act out. You were just a little quieter than usual, and not very willing to talk about the new baby. But in the past week, you have been amazing. You are so concerned for your sister's well-being. As soon as she fusses, you run to me and say, "Mommy, come quick! The baby is getting cranky and she wants to nurse!" You hate it when she cries. You tend to her. You ask to hold her. You have been so grown-up about the arrival of this baby. It melts me.

You also officially have what I consider to be the most important characteristic in all of personhood. You try. You always, always try. If I ask you to do something that might be a little beyond you, you always say, "I can try." And sometimes you add, "But I might need a little bit of help." But, kid, you try. Sometimes watching you try to do something rips me in half. You always, always try. Sometimes you fall. But you are always so willing to get up and try again. This year you took swimming lessons, and in the span of a few swimming classes, you went from being unwilling to be in deep water without touching Daddy or I to swimming the length of an entire competition-sized swimming pool and jumping off the high dive while wearing arm floaties. You were scared, and you tried. And now you can swim. Man am I proud of you for that.

Oh kid. I could go on forever about all of the nuances of who you are and why I find you so endlessly fascinating and miraculous. There is just so much about you that is so, well, bad ass. You are a fierce little person and as far as it is possible to extrapolate your adult personality from your 4-year-old self, well, I think the world had better look out. You charge through life like you have simply been on this plane before. Kid, I love you. I love hanging out with you. I love listening to you talk and explain your thoughts on everything. I love your little world and I love spending time with you in it. I love watching wherever you go, whatever you do. Because it's impossible to tear your eyes away from a person who is always running her fastest, and always, always trying.

Happy Birthday, Phook. I love you. I really, really love you.

XO,
Momma

Expecting you

2010-09-26T20:14:00.001-05:00

I haven't gotten to that birth story yet, but I have a pre-birth story to share. In my anxiety the evening before the induction, I had a lot of mayhem banging around in my brain, and it came out as this post, which I wasn't ready to share before the baby arrived. So here it is now. The emotions of the last hours of my pregnancy...

My dear baby,

It is the night of Tuesday, September 14, 2010. Tomorrow morning at 6:30 a.m., I am supposed to call the OB unit of the hospital where you are to be born. If they haven't had a run of emergencies or unexpected patients, I will be going in at 7:30 to have my labor induced. It will be 4 days before your official due date.

I didn't want very many specific things in the course of this pregnancy, but I had sincerely hoped I would have the experience of going into labor on my own, since I was induced with your big sister and brother. It just seems like a woman who has had three children should at least know what it's like to go into labor. To have those hours of wondering "Is this it?" followed by that moment of knowing that it definitely is, followed by the trip to the hospital. I won't know that, unless something miraculous happens in the next few hours.

The doctor has said you are likely "huge," "a giant," and, finally, at our last check-up, she amended the prediction to "maybe just really long." So tomorrow we shall see. Either way, being induced feels a little sketchy, because all signs point to you being healthy, and predicting your size is a pretty inexact science at this juncture. But if I were a doctor, I guess I'd like to have babies born on Wednesdays instead of Sundays too. And I don't feel like I can fight or push or struggle against this course of action, simply because of the "what if?" factor. What if you are huge, you get stuck, and something terrible happens? I can put aside my fantasy of rushing to the hospital in the middle of the night to avoid that outcome, and the lifetime of guilt that would follow it. Really, I can. It is okay. In this rare case, life is indeed the destination...the journey is barely worth a mention when it's all said and done.

So here I sit. I have done all I need to do. All I can do. We are "ready." I'm actually lying in bed right now typing this. Daddy is asleep on my left. The bassinet where you will sleep in just a couple short nights is on my right. Your brother and sister are tucked in their beds, and if they're not asleep, they're at least putting on a good show of it. I'd like to go to sleep. I should go to sleep. But I can't.

I can't stop thinking of you. This is different. When I was expecting your brother, I spent the whole time worrying about your sister and how she would handle the birth of a sibling. I actually got fairly close to driving myself insane over it. A few short minutes after your brother was born and my heart swallowed him up whole, I realized that I had enough for both of them. So this time, I'm not worried about your big sister or your big brother. I'm worried about you.

I once read a quote from a labor nurse saying that it was typical of third-time moms to be extremely anxious...possibly the most anxious mothers. On it's face, that doesn't make much sense. Why would someone who has done this twice before be scared to do it again? But the quote went on to say that women about to have their third child are scared because they tend to feel like they are asking for too much. If God has already given you two healthy and beautiful children, aren't you pushing the limits by asking for lightning to strike in the same place for a third time?

Although it hasn't plagued me throughout the pregnancy, that is where my emotions are right now. I have had, with you, the healthiest of my three pregnancies. I know how this whole birth thing works and how it feels, so there shouldn't be much to fear. But here I am, pretty amazingly scared. The only person in this house awake. The only person in this house scared.

It's because I want you so badly. I want to be your mother. I want to hold you after sharing my body with you for what seems like an eternity but has only been a moment. I want to see your face. I want to name you. I want to dress you, bathe you, care for you, feed you, carry you, stare at you, and love you. Those things are so close right now, if I think about any one of those acts, the tears prick up in my eyes with the wanting. And I need you to be born safely for any of it to happen. For some reason, being perhaps 24 hours from your birth feels like 10 million years right now. You are kicking my laptop right now. You are safely in my body. But now all I want is to have you safely in my arms.

I don't think I've ever wanted a baby as much as I want you. When I was pregnant with your sister, I didn't know enough to know what it was I was wanting. When I was pregnant with your brother, I was too scared for your sister to appreciate the expecting of him. But this time, it is pure want. You are the third child, the asking for too much child, the supremely easily conceived child representative of embarrassingly good fortune. I am so scared about the hours between this moment and the moment of your birth. The fruits of me asking for too much are right there...so close. I am reaching, reaching, reaching for you right now. I can almost touch you, little baby I so purely want.

But I can't hold you yet. So I am praying. I am praying, praying, praying that you arrive safely. Please be born healthy. Please. Please. Please. I am reaching out for you right now, with every cell of my body I am willing you to come to me safely. I love you so much, my sweet baby. Dear child, your clothes may never be new, but I want you to know in this moment that your mother has never wanted a baby the way she wants you. She has never longed to hold a baby the way she longs for you. You are the gift wished for by a woman who has already been given too much. You are precious. You are so painfully precious.

Please come to me tomorrow so I can finally hold you. Please make it to me safely. I am here, waiting to love you. I have been waiting to love you for all of my life.

I had a baby. A girl one.

2010-09-18T20:38:00.000-05:00

Hello friends. I birthed a babe. A girl. A perfect little girl. I love her name so much I wish I could tell you what it was. And I still don't even have a nickname for her. But I'll come up with one soon. Until then, you can know that she was born on Thursday morning. She weighed 8 pounds, 7 ounces. She is 21.5 inches long. (For those keeping score, that is identical to Bigs in length and one ounce heavier than him. Making her our biggest K Child, by a hair.) She is perfect. She is so soft. I love her. I'm having a hard time doing much else other than holding her. I think I just became okay with dust.

I was induced on Wednesday because my doctor was convinced she would be huge and didn't want mayhem. It seems she was wrong-ish, but oh well. The induction was 24 hours of attempting to force the child out of me, making very, very, very little progress in that endeavor while dumping huge quantities of pitocin and fluids into my body, followed by being labeled "failure to progress" and getting myself on the OR board for a c-section. Followed by being given a few more minutes to attempt to dilate beyond 4 centimeters while my doctor quickly went to a meeting. Followed by 3 contractions that each increased the curious pressure in my nether-regions exponentially until I was holding onto the bed rail trying to not accidentally push a child out onto the hospital floor. Followed by me pushing out a child in under 8 minutes while the entire OB unit's staff ran around like chickens with their heads cut off because the lady who had been lying around like a cow having an unsuccessful attempt at birthing for a full day was magically shooting a kid out while everyone attempted to get gloves on. It was neat. I'll write up the whole story later, although be prepared that it will be not much more than a wordy exposition on the topics of frustration and exhaustion. Except for the last 3 sentences. Here's right after those 3 sentences - I hope you like my top:

Man do I love her. Really hugely. I feel pretty strangely at peace with my family feeling complete right now. Phook told me today that she is going to teach the baby how to dance. Bigs hushed the baby when she started to cry and said, "Shhh, baby, it's okay." We are a little family. A little big family. This is gonna be nuts. I'm in love. This seems like a very large number of children:

She looks a lot like Phook when she was a baby. She's cuter than this picture shows. It's impossible to take good pictures of newborns when you suck at taking pictures. But here she is:

And then we packed her up and took her home. Home. The only place I want to be.

We are some lucky dogs here, us K's. That is for sure.

And now I have to go. I have new person to gnaw on.

Still pregnant

2010-09-07T12:04:00.000-05:00

Yes, friends. I am still here. Barely. I am huge. Huge in the sense that I am measuring big and my doctor is freaking out about the size of my baby but also only huge in the sense that random strangers guess I am about 7 months pregnant. Which is as big as a belly gets when the fetal apartment is on a 6 foot tall host organism and when Momma managed to gain 10 pounds - on a fat day. But man, I feel it. I kind of scream whenever I stand up or shift my position by 5 degrees or more. I grunt involuntarily a lot. I make big statements about how I'm not doing anything other than feeding my children and helping them with toileting until the baby arrives, and then I can 30 jars of salsa or something. But even that drive is starting to lose out to the biological reality that is impending childbirth. Yesterday I had it in my head that I was going to make a relatively fancy dinner for us for supper just to be festive or whatever, and standing there scooping the pulp out of potatoes to make twice-baked potatoes almost killed me. I had to lie down mid-scoop so I didn't keel over. It is the end of a pregnancy. The tank is empty.

The bummer is that the longer I hang out in this state, the more crap I think of that I should do "before the baby comes." I'm trying to be reasonable and let it ride. I'm doing okay, for me. But I think that I am in nesting mode, because it is rare for me to open a drawer or cabinet and not quickly organize the contents. And I have a really large urge to go to a warehouse store and buy a lot of frozen meat and huge quantities of non-perishable foodstuffs. If I'm still pregnant this weekend, I'm actually probably going to do that, so strong is the urge. I may give birth while trying a food sample of a mini-quiche or something, but oh well.

Emotionally, I am actually pretty cool. Absolutely nothing like being ready to hatch Bigs, when I was pretty sure I was about to slaughter my firstborn's charmed life and unleash an utter nightmare of multiple children on my home. I mean, I'm sure my husband would call me hormonal or whatever and he'd probably be right, but I'm not losing my shit outright or keeping myself up at night worrying about our new human. I'm ready to have the kid. It's gonna be hard. There will be mayhem. But I am ready to meet this baby and drink in all the good parts and, you know, ponder up all these things and treasure them in my heart. As it were.

I have actually been having contractions for like 4 or 5 days. Pretty frequently. This never happened with the other kids. Wouldn't it be the cat's ass if I actually went into labor without my insurance company spending thousands of dollars to force me into the state? I'd dig it. Probably isn't going to happen, but I'd dig it if it did. This pregnancy has been, by far, my healthiest. My blood pressure, while not what you'd want your blood pressure to be, is okay. And I'm not having any of the associated scary blood pressure things, like protein in my urine and all the borderline un-good crap I've had the other times. For that I am thankful. Life is better when I don't have to regularly collect every ounce of my own pee for 24 hour stretches and store it in my refrigerator. That's for sure.

Phook the other day asked me what the baby would look like. I said maybe the baby would look like her. This pissed her off. "No!" she said, "The baby cannot look like me!" And then I suggested that the baby might look like various other family members, and none of those suggestions pleased her either. So I asked her what she thought the baby would look like. And she said, "A triangle." Well, that would be a real bitch. So there's that. Phook can also write her name now. You know, I decided to stop beating myself about her academic development and she decided to teach herself literacy skills. This is how things work here. Bigs can identify by name animals that I have basically never heard of, including mandrills, water bears, and coconut crabs. I'll not waste energy worrying about his academic progress either. Good thing I've come to terms with that, because I will be spending the next 6 months or so doing not much more than lactating.

I love my children. Phook has been awesome sauce lately. As she rounds the corner and is about to turn 4, she has been in a fairly consistent state of reasonable, manageable, helpful, and charming behavior after a relatively rough stretch through the middle of her third year. It would be swell if it lasted until the Thirdling is sleeping through the night, but these things have a tendency to have a mind of their own which usually conflicts with my personal concerns. Ah well. Bigs is an animal and is starting to show signs of being a two-year-old, which is, for some reason, less frustrating the second time around, but still sometimes makes me lick the carpeting in a crazed parenting state. And as he weighs 35 pounds now, he has decided that he likes to be carried...for the first time in his life. Which is a bit inconvenient. But I still spend 80% of my time gnawing on him, because he is so dang charming and lovable. He can also do athletic things that most third graders are still trying to master and really seriously appears to be left-handed, so I'm holding out hope that this little sucker is gonna go pro in some sport and buy me an oceanfront condo some day if his career as the world's foremost biology scholar doesn't pan out. With this in mind, I've decided I'll put up with some random shenanigans during the toddler years in order to reap that big payday.

Let's look at these characters...

They like lakes:

They like rides:
Sometimes they share:

They have enjoyed many adventures this summer:

Auntie Hode got married, and Phook was a beautiful flower girl:

Bigs was also a flower child, and while he did wear a suit for the ceremony, he ended up tearing up the dance floor in this ensemble because the little ham steak was totally overheating:

I was there wearing a number from my extensive collection of maternity formalwear. My sister was a beautiful bride:

It is cold out. I'm into it. This post has the level of cohesiveness only an ultra-pregnant she-cow could provide. I hope you have enjoyed it. And I really hope my next comments here are a birth announcement.

XO,
Momma

A rather unremarkable update that focuses heavily on complaining

2010-08-09T09:02:00.000-05:00

Just realized I haven't been blathering on much lately, and I thought I would update with miscellany. I am still pregnant. All of a sudden, very pregnant. I was walking the dog last night and all of a sudden I started to feel THE PRESSURE. Like one day your kid is just floating around in there, generally bugging you when you're trying to sleep, and then one day your kid's head decides it's going to start toying around with exit strategies, and all of a sudden you feel THE PRESSURE. All of a sudden, what you had been imagining as a tiny baby you begin imagining as an overgrown watermelon-headed creature with distinctly octopus-like characteristics weighing somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 pounds. So that's where I'm at. The child is due in 5+ weeks. I might complain a bit between now and then.

The thing is, as per usual, I have gained less weight during this pregnancy than I could easily put on at a really good buffet in a non-pregnant state. But still, there it is, THE PRESSURE. My bladder, not in good shape to begin with after being trampolined by the previous K children, is behaving as if it's the size of a marble (not even the shooter). Any shift in my position activates the urge to pee. I can tell you about the nocturnal activities of every squirrel and teenager within 3 blocks of my house, because I'm up all night peeing and listening to their shenanigans.

I am exhausted. Yet another luxury you can never appreciate is the fact that during your first pregnancy, you DON'T HAVE TO CHASE OTHER CHILDREN. Sure, you might go to work and struggle through your day, but then you generally get to come home, watch bad TV, and crash. If you don' t make dinner, no problem. If you pass out at 6 p.m., no problem. Not so true when you are the primary caregiver of a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old. Usually at about 4 o'clock every day, when the kids are cranky and Big K is a solid hour and a half out from getting home, I start licking dirty carpeting and wadding up Kleenexes and eating them and plucking out my eyelashes by hand while staring off into the middle distance. All of that being my way of telling you that I am going crazy.

I am fond of re-stating a quote attributed to my paternal grandmother, a mother of five, who is rumored to have said she didn't mind pregnancy because babies are easier to take care of on the inside than on the outside. That seems pretty sensible. You can't hear a thing when they're in there gulping amniotic fluid, and they sure get noisy once they come out and you do something heinous like put bath water on them. But I am now at the point where the quote is no longer applicable. Even if it's still technically true, I no longer care. I would like the baby to be on the outside. I am even willing to give birth to it to make that happen, and that in and of itself says a lot.

Oh, hell, I'm excited as pie to actually meet this creature. Find out if it's a boy or a girl. See my husband's dang face on another suckling newborn. I mean, I really want to snuggle that baby. Really, really badly. I have those pure motives. But now I am at the point where those motives are nearly equally matched by my desire to end the Kleenex-chomping crazy that is the energy void of the late third trimester.

So yesterday I decided was the magic day to fetch all the baby gear out of our basement and set it up for this impending creature, before the child actually is falling out of me. Our house is over 100 years old and our basement is about the dumbest place to put anything you care about. But we have no other space for off-season baby gear. So imagine how awesome I felt as I unwrapped all the dorkily-labeled items from their various plastic wrappings and found that everything was really musty smelling, and some of it pretty dirty looking despite having been put away with care. To rectify this situation, I hosed it all off in the driveway and let it sit in the sun. As I was doing this, I was imagining my post-baby-shower self, endlessly arranging and re-arranging Phook's new stuff. I bet I spent 12 hours strategically putting diapers where I thought I might want to have a stash, and then changing my mind and putting stashes in more optimal locations, like a squirrel rearranging its hidden nuts before winter. This time, there I was in my spaghetti sauce stained pajamas at noon (don't ask), hosing off what is essentially mold in the driveway and hoping the hospital actually lets me out of there with the kid in a car seat in that condition. Huh. This baby has a very special mommy.

So, yeah, there wasn't much more than Febreeze, a hose, and a pinch of guilt involved, but the K household is now ready to accept its next clown into the Big Top. I even have diapers for the little marmot, and I sprung for a new outfit for coming home from the hospital. What freshly minted human could complain about that?

And the kids. Phook and Bigs. Okay, so they are aware that a baby is coming to live with us. They have both been kicked excessively by this thirdling through my belly. But yesterday when we started hauling out gear, they actually seemed to get excited. Phook said, "Is our baby coming out TODAY?" I had to tell her that she'd likely have to wait a little while yet, but it would be soon. And then we got out the baby swing, which generated the most interest of all. Bigs of course wanted to climb into the thing and take a spin, but the little straps were still all the way to their largest possible setting from when he was a 25-pound 6-month-old and he stopped fitting in the damned thing, so we had to shut him down. But we got out the kids' baby dolls and put them in there VERY GENTLY and took turns swinging the "baby" VERY GENTLY. And we talked about babies and how you have to be VERY GENTLE with them, and there was some understanding expressed and it all seemed like a moment of fairly decent parenting. (Rare.)

And then we all went our separate ways, each kid with a doll. Five minutes later, Phook came running to me with her baby yelling, "Mommy! My baby just rolled down the stairs and she is BLEEDING ALL OVER!" And I said, "Is she okay?" and Phook said, "No, she is NOT OKAY! She is BLEEDING!" So then we administered first aid to that baby. While this was going down, Bigs came out with his baby and took her into the hallway where he personally spends a fair amount of time "thinking about making good choices" and proceeded to set his baby down on the floor firmly and said, "Baby, you take a time-out! You are VERY NAUGHTY!" and then he stood there and chastised the naughty, naughty infant for its heinous crimes. Big K and I took in this scene of our children as mini-parents and he said to me, "Okay, so maybe we have a ways to go." Good times here in the K homestead. This is gonna be a trip.

So there you go. That's what's happening. No one wants to be married to me anymore and no one wants me to be their mom anymore, because I'm no good at either. There is no question that the mayhem factor will of course rise exponentially when there is a yelping infant in the mix, but it is fair to say that Big W is ready to trade that flavor of crazy for the current one. Yes, in exchange for at least a semi-functioning bladder and the ability to crush up ibuprofen and snort it, I am wiling to take care of a newborn 24 hours a day and go nuts in an altogether different way until one day I wake up and realize that I am the mother of three children and that I no longer have a baby. A process which will take about 40 seconds in superspeed parenting time.

Let's get the game on.