The Livin' Is Easy

Oh dear, where to begin? I am still planning on making that move to my own site, yes I am, but holy heck things have been busy and crazy around here. Good busy, but still. See, all last summer while I was hot and pregnant and contracting and semi-bed resting and then total bed resting, I was all, "Next summer is going to be the BOMB! I am going to be super mom and we are going to do Fun!Stuff! and Be!Outside! all the time!"

I am keeping my little vow to myself, but I realize it doesn't leave a lot of time for, um, anything else. We have road tripped to the zoo multiple times already, got a membership at the kiddie spray park/pool, been on neighborhood walks and playground adventures and ice cream trips and picnic play dates and gone to nature exhibits and summer library programs and blah blah blah bestmomever. We are having a ton of fun, myself included, but yeah... I am falling into bed exhausted most days, just after I finish scraping the nastiness out of Jameson's high chair. He is at long last joining the world of food eaters, and while I am super happy about this since his weight was slipping down the charts there for awhile, I forgot how time consuming and messy and what a lot of extra work it is to have a baby eating with you at mealtimes.

Additional bits of stuff:

-We got viruses on both our computers last week, so half the time my internet is not available to me anyways. Grr. Sorry if you've had an email waiting forever for a reply. I shall check it today!

-I feel frustrated right now, because in the last week or so I had so many post ideas drift through my head. I tried really hard to sort of tack them in there so I could go back and gather them up, but of course as I sit combing my brain right now all I can think of is, "Do we need more sunscreen?"

-I think I spend approximately an hour a day just sun screening kids and then scrubbing them down at bath time. No wonder summer flies by so fast.

-Our landscaping actually looks kind of nice this year. We also put shutters on our giant front window, and it looks so nice I can't believe it took us six years to get around to it.

-I am in the process of finishing all of my required reading for doula training. It's great but it's so hard for me to simultaneously read and be engaged in real life. I get so lost in books.

-Speaking of, while at the library checking out my required books, I also grabbed a few novels. I absolutely loved "My Name Is Memory" by Anne Brashares. She also wrote "The Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants," but oh dear, don't judge by that alone. I mean, I never even read that book, I'm sure it's good; what I'm saying is she's much more than YA fiction and even though this book does deal mainly with fairly youthful characters, it is in no way exclusive to them as an audience. My teaser will be that it deals with the concept of reincarnation, which found me completely engaged despite the fact that I was raised in Judeo-Christian tradition and never once gave reincarnation a serious thought.

I loved the idea of time being only a minor constraint, a movable, shifting element rather than the most finite and concrete aspect of any of our lives from the second we are born and the exact time is recorded on our birth certificate. If you liked "The Time Traveler's Wife," you'll LOVE "My Name Is Memory." (As soon as that sentence entered my mind, I saw it written out on the side of some drug store imitation cologne bottle.)

-I am running out of ideas and motivation for dinners. I just want to make salad ever night, but the kids won't eat it and anyways, we aren't rabbits, after all. But other than cook out stuff, which gets old pretty quickly, I never know what to make in the summer. Can't we just exist on watermelon and Popsicles? And, um, wine?

Location, Location, Location

Dear Blogger/Google Reader,

You are killing me. I can't mark-as-read, I can't comment on half of my peep's posts, and I can only occasionally even get into my own account to post the last week or so. I think this might just push me to finally USE that domain name I've owned for a year now and move my blog to my own site. (Though that won't help at all with the mark-as-read problem.) I do appreciate your free services and ease of blog set up, though, dear Blogger, and will always think of you fondly.

Love,

A no longer QUITE so desperate housewife

P.S.
You guys WILL bear with me if I'm MIA for a few (more) days as the hubs helps me set up a new local, right? Also! Blog design ideas/recommendations, anyone?

Getting There Is Half The Fun

Highlights from yesterday's road trip to the zoo:

-woman in front of us on the highway steering car with her elbow while applying eyeliner, curling her eyelashes, doing all sorts of things with powder and brushes, and styling her hair. Now, I've certainly done the swipe of lip gloss and/or mascara at the stop light routine a time or two, but I have never seen this level of inattention to one's driving. At seventy miles per hour. I have to say though, despite watching her in fascination/horror for almost half an hour, she never did swerve too dangerously. I've certainly seen worse drivers. So clearly, she's had some practice at applying a full face of makeup during her commute. Scary, or impressive?

-Eli, tearfully, after I hushed him from talking to me until after I got off the phone: "You hurt my feelings, Mommy! You hurt my heart!"

-Addy, after pulling over to use a rest area bathroom (a whopping half an hour after using the McDonalds bathroom): "Oh my, this soap smells heavenly! Like cherries! I can't stop smelling it!"

Awkward Birth

I know most of you probably check Awkward Family Photos at least periodically; if you don't, you are really missing out on some visual treats. Puts your last family reunion in perspective, guaranteed. Anyways, the recent Memorial Day Special was so wonderful I had to share. And after you've blinked and done double-takes, come back and tell me what you think.

Teaser: if you've had a water birth, did your PARTNER also jump in pants-less?

Best Face Forward

Our little ray of sunshine, or, Mom sure is looking forward to three more months of this, this being "They splashed me!/There's a BUG!/I'm too HOOOTTT!"


Jamers is at last warming to the idea of solid food. As a mother I'm delighted. As the maid, I demand a raise.

School's Out For The Summer

First of all, today is Addy's last day of preschool, and I am SAD and also a little FRANTIC, because I totally forgot you're supposed to give teachers end of year gifties. I think I'm just going to get them something garden-y, since I need to go get more mulch anyways. That cool, you think? Speaking of mulch, I so should have just ordered a giant truckload of it. I've already used TWENTY THREE BAGS, and I need MORE. I've also stained the upholstery of our van trunk, and about three of my t-shirts, with black mulch dye from accidentally buying the cheap mulch the first time. Live and learn.

But hey-o, look at me, gardening and landscaping up in here, just like I swore I would last year as I lay pregnantly sweating on the couch and staring forlornly out at the untended flower beds. I am actually amazed at what we've gotten done considering the weather (and the three small children,) but it's mainly due to the fact that despite the rain nearly every night for two months straight, including scary thunderstorm/tornadoes that send us fleeing to my mom's basement, it actually IS sometimes sunny, if incredibly damp, during the day.

But anyways, about the preschool thing. I am sad to see it end, even though I'm relieved to no longer be doing the frantic rush to and from four times a week. It was the perfect amount of time (two and a half hours a day) to give Addy a break from her brothers (coughcough and her nagging mother coughcough) and to give me a chance to run errands with only TWO helpers, both of whom can be contained in the cart. It also added some structure to our generally haphazard days, since I am not what you'd call a naturally scheduled person.

Take the kids' baths. I know lots of people have the whole bath-story-bed ritual, but us? Kids get baths whenever it seems they need them, be it every few days or twice in one day. Sometimes it's after breakfast, if they're all sticky from syrup and yogurt. Sometimes it's immediately after a trip to the playground or McDonalds, when I just want to scrub the dirt and germs off ASAP. For Eli, it's often following a didn't-quite-get-to-the-potty-in-time incident. In the summer, when we've been outside in the grass and slathered in sunscreen, they always get showered down before getting into bed, even if they already had a proper soap and shampoo kind of bath earlier.

I did use to have a cleaning schedule- I kept to it religiously for several years and it made me feel so organized. Mondays I would dust, Wednesdays clean the bathroom, that sort of schedule. Since Jameson, though, I just do stuff when I can get to it- it's more on a triage basis, as I remember Marie Green once said re: cleaning. I try to keep the kitchen cleaned daily, keep up on laundry and dishes, emptying trash, keeping things sort of picked up so no one breaks their foot on toys, etc. But there is no more regularly scheduled dusting. Sigh. It's ok though. I don't want to look back and remember that I spent my kids' entire childhood fretting over a never ending, constantly repeating to do list. Not worth it.


Do you see here that Addy has lost a tooth? And the grown up tooth is already halfway in? ZOMG MAH BABY! Stop being so big.


Same goes for you, Jamie James.

Ending on a Positive Note: FAIL

The good: We got a lot of yard work done today, all of us outside working on various projects and playing in the dirt. I am sort of a task oriented person (more so now that I have kids; I think I just really need the feedback of seeing things getting accomplished) so watching projects being tended to always puts me in a good mood. And lest you think the kids were neglected, I also had a princess tea party on the newly swept and tidied deck with Addy, and had her help me plant and pot a bunch of flowers. Eli "helped" Jim a lot too. When we were going inside around dinnertime, Addy told me it was the best day ever. Coming from a kid who had been crying over a canceled playdate just hours earlier, that's pretty good.

The bad: We have a leak in our roof, coming down in our linen closet. It's also causing mold on an interior wall of our bedroom.

The good: At least we finally discovered what was going on with the mold situation.

The bad: The roof has to be torn up and fixed along an edge, and it can't happen until it's going to be dry for a few days. Which is literally not due to happen around here for about another two weeks. We have storms in our forecast EVERY. BLOODY. DAY. for the next ten days. This is without question the most sucktastic spring I can ever remember. It also means we can hardly ever mow, and our yard looks terrible in the back and is unusable for playing, and I feel sulky every time I look at it from my kitchen window. I realize these things are small scale, but they do contribute to an overall sense of grump which I have to fight off, or I end up snapping at the kids, who are also going out of their minds from boredom thanks to the two months solid of rain.

The good: At least the forecast of rain gives me a good excuse to skip the nightmare end-of-preschool picnic on Wednesday. And lest you think I'm a spoilsport for calling it a nightmare, let me explain that I spent last Sunday afternoon jammed into an auditorium with literally about ten relatives for every kid in Addy's school, which is also a daycare, and boasts quite a few students. Like, at least a hundred. And there were not enough seats, not even close (it's so comforting when your child's TEACHERS clearly cannot count and sell tickets without considering whether there's even room for each ticket holder to have a seat) and it was a hundred degrees and filled with restless angry people who despite paying money be there to support their kid, would now have to stand to watch other people's kids sing "Row Row Row Your Boat" for forty five minutes until their own child's class had a turn. All this crowding and standing-room-only sitch created a serious fire hazard, as well, and the parking situation was a nightmare. People were grumbling and shifting nervously and sweating, and basically everything about it except the lack of water felt like being aboard the doomed Titanic as the passengers realize there's not nearly enough lifeboats and it's every man for himself.

One Upping

So I was mopping today (pauses for applause) and the older two kids were playing babies in the den while the real baby napped. The pretend babies were getting hungry, so Eli mentioned that he ought to nurse them.

Addy, in a superior tone, "Eli, boys and men have BREASTS, but they don't make any MILK. Only I can nurse the baby."

Eli: "Well my breasts make JUICE, so I think the baby wants ME."

The More You Know...

I'm going to tell you this even though telling you is an admission of a pretty quick and rapid jump off the wagon of good intentions. I am eating sugar again, though not as much as before (i.e. I won't substitute a cookie for a MEAL. Must set a good example!) I have been for at least a week. And?

I've lost three pounds in about ten days, ever since I STOPPED worrying about what I was eating at all because my brain was so busy with all the stuff going on and all the stuff I needed to get done and remember and I just couldn't stand thinking about every bite I put in my mouth TOO.

Now, the goal of the sugar wean wasn't to lose weight, so it doesn't really mean all that much that I had very negligible, if any, weight loss while avoiding sugar, or that I have suddenly lost a few pounds since letting it into my body again. The real experiment was to see if I felt better after getting rid of sugar, and basically what I figured out was this: meh.

To elaborate on the meh: yes, by the end I think I was having fewer blood sugar spikes, so fewer ups and downs and feelings of total wipe out in the afternoon. But I also wasn't feeling GREAT and full of energy all the time, either, as many people had assured me I would. (Could be I didn't give it long enough to get to this point... Or could be that when one is getting up two or three or five times a night with kids, you're just never going to feel GREAT, regardless of what you are or are not eating.) Another issue is that I was eating ALL the TIME when I wasn't eating anything sweet because I was constantly looking for something to substitute for the sugar I was craving. I wasn't eating terrible things, but there were a heck of a lot of apples and cheese sticks and almonds and yogurts getting gobbled down throughout the day while I fidgeted and felt grumpy, wanting just one bite of chocolate. Again, my fault and probably something that would EVENTUALLY go away, but I was very tired of the feeling of constantly thinking about food.

One of my previous issues was that I couldn't seem to STOP nibbling on candy once I started- couldn't just have a bite and then be done. That problem does seem to have been somewhat helped by even a week or two off sugar. Now I have a few bites of chocolate and actually do feel satisfied, and kind of sick if I try to eat more. I seem to be enjoying chocolate and sweets the way a normal person would- as TREATS, not a staple of their diet. And I think I'm going to keep on eating treats at least once a day, because it gives me a lift and makes me feel happy and then I have some coffee and feel perky and go get some stuff done and stop thinking about how yicky I feel. And when I don't feel deprived (again, this is a MENTAL feeling of deprivation I'm talking about, not actual hunger) I'm much less inclined to roam around searching for further snacks later on.

So I guess I'm back off the bandwagon for now. I'm thinking of trying another sugar cleanse type diet after Jameson is sleeping through the night (so in another two years, I'm guessing! ha ha!) and see if I get different results when I'm regularly sleeping soundly and getting my REM cycles and all that. Because I did like not having the blood sugar dips and feeling more even keeled throughout the day. I just didn't like that my even-keel level seemed to be a low hum of moderate fatigue unsolved by coffee alone. Feeling only SLIGHTLY less tired, and then without any nice sugary pick me ups, didn't seem worth the effort.

Dashes of Annoyance

-Every spring these determined birds (the same ones? the same... family, but a new generation?) force their way into our overhang and nest under the eaves right outside our den window. This hole in the overhang has been fixed, but they just keep finding the weak spot and shoving their way back in. So whenever we notice it happening, there are already baby birds living in there, chirping sweetly, and we're not going to evict them to their deaths, obviously. So we say, "We'll just fix it really good once they fly out." And then they're gone, and we forget about it or get distracted with some other urgent project (or the project of keeping three small people alive and reasonably cared for) and then before we know it the birds are back for another spring of baby making. I kind of think we should just tear it even further apart and open a Bird Maternity/Nursery wing of our house, with older, motherly birds bustling around in white aprons and wheeling little bassinets back and forth between the nests.

-Addy's dance recital was yesterday- or more accurately, dance RECITALS, since there were two performances, each lasting two hours, and they have to be there an hour early, so altogether six mother loving hours. Plus a dress rehearsal the night before lasting, I kid you not, four and half hours. And today, in an hour, is her preschool program! Whee! So! Many! Special! Moments! Leading to So! Many! Tired! Cranky! Attitudes!

-I was room mother for Addy's class during the last performance, which involved dealing with: Addy leaving her ballet slippers at home between shows; another girl losing her gloves- and we HAD to find her a pair somehow or the whole class had to skip wearing them, and HEAVEN FORBID they not get to wear their preshus white gloves; one little girl trying repeatedly to run away into the enormous backstage labyrinth, insisting angrily that she "knew her way around"; fourteen girls all having to pee at the same time; everyone forgetting to pack their kids snacks and drinks, seriously EVERYONE, and while I had brought enough stuff for a FEW kids in case a FEW showed up without water or snackies, I didn't have enough for everyone. So I was trying to ration stuff out fairly and also trying to dispense three water bottles amongst all these germy kids without just passing the bottle around and letting everyone take swigs from it. They could not understand why I didn't want them all sharing and were getting very upset that they could SEE water right there but weren't allowed to drink it.

-Oh and then one little girl (the same one who kept trying to flee) "accidentally" drew blood from her line buddy twice within five minutes! First they were lined up waiting to go on stage and she stepped on the other girl's pinkie with her tap shoe, then as they were leaving the stage she somehow "bumped" into her hard enough to cut the inside of the girl's lip with her teeth. Gah. It was really hard to comfort the injured girl and restrain myself from yelling at the annoying, roughhousing runaway. And lest you think I'm being mean, this girl has been a brat to the teacher and the other kids pretty much ever since Addy's been taking dance. And you know what? Her mom's kind of wench-y too. There, I said it. (*cleansing breath*)

-Everyone at our house is sick again with some kind of hacking thing. And not a single one of my kids yet knows how to blow their nose. Nor, apparently, do they yet understand the concept of not letting snotty tissues fall wherever they happen to be standing. (Side rant: how do you even begin trying to de-germ things when kids are wiping their noses on the back of their hands and then touching everything in sight? Seriously? I kind of wish we lived in a tent so I could just throw it in the washing machine on SANITIZE in between illnesses.) To make it worse, both my out of town sisters are in town for Addy's various programs and events this weekend, and now everyone feels like crap and yet we need to VISIT with them because we don't get to see them that much! But how do we see them without infecting them?! DILEMMA.

-The house is in utter disarray from all the running around this week, and I find myself filled with a strange inertia about it. It's like, if the house is generally tidy and one room gets a little torn apart, I hurry to put it right so that everything stays nice. But if the whole house is a disaster, I sort of mentally withdraw and just ignore it for awhile. I get that way about my weight too. If I'm doing well with my eating habits and feeling all slender and my pants are fitting well, then I try to keep it going and feel inclined to make good food choices. But if I've been eating on the go (i.e. crappily) all week, and am so bloated from the sodium that my rings aren't even fitting well, then it's like I throw my hands in the air and eat a chocolate rabbit for breakfast. Whoops, did I just admit that?!

Cycles

Thank you all for your sweet comments on my last post. I try not to dive into despair too often, but every so often it just seems like all the small things of everyday life are piling up into one GIANT thing that is slowly burying me alive. What is that one saying? "The problem with life is that it is so very daily." That's exactly what it is. It's that the same dishes you wash and put away today are going to be waiting in your sink for you tomorrow. It's that the routine of laundry- pick up from the floor/basket/hamper, sort, wash, dry, fold, put away- seem ridiculously excessive, and I sometimes wonder if we shouldn't all just dress and undress right in the laundry room to cut out a few steps.

There's this Jim Gaffigan bit where he complains that the weird, cyclic continuum of shopping- we buy the box of trash bags, we take it home in a plastic bag, we open it up and put a clean trash bag in the can, we throw away the plastic bag IN the trash bag- makes him feel like he's being punked. I sometimes feel that way re: the daily grind. Am I being punked? THIS is what my life is? To wipe the same spots off the stove top twenty thousand times? To empty the diaper pail every single day? It's not that I'm unhappy, it's just that... that it often feels that there isn't any discernible PROGRESS being made; I'm just madly spinning my wheels trying to keep our household afloat, and all my efforts add up to a house that is still in a state of general untidiness, stickiness, and odor, and kids that are still shrieking and bopping each other with toy cars and changing clothes ten times a day.

But. I do know that it won't always be this way. "It's just a stage!" as everyone always tries to reassure me about every parenting problem. But I believe it, actually. And I know that there will also be a stage when everything isn't sticky, and when I have time not only to manage my own life but to help other women manage theirs so they feel a little less overwhelmed. I know this because I see it happening in my mom and mother in law's lives, so I have hope. Also? Gratitude. Happy belated Mother's Day, you guys. Thanks for taking care of us!






P.S. Kids, I know genuine, un-forced smiles are a little too much to ask for, but at least try to look in the same direction next time we do pictures, m'kay? And not look deranged?

This Is Just... Off The Rails, Here

Um, this is a rapid fire, absolutely no rough draft or editing going on type post. Am frantically getting ready for Jim's birthday party, to which I optimistically invited almost thirty people because hey! May! It'll be spring time and sunny and we can all just hang outside! Except... it has rained for thirty days straight, more or less. Our backyard is literally a giant muddy sponge almost as soon as you step off the deck, ending in a sort of soup bowl of standing water which my husband and BIL are currently trying to reroute by way of a giant EFFING DITCH in our back yard. To which I say, heck yeah, if that's what it takes. I am unspeakably sick of having a huge backyard which is virtually unusable months out of the year because of the horrible drainage issues. I'll take a giant ditch if it means the dog isn't filthy to his ankles every time he goes out to pee.

Can you tell I'm a little cranky? I'm a little cranky. The week started with the horrible news of the two deaths I mentioned, then we found out a teacher friend had been fired due to some.... personal issues, I believe, more than professional, so that sucked. I've been getting more and more anxious about the state of the yard, wanting so badly to be able to use it for the party and becoming more and more resigned to the fact that we WON'T be using it and that thirty people are going to be milling around our (smallish) house with nothing to do but eat stromboli for three hours.

Oh, and Jamie fell out of his jumperoo the other day- or more accurately, the whole dang thing fell off the door frame somehow (the only thing I can figure is that I put it on wrong- hangs head in shame) and while I was tearfully calling the hospital for a reminder on what to watch for and an assurance that he was probably ok, I heard Eli start screaming and crying because he had HIT HIS HEAD while jumping on the couch, something I've only been lecturing them about for, oh, their ENTIRE LIVES. I had to hang up on the nurse to go attend to his head injury, then call her back to check on Jamie's. A fine parenting moment!

Oof, and speaking of Eli, his recent issues have just been killing me. (This is the part where I should say, won't be printing THIS post off to save for posterity.) I've always said if one of my kids were aiming to be my favorite, he could probably manage it, with his cuddly little ways and his face basically a cross between Jim's and my dad's, and his mama's firstborn boy status and all. And also our personalities just mesh really well. BUT. This week he's lucky I didn't abandon him at the firehouse and drive off, cackling like a lunatic, into the sunset.

He is still having accidents so often that there are always a pair of his underwear or pants hanging to dry after being rinsed. ALWAYS. His room ALWAYS smells like wet pull ups no matter how often I empty the trash in their room. He is ALWAYS insisting he doesn't have to go and throwing a fit when we make him. Dudes, this is going on a YEAR that this kid has been in the process of potty training. A YEAR, minus that blissful month or two when he was completely potty trained, before Jameson was born and then all was lost. I'm about to either give up, stick him back in freaking DIAPERS until he decides to take himself to the bathroom, or take him to the doctor to see if he's having some kind of physical issue causing this extreme and lengthy regression.

I try to make no fuss about it, try not to get irritated, try to stay positive. But I know he can feel my annoyance, and it's making him defensive and grouchy and defiant, which in turn gets me even further irritated, and on and on we go until one or both of us melts down. Ex: yesterday in the DMV, when he ran in screaming circles while I tried to handle the always smooth process of dealing with bureaucratic stuff while Jamie cried relentlessly on my hip. Finally as we were leaving and I was getting Jamers settled back into his stroller, Eli darted out of TWO heavy glass doors and into the parking lot before I could catch him, ignoring my warnings and frantic waving. I couldn't even speak because I was on the verge of tears- I was so scared, and so angry, and so furious with myself for not being able to control my kid. Once I got everyone buckled in, I'm pretty sure I was just ranting. "Do you know what a car can DO to you, Eli!? Do you want to get KILLED?!" Etc. Productive!

Ugh. Then I realized I had to get the kids dinner really quick because lo! It was Addy's night for dance class, and it started in an hour! So we went to McDonalds, where at least I knew the kids would eat, and they proceeded to fuss about every little thing, and I ordered the wrong flavor of milkshake for Addy, and Jamie lost his sock in the car, and then the lady at the register was like, "Ma'am? Did you know your baby only has one sock on?" SO loudly that the whole room turned to look at the sweaty mama with the sockless baby on her hip and the feral children clawing at her leg.

Basically the night continued like that: late for dance class, hurriedly running errands for the party while Addy was in class, Eli running off and trying to steal sunglasses and toy cars in Rite Aid and finally having to be physically removed from the store, HITTING me and yelling about the car, losing all his toys for the night, crying hysterically about that, pooping his pants, me grocery shopping until ten pm....

I am living the dream here. Sigh. Sometimes I wonder if I'm even doing my kids any favors by being at home with them while they're small. Would I be nicer to them, more patient, if I saw less of them?

Too Soon

Well wow I've had a bad couple of days. Or more accurately, there has BEEN a lot of bad the last couple of days. Yesterday I found out that a guy I went to church with in high school and with whom my younger sister was pretty good friends died in a car accident, probably due to drunk driving, though the details aren't clear yet. He was twenty five years old, but all I can conjure up in my mind are pictures of a blond, smiling kid about fifteen years old, cracking jokes while we road the bus downtown each Sunday to pick up kids for church. He was such a sweetheart, and now he's just gone. Not here.

-

This afternoon, Jim learned that one of the girls from the soccer team he coached a few years ago was found dead yesterday, under suspicious circumstances. She was nineteen years old. And now she's gone. Not here.

Sometimes I feel like by having children I have basically bought myself a ticket to inevitable heartbreak at some point. Stuff like this makes me want to bubble wrap my kids and lock them in the house for the rest of their lives. I am so sad that these young lives are over, but the ones I am really torn up for are their families, for their parents. For their mothers, the women who still remember what it felt like to have those babies kick and jump inside them and who are now living out their worst nightmare: burying the child that they once delivered and cradled in their arms. God. I just can't imagine. How do you keep living when your heart is in shreds like that? I know you do, but just... how?

Really puts everything I was planning to post about- scratches on the wall, marker on the carpet, poop in the big-boy underwear- all into perspective. They can tear my house apart and I swear I'll watch it with a smile if they could just promise me to stay alive forever and always.

In Her Majesty's Secret Service

So you all had British-type snacks whilst watching the royal wedding, right? Cause I felt absolutely COMPELLED, and the only thing we had in the house was.... dum dum dum. A Cadbury egg. Which I ate, because I'd be gosh darned if I let this historic occasion pass without the appropriate pomp and circumstance. But I only ate the one, and then I totally forgot about it and moved on with the day and did not start stuffing candy into my face Willy Wonka style, so I guess that's a good sign. I haven't physically craved sweets for a few days, but I also don't feel fantastically different without them, either, so... we'll see. And I swear I'm eating MORE than usual, albeit more healthy stuff. Well, I'm going to finish out the week, at least. Then we'll see. I might stick with writing down what I eat longer than the no candy thing, because boy does that make you think twice before shoveling random crap down your throat, and also makes you painfully aware of days when you've only eaten one item of produce (see: today.)

At any rate, that sugar-fast cheat was for you, Lovely Kate. I loved your makeup! I loved your hair! I love your immaculate yet not too thin eyebrows! Also, I love your super hot brother in law who happens to be only ONE DAY older than I am. (Your husband? Meh. He's ok too.)

Habits

So it turns out afternoons are pretty rough without a nibble of chocolate here and there. As proved by... three whole days, which in my mind, apparently, equals a substantial body of evidence! So far each day, breakfast is fine, I get through the morning feeling fine, eat a virtuous lunch, continue to feel fine, and then two o' clock hits and... SLUMP. I make another cup of coffee, eat an apple or some dried berries to try to get a jolt of natural sugar, but man, literally from then until dinner it seems I cannot shake the thought of a pan of brownies or a couple of Reese's eggs from the kids' Easter stash. While I don't feel super tired, or at least any MORE tired than usual, I can literally feel in my bloodstream the craving for refined sugar. I feel shaky and headache-y and cranky, and have to distract myself with busyness or I just keep circling back to the kitchen, looking for SOMETHING. I need a patch, just like a nicotine addict.

It sort of frightens me that I could be this addicted to a substance. It also gives me a new level of respect for people who manage to quit smoking or drinking, which is surely far more difficult. Now, I'm sure that there HAVE been days in my life before where I just didn't eat sugar for whatever reason, but it wasn't an intentional abstaining, so it probably didn't get noticed so much. I was likely doing stuff and out of the house or traveling, and had other things on my mind. When I'm home alone with small kids (who are constantly asking, "Can I have an Easter candy since I did x without whining/since I ate my lunch/since I stopped hitting Adelay/?") it's like this ridiculous loop in my head of BOY DO I NEED SOME CHOCOLATE/CANDY/DESSERT-TYPE ITEM. It's kind of pathetic to be spending this much time thinking about food.

So pathetic that this afternoon I was thinking, "You know, this is stupid. I'll just have a Reese's cup, end the craving, and move on!" Except that I WOULDN'T just have one. The floodgates would be opened, and then I'd have five or six over the course of the afternoon. And feel sick, and mad at myself. So I just keep trusting that if I give it a few more days, or a week, I will get used to being without afternoon sugar to get me through, and I will stop thinking about it so obsessively. Because that's the goal- to not NEED sugar to feel normal.

I should clarify that I don't think it's generally good to have forbidden foods. This is more just trying to break a cycle of addiction, if you will, so that when I do allow myself sugary goodness again, it will be at birthday parties and as a special treat, not a daily necessity that I miss like a freakin' CRACKHEAD if I'm without.

This dependence on a cocktail of sugar to get me through the day is a bad habit I started when Eli was a baby, and didn't start sleeping through the night until he was a year old... and even then, not reliably for another year. By afternoons I was just so profoundly tired that it literally felt dangerous to even drive anywhere. And drinking pot fulls of coffee wasn't an option since he was always sensitive to caffeine in my milk- a cup a day was about all I could have without making him cranky. But that was when we were trying to sell our house, so falling into a drooling coma on the couch just wasn't an option- I had to keep up on the cleaning and laundry all the time. It wasn't long before I discovered that in the absence of coffee, a brownie or a cookie (or a brownie AND a cookie) was enough to jolt me back awake long enough to get through the dinner/bedtime stuff before I could collapse on the couch for the night.

Not coincidentally, it also took me until Eli started sleeping through the night, thus ending my complete and total reliance on sugar to sustain me, before I lost the last ten pounds of my baby weight. Now, Jameson had a brief window of being a pretty decent sleeper, and I was feeling and looking good and the world was a sunny place. But ever since his bouts of ear infection back in Jan/Feb, he has been up and down the whole night, most of it spent in my bed because I am too tired to put him back in the crib after getting him up to nurse yet again! So yeah... the profound tiredness is really starting to get to me with this kid, too, and I've been doing the sugar routine again hardcore, kicked off with boxes of clearance Valentine's chocolates.

But this time, I am going to nip it in the bud! Yes I am! I am also going to try putting Jamie boy back in his own bed after feeds, even though in the short term it will be a pain, in the hopes that long-term it might help him wake less frequently. Also because I've become concerned that I am SO tired I am no longer able to cosleep very safely... a couple times last week I woke up on my side and realized I had fallen asleep while nursing without first making sure the baby was safely arranged away from pillows, with blankets tucked away securely, etc. His face was just inches from my pillow. I felt really freaked out and guilty. So! Time to try something different. This cosleeping is also causing me back and neck issues because when I know the baby is with me, I literally don't move a muscle in my sleep, and every time I wake up, my back and hips are throbbing from remaining so stiff. I went to the chiropractor a few times, but it only gave short term relief; after a few nights of sleeping with the baby, the pain was back, and this time I was more aware of it since I had experienced brief relief. So I think it'll probably only go away for good if I change my habits.

So does anyone else get this way about sugar? Or do I just have a really addictive personality? I sometimes think I do; for instance, I had a really hard time weaning off of the painkillers I had after Eli was born, and I was only on them for a WEEK. But I just felt awful once they were gone! Is that normal? Is the sugar thing normal?

Also, is it mean to try ending the cosleeping for my own selfish reasons? I feel sort of guilty, but also just sort of DONE, you know?

Health Kick Post! And Also Some Nursing Questions

So today I started the not diet diet, as in, I'm not counting calories and I'm not going to be hungry, because my milk supply is somewhat lame as it is, but I AM going to pay a heck of a lot more attention to what I'm shoveling into my cake-hole. Basically, I made a list of foods I know to be healthy and filling for me, and that's what I'm eating from, for... indefinitely. Until I get sick of it. Or something. This is SO boring, I know, but whatever, Tess requested it, so here is my list of foods:

-any fruits or veggies
-turkey
-eggs
-chicken
-almonds
-beans
-fish
-string cheese (low fat)
-cottage cheese
-Greek yogurt
-low sodium veggie soup
-a couple servings a day of whole grains like brown rice, Grape Nuts, oatmeal or similar
-popcorn
-fruit leather
(last two are my substitute snacks for when I'm craving crunchy or sweet)

Now, I like all these foods, and I'm eating enough to stay full, so it's hardly torture or deprivation here. Like for dinner I had tilapia and fingerling red potatoes (yes, I'm still eating potatoes- WHAT OF IT?) and asparagus. I seasoned the fish with a dash of EVOO, s and p, and herbs and everything else with just herbs, and it was a totally normal dinner for us and I was fine. But I'm a pretty genuine sugar addict, so ignoring the Easter candy has been rough today. I also realized that I have some sort of internal clock that goes off around two pm every day and announces, "Time to have some coffee and a sweet!" That was a rough couple of hours, even though I FELT okay (actually LESS tired than usual, interestingly) but I just felt all twitchy and weird and kept roaming back to the kitchen as though I had forgotten something. Forgotten my daily infusion of love handle fat, I suppose.

I wrote down everything I ate today, and that helped a lot with resisting the candy. Which I realize is simply a matter of willpower, but it didn't help that it was pouring rain again and I was stuck in the house, bored, all day long in the VICINITY of the candy. (Hilarious side note: it has rained like twenty out of the last twenty five days here! Oh, you delightful April showers! You have made our backyard so wet that a pair of DUCKS have taken up residence! For reals.) While I was at it, I also wrote down every time Jamie nursed, something I have not once bothered to do since bringing him home from the hospital. Can you tell I embrace the nurse-on-demand style of parenting wholeheartedly?

I had been worrying that maybe he wasn't eating enough during the day, and that was why he's still getting up three (3)(THREE DO YOU REALIZE HOW OFTEN THAT IS??!) times a night to eat. But I think... that's not the problem. He's nursed six times today already. (It's seven pm now, so he'll probably eat twice more before going to bed.) Now, he only ever eats for fifteen minutes at the MOST, and usually he nurses for seven to eight minutes exactly. I can't get him to go longer than that; he is just DONE, and when he's done he's done. The only time he'll nurse a full fifteen minutes is if, say, he fell asleep on a car ride right before he usually would have been hungry again, and then stayed asleep an extra long time, so that it's been four or five hours since he's last eaten. Then he'll nurse well, and actually stay on task and not yank his head on and off a bazillion times trying to simultaneously eat AND watch the world go by.

So, uh, any suggestions on ways to get him to eat less often/longer at a time? And not be so hungry at night? Because, you know, good grief. And also, Nephew Smith is sleeping through the night reliably, and that is just not fair. I need the sleep more! I have three kids! I call BS!

Filed Under: Diets, Baby Food, Breast Pump

Wow, I guess partying has its price. I cannot seem to get it together this week, not to blog, not to keep up on laundry or housework or bedtimes, and certainly not to curtail the endless stream of white flour/sugar crappola I keep shoveling into my face. Though, that's partly because I know my diet/LIFESTYLE CHANGE (gag) is coming on Monday.

No, it's a diet. I always hork a little when people yammer on about lifestyle changes vs. dieting. I mean, yeah, things like switching to whole grain bread instead of white and using butter instead of margarine are lifestyle changes. But when you're talking about trying to lose weight, it's a DIET. Unless you're telling me you plan on NEVER EATING CHOCOLATE AGAIN as part of your lifestyle, then if you're currently avoiding it, you are DIETING.

I'm not so much trying to lose weight (though I certainly wouldn't COMPLAIN) as I am trying to stop feeling like crap and like my midsection is turning into squishy bread dough. I'm actually back to my pre-baby weight (thanks in no small part to nursing, I am sure) and even down a few pounds from that, but without exercise and with a regular routine of nighttime snacking in front of the TV, my body is starting to look and feel like a pale, unbaked bread stick. So I know with the advent of summer sun and a bit of gardening and walking the muscle tone and color will return, but I would like to feel like I'm nourishing my body more healthfully, especially since I'm still breastfeeding (is this the... very best bite for baby??)

Also, one thing I've learned over the years is that weight is just a number, and can have very little to do with how you look and how your clothes fit. When I was working out three times a week, I was almost ten pounds HEAVIER than I am now, but it was muscle, and I LOOKED a lot better. Especially my arms and belly. I also learned during Jim's Great Diet earlier this year that if you're eating a lot of carbs, your belly is bloating, whether or not you're actually gaining weight. When you're eating a lot of fiber and veggies and lean stuff on a regular basis, your skin looks better and your tummy looks flatter. Gah, I sound so annoying, but trust me, I'm really reminding MYSELF of this stuff, because currently I'm eating danish for breakfast and drinking my second cup of coffee and I do NOT feel excited about switching back to Greek yogurt and almonds and carrot sticks come Monday morning.

You know what else I've become sadly resigned to? Eating well is kind of expensive. At least it SEEMS more expensive. Maybe in the end it evens out because if you're buying a bunch of junk it takes MORE of that junk to feel full? I don't know. I just know that these days I about have a heart attack every time I check out at the grocery. Sorry 'bout your luck kids; please accept these nutritious skim-milk cheese sticks and fiber-licious Grape-Nuts in lieu of a college fund!

I wish I were joking. I just hope that all this (attempted) eating well pays off and enables them to focus well in school and get fantastic grades and earn themselves full rides to Yale.

In other eating related (read: probably boring) news, Jameson is really into solid foods now. That's SOLID. As in, not pureed baby food, but those Gerber puffs and also those weird rice rusk things that dissolve when gummed. He happily spends up to an hour at a time taking down a package of those bad boys, but still can't figure out how to OPEN HIS MOUTH for a spoon so I can get some oatmeal into his belly. (Not that I'm trying all that hard... I despise the whole baby food routine, and honestly prefer ridiculously frequent nursing for awhile until baby can manage some mashed up table food thrown on his tray. I have enough trouble getting the five and three year old to eat without spending another half hour after dinner playing airplane just to get a few tablespoons of Earth's Best into the baby's belly, and the rest of the jar on his clothes. Spare me!)

So, the James is still frequently hungry and nursing three times a night, every night. I am so used to being exhausted that I felt better than usual the night I was out at a freaking DANCE CLUB until two am, because at least once I got to bed I slept, uninterrupted, for seven whole hours. Everyone else was staggering around, bleary eyed, the next morning, and I was all, "Good morning! I feel fantastic! Where's the coffee? And also my pump? 'Cause the girls here feel like rocks! Also I am SO AWAKE WHEEE!"

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Well hellLLOOO! That was a nice little sabbatical, eh? Not sure what happened throughout the week, but I can tell you why I wasn't blogging on the weekend. Bachelorette party, baby. One of my friends from ye olde high school is getting married in May, and on Saturday night we joined her for a last hurrah, complete with party limo and jello shots. It was a really fun break from the real world, and I was quite proud of myself in that I drank exactly enough to have a good time and dance a little without feeling silly, but not nearly enough to throw up/act stupid/have a hangover. Success!

Also? I decided it's way better to be a girl than a guy if you're going clubbing. Kind of an established fact, I guess, but definitely reconfirmed.

Except for the lines in the bathroom, of course. But that's anywhere.

Love The One You're With

I ran across this blog post the other day and I loved it so much I thought I'd share it in case it was just the thing any of you needed to hear, too. It's in a category of posts about decorating and decluttering, by the author of the adorable Clover Lane blog, and it's called "House Love." It's basically just about how to embrace and love the home/furniture/stuff you have right now, rather than constantly plotting and wishing and envying for other, better things.

It was perfect for me to hear right now, when I am often feeling a bit squished in our current home (just a BIT, but it's making me panic about what it would feel like to add even more kids!) and when I'm wishing the market wasn't so wretched and that showing a home wasn't such a staggering pain in the butt so that I could actually contemplate moving. This post reminded me that any house can be a dream home with a bit of love, work, and the right perspective: that is, that home is who you're WITH, not the composite of granite counter tops and double closets and professional landscaping. The happiness you feel in your home has very little to do with how it looks, really, but is more about how it feels. That's something I can improve no matter how much money or flexibility I have, right? That's a heart thing- if I can invest love in my home, even just by cleaning it or rearranging a chair or fluffing a pillow or watering a plant, I've made it feel a little better and more welcoming to me as well as my family and guests.

It also helped me to remember that what we HAVE in our current home (a truly perfect location, with wonderful friends both right down the street within walking distance as well as just a few minutes away in either direction, relatives five to ten minutes away on all sides, church five minutes away, SCHOOL five minutes away, Jim's office ten minutes away...) is something no other house could replicate, unless we magically found our dream home within a one mile radius. We have been very blessed in our location, and if we have to work a bit to make the home more comfortable and livable, well, that's a fairly small price to pay, and can even be kind of fun if you dig up the right attitude.

Here's what I did last night in our front hall to "love" my house a little more:



What helps you feel more content in your home when you're having one of those dissatisfied kind of days?

Day 30

My hopes and dreams for the future, or something like that. Well, I guess now would be a good time to tell you that after years of toying with the idea, I am taking this year (or, next year or SO, I should say) to get certified with DONA as a professional doula. It's something I've considered doing ever since Eli's birth, but until just recently I've felt that my own kids/fertility issues/pregnancies were enough baby stuff for one woman to handle!

I'm definitely ready for a hiatus from my own personal baby-making adventures for the time being, though, so I feel I could now be free to concentrate on others. And after being present at both my sister and my friend's births recently, it was really confirmed to me that the whole pregnancy/birth/baby thing is a topic for which I can summon endless enthusiasm and interest. I've never felt that way about anything else. I also had a good talk with one of Jess's midwives, who told me that she thought I was a natural doula, and that she felt one day I could even be a midwife or a childbirth educator.

While the idea of actually being the one responsible for delivering the baby still scares me profoundly, I think I could DO it. Birth fascinates me and doesn't disgust me in the least, and I think for the most part I stay pretty calm when I'm at a birth. And I would absolutely, unequivocally love to teach birthing classes someday; it's something I've felt our area is sadly lacking in anyways.

So, that's that. Totally ready to get started on the doula path, and open to more someday, if that seems to be where the path is leading! I still haven't purchased the DONA kit, because once you do you're on the clock to get finished. Since a big part of the training is a (long) weekend workshop, I want to wait until I know Jameson can be without me for two or three days before I go. You're allowed to bring nursing infants with you up to six months old, but even if he were still young enough, he is an active and vocal baby, and I'd feel bad about inflicting him on everyone else trying to listen! So I think I'll be waiting until November, when there's a workshop scheduled at a really cool birth/breastfeeding resource center in Ann Arbor. Once I confirm that in stone (i.e. drop a deposit) I'll go ahead and buy the DONA kit, and get started on my reading list and on trying to find a breastfeeding class around here to attend.

I'm so excited, I won't lie about that. It's certainly not a highly lucrative or glamorous career path, here, that of birth junkie, but it's something for which I feel a lot of passion, and I was starting to think I might never find that niche. That maybe I just didn't HAVE passion for anything useful, or possible. (Like, I totally have passion for drinking red wine and getting in long winded religious/ethical/sociological debates in the wee hours of the morning, but that's not really something anyone gets paid to do, as far as I know.)