b e a n s k i

Redefining me

I'm laying in a hotel room a half a country away from my kids and my baby is sick. He's my boy, my sidekick, a mama's boy to the core and I can't help him. I'm sick, literally nauseous about it. And along with that, I'm angry.

I think today, sitting alone in an airport with a book all alone for the first time in a long time, and all I could do was hold back tears and feel angry that I have to do this.

I feel like I am a different person than I was when I "made" this career. Back then I was a strong woman in a business suit with no kids flying around the country building websites and now I am a mom that has to fly around building websites. I go to work because I have to and the last six months has made me bitter about that. I don't dislike my job itself, I just dislike that it takes me away from what I consider to be my far more important job. I'm laying here eating room service when I should be at home comforting my baby.

I am angry at myself for the choices we made and I'm sad that my little people are growing so fast and I feel like I'm missing it. I feel like I'm only half at home and half at work and the constant pulling in 700 directions is wearing on me.

Six years ago, when Renee was a baby, I made a choice to work. We bought a house requiring two incomes and that is that. I don't know how to change that. I want to change it, I am beginning to think I NEED to change it but I don't know how.

And at this point I'm not sure who I am anymore. Am I their mom or am I this person attending conferences and making small talk in hotel bars? What if I'm neither?

Adios forever, high chair

The level of excitement I get out of purging the baby crap is disturbing. The high chair taking up half of my kitchen is on its way out!

life

This image resonates with me because it is just so them. Renee with no pants on (always), standing on her tippy toes so that she can get her window stickers high enough that Isaac can't reach them. Cameron probably trying to help his little brother put his stickers on the window and Isaac just desparate to keep up with the big ones. In a shirt that is two sizes two small. With chocolate all over his face.

They are pretty sure the window stickers will make it clear to the Easter bunny that he's welcome because he might, you know, decide to skip our house.  I really need to start taking pictures and reflecting more often.

Spring ahead

Springtime in Minnesota traps one between the old and the new. You're excited for the extra hour of daylight but you know that means later bedtimes for the kids and that means even less alone time for you. When you're alone time is virtually non-existent as it is the thought of it actually decreasing (Can one go negative on alone time?) is almost depressing.

Summer in Minnesota with all of the cramming in the fun in two short months and living in a house with no air conditioning and three kids under six isn't exactly relaxing. And don't even get me started on the bugs in Hermantown. Fist-size spiders and trails of ants, I tell you. EVERYWHERE.

That purguatory, that wanting the next thing at the exact same time as not wanting the next thing, that is the story of life right now.

You want the kids to get big and learn new things while at the same you sort of want them to stay small. You yearn for the day when you aren't trying to walk the delicate line between the baby and his schedule and the big kids and their activities and you can hardly wait for you and your husband to start living the same life rather than both alternating back and forth between The Little One and The Big Ones.

BUT. And there's always a but.

You have been doing this mothering thing long enough to know that Isaac growing out of his extreme separation anxiety will just replaced by some other, and probably equally annoying, challenge. Skating lessons, ballet recitals, hockey practice, swimming, camping and fishing and learning to read and doing your homework and losing your first (or last) tooth. AND DISNEYLAND.

MOM, WHY CAN'T WE GO TO DISNEYLAND?

It's everywhere.

You want to buy bunk beds for the big kids to camp out together even though there's enough bedrooms in our house for everyone to have their own because you yearn for a simpler and much smaller life. You want them to get along better than they do. You want them to learn how to share and to absolutely not grow up getting everything handed to them on a silver platter.

You want to start dieting at the precise moment that you pour a glass of wine and sit down on the couch to watch The Bachelor with the iPad in hand simultaneously shopping for bigger work pants.

You want to pick up your SLR for the first time in MONTHS but you don't want to deal with the electronics obsessed toddler screeching because he MUST. PUSH. THE. BUTTONS. RIGHT. THIS. INSTANT. And you probably won't bother to process them anyways because The Bachelor and The Wine are much more important.

You want to be a stay-at-home-mom and you want a smaller and cheaper car and you want to downsize the house and sell all of the furniture and all of the baby crap and all of the maternity crap and just START OVER but you are just so overwhelmed by all of the STUFF that you have no idea where to start.

You want to start blogging again, after a multiple year hiatus, but you aren't really sure where you want to start. You've missed so much. You want to remember what this time was like. You want your children to read your words and to someday be able to see their childhoods through your eyes.

But you let so much time pass without documenting anything. You let so many months pass without taking a single photograph. You are already so far behind. It seems pointless to even try to catch up.
.............

And so you just keeping rolling, waiting for the next season of change, hoping that maybe it is this one where it all comes together.

dear isaac

I am fairly sure I say this with every birthday that you and Renee and Cameron hit but I can NOT fathom the idea that you are one. It seems like a week or two ago that I was beside myself begging you to PLEASE hurry up and evict yourself from the confines of my uterus.

You weren’t in any hurry to get here. You were wedged in there all nice and comfy in my belly with your face pointing up. Every night when I laid down to try to sleep, you would hit me with contraction after contraction after contraction all night long and just around 4AM, when I’d already lost an entire night’s sleep, you would stop. I’d get up for work the next morning exhausted and completely certain that I would be pregnant for the rest of my life. I just wanted to meet you. I just wanted to kiss your soft little forehead and tell you what your name is. I wanted to rub your little fingers and count your little toes and promise that I will always be there for you.

And, after you finally showed up, I did just that. I spent my entire maternity leave with you curled up on my chest breathing in your scent and enjoying your warmth. We watched a lot of movies and shopped on the iPad and watched Food Network. I will never forget how happy and calm I was and how over the moon I was to have you in our lives. We kept each other warm all winter and I enjoyed every single minute of it. I called you Baby Love and Sweetest and Mr. Love and delighted in every single smile and every single feeding and every single nap.

I went back to work when you were 12 weeks old and since then time has flown by faster than I’d like. The days are filled with the hustle and bustle of a family of five with three kids under five. There’s dance class and homework and school programs and grocery shopping and endless amounts of laundry. There’s cooking three different meals for three different demographics at least three times a day and the endless amount of dishes that go along with that. I try to take the time to notice how you eat your food and what you are interested in playing with and I remind myself daily not to wish these days away because I know I will miss you being so little.

You had a busy year. You learned to roll over and sit up and crawl and eat. You flew across the country on vacation and were a superstar baby traveler. In the last week, you have learned how to walk. There is nothing in this world that I love more than your little Frankenstein walk and how you look so determined as you stumble down the hallway. You love markers and shaking your little booty to music. You love the remote control. Not the back-up remote control or the toy remote control but the remote control that actually changes the TV station and leaves your brother and sister yelling ISAAC! constantly.

You love your brother and sister. You love it when they talk to you and play with you. Renee gives you snacks when we are riding in the car and Cameron is constantly hugging and kissing you. You screech with joy when they are running around the house like lunatics because you just can’t wait to chase after them. Auntie Jen and Auntie Annie got you a little chair with your name on it for your birthday, a gift that each of the cousins got on their first birthdays. You were THRILLED to have your own chair and I could tell by your excitement that you knew it was yours. You knew that they wouldn’t be able to tell you get off of theirs anymore. You climbed on that chair and smiled like a ham for much of the week following your birthday party and I swear to you, every time I look at the chair for the next few years, I will smile and remember your joy. It was that good.

You are a mommy’s boy to the core. You cry when I walk out of the room. Lately, you start crying as I am standing up from my chair. On the nights when I take Renee to dance and leave you with dad, you crawl to the door to the garage where you know I went and you scream. You smile at dad but push his arms away if he tries to take you from me. I did this to you. Part of it is because of my insistence on nursing you (and yes, you are still nursing, I am not sure you will ever stop nursing) and part of this is because your dad is not tuned in to the frequency of your cries and unless I throw a pillow at his head, he doesn’t get up in the night to calm you. It’s just you and me baby, from 4AM until the sun comes up, snuggling in our big red glider. You sleep fairly hard until 4AM or so and then you’re up, either because your teeth are hurting you or because you have farts trapped in your belly.

You are the gassiest baby I’ve ever met. I avoided egg and dairy and soy for most of your life trying to make that gas better. I’ve started eating recently and given you cheese and eggs and we have seen little to no change so I don’t think it was ever what I was eating but just the way you were made. You fart as loud as your dad and often, like every few minutes. It is hilarious.

You have six teeth and have made me pay with precious hours of lost sleep for each and every one of them. You got four of them in the last few weeks and you were not pleased about it. You did not let me put you down day or night for weeks. Then, they popped through and you went directly back to sweet little Isaac. Feisty and opinionated, yes, but there is a lot of sweetness mixed in there too.

Your favorite words are NO NO, Mama and BYE! I love how you say BYE to everyone whether they are coming or going. There are a lot of other words mixed in but those are the words that I am certain that you are using purposefully in context.

I call you Zilly as often as I call you Isaac. You will turn your head if I say “Zilly, no, no” and you’ll smile and shout “NO NO” and then you’ll just go right on doing whatever you want. I think you might think that your name is Zilly. I’m sorry for that. But, your dad calls you The Dawg and will go so far as to send me text messages that say “I’ll pick The Dawg up today” so I tell myself that my nickname is better than his? I hope you think so.

In any case, we are both so glad we decided to have a third. You are the perfect caboose to our train, the perfect end to my days as a mommy to a tiny little baby. Here’s to toddlerhood and here’s to the next couple of decades of watching you grow.

I love you, my Zilly, my Isaac, my littlest, my sweet little baby boy,
Mama

if you change nothing, nothing will change

Today is my last day at a job that I've loved (mostly) for the last six and a half years. A job that allowed me to have my babies and to take time off to take care of them with zero guilt. A job that allowed me to work four days a week. A job where I respect the people that I work with and am so thankful to call them my friends.

It was a good run. They paid me well. They were flexible. But, the work was boring and the funding based on the whims of the government so I never really knew from one day to the next how long I'd be able to work here. A change in management in the last year made it not as fun to come to work and on one particularly bad day, I got fed up and sent out exactly one resume. That one resume led to an offer that I could not turn down no matter how bad part of me wanted to.

A new job with stability and a retirement. A new job with a challenging work environment where I'm not working with outdated technology. A new job where I have to dress up and go out for business lunches. I went to lunch with the men in the business suits and I looked down at my lap and noticed the bananas from Isaac's breakfast on my silk shirt and I wondered what this mom was doing sitting at that table. I lay awake at night wondering what I am doing.

I'm stepping in to the unknown. I'm afraid. I'm taking a leap in faith for our future. I'm throwing myself in to a new job where I don't know if they'll care if my baby boy is sick. A job that I'm nervous that I can't remember how to do. I know the reasons I am doing it and I know that they are the right reasons. I have told them that I am a mother to three little people first and foremost and they hired me anyways. I keep telling myself that everything will work out, that everything happens for a reason, that I'll look back on all of this worrying someday and laugh.

But, today, I'm scared. And excited. And confident. And scared.

If you change nothing, nothing will change.

dear cameron

Four years old. It’s here. You’ve asked me almost every day since Renee’s birthday in June if you are four yet and today is the day I can finally respond with “YES, son! You are FOUR.” And no, you’ll never be older than Renee. I know you don’t believe me when I tell you that and continue to be adamant that you will SOMEDAY catch up but it is true. You’ll be younger than her forever.

I suspect you’ll never be smaller than her again though, if that’s what you mean. You outweigh her by six pounds at this point with your broad chest and long legs. You are in the 99^th percentile for height and weight and I buy size six shirts and pajamas and size five pants for my little (big) three year old. I find it incredibly amusing that your dad and I have such a big boy.

You outgrew your egg allergy this year and I did a little dance right there in the allergist’s office. You love sweets with every fiber of your being and the thought of watching your face light up when you get to eat a real Christmas cookie for the first time in your life brings a huge smile to my face. I can’t wait. I can’t wait for you to try real banana bread and real chocolate chip cookies. Your response to your first real pancake was “I LOVE these fluffy pancakes, mom” and I was amazed that you could totally tell the difference between my feeble attempt at eggless pancakes and the real deal. You ate three of them in one sitting to celebrate.

You love boy stuff. You love guns (and ask often why we won’t let you have one), big trucks, tractors and anything that makes a whole lot of noise. We were driving down the road the other day and you said, “Mom, when I get big, I’m going to drive a big, blue truck” and I smiled a big smile because I just know that someday you will pull up into my driveway with a big, blue truck. You are persistent like that. Your dad and I like to talk about how we know that you’ll be the successful one in our family because once you get an idea in your head, you will not stop until you see it realized. I’m not going to lie, it is annoying and frustrating at times right now (no, you may not drive your tractor through the swamp for the ten millionth time today) but I just know someday your persistence will pay off.

You love to be outside. I can’t wait until the baby is old enough to not need to be inside on a schedule because you and I (and Isaac if he is so inclined) are going to have so much fun playing in the garden while dad and Renee sit inside and read books and do puzzles. I let you shovel the sand from your sandbox into the trailer of your tractor and dump it on the sidewalk in the front of the house and I loved every minute of watching you make that huge mess. Your entire body was smiling. Once in a while you’d run over to me and purse your little lips and say “Kiss, Mama, kiss” because you just couldn’t contain your joy and that was the only way you could think of to thank me for letting you do what you want to do for once. It’s hard for me because I want to let you explore your world but your definition of exploring is usually dumping water all over the bathroom floor or dumping every toy bin in the house in the center of playroom with no intention at all of actually playing with any of the toys.

You sleep in our bed every single night. You go to sleep in your own bed but upon that first waking around midnight you thunder down the hallway and crawl in between us. You have to be touching one of us at all times. There was a time when it drove me crazy but you are growing up so fast that I just don’t bother to worry about it anymore. Someday you’ll want to sleep in your own bed, right? RIGHT?

You love to match what dad is wearing and will throw tantrum after tantrum after tantrum if your jeans aren’t the same exact color as dad’s jeans. If dad is wearing a short sleeved shirt you HAVE to be wearing a short sleeved shirt. A few weeks ago I was digging through your clothes and found a pair of black sweat pants that are exactly the same as the black sweat pants that dad wears around the house most days and you will not wear anything else to bed. EVER. When you put them on, you run over to dad and knuckle up and say “comf power.” It is the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

You use big kid words like “antagonize” and “ridiculous” but you still say “hostible” instead of “hospital” and "aminal" instead of "animal" and I am certain I will cry actual tears when you finally get those two words right. I was working on your birthday banner this week and looking at pictures of you from a year ago made me cry so hard. You grew up so much this year.

I will lay awake every night that you are out with your friends during your teen years worrying about just how far you are willing to go to make other people laugh. If I take you swimming by yourself, you are reserved and cautious but when I put you in a group of your peers at the water park, you’ll go straight down that slide head first with no life-jacket if it means the other kids will think you’re cool. This really worries me, son. REALLY worries me.

You desparately wanted a real, grown-up tractor for your birthday and I'm sorry that I didn't have a thousand dollars laying around to buy you one. Grandma and Papa and dad and I bought you a dune buggy instead and watching you open that was one of the single happiest moments of my life. You just couldn't even believe your eyes.

I love you, my son, my c-man, my Cam, my stubborn little boy with the big blue eyes and the great laugh. Happy Birthday,

Mama

election day

Election day is finally here. I tried to stay out of political rants on Facebook and I tried not to judge people that I know hold different beliefs than me. It was exhausting.

I find myself sick to my stomach today and not because of the presidential election. I mean, yes, there is one candidate that I would strongly prefer to the other but at the end of the day, what is going to happen is going to happen. I threw my vote into the pot and it will be counted with all of the other votes in the pot and we, together, will elect someone and we'll live with the consequences. I care and I don't care. I care because I should care and I don't care because I'm completely and utterly tired of it.

There is proposed legislation on the ballot here in Minnesota this year to write an amendment into our constitution to "define marriage between one woman and one man." It is this issue that has me sick to my stomach because tonight, when the final tallying is done, I will be completely disgusted with my state if it passes. I will go to bed feeling like we did humanity a great disservice.

I believe that we'll look back on gay marriage the same way we look back on slavery. Or on how there was a time that women were not allowed to vote. I believe we will someday look back on the issue of gay marriage and wonder how on earth we ever let the church or the government or whomever decide what is the "right" way to live. I believe it is completely preposterous that anyone should have any say in who anyone else loves. I believe it is a gross violation of the civil rights of our gay citizens if it passes.

I had a gay uncle. My best friend in high school was gay. My boss is gay. I've come across many gay people over the course of my life and I have not met a single one that isn't compassionate and kind and genuine. It physically pains me to imagine how they are feeling today, how it must feel to have no control over how you are defined by other people. How it must feel for someone else to be deciding who you can or can not love.

you sunk my battleship

Over the weekend, Cameron was scanning through the closets and storage compartments in our house looking for something to DO! BREAK! ENTERTAIN ME! and he came across the game Battleship.

He drug it out and dumped all of the tiny little pieces on the floor and then left, willing his baby brother to crawl over as fast as he could to hurry up and choke on something. Quick! Something tiny on the floor! I must get it in my mouth immediately!

Seriously, if Isaac lives to be two years old, it will be a miracle. In the last week, in addition to the choking hazards I swipe out of his mouth every minute on the minute, over the weekend I caught him with a full-size scissors one day and a wine opener the next.

You can thank my pain in the ass three year old with monkey-itis for that. The kid doesn't do toys. Only screwdrivers and knives and scissors, thank-you-very-much.

ANYWAYS. Between Isaac's screams because he desparately wanted the tiny pieces to eat and Cam's whining because heaven forbid I actually pay attention to his sister, I managed to explain to Renee how to play Battleship. She was frustrated for a few minutes and then it was like a light bulb went off. And, for the rest of the weekend, all she wanted to do was play Battleship. OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

The kid beat me as many times as I beat her. When Ski got home, both Renee and I went running up to him because we couldn't wait to show him how she could play. I was like DUDE. Our daughter can use like, deductive reasoning, and shit.

MIND-BLOWING.

beauty and the beasts

Not the best pictures but quite frankly, everyone was quite crabby on Halloween. We did it, though, we got the candy and are currently in the midst of fighting about how often we can eat it. I don't love Halloween as a holiday with the hoarding and the over-excitement and the candy. But the kids in costumes are cute. And someday I'll smile about my little Belle, my little fire fighter and my little cow.