beanski

so much to do

My emotions seesaw like the waves on an ocean. One day I’m convinced everything is going to be OK and the next I’m laying awake all night long worrying endlessly about things I have no control over.

I’m very unsure of myself. I’m very unsure that I am capable of taking care of this baby. A pretty much useless back has left me helpless and I can’t do anything for myself. There is laundry and toys piled in every single corner of the house, a habit of my husband’s that makes me want to throw things at the wall even when I’m not pregnant and can actually do something about it.

And there has been some of that. I’m not necessarily a nice, happy pregnant person this time around.

It’s hard for me to admit that because I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I’m never doing this again. Come December I’ll never feel what it’s like to have a baby kicking around on the inside again and honestly, those kicks in the wee hours of the morning are the only part of this pregnancy that has been any fun.

Decorating the nursery started out fun but as of now, I have all but given up on doing the things I wanted to do in there all together. It makes me so angry when I walk by his room piled from floor to ceiling with clothes and crap that I hoped to do something with to welcome him into our lives. Money already spent that I may as well have just thrown straight into the garbage. I’m resentful that I haven’t gotten ready for Christmas like I planned to do and that I haven’t planned Cam’s third birthday party. It makes me mad that I haven’t started freezing food. I’m resentful that I never get any time to do the things that I want to do for me.

Between the fantasy football drafts (seriously, does one person really need three fantasy football teams) and making sure the kids get enough fun in over the summer and celebrating our anniversary and visiting family and taking and editing pictures for a whole lot of different people, there just wasn’t time for me. And now, here I am, starting my third trimester, life slowing down to the point where I might actually have the time to do something for myself and now I struggle physically to even get in and out of my car. After eight hours of sitting in my chair at work, I can’t even walk so now even the evenings are useless. I’m capable of lying down on the couch to watch some stupid TV show that I hate or reading book after book after book.

My husband went out of town for four days over Labor Day and I spent the entire month leading up to the trip completely TERRIFIED of how I was going to do it all, the baths, the meals, and the clean-up at the end of the day. I mean, I can’t even physically get the kids up to their rooms for a time-out. To my surprise, my kids were very helpful and supportive and the weekend at home alone with them was way easier than the week following the trip has been. We’re at each other’s throats, all of us. Renee started preschool full-time and isn’t pleased about it. Ski is tired from his trip. Cam is Cam. I’m hurting and have totally unrealistic work deadlines looming. Deadlines that are impossible to meet when I’m constantly running to the clinic for a shot of progesterone that makes me even more emotional than I already am or to the chiropractor for an adjustment that is costing me thousands of dollars and doing basically no good all. Or to the pediatrician for well child visits and shots that my kids are already so far behind on and loading her up with five vaccinations at once because I don’t have time to bring her back and she ends up sick with a fever for days on end. We all need to get to the dentist. I need to get clothes/boots/hats/mittens/Halloween costumes/ etc for fall and winter. I need to spend some time working with Cameron on the potty. The baby has basically no where to even sleep. I’m exhausted. I just can’t keep up with all of it. I’m paralyzed with the enormity of just how much there is to do that I almost can’t do anything at all.

 I look outside at the most perfect weather I could possibly dream of and it makes me sad that I have absolutely no desire to go out and enjoy it. I have tomatoes in my garden that look red and delicious but I can’t physically get myself to walk out there and pick them. What I really want to do is just curl up in my bed and sleep until Christmas. I don’t want to talk to anyone; I don’t want to do anything except mope around.

I tell myself over and over and over again to let it go. I tell myself that it isn’t that big of a deal. I look through pictures on my phone of Cameron a year ago with his curly little mullet and his chubby baby thighs and I know that it is all going to be over before I even know. My head knows it. Unfortunately, I just can’t seem to get the rest of me to believe it.

I thought maybe writing it down and admitting defeat, accepting that I can’t do it all would make me feel better. I think it made me feel worse.

TFT: overbooked

This article from the New York Times was an interesting read for me and something my husband and I talk about regularly. What are we doing to our kids by overbooking their lives? In an effort to expose them to every opportunity imaginable, are we taking away something from the family, from the imagination that spawns from being at home with nothing to do but make up imaginary games. Do I really want to pack up the kids and take them somewhere every time they get crabby and bored? It's an overwhelming feeling shoved in your face the minute you see two lines or the word PREGNANT on a pee stick.

Don't you dare have caffeine, your baby will never develop properly.

If you don't give birth naturally, you'll ruin your baby's life forever.

If you don't nurse for four years, your child will be sick every day and will have no chance of getting into college.

Your kids watch TV? Blasphemy! Plan art projects for them to work on instead. It's easy.

What do you mean you don't get a babysitter and have date night with your husband at least twice a month? Don't you know you're ruining your marriage?

While you're at it, work two jobs, make sure they have properly fitting shoes so they don't ruin their feet for the rest of their lives, cook healthy meals and make sure you are reading books with them for at least an hour a day.

If you want your girl to be a ballerina or your boy to have a chance at playing hockey or baseball or soccer, you better start it by the time they are three. Sign up for the traveling teams that cost an arm and a leg and force you to travel to games every weekend of your life just to make sure he has the best chance of being the best.

We want our kids to be successful people, yes. But we also want them to be happy. I often wonder when I'm browsing through Facebook in the morning if we, or our kids, would be happy rushing from dance recital to ice show or if any of us would even get anything out of a vacation across the country before the age of five. I mean, maybe Disney World would be fun but something tells me that the lines and the heat and the three kids under five and the the insane amount of money might make it not so fun in the end. I can't help but see people running around from thing to thing checking off items on the proverbial checklist if those people are actually happy or if they just think they have to make sure to squeeze everything in to make sure they are adequately living their lives. I wonder if they really never feed their kids even the nitrate free hotdogs.

And, after I get off my soapbox and rationalize my own self preservation, I wonder if maybe I'm just too lazy to be bothered with shuttling her back and forth to ballet twice a week after watching her be totally ambivalent about the concept in the first place and I wonder if I'm depriving her of opportunities to be good at something using the excuse that I just want her to enjoy being a kid.

Thoughts?

how to talk to little girls

As part of my effort to post more on this blog as well as comment on other blogs I thought I'd share this today. It is something that I struggle with as a mom to a four year old girl.  Go read this article if you're so inclined as it is what got me thinking today.

I'm guilty of telling my daughter how beautiful she is and it's not because I think that's all that matters about her. Her sweetness and kindness and curiosity are way higher on my list of things that I love about her. I am not a girly girl. When there are bugs that need to be taken care of in our house, the kids call for mom. I dress up once in a while and I like to buy decent clothes that actually fit me when I can, sure.  But there are days when I leave the house in yoga pants with no make-up and personally, for me, I don't see anything wrong with that. It is my life to live, not my job to look good for everyone else while living it. If I feel happy and content in my non made up skin (and my yoga pants), well then I'm going to own it. My daughter doesn't see me putting on make-up ever as I generally put in on after I get to work. As far as women go, I spend VERY little time on myself (we're talking a five minute shower and five minutes to put clothes on my body). 

Regardless of this, she still likes girly things and princesses and nail polish and all of that. Her dad and I do spend a lot of time building Legos with her and doing art projects rather than only playing with her dollhouse or having a beauty salon all day every day. When she asks me why they don't make more pink Lego sets, I get angry with the way our society trains little girls that they have to love tutus and lip gloss instead of toys like Legos. They can't like pink and still like Legos apparently. I find it annoying that 90% of the books marketed to little girls are about princesses and make-up and being pretty. And yes, there are exceptions to every statement I've made here. I could list at least a dozen girl-centric books where the main character is actually a bright, smart, funny girl. Those are the books I read to her.

BUT. There's always a but. 

At the same time, I want her to know, I want her to truly believe, that she IS beautiful. I tell her regularly and it is not because I think that's the only part of her that matters, I tell her because when someone criticizes how she looks or what she wears, I want her to remember that her mom thinks she's the prettiest thing on planet earth and I want her to shrug them off and move on with her life.

Am I, at the same, supporting and encouraging her predisposition to insecurity, vanity, etc. that often goes along with being a woman?

What's your take? Do you instinctively compliment little girls' looks, too? What else do you talk about with little girls? Does it matter?

i need to get a few things off my chest

Do you ever have one of those days when you feel like you are the worst mother on planet earth?

You know, one of those days where you wake up at 2AM with your daughter in your bed and your husband snoring so loud you want to smother him with his pillow and you can't sleep so you grab your blankie and pillow and go crawl in your daughter's bed only to wake up to your son screaming bloody murder because you're not sleeping where you're supposed to be sleeping and after wanting to poke your eyeballs out with a pen, you head for the shower in attempt to restart your morning by taking the five extra minutes to shave the three inches of hair off your legs only to be interrupted by your daughter SCREAMING from the other room because she had a bad dream and doesn’t want to go to school today.

You race out of the shower, throw your dirty pajamas back on and carry your almost forty pound, almost four year old down the stairs because she’s crying and acting like a baby and you sit down with her on the couch long enough to get her to stop whining and crying about wanting to stay home from school (thank-you Little Einsteins) and then your son starts crying and screaming because he wants the Fresh Beat Band instead and you distract with him with taking him in the playroom to play with cars and while you’re in there you pick up the 4,000 legos scattered all over the floor that have been sitting there for five days because you’re too tired and lazy at the end of the day to give a shit about the mess that you all live in.

For two minutes the children are quiet so you pour yourself a bowl of cereal and sit down at the counter only to look over see Renee’s school flyer on the counter that haven’t looked at it in a while so you pick up and start reading and at the end of the first paragraph you realize that she needs a costume that represents the letter S for her Chicka Chicka Boom Boom play by the end of the day TODAY. You get instantly annoyed at your forgetfulness and decide you’ll have to plead for more time from her teachers and you go upstairs to get dressed and can’t find a single thing to wear in the mountain of laundry that is clean (you think) but hasn’t been put away in God knows how long and so you just throw something on and don’t bother to put make-up on or give a rip about how you look and you go back downstairs to try to coerce the children to get dressed but your kids think it’s really funny to lay on the floor like limp noodles and pretend they are babies while you try to put their clothes on. You finally get her in her swim suit for Swim and Gym and him in the right pair of shoes (he’s very particular about shoes) and you get up to take them out to the car and realize that you forgot to pack your daughter’s lunch for school. You use a few not-so-nice words under your breath, throw some cucumbers and cantaloupe and a bagel in her lunch box and tell yourself that it’s fine because she doesn’t actually eat anything anyways and then you head out the door to get in your car to go to work and you can’t find your ever-loving car keys. You wander through the house cursing your forgetfulness, telling yourself that you are the worst mother on planet earth; snap at your husband who is trying to help you find the keys you lost in the first place and then you finally just accept defeat, take his extra set of keys and accept his explanation that we can find the keys after work.

You storm out to your car, forget to give your kids a kiss and a “have a great day, I love you” and you sit down in the driver’s seat of your car holding back tears while your cell phone is ringing and you can’t find it and you look down and guess what? The effing keys were sitting right in there in the ignition the whole time.

Holy hell. How am I going to do this for the next 16 years? And more importantly, does anyone out there that in the off chance is still reading this blog I never post on anymore have a really good idea for a costume to represent the letter S that I can throw together on my lunch break? The lunch break I don’t actually get because I have this irrational need to skip my lunch in order to spend an extra hour with my children after school, an hour that is usually spent listening to them argue about which way to drive home or whether to play in the front yard or the back yard. The answer, in case you are wondering, is that they just want to play wherever the other one isn’t which pretty much requires mom to be in two places at the same time. That’s totally easy for moms, you know. Like, moms can do anything and everything on the whim of one of the short people dictating every single minute of their life.

I feel better. I needed that.

to children, from mrs. claus

I've officially decided I'm putting "From: Mrs. Claus" on all of the presents that magically show up under the Christmas tree on Christmas morning. I mean, I guarantee Santa isn't the one doing the shopping and the wrapping and the baking and the decorating and the Advent calendar-ing. I bet he isn't making and addressing Christmas cards either. I bet he doesn't even do a load of laundry once in a while.

So tell me, the fat man rolls down the chimney in the middle of the night one night a year, eats a few cookies, takes a few gulps of milk, dumps some presents that were already made and decorated and labeled courtesy of his lovely and very tired wife and he gets to put his name on them? Why is Santa a man anyways?

I'm beginning to understand why my mother-in-law has always signed some of her presents from Mrs. Claus. I'm signing all of mine from Mrs. Claus.

once-a-month cooking

One of the hardest things for me to juggle on a daily basis is working (almost) full-time and getting reasonably healthy meals on the table for the kids and for us. I get stuck in ruts. Ski and I like spicy, authentic food and the kids don't. Cam is willing to try almost anything so I've got that going for me but Renee is a VERY picky eater. Like, she cried last night when I gave her a bowl of spaghetti soup. I made her try a bite and she liked it (or so she said) but she didn't eat anymore of it. Entire nights go by that she doesn't eat anything except broccoli and an apple.

I used to LOVE to cook. I would spend hours pouring over The Food Network website, have no fewer than 100 cookbooks, I love to try new things. What I don't like is trying to get it prepped and done in 15 minutes with two kids climbing my legs or pushing chairs over to the hot stove. And don't get me started on having to clean it all up during the only 30 minutes I get to myself in a day. I have learned to absolutely DESPISE dinner-time. Not only is it the witching hour but the days are getting shorter and cooking takes away from the time I want to be spending with the kids after not seeing them all day.

I have tried those freeze-a-meal places and they just aren't the type of food I'm interested in eating. Easy? Yes. Delicious? No. Healthy? It's a stretch. I read this post this morning and I think I'm going to try this approach. They say kids have to try things seven times before they like it so I think serving the same thing four weeks in a row wouldn't be that bad as long as it is something that Ski and I actually like to eat.

Or better yet, is there anyone out there that is local or willing to travel that would be interested in doing this with me and possibly trading meals? I'd even host a cooking party at my house where we can spend a day putting together a bunch of meals to freeze. There may even be wine involved. We could control the ingredients and the salt and the menu. And as a bonus, I would guess we would save a lot of money in the process!

urge

I have this overhwhelming urge to change something. Buy something big. Change jobs. Start a business. Book an expensive vacation.

I have had a hard time putting my finger on just what I'm looking for or what I feel like I'm missing.

It is just stress, I think, but it is suffocating. The work deadlines that I have been working towards for three years are looming and I have a lot of work left to do. That's fine and everything, I do know how to work hard or at least I used to, it's just that I don't really care if it gets done on time. And shouldn't I care?

The kids are getting bigger and I guess I magically expected things to get so much easier once we got out of the baby stage. I didn't account for the three-year-old phase. The phase where she talks back about EVERYTHING. About how she takes all of her frustrations out on me on her brother and her dad. Gone is my little snuggly girl wanting mommy time and in her place is this bossy little being who doesn't do anything she doesn't feel like doing. Like, she WILL NOT nap anymore but then turns into a raging lunatic around 4PM because guess what? SHE'S FRICKING TIRED. She doesn't believe me and insists that she's "not tired" because she turned three and now she knows everything and I know nothing.

Apparently.

I spent a weekend on Rainy Lake for the first time in a few years where I actually got to take the time to feel my hair floating in the water. I spent time sitting on my parent's boat drinking white wine with my mom and talking to my dad about Twins baseball. I want more. More lake time. More mom and dad time. More husband time.

So, when we got home, I bit the bullet and I hired a babysitter. I spent a night on the beach with my husband and my long lost friends and it was awesome and then we got stuck by barges going under the lift-bridge coming home and I LOST IT because I didn't want to be late getting home to the first babysitter I've ever hired.

It doesn't matter how many babysitters I hire or how many weekends I spend on the boat or how many beach vacations I spend hours planning in my head. At the end of my little mental break, I'm still The Mom. The pressure, the worry, the responsibility, it never goes away.

There is always someone in need of new shoes or a trip to the pediatrician for the well-baby visit that isn't covered by our crappy health insurance. There is always swimming classes and ballet classes that I never actually register the kids for because I forget or don't have time but then I spend so much time feeling guilty that they aren't getting those experiences that I should have just taken them to class in the first place. There is another week's worth of dinner to plan and another 14 baskets of laundry to put away.

Most days I can handle it. I do my job and I kiss my children and I thank my lucky stars that I have them and that I am married to a really kind man.

And some days I just want out. I want to quit my job, sell the kids on ebay, and run for the mountains.

Today, I read this post and for long enough for me to write this post I felt it was OK for me to complain. She must have broken in and stole those thoughts from my own head. I know someday Ski and I will have all the time in the world and twenty bucks says that I spend most of it sitting around missing my babies.

a new decade

2009 wasn’t that great of a year for me. I feel guilty the instant that statement comes out of my mouth because these are, or are supposed to be, the best years of my life.

I know that. I tell myself that often.

I am thankful that we are alive and that we are all healthy and I know that there are people that are not. I’m glad that we have a roof over our heads and I’m glad that I have two perfect little babies to snuggle up to when I need a hug and a husband that is the true definition of patient. I know that I have more than a lot of other people.

Some days I tell myself these things and I feel better.

Some days I tell myself these things and I feel even worse.

Like, I am even failing at trying to tell myself to be happy.

I started 2009 curled up in a ball on the floor of my son’s nursery crippled with a 102 degree fever and a violently upset stomach. I couldn’t will myself to walk back to bed after nursing him to sleep because I couldn’t bear the thought of getting back out of bed when he inevitably woke back up screaming. I didn’t wish a single person Happy New Year and no one wished me one.

Six days after that, I turned 29, spent the day changing at least 30 nasty diapers, and then drove myself to the grocery store after the kids went to bed and bought myself a piece of chocolate cake. I choked down tears and cake and I went to bed alone.

Those two experiences pretty much sum up the entire year for me. There were bright spots to be sure but overall, it was hard and lonely. It was full of trying to live up to my own expectations and oftentimes feeling like I am letting myself and my family down. When I do take the time to look in the mirror, I see a lot more wrinkles and a lot of extra, unwanted pounds than I care to see.

I love my kids more than anything in the world and I’m not sure I even need to say it because it should be obvious but if I had to pick one thing to do for the rest of eternity, I would want to be a mom.

I would want to be their mom.

It’s just, I don’t know. There isn’t a lot left of the old me and I’m still getting to know and learning to love this new me. I’m two and a half years into this mom gig and I’m still trying to figure out where my needs fit in the needs pie chart. I'm learning to admit that it isn't wrong of me to expect a spot for me on that chart.

I’m hopeful that this will be the year that I figure it out. That this will be the year that I quit feeling guilty for wanting more or for having too much or for not being better at seeing the cup as half full instead of half empty. Maybe this year I'll quit wishing for my old size two self and accept that the size eight me isn’t that bad. Or better yet, I'll make the time to get the size two me back.

I can’t help but feel a bit of hope about starting a new year. I can’t help but feel hopeful that this year will be the year that I get it all together. That this will be the year that I will live life for what is rather than for what I thought it would be.

In a few days I’ll leave my twenties behind forever. The new decade will start and my thirties will start and I'm looking forward to the new beginning.

I’m looking forward to reconnecting with old friends and to meeting new friends.

I’m looking forward to watching my girl spread her wings a bit and I’m looking forward to getting to know the boy that my baby is growing into before my very tired eyes.

I’m looking forward to some time with my husband that isn’t spent negotiating who is going to stay home with which sick kid and who gets to put who to bed tonight.

I never thought I’d say it but I think I’m looking forward to my thirties.

not exactly what i had in mind

When I found out I was pregnant the first time I focused my daydreams on newborn smiles and adorable little pink pajamas and that smell of fresh Pampers. I knew that my baby, my experience, would be perfect. I planned on being the mom that didn't let a little infant cramp her style, figured I have friends and career and a house in the suburbs. 

I didn't exactly envision a baby screaming for hours on end every.single.day. I didn't see the sleepless nights or the pre-term labor or the stress involved with picking out piece after piece of baby paraphernalia in a age where paranoia runs rampant. I didn't understand the importance of a schedule or how fucking bad it sucks to be the mom on the days when you have no other choice than to throw it.

When I decided that nursing was the only thing for me I didn't plan on being the only person with the ability to soothe her. Or on my nipples bleeding every day for five consecutive months. 

I didn't plan on teething and fevers and colds and days and days and DAYS of poopy diaper after pooping fricking diaper.

I didn't plan on never seeing my friends, of really not having any friends. I didn't imagine my career would cease to matter to me all together.

When I found out I was pregnant for the second time I couldn't wait to tell my daughter about her sibling. I saw friendship and bubbles and them racing around the house in hysterics. I couldn't imagine giving her any greater gift than giving her a brother.

What I didn't see this time was the fact that she would want nothing to do with him. I didn't envision him crawling over to her with a look of absolute joy on his face only to have her throw her hand up his face, scream a pissed off scream and shout "I don't like Cammon. Go away Cammon." Or worse yet, I never once planned on her kicking him in the head five times a day.

But here we are, my daydreams, my Johnson and Johnson baby commercial dreams shattered by reality.

Today I have had to tell myself a thousand times that there are so many other good things that I didn't see coming. Things I couldn't plan for until I saw the babies that I carried around in my womb for nine months. It's how hard they can make you laugh over the dumbest stuff. How far your heart can grow from watching them learn a new thing. How amazing it is when they start remembering things, experiences, or when they'll FINALLY sit on your lap long enough to read a book.

I didn't understand the pride when I made my plans. But that pride is what keeps me going, what gets me through days like this.

Today was hard. Today I spent a lot of the day feeling sad for my daughter who doesn't want her brother around. I felt a LOT of sadness for my son who wants nothing more than to be the apple of his sister's eye. I felt helpless, like it doesn't matter how much I want her to love him, or how bad I want him to understand why she's behaving the way she's behaving, that I have no control.

Then I really started to think about it. I haven't had control in a very long time.

And today I'm OK with that.

remembering what i do have

There is this girl that I work with that just had a baby like two weeks ago. She brought the baby in today. She looked EXHAUSTED and when he cried that tiny little newborn cry, she went into the Conference Room to feed him.

Honestly, do their cries really change THAT much in six short long months? Don't I have a newborn at home? Where did he go? Because my newborn's cries sound NOTHING like that.

For a split second I actually thought "I HAVE to have one more baby, isn't that cry just so precious?"

And then I punched myself in my own face.

The End.

Just kidding. Moving along...

As she was leaving the Conference Room, I said "He was hungry, huh?" and she sighed and said "He's always hungry."

I wanted to hug this girl that I don't know beyond a casual "How are you feeling?" in the hallway. I wanted to hug her and promise her that it will get better. I wanted to tell her all about how fast it goes and how one day she'll wake up and he'll be turning two and she'll be all like WHO STOLE MY BABY? I wanted to tell her that someday, maybe like six months from now, she'll hear the cry of someone else's newborn and her heart will sink with the realization that her own baby isn't a newborn anymore.

But I didn't say any of it because she's too tired and sore and preoccupied to listen to my droning anyways and she doesn't want to hear it.

I was reminded just how incredibly lucky I am.

Because this girl? She's all alone. And she has no car to use to take her baby to the doctor. She rode downtown with him in a baby carrier on the city bus. A two week old on the city bus. Can you imagine? I was afraid to take my kids to Target when they were two weeks old, in a CAR SEAT. As I watched her put the baby back into the carrier to walk him to the clinic that I know is more than ten blocks away, carrying a diaper bag, purse and a baby, an actual tear trickled down my face.

I complain a lot about everything I don't have. I complain that my son isn't the greatest sleeper and that I wish my mom lived closer. I complain that I am tired and alone and overworked.

But I have two cars. And a house. And a wonderful, helpful, incredibly patient husband.

And I need to start remembering what I do have more often.