beanski

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.

every day should be mother's day

It started out on the right foot, my Mother's Day. And I'm calling it mine affectionately, like I'm petting a little baby kitten that is soft and cuddly. I loved this day so much.

My young son woke me up at 2:15AM having gone to bed at 7:30PM. I ALMOST DIED. He Who Doesn't Sleep actually slept for many hours in a row.

The girl woke up at 5AM and when I realized that He Who Doesn't Sleep was STILL sleeping, I did something that I never do. I brought her into our bed. She looked at me, snuggled in close to my body, smiled sweetly and went back to sleep. FOR TWO MORE HOURS.

Renee, Cameron and Ski brought me to the basement to show me the new plants they bought me for Mother's Day. Renee picked all purple plants which made me laugh because I really don't like the color purple. But today I loved purple because she was so proud of "Mommy's flowers."

Then, He Who Doesn't Sleep? He took a TWO HOUR nap. WHOA.

We went to Max's 2nd Birthday party where Max, Ryan and Renee got to play together and eat cupcakes. I got to see FatJ herself in person for the second time and to meet her husband. It is weird (and cool) to see other bloggers in person after you have read about them on their blogs for multiple years. Renee told me ALL DAY all about how she had a blue cupcake and that Max and Ryan had green cupcakes. FUN.

Then, we went home and the kids actually took naps and I drank a beer while digging in my garden. Did you hear that? I spent 45 minutes ALL ALONE and I drank a beer! While doing something I used to love to do! I played in the garden!

We ordered take-out and everyone went to bed without incident. I came downstairs after putting Renee to sleep, looked at my husband and said "I think God Himself reached down and made it possible for me to have the best Mother's Day of my life."

Amen.

The only real bad part of the day is that I didn't get to see my own Mommy :( I told Ski this afternoon that I think that this is the first time in my ENTIRE life that I haven't seen my mom on Mother's Day. And Mom? I missed you. And I love you. And HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

four hundred and sixteen

When I got pregnant with Renee I was naive enough to think that being a stay-at-home-mom was an option. I had apparently not looked closely at our spending habits and had not considered the expense that providing for another life would have on our pocketbook. I held onto that dream for nine months of pregnancy and for twelve weeks of maternity leave.

Just before I was scheduled to go back to work, Ski and I argued a lot about money. I wanted to stay at home and raise my daughter and he kept telling me that we couldn’t afford it. I didn’t want to hear it. He showed me the numbers. The debt-to-income ratio was not something I had looked at regularly because I hate paying bills and one of our agreements when we entered into wedded bliss was that I would never have to pay another bill again. Ever. I was shocked. Flabbergasted. I just couldn’t believe it.

So, I went back to work and we made a commitment to each other to change it. During the last two years we made a lot of progress. Even while preparing for our second baby we were extremely careful with money. We counted pennies. We clipped coupons. We got rid of the credit card debt. We started a college fund for each of the kids and got life insurance policies. We became parents, in practice and fiscally.

With the changes came more flexibility in our budget and lately at the end of the month there has been extra; money to set aside for a new house, for new toys, for retirement.

When I reported back to work a few weeks ago I had hope that maybe they would let me take a pay cut and reduce my work schedule a bit so that I could have more time with the kids.

I asked them and they said yes.

We might not be able to buy a bigger house just yet and we might have to drive that seven year old car just a bit longer. And I might have to be careful about how many dollars a month I spend on etsy.

But starting tomorrow, eight extra hours a week, four hundred and sixteen hours a year will be spent at home with my babies instead of writing code in my dingy cubicle. I will get to spend four hundred and sixteen extra hours being their mom during a time of the day that isn’t the evening hours when we are all tired and hungry and cranky or the weekend hours when we are running around visiting family and stocking up on diapers and toothpaste and groceries.

Don’t think I’m not counting the time. I will count the hours and my blessings and I’ll kiss their little cheeks at least four hundred and sixteen extra times for good measure.

welcome to motherhood: sleep deprivation and never knowing for sure what is wrong

It was two weeks ago now that my son, who up until that point was sleeping from 7:30PM until 2-3AM most nights, started waking every hour all night long sporadically, crying, arching his back, screaming in pain. We are not talking about your standard just-checking-in-to-make-sure-you-are-listening-at-my-beck-and-call cry, they are cries for help. Even I can barely calm him and 9 times out of 10 the only way to make him go back to sleep is to nurse him. He won't even let his dad touch him, he LOSES HIS SHIT. 

I have suspected reflux since he was born as the only way I could get him to sleep was to swaddle him up so tight that he couldn't move a muscle and put him in his crib with his mattress elevated. His poop has been violent, stringy, watery since birth. When he wakes up it is always with a clearing-his-throat cough followed by a high-pitched scream. A month or so ago he figured out how to get out of the swaddle and he will not tolerate it any longer. And I suspect that his jerking limbs are aggravating his reflux causing him to cry out in pain. I have tried having him sleep in a swing, propped up on our bed, in my vary arms and he still wakes up once an hour crying. I have thrown out all hopes of establishing good sleeping habits in order to just get an hour or two of sleep for myself and I HATE THAT. I hate knowing I'm creating problems that I'm going to have to deal with later. But what choice do I have? We are currently operating on Survival Mode. Barely Surviving Mode.

I took him to the pediatrician with my suspicions, hoping for a prescription for Prevacid or whatever works for reflux and she told me that it could be a food allergy and that I need to start with cutting dairy out of my diet. If that doesn't work, try gluten and then soy and then corn. I am all for the whole "least invasive first" speech she gave me IN THEORY. What bothers me is that this is the same pediatrician that wrote Renee a prescription for the vary same drug because I told her that she was coughing at night and that she barfed a lot. I never filled the prescription for Renee because honestly I just didn't think she needed it. She was happy enough, gaining weight, SLEEPING THROUGH THE BLESSED NIGHT, why drug her? But now my son is in pain and we are all so sleep deprived that we can barely see straight and instead of writing the prescription so that I could just see if it makes any difference she is forcing me to DRAMATICALLY change my eating habits. I somehow need to find the time to plan and cook now THREE different meals three times a day (one for Renee, one for Ski and now one dairy, gluten, soy, corn-free meal for me). I'm supposed to do all of this planning and cooking while working full-fricking-time and trying to have some sort of relationship with my other child and god forbid, MY HUSBAND. To top it off I was planning on starting solid foods and on supplementing Cameron with formula starting at six months because our nursing relationship has been anything but enjoyable and honestly I miss spending time with my daughter. I miss seeing my friends. I want my son to be able to be fed by his father. I have no intention of quitting all together, I just want SOME freedom. OF COURSE now he's allergic to milk so let's throw that whole getting-my-life-back plan out the window.

This whole trying to decode the intricacies of babies is TORTURE. Like, why can't there just be a test that they can run on their poop or on their blood or something that tells us if they are allergic to dairy or if they have reflux? By the time I get everything phased out of my diet to find out if there is a problem there, he'll have outgrown it. And then I'm living in food allergy fear for the rest of my existence having wished away my son's entire babyhood.

Know anything about reflux or food allergies or pediatrians that seem to think that they know more than you about your own kid when you are the one that is watching them and trying to put together the pieces of the puzzle day in a day out? Or how about how to combat sleep deprivation? Life sucks when you can't even eat pizza and get drunk to fool yourself into temporarily thinking that things are going OK.

i have no idea where she gets her temper, umm well...what?

Now, I could easily open up and actually read one of the books that I have purchased on the subject of disciplining toddlers but that wouldn’t be as fun or as easy as asking for advice here. Besides, the more I read, the more I am convinced that the people that write those books live in a dream land. A land where four month old babies sleep through the night and only eat every four hours. A land where (almost) two year olds have the ability to understand and then act accordingly when their mothers threaten: If you don’t quit with the damn screaming right NOW you are NEVER going outside again.

What should I do when she throws herself into hysteria complete with lying on the ground kicking her feet because her brother woke up from his nap and it really isn’t optional that we have to go inside? Like right now. Not in a few minutes, not in two hours when she’s bored with her outside toys, like RIGHT NOW.

Or how about when she demands chicken nuggets for dinner every single night and when I tell her no, that she needs to eat her pasta instead, she starts screaming and whining and refuses to eat another single bite of food off her plate?

What about those times when she comes over and rips toys out of her brother’s hands so fast that he looks completely terrified and starts screaming?

Ditto for when she purposefully kicks him in the head?

Or when she pushes kids that are smaller than her down at daycare and when I try to talk to her about it and explain to her that it isn’t nice, she laughs, and then during each and every car ride home from daycare from then on when I ask her what she did at daycare she says "pushed Kennedy up” in a very proud-of-herself-for-doing-exactly-the-opposite-of-what-I-told-her-to-do manner.

She responded to the concept of time-outs exactly once, now she laughs at me when I sit her in the time-out spot.

Distraction usually works to stop the screaming but good lord, should I really respond to her kicking her brother in the head with a casual “Renee, do you want to read a book?”

Tell me, people, what works? Besides beating her which I would, like, totally do if I could even handle the idea of letting one of them cry for seven seconds without rushing to their rescue. But I can't so I won't.

i think i have finally dialed in on the worst part

I do a lot of complaining about motherhood, about marriage, about pretty much anything. Here and elsewhere, oftentimes to anyone that will listen. 

I bitch and moan about how she throws her food on the floor and how she wouldn’t throw her food on the floor if I wasn’t feeding the baby and her dad wasn’t sitting at the table eating his down dinner, reading his own magazine ignoring her requests for UP DADDY! All done! She knows if she starts throwing her food on the floor he’ll get her cleaned up and out of her chair but her sweet, innocent asking politely requests will go ignored. Cause and effect, it is simple and she gets it, I try to tell her dad. It's too bad he doesn’t get it.

But that’s not the worst part.

I bitch about breastfeeding and about how my son doesn’t sleep through the blessed night and about how he poops out of every single blessed diaper I put on him resulting in mounds and mounds and MOUNDS of stained laundry.

That’s not the worst part either.

I bitch about how the girl threw a tantrum of epic proportions the other day in the driveway at daycare with everyone watching because she wanted to go for a walk right then and there and couldn’t wait the ten second drive until we got her home. I swooped her up and went to wrestle her flailing body in to her car seat when I heard something snap in my back. And it still fricking hurts. No amount of Advil touches the pain. It throbs and aches and I can’t even lift my baby out of his own bed.

SIGH. Nope, not it. It's not the worst part.

The worst part is sending your kid to daycare when you KNOW they’re sick. You know the diarrhea that went on all day yesterday and through half of the night isn’t done. You essentially turn a blind eye and tell yourself that maybe she’ll feel better after she wakes up and gets something in her belly. You send her with diaper rash so bad that she says OWIE! and cries and moans every single time you so much as mention changing her diaper. You send her knowing full well that she’ll come home and it will be worse. You send her because the mom has a bum back and can’t lift her and the dad is already seventy hours negative on vacation time. You send her because you really don’t have a choice.

Yep, for me that’s the worst part about being a mom.

What's the worst part for you?

TFT: finding the right balance

The van was loaded to the gills with swimsuits and packed lunches, two pack n plays and lots and lots of diapers. The diapers I almost forgot in the midst of trying to pack the rest of the paraphernalia needed to spend one night in a hotel with two children under two.

The DVD player was armed with the familiar shows so that when the toddler demanded “more musit” we could quickly and easily comply. Anything to keep her from getting bored, from realizing that most kids her age don’t spend so much time in the car.

There was an extra glass of milk tucked neatly next to me in the case of a melt-down emergency. Because the milk has magic powers and is always successful at getting her to shut up for at least five minutes. And when you’re trapped in a van with two screaming children, sometimes one of them shutting up for five minutes is all you need to retain a shred of your sanity.

The aroma from the clothes soiled with spilled baby poop wafted up from the back, reminding me of the piles and PILES of laundry awaiting me when we finally returned home. The clothes that needed to be soaked and scrubbed and pre-treated because those breast milk poops? They stain. And those outfits? They’re borrowed.

When we’re coming home, having spent the two days prior to the trip packing and writing lists and organizing, the 24 hours we’re there putting out fires and trying to get the kids to just please be quiet and well-behaved, and the two days on the return end playing catch-up, I can’t help but wonder why we do it. I can’t help but wonder if it is worth it.

I bought a new momAgenda and I sighed a heavy sigh when I looked through what is going to be our next six months. I couldn’t help but feel guilty when I realized that at least every other weekend will be spent on the road, our family time spent with the children buckled in to their car seats, mom and dad hoping and praying from the front seat that this trip will go better than the last.

I want my children to know their cousins, their grandparents, their aunts and uncles. I want that. I want to be the kind of aunt that was always there for her nieces’ and nephew’s birthday parties. My sisters are my best friends; surely I want nothing more than to spend as much time as humanly possible with them. And don’t get me started on the grandparents because one of my biggest fears in life is my children not being able to remember their grandparents. We choose to live where we do, at least a hundred miles from any of our relatives and most of our friends and I know that. I take responsibility for that choice and this lifestyle is one of the consequences of that choice.

That is why we spend more weekends on the road than we spend at home; to build those memories, those moments, those relationships between my kids and their cousins, between my kids and their grandparents. And three trips out of four, or at least half of the trips, I come home feeling like all of the organizing and packing and distracting was worth it.

But I have to admit, there are days, especially after a particularly bad car ride followed by two nights where neither child slept all.night.long when I wonder why we do it. I wonder if we are doing our children a disservice by refusing to make a life here, in the town where we live. Everything we have scheduled is stuff I want to do but I can't help but wonder if they could make the choices about what we do this weekend, what would they chose? I wish I could ask them.

How often do you travel? Do you spend holidays at home or on the road? Do you have thoughts on how to find a perfect balance?

redefining myself with the mommy cut

Maybe I needed a little boost. Maybe I needed to feel like something other than someone's mom. Maybe I felt like over the course of the last two and a half years, I have lost the definition of me. Or maybe I just got sick and tired of the ponytail every single minute of my life. I woke up this morning and decided that I was cutting it. And then I ordered $500 worth of new clothes on the internet. And damn it, I feel better. I feel like a giant weight has been lifted. I guess maybe it was the 20 pounds of hair she cut off.

Kim took this picture for our Christmas cards this year. ISH. Not the picture because it is awesome because she rocks at taking pictures. And my husband is handsome and my kids are damn cute. But my hair and everything else about me? ISH.
 
So I cut off my hair hoping that would help with the ISH factor. Here is what I look like today.
  
And speaking of Kim. I love her. She sent me these on my first day back to work. When the delivery person showed up at my desk I said to him, 'Oh, so my husband did feel bad this morning.' And then I opened the card and I smiled because I really should have known it wasn't him. When I told Ski about them he said, 'Damn, I totally should have thought of that. She's making me look bad.'