Summer is Coming…

Listen. I know, Flashing Cursor. I realize I’ve been MIA from this blog for months. I am aware I used to take great pleasure in writing about all the ways my children outsmart me on a daily basis. All the ways they made me feel so loved and then so completely useless and then wait, nope, there’s the love again~ often in one breath. After briefly considering canceling my hosting when it came up for renewal a month ago, I decided I would give it another year and see what I had left in me for this space. I really don’t know. But for now, I am here and I promise not to make any promises about how often I’ll check in, because that seems to just guarantee I’ll never write again.

So this is what I can tell you now… In less than 2 hours, my two giant children will join the household for the summer. This is maybe a little scary and maybe a little awesome. I like having all my chicks with me for the most part. I love lazy days, jammies til noon, lunch when…ever, beach and park trips, art supplies strewn about the table and intricate figurine set-ups taking over my gardens. It makes me smile, it makes me sigh. It makes me miss being a kid.

Like all parents, I don’t enjoy the whining, tattling or the incessant arguing but unfortunately, it comes with the territory of multiple kids. We’ll get through, I know, but I definitely don’t have to be excited about it. Mostly I am nervous about Rowan’s insane dance schedule over the next two weeks. She has summer dance and nationals practice that leaves her at the studio from 10:45- 5:30 or later most nights. Then I have to kiss my little guy’s sweet cheeks enough to last me 9 whole days without him while we’re in Florida. {Clearly I did NOT think this through. I’m already panicking and searching for plane tickets for him, shhhhh don’t tell Bill. He’ll think it’s funny when Ez shows up in my carry-on, right?} The longest I’ve been away from Ezra is overnight. I’m legit freaking out right now.

But! If we can make it through June, and the first 4 days of July, we’ll be in the clear to laze around and enjoy Summer at our new house. It seems amazing to me that I didn’t write about such a huge life change when I have multiple {really, like DOZENS} of posts devoted to poop on this blog. I wish I could detail the simultaneously dawn-out saga/whirlwind this whole process has been, but the most important thing to know is that we are all so very, extremely happy to be in a beautiful new home that is just the perfect fit for us. Hopefully more on that to come {if I can get my shit together, so again, no promises}.

For now, I will leave you with these two…

Who completely OWNED 2nd grade and Kindergarten, with nary a yellow or red light between the two for an ENTIRE year, like WHOA. So proud of them!

And these two, who melt my heart, pretty much on a daily basis…

I think lucky is the word I’m looking for. Yep.

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Sixteen Months

 

So this month was a fun one! Ezra proved adorable, funny, sweet, smart and crazy-entertaining almost all the way through. That is, until he got the plague and spent a week and a half looking like he walked straight off The Walking Dead set. Only a few weeks after getting rid of a miserable double ear infection, the poor budders got another double ear infection and nasty eye infection, which caused both his eyes to get reddish/purplish rings around them while secreting neon green goo.

I’ll just leave you with that visual for a while…Can you see it? Nope, the eye boogers you’re imagining aren’t green enough. Think 1985 then amp it up by 1000. They were impressively green. Now imagine getting hit in the face with a 2×4, because that is what his eyes looked like. And don’t forget the two lines of perpetually seeping snot coming from his nose {directly into his mouth EEEEWWWWWAAAAHHHHHH} and the raspy breath with the gunky cough. Paired with an unsteady toddler walk, and a vocabulary that is dominated mainly by grunts and screeches, I was 90% convinced there was a tiny zombie lurking around here. Good thing toddlers are too picky to eat brains. They would have to be banana flavored brains or possibly strawberry-apple but only if it was Tuesday.

Anyway, after all that fantastic imagery which has hopefully frightened you from ever, ever procreating, he’s better finally so, yay!

Here is what Ez did this month:

Besides turning into the undead, he also turned into a ham. Seriously, such a ham sandwich. Everything he does, he does with a big cheese-ball grin, waiting to see your reaction and it better be good otherwise he’ll keep at it until it is.

Tantrums. We are having them, people. He goes all wet noodle and flops around on the floor until he sees that I’m doing the Official Parent Ignore Tactic, where I hold my head up high and away from him with a face that, while attempting to look stern and remain uninterested and unemotional, is really holding it together just enough not to let the smile crack through. This worked pretty well for a while. He would see he wasn’t getting any attention and give up. Unfortunately toddlers are always looking for new ways to be asshats, so now he has started to get up from ignored tantrums, come over to me and swat me on the leg to get my attention. Then he gingerly gets back down into tantrum position and resumes his floppy fish impression, only now he’s just landed his butt on the Stair of Shame and nobody wins.

Says “jump jump jump” happily as he jumps on the bed or the trampoline.

Climbs. The coffee table. The chairs. The toilet. The big table. The stools. The toy boxes. The play table. If I try to stop him he tries harder. He does not give up until he has hoisted his giant diapered butt onto an object, stood up, grinned at you and claimed it as his own. I mostly let him just do it to get it out of his system because once he’s conquered something he tends to leave it alone unless there’s something highly desirable at the top, like the cats’ water dishes that he can splash in, then dump onto all my prized literature books from college. I’m >FROWNY EMOTICONING< at you, baby.

Loves:

Shoes. We somehow lost his shoes sometime mid-December and his boots, I can only surmise, must have sharp needles lining the insides, because he refuses to put any pressure on his feet to stand when they are forcibly fitted on his person. This meant that he spent 2 straight months in Hanna Anderssen sock/slipper things which are lovely but not really Minnesota weather proof so I was finally shamed enough to head to Target where I was greeted with 9,768 styles of adorable girls’ shoe styles and 5 versions for boys that are either plastered in superheroes or are a boring brown/blue/black. THIS IS BULLSHIT. Boys like shoes too, assholes. {Well, at least their moms do.} I did end up finding a couple of okay pairs hidden on a clearance end-cap, one of which was the size up in the pair he lost, but still. I shouldn’t have to keep buying the same shoe because all the other options suck, Target. I love you, but I’m really mad at you right now which still won’t stop me from dropping another $150 on things I “need” next time I go in to get toilet paper.

Good Lord, What was I even talking about before I got mad at Target? OH! Shoes. SO now that Ezzer finally has shoes again he loves to walk on hard surfaces so he can hear his feet make cool noises. He carefully lifts his knee up high and then drops his foot with a big smile when he hears the tap. It’s all kinds of adorable to witness, trust me.

Dance, which means pumping his fists up and down and then throwing himself onto the floor and writhing around. He gets all his moves from Bill, BTW.

Books. We read a ton every day.

My phone. You and Suri are super tight these days. You babble at her incessantly and she directs you to the 5 closest restaurants in our area. I think it might be true love.

Turkey. Every time we give you a bite you say “turrrKEY!” and gobble it up; pun 100 percent intended.

Rowan. You and your sister have been super close this month. She adores playing with you and making you laugh. Every morning after nursing I say “let’s go get Rowan and Keaton up!” You haul ass up the stairs ahead of me and start banging on the door. {Thankfully doorknobs still mystify you, I’m sure you’ll have them figured out by 18 months though because my life is nothing if not HILARIOUS already}.  I open it up and after you run over to turn the fan off {whitenoise} you proceed to climb up on your sister’s bed and shove your sweet little face between her nose and the book she has it stuffed into. Rowan has never liked being interrupted, she will forever be my trouble-with-transitions kid, but you are the exception. She just laughs and puts her arms around you, pulling you in for a morning hug.

Says:

Jump, turkey, please, thank you, cracker, cookie, hello, stop, drop, uh-oh, ouch, hot, da-bu {pretzel}, fish, duck, quack, moo, meow, kitty, book, baa, woof, choo-choo, sock, shoe, hat, juice, tub, ear, eye, nose and a bunch of others that I can’t think of right now. He really has had a language explosion, but 85% of these words are only discernible to Bill, the kids and I. He gets the inflection perfect but the annunciation is all off so it’s really near impossible to understand him if you’re not us. Still, this is huge. Such a massive improvement from where we were a month ago. His language skills have been so puzzling to us because he started out just like Rowan and Keaton. He was an early babbler, and was able to make all the consonant and vowel sounds he needed to form words. He had amazing receptive language skills and even started regularly mimicking a few words by 8 months like ‘drop’, ‘stop’ ‘meow’ and ‘dada’. Then he just stopped altogether and wouldn’t even try to say anything other than MEOW for 6 months so it made me really nervous. I’m so relieved he’s figured things out because communication has gotten much easier but really? He still does not say mama intentionally, so none of this counts. Nice try, baby.

The winter days are getting so long. The weather this year is trying to kill all of us what with the daily highs never even reaching the teens and the snowsnowsnow. That paired with the fact that you’ve been so sick a majority of the last 2 months means we’ve been stuck inside since December. I was really hoping spring would take pity on us and give us a pre-show by way of a thaw out but nope, here we are nearly to March and the windchill was almost 40 below this morning. I complain because wow, this is ridiculous, but really there is no one else I’d rather be stuck inside with for months on end. Yes, you can be a little dangerous {no more sneaking into the dishwasher and pulling out knives!!} and yes, you can be a little feisty, but oh boy are you sweet, and snuggly and there has not been a day that’s gone by where I haven’t said, “Oh, baby. I just love you.” Because I really, really do.

 

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Lucky 13

Before I dive into Ezra’s monthly blah blah I just want to describe to you the moment I just had… My blood started pumping so hard it filled my head, my palms became clammy and my hands started shaking. My chest went tight and I felt like I could feel every single hair on my entire body as I tried to catch my breath. Slowly I attempted to regulate my breathing as I clutched my pounding head in my hands, the only thought swirling around in there… my god. I’m going to have a highly mobile, non-verbal 13 month old and a Christmas tree in my house at the same time for 5 weeks.

AND THEN I DIED.

Which I’m actually quite thankful for because death is a far easier thing to deal with than a baby, that I just know will figure out how to scale the gate I will inevitably have to put up, whose main goal in life will be to take that tree OUT. He will maim the branches. Pull off the needles and eat them. He will get too close, poke his eye and then cry like it was the tree’s fault. Then he will get mad and try to hit the tree but when that won’t prove satisfying he will try to push it and when he realizes the branches just spring back, only to hit him in the face again, he will charge that sucker in a fit of horrifying toddler rage and knock it over. Or he might just look at it suspiciously, like what’s this giant pokey green thing doing in my house and then largely ignore it. I’m betting on option one though and wow, I am feeling all of the fear now, just ALL OF IT.

Alright, time to reanimate so I can throw some bullet points up about mini-budders month of twelve, stepping away from the inviting, warm, glowing orb of light in 3…2…1…

This month in Ezra!

* The biggest change for our guy was the room swap which I think he’s adjusting to fairly well. Unfortunately we did this at sort of a crappy time for him developmentally as he was definitely starting a sleep regression, getting ready to drop a nap and cutting his molars. It was either now or after Christmas though and I really just wanted to get the whole mess out of the way before the holidays. He’s had a few rough nights but it hasn’t seemed to impact the older two at all and most times the wake-ups can be resolved with a simple re-corking of the nuk.

*naps. Ah, naps, BANE of my existence. Since he was nine months old, Ezra has been insistent on napping right at 9:30am after a 6:15 wake up. Since he is so spotty on whether he’ll then follow that early morning nap with a late afternoon nap, I have been trying since September to push back the morning nap. This would give him a more balanced spread of awake time~ that 7 hour stretch of no nap is very rough on all of us. He would NOT have it though. If I tried to push the nap back any more than 20 minutes he would lose his ever-loving mind, and then when he would fall asleep he’d only go down for 45 minutes instead of his regular 2-2.5 hour rest and then still refuse the afternoon nap. Forty-five minutes of sleep during a 13 hour stretch for an infant is not a sustainable schedule. Of course now this week, that of the holiday in which I need him to sleep in the morning otherwise wreak havoc all over our Thanksgiving plans, is the time he chooses to skip the morning nap in favor of reaching over and banging the wood blinds against the window frame and giggling maniacally for 40 minutes until I finally give up and pull him out. He of course went down smoothly at 12:30pm, exactly the time we need to be out of the house and on our way to a day of family stuffs. GAH, this is stressing me out.

* Teeth! After getting 8 teeth between 6.5 and 9 months we had a blessed break until last weekend. He came home from his grandparents’ house with a fever of about 100 and a runny nose which sent me into a panic because of the upcoming holiday and the fact that he had just gotten over a stupid cold that lasted over two weeks. He woke up a number of times that night, needing tylenol, a cuddle and a nuk but by the morning the fever had vanished and in its place I felt the corner of a branny-new molar poking through. UGHUGHUGHUGHUGH. As you may recall, molars are my least favorite things about toddlers. It’s gonna be a fun few months.

{*This photo series brought to you by dumdums, aka: the only way to get a baby to sit still for more than three seconds.}

* Food. Everything gives him a damn rash around his lips. EVERYTHAAAAAANG. We have to put petroleum jelly around his mouth before and after every meal and even then he still gets red and irritated. Before nap and bed times he also gets either a prescription strength hydrocortisone or a combo of lotrimin, neosporin and regular hydrocortisone, which may lessen the redness and irritation briefly but it certainly hasn’t helped to heal it.

We can’t figure out one thing as the cause. He reacts to carrots, citrus and tomato, it definitely gets worse when he is teething and really really bad when he has any dairy. Do you know what toddlers live off of? Whole milk. That makes this whole “keeping the kid alive thing” a little trickier. As if one child with a dairy problem wasn’t enough, now we have a second. I just don’t get it. Bill and I ate ALL THE THINGS when we were little and neither had any food sensitivities or allergies. We exposed all our kids to a variety of foods at appropriate times to minimize the chances and Rowan, my picky child, remains completely food allergy free. The boys would eat anything but can’t and it is maddening too have to pay over seven freaking dollars for a package of dairy-free cookies or snacks. This week his mouth flared up so bad he looked like The Joker, so I finally broke down and am committing to a month of dairy free for him, let the vanilla flavored coconut milk commence. He does still breastfeed twice daily. I was able to drop the before-bed feeding with no problem for him or myself. His need for a morning and afternoon feeding is still pretty strong so I’ll just be following his cues on when he wants to wean from that.

* Ezra has gone from new drunk baby walk to stealthy, speedy drunk baby walk. He still stumbles at times but he can go FAST, and now rarely, if ever, breaks out into a crawl. {RIP cute and creepy baby franken-crawl, I will miss you.} Now that walking is fairly mastered he has started to move on to climbing. Lord help me, Internet.

* Language. Welp. Not much progress was made this month. He makes a vaguely familiar sound when he’s trying to say a word, like “guk” for his rubber duck, “sss sssk” for sock and other similar things but he still doesn’t say anything discernible. The exception being thank you which is a relatively easier to understand “tink ye” as he hands you toy after toy. No intentional ‘mama’ or ‘dada’ or ‘more’ or ‘uppy’ even though we repeat the words and use the baby signs all day long. Listen kid, I think it’s highly adorable you’re trying so hard to say the name of your ducky but maybe let’s focus on something more practical like “up” so you can stop trying to wedge your body between me and whatever I’m standing next to so that you can hang off my shirt and scream. Forming a u and a p sounds with your mouth seems so much easier than these shenanigans.

His sound effects repertoire has become very impressive though and his receptive language and ability to follow instructions continues to grow every day. He is also starting to point much more than he was last month so I’m holding out hope this doesn’t turn into a ‘thing’. {And I know there are tons of you out there with kids that didn’t make a peep until 18 months or later but when your other two kids were absolute motor-mouths at this age… well, the difference is huge and worth paying attention to.}

To sum up, at 12 months Ezra loved: Meowing, walking, dance parties with his siblings, brushing his teeth, baths, snuggling blanky, eating cake, going to the playground, raiding the cupboards, sneaking into the bathroom to inspect the wastebasket and remove anything he didn’t think should be thrown away {i.e dirty kleenex} and removing and hiding his socks. {Where are all the damn socks baby? No, seriously, you only have one and a half pairs left.}

This month has been one of your most adventurous ones yet. It’s been SO fun to watch you explore the world on two feet. One of my favorite things to do this month was to bundle you up, set you on the sidewalk and just let you go. Seeing your little body bob up and down as you carefully lifted your feet in a kind of slow-paced, very deliberate march, filled my heart up to the very top. You are so happy outside {in the wild. Yep, this is total foreshadowing of your personality isn’t it?} that I’m a little frightened of being trapped indoors with you for the next 5-6 months. We’ll get through though {if the Christmas tree doesn’t kill mommy} {again} and I can’t wait to see you racing up and down those sidewalks come spring. We love you, pal.

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I am both Dumbledore and Galadriel. That's all you really need to know.

There are a few memes going around facebook right now that are bombing my feed. One is the “share x amount of things about yourself others may not know”. I’ve really liked reading everyone’s posts but haven’t participated as a service to my facebook friends because, look, everyone that clicks on my blog already knows way more about me then they ever wanted to. And besides! I bestowed the Internet with ONE HUNDRED things a few years ago so I feel like I’ve sort of covered this already.

The other meme is one that gives you a correlating animal or fictional/non-fictional character based on your Myers Briggs test score. I have taken this test a number of times over the years and my results are a little complicated so I never know how to correctly label myself. {Also, this turned into a giant time-sucking wormhole for me today, which I felt bad about until I thought of all the hoards of you out there obsessively playing Candy Crush. I’ve never touched that game, meaning I have at least 10,000 unused time-wasting hours that most of the general public has already used up.} {Also: Now I want to download Candy Crush. Dammit.}

Anyway! Here’s my Myers Briggs Results Extravaganza!…

I or E {Introvert or Extrovert}: I am roughly 60-65% Introvert each time I take the test and I find this a fairly accurate assessment. I like talking. In general {I talk to Ezra, the cats and myself all day long} and with other people, and also feel a desperate need to keep conversation running smooth {read: silences during conversations give me facial tics} but people as a whole? Exhaust me. I much prefer to communicate by writing {god bless the almighty Text} and for me hanging out at home reading or relaxing is preferred over social interaction or recreation 90% of the time.

S or N {Sensing or Intuition}: I will score 51% one way, 49% the other way and then it flip-flops the next time I take it so I’m pretty much equal parts Sensing and Intuition when I take in information. I gather info by paying attention both to the physical world around me and by analyzing theories through my feelings and thoughts. Again, I think this is accurate which is why taking these tests is hard for me because the answer to these questions never seems clear to me and I curse the absence of a BOTH button. But! Because I know myself pretty okay {and assessing my very reaction to this conundrum} I most often identify as N, Intuition.

T or F {Thinking or Feeling}: Samesies, always within a percent or two of 50/50, using equal parts Thinking and Feeling when I make decisions. Also again, I find this very accurate. I think this trait gives me both balance once a decision is made but a healthy dose of conflict as I try to figure things out as I never know which part of me to trust. Should I go with the facts or my gut feeling? It’s a push/pull sort of thing but I tend to err on the side of Feeling.

J or P: I am not messing around here, I am always {literally} 99% Judging which means I like structure and definitive answers/decisions ALL OF THE TIME. If you are my husband you are nodding your head up and down very vigorously in agreement right now. I do NOT like wishy-washy bullshit and I seriously think my great trial in life is to accept that sometimes there is no answer. Which is stupid, THERE SHOULD ALWAYS BE AN ANSWER. Here. I’ll make one up so I can sleep tonight. I get that sometimes you just need to wait and see but gahhhhhhhhhhhhhh…. I can’t handle it. I’m 100% certain that in the end it won’t be my genetic predisposition for cancer or heart disease that takes me out, it will be not knowing the definitive answer to something vaguely important. I’ll just KEEL OVER. Cause of Death? Not knowing if the home was serving mashed peas or carrots for lunch, RIP, CHRISTY.

So! I’m one of the following based on how I’m feeling when I take this test: ISTJ, INTJ, ISFJ or an INFJ. I’ve taken it every 2-3 years since I was about 18 and I always get the same-ish results, so I’d say it’s fairly accurate for me. I have only taken the “real” test twice, once in high school and once in college.  {And fun fact! I actually scored extrovert in high school which was accurate at that time in my life since everything when I was a teenager was based on social standing and how well you interacted within peer groups, but at the heart, I am not an extreme, but a solid Introvert.} The other times I’ve taken the test it’s been one of the many free online versions floating around out there.

Now. Since I go off the label I get most often, I normally identify as a INFJ, a part of the sub-group entitled “Idealists” and given the moniker, “The Counselor”.  Swinging back around to the internet memes, this is the {fascinating!} list of what I learned about me today…

My spirit animal is: A Tiger. Which is total bullshit because we all know my spirit animal is Monkey Jane. I guess it’s still in the cat family so there’s that.

My super hero equivalent is Batman. {He is listed equally on the internet as an INFJ and a INTJ and since I can claim both I’m using him.}

My LotR character is Galadriel, which makes sense because Cate Blanchett herself is an INFJ and I’m preeeeeety sure they’re the same person. Have you noticed Cate Blanchett age? Yeah. Me Neither. I call ELF.

Tiana is my Disney Princess. Of course she is! She is the best. Some say Pocahontas, {but I say I would never make out with Mel Gibson, even if we were both cartoon characters} others say Cinderella {I do like her shoe choice so this one might work}.

Jean Valjean. SWEET. I wouldn’t have taken those candlesticks though. OR WOULD I? Maybe Myers Briggs knows me better than I know myself…

My Harry Potter character is Albus Dumbledore, Remus Lupin or Lily Evens depending on which chart you use. I chose Dumbledore cause AWESOME.

Obi-wan Kanobi from Star Wars. My street cred with Keaton is gonna go waaaaay up when I tell him this.

Lisa Simpson. Yep.

Game of Thrones: Varys. Soooo I’m super conniving… and creepy as hell… huh.

Walking Dead: Dale. Man! I’m lame. And *spoiler!!!!* super dead.

Aslan. All powerful cat suits me just fine.

Mythical creature: Wizard. I’ll take it, but would have preferred vampire or unicorn.

Jesus. He’s typed a number of ways but INFJ is always one of them and since I’m pretty sure he and Aslan are the same person this all makes perfect sense to me.

The Hunger Games: Rue. There I am, super dead again.

Fox Moulder from the x-files. I don’t know, he was kind of a sucker and sort of irrelevant since it’s 2013. {Ah crap, don’t tell Bill I said that, it might be grounds for divorce according to our imaginary prenup.}

Mr. Bates from Downton Abbey and whenever I read/say Mr. Bates I hear it in Anna’s voice and it’s creeping me out Mr. Bates Mr. Bates Mr. Bates AHhhhhh!!!!!

Dr Doofenshmirtz. Ohmygod I’m putting this one on my resume.

Other facts: INFJs are the most likely to have high IQs, be shy, to read a buttload of books and love to write. Also more likely to suffer from OCD, narcissism and depression.

Real Life INFJs…

Hitler, Osama bin Laden, Ron Paul. WHAT?! I don’t think this list is accurate.

Dostoevsky. Ghandi. Plato. Thaaaat’s more like it.

Congratulations, Internet!! You now know even more pointless shit about me! Since I’m prone to narcissism this couldn’t have been wholly unexpected but just know I’ll probably feel mild to moderately depressed about it later.

Source Source

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I just, I just, uh… Here. Have a picture.

And this is just about how Fawksey and I feel about this week. Quit judging us, Internet.

Whatever, I’m gonna go get a refill from the box. {THAT’S RIGHT I SAID BOX.} G’night.

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If I could be a character in any book, it would definitely be this one…

So, yeah. Things look a little different around here. Yesterday I got a bee in my bonnet, deciding I needed to change the header to include Ezra. The thing is, because there is always a thing, Bill designed and built my blog back in 2010 having very little knowledge about blog coding and while he did a fabulous job, it was time-consuming and a giant pain in the ass. At the time it was worth it because I was blogging very regularly and had hopes in the future of putting work into promoting it and making it a bigger, maybe even income-generating thing.

After a little time and soul-searching, I decided that what I really wanted for the foreseeable future was a home to keep our family’s memories, nothing more. Not that you can tell from the posts I put up here but I’m actually somewhat of a perfectionist when it comes to my writing so when I thought about being read on a wider scale I knew I would drive myself crazy during the editing process, because time? We just don’t have it at this point in our lives. Life morphs, evolves, in the nearly seven and a half years of being a parent, the shape of our family along with its dynamic has changed so many times. One day I might get to a place where I want to do more with this space but for now I scramble to document the big events and much of the minutiae of every day life is lost to these pages now.

At the point we’re at now, I just wanted to strip down what I had by choosing a basic wordpress theme, throw up a picture of the kids as the header and call it a day. Only neither of us could figure out how to add a picture to the header which seems like it should be the easiest thing in the world and it probably is but when you have two sleep-deprived parents of three small children, well, basically we’re idiots. So after playing around with themes and trying to get the fuuuuuureaking header image up, we broke the Internet and my blog {temporarily, obvs.} then gave up and went to bed because our brain cells were starting to jump ship out our earholes. Being a lazy asshole, I’m just leaving it bare-bones for now, but if we can’t figure out how to fix it, I’ll probably end up putting the old site back up until we figure it out, so bear with me as my super kaduper life is going to be a bit bi-polar for a while. UPDATED: Bill figured out the header! Yay Bill! {I’d say I’m sorry for publicly shaming you, but you know, shame gets shit DONE.}

Now! To distract you from these boring surroundings, I will share with you my very favorite Christmas gift. Rowan was very secretive about the gift she had made in school but she was super excited, downright giddy, to give it to us. The little stinker even sneaked out in the wee hours of Christmas morning and put it under the tree for us, right next to her own presents which I’m sure she thoroughly {illegally!} inspected. Truth is I sort of cheated because the evening after the last day of school I was going through her bag and in it was a rough draft of her present. I didn’t realize what it was at first, it was just a little stapled book, but I’m so glad I was able to read it first out of her presence because tears were just streaming down my face I was laughing so hard which probably would have insulted her had she witnessed it. Thankfully, I was much more composed on Christmas morning.

Here is her book. The harrowing story of her mother. A mother who, against all odds, takes naps, goes shopping and drinks…

I can’t decide if my favorite part is when I ditch everyone to take a nap or when I take my small child out on a shopping trip where I start drinking. A few people who read it tried to make me feel better by saying maybe I was just being mean and not letting her get a drink, that it didn’t necessarily mean it was alcoholic. So I asked Rowan why I wouldn’t let her have a drink in her story and she replied, “I can’t have those kinds of drinks mommy. They have booze in them.” You guys, I don’t even know what her teacher must think but for now I don’t care because despite the storyline, this was by far the best present I have ever received.

Also, just so we’re all up to speed, on the flip side was Bill’s story, in which he gave hugs, cooked her dinner and went to work like a responsible parent.

Now, Internet, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go make a martini, do some shopping and take a nap.

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Fancy New Year

Hello, Internet! Happy 2013! I have a holiday re-cap in the works but I know how much you like to see embarrassing pictures of my family so I just could NOT put you through the agony of waiting any longer. So!…

We were back at the Mallinger’s for their annual New Year’s Gala {this year it was a gala because three of us were in a dress, shut up, it works}. Bill and I really didn’t know how the night would go with the baby, and it was definitely a little different from our usual care-free night of debauchery, but it really went surprisingly well thanks to a very cooperative Ezra. After almost a year of a stone sober wife, it was Bill’s turn to stay sober {normally we spend the night but we weren’t THAT adventurous with a two month old} so I packed a ton of expressed milk for later, breastfed the baby at 9 o’clock, pumped and was ready to join in the fun {read: drinking} by 10pm. I had a few drinks and champagne at midnight and around 1am, knowing Ezra would be due to wake up soon, Bill asked me where the bottle was. Uh. Yeah. So I had packed approximately one thousandy ounces of breastmilk but nothing to actually get that milk into the baby. SHIT. {And this is why exhausted parents of very small babies cannot be trusted}. Thankfully Ezra slept peacefully through the transfer to his car seat and the ride home, so it was really a non-issue in the end, but ugh. Christy – sleep + packing = DUMBASS.

Anyway! Sometimes we do a theme for these nights, sometimes we don’t. This year Bill’s brother bought Ezra a tiny tuxedo onesie for Christmas so when my sister asked if we wanted to do a theme I told her Ezra would be dressing up for the occasion so maybe we should too. Everyone was on board! We thought it would be fun to hit up Goodwill/Savers for terrible promwear and Jen and Jay came across some great finds but Bill was looking for a bow-tie get-up which we had no luck with. I really didn’t want to go out and spend money on a dress, even a goodwill one, so I was planning to just wear my bridesmaid’s dress from Snoreface’s wedding but then I had an even better idea! What if I didn’t have to wear a dress at all! All I had to do was talk Bill into a dress… It was a super tough sell that went something like this:

Me: I know! YOU should wear the dress.

Bill: DONE.

And so commenced Fancy New Year’s!

The Fancy baby that started it all. So handsome.

And here it is, Ladies and Gentlemen, my husband in my very pink dress. It definitely helped that I was 7 months pregnant when I wore it but we still had to buy a similarly very pink shirt to bridge the gap in the back so it would fit him. And it did. Like a very manly pink glove. {I’ll have you know that the headband/bow combo was his idea.} {The eyeshadow and blush were decidedly all me though.}

Jen’s dress looked fabulous and set her back a whole 8 bucks. I’d tell you all about the DCFI’s terrible green jacket complete with BROWN FAKE SILK-I-touched-it-and-died-a-little-bit-inside shirt but I still can’t get past that awful facial hair he’s been sporting since Movember. So wrong.

We jumped right in to Just Dance 4. My niece Ellie decided her dad and uncles needed to perform a One Direction song together…

So they did, and it was magical.

Snoreface with the night’s youngest revelers.

Jorie wore her mom’s Junior prom dress. You are staring at straight-up, unadulterated 1989 right there, people.

The boys were very serious about their Final Countdown performance. Bill soon realized that strapless dresses and vigorous booty-shakin’ just don’t mix {so much man-nip-slip} but he kept the headband on like a good sport.

Even grandma got in on the fun!

If you don’t know what dance this is, I’m sorry, you’re not allowed in 2013 because you clearly failed 2012.

Jen and the Deps rounded out the night with a so-bad-it’s-really-just-awesome dance to “I’ve had the time of my life”. Yes, the lift at the end was attempted and no, no one was thrown directly into the fireplace {although it may have been a close call and the headline would have been epic : Deputy Chief Fire Idiot Throws Fancy Wife into Fire in Romantic Dance Gone Horribly Awry}.

Needless to say we had too much fun for our own good, as it should be on this night. Happy 2013, Internet.

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Aaaaand THIRTY.

It’s done. NaBloPoMo has reached the end and I’m not going to lie, I’m glad. This was both the easiest and hardest of the four National Blog Posting Months I’ve participated in. Easy because, with a newborn, I almost always had something to write about. I never had that panicked feeling of Shit! Maybe I can dress the cat up in people clothes and post pictures to buy me an extra day. Hard because, uhhh, we had a newborn, and I don’t know if you know this or not but they’re kind of a lot of work.

Coordinating writing time went great when I could sit up to the computer, lay Ezra on the boppy to feed him and then hunt and peck with my free hand to cobble together a post or edit and upload pictures. Unfortunately it didn’t always work out so smooth and much of the time when I was writing I felt guilty because there are always just so.many.things. I know every mom says it and I will again freely admit how bad I am at math, but how one little baby can add up to so much extra laundry is just not mathematically possible. DOES NOT COMPUTE.

Having the completely imaginary pressure of the internet waiting for me to post will not be missed but it has been nice to have a focus. When one minute you’re holding a sweet, peaceful cherub, plump and happily slumbering in your arms, and the next minute the dog barks and said cherub turns on you and is all of a sudden simultaneously shooting spit-up down your back while having a massive poop and when you go to change that massive poop he starts peeing all over you and himself at the same time he is spitting up again HOW IS THERE EVEN ANYTHING LEFT IN YOU BABY and you have no idea which end to wipe first and how did things go so wrong so quickly so…yeah. To have some control amidst the chaos was a welcome break.

Another plus? Having this record of Ezra’s first days. One of the first things people ask you right after you’ve had a baby is So… are you done? For the record I think it’s totally unfair to ask someone who’s just had a baby if they’re “done” because more babies are really the last thing on your mind in the days after giving birth. And my go to answer is, well, Bill is done, so unless things fall through with Brad and Angelina, I’m probably done too.

In truth, I want four. The reality is though, that kids are expensive and holyhell a lot of work {also: THE PUKE} so I really understand why three is more than enough for Bill. Still, I think we’re both in the never-say-never camp as who knows? I might win big playing Bingo someday… you know! If I start playing Bingo! Point is, circumstances do change so we’re not closing any doors permanently but Ezra will more than likely be our last so having this record of his first weeks is pretty invaluable to me.

And now? I’m going to ride off into the sunset to revel in my family and enjoy the peace of the impending holiday season. HA HA JUST KIDDING! Did I mention we are throwing a pool party for many small preschoolers in honor of Keaton turning the big OH- FIVE? Because I am throwing a motherfucking pool party for many small preschoolers. And it is in two days and I don’t know what the hell I was thinking because DUMB and STUPID and I think I should probably buy some cake plates or a balloon bouquet or something oh god what is wrong with me. At least we don’t have another birthday to attend tonight, a full day at the dance studio tomorrow and our own packed evening of getting our tree and decorations up in the evening. OH SHIT WAIT. Of course we do.

With that? Thanks for once again for sticking out NaBloPoMo with me. I’m so grateful that people take time out to read about our adventures, even if it is only to laugh and be thankful you’re not as ridiculous as we are. Pray for my stupidity, Internet! I will need all the help I can get.

 

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Ezra's Birth Story, Part the Third

{Parts One, Two}

Before I pick up where I left off, I should explain the whole wanting to go drug free thing. While still pregnant, I had a whole series of posts planned out about Rowan and Keaton’s births and why this time it was important to me to try something different and I even typed up a massive post on Rowan’s labor and delivery, with one for Keaton in the works but then I was so miserable and tired and busy that the posts never saw the light of day.

Without going into either of those experiences it’s hard to explain why it was important for me to at least attempt a drug-free birth but what you need to know is that with both Rowan and Keaton I had labor dystocia {abnormally slow progress, specifically dilation in my case}. This basically means that I had very close together, very violent, ferocious contractions but my cervix would not dilate past a 3.5 on its own, sorta making that whole “getting the baby out” thing difficult. Both times I needed an epidural to relieve the pain so my body could relax and dilate and both times I dilated to near complete within an hour of receiving the epidural. Had this not worked I would have needed a c-section but thankfully it did and I’m grateful for it.

Only this time I really wanted to try to relax my body on my own. When I experienced a contraction I would clench my body up as a way to deal with the pain, tightening and pulling in on myself. Instead of viewing the contractions as tools that are opening things up to make way for baby’s arrival, I was really trying to turn my body into stone so I couldn’t feel the pain. I was so sure that if I could focus my mind in the right direction I would be able to dilate on my own and so I ordered the Hypnobabies home study program and began the meditations around 26 weeks into my pregnancy. I should say that I probably didn’t use the program as they intended. I had no desire to “hypnotize” myself, only to use the CDs as a meditation guide to get my mindset in the right place and I will say I learned a lot of great relaxation/meditation tools through listening to them but I wasn’t drinking the kool-aid. I did not buy that these would allow me to have a magical, completely pain-free birth. I did, however hope that they would help me to go as long as I could without pain medication so I could be as involved in the birth process as possible.

To give you an idea of the time frame, I had gotten the prostaglandin gel at around 12:15pm and was admitted to the hospital at about 12:25pm. After an hour or so of being monitored, and my contractions already coming 30 seconds to one minute apart and lasting more than a minute, it was time to start trying some pain management techniques to get my body to relax naturally. At around 1:45 I was offered the choice between a hot shower or bath. I did not feel like I could sit down at this point so I chose the shower, where I just let the water pour over me as I gripped the bar on the wall with each contraction. The nurse, Bill and my mid-wife took turns standing guard as I labored in there for almost an hour. The contractions were intense but I definitely feel like the shower helped me cope. My mantra the whole time was “open, open, open, open”. I kept repeating it in my head, and sometimes under my breath through the entire shower and I felt like it helped my body relax.

Unfortunately, because of the bleeding at the start of labor, the nurse needed to monitor me at least 20 minutes for every hour. My first nurse was very lax about this as she had found Ezra’s heartbeat right away and could see I didn’t want to be strapped down so she let me stay in the shower without interruption but I needed to be put back on the monitors when I got out. She set it up so I could rock in the rocking chair while hooked up and after 10 solid minutes she let me off, offering me a birthing ball which I accepted.

Bill set up my hypnobabies tracks on the i-Pod and so I rocked on the ball while listening to the meditations. I was still in an incredible amount of pain, but I found myself drifting off into the meditations, thinking about what my son would look like, when he would get here and how perfect he would feel in the crook of my arm. It’s hard to explain… I was certainly working hard, certainly feeling pain, but I was also at peace, very calm, and I truly felt excited that I was going to get the un-medicated birth I wished for.

Then? Shift change. And it was all over.

Bill had stepped out to make a few calls and while he did my new nurse came in. My eyes had been shut but I had that feeling that I wasn’t alone so I opened them and the new nurse was in my face, looking expectantly and when I paused my meditation she immediately began bossing me around, saying they needed to get me on the monitor right away and I had no choice in the matter. I was confused because I had just been hooked up not even 45 minutes ago and now that my concentration was broken the pain really, really intensified. All the literature on birth told me I could refuse monitoring but she was so matter-of-fact and dead-set on it that I didn’t feel like I was being given any choice in the matter so I did as I was told. She tried to hook me up while I was on the birthing ball but she kept fumbling around and couldn’t find the heartbeat so I moved to the rocking chair where she found his heartbeat but could not keep it on the monitor for more than a minute or so. After struggling with this for over a half hour she told me I needed to lie flat.

When she asked me to get into the bed I knew it was over. The whole time I felt that if I got back into the bed I wouldn’t be able to get out again and I was right. The pain was near constant and so very intense that I could NOT get back into my mindset of staying open. I found myself falling back to how I spent my labors with Keaton and Rowan which was gripping the bar of the bed, pulling into myself as hard as I could and praying that the pain would just be over. I was completely lost in the agony of contractions that would not let me catch my breath.

At 4:45pm the nurse checked me. At this point I was so lost in the pain but I rallied at the thought of knowing how much progress I had to have made over the last almost 5 hours of constant contractions. I had to at least be dilated to a six but I was hoping for a seven or an eight and WHAT WAS THAT?

Three.

THREE.

I had not progressed at all since being checked at my appointment. If I hadn’t been so exhausted I would have broken down sobbing, but as it was, I had no energy left to cry. But I was completely devastated because after all that work I knew what had happened and I knew what had to be done.

And………. yes, I’m totally going to make this four parts. I know. I totally suck.

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Ezra's Birth Story, Part the Second

So! Back at my mid-wife appointment…

Right before she inserted the gel, my midwife decided to strip my membranes one last time. I had heard this was a painful procedure but the first two times I had it done I didn’t even flinch. This time however, OUCH. As she went to insert the gel she asked the nurse to get a towel as there was quite a bit of spotting. I was actually excited to hear this as I had none of the promised spotting or {gross alert!} mucus the other times. As she finished up inserting the gel I began to cramp really bad and I saw the nurse reach for two more pads to soak up the blood. Then she asked me to cough and I could feel that this was way more than spotting.

I was already in the room with the monitor so they had me sit up and when they moved me to the chair…THE HORROR {Read: blood everywhere}. At this point I could tell my midwife was moving fast but she was very calm and reassuring so I wasn’t panicking. She grabbed the monitor to check the baby’s heart rate and kept moving it around in different places, then she had me flip from side to side, as she attempted to find the heartbeat that was so strong and clear 20 minutes before.

Nothing.

At the same time the weird cramping that happened immediately after my membranes were stripped turned into full-blown contractions that hit me every 2 minutes. After frantically trying to find the heartbeat my midwife disappeared and returned with a wheelchair, very quickly but calmly explaining we had to go over to the adjoining hospital NOW.

Of Course this was the one appointment Bill couldn’t be at in the last few weeks so i grabbed my phone and texted him to meet me at the hospital, which he did not respond to. Luckily as I was rushed out to the elevator, he and Keaton were already in the waiting room so they ran along side me, Keaton thinking it was a fun race, Bill probably wondering what the fuck was going on- when he left me an hour before the baby was happy and snug inside of me and now we were in full-blown emergency mode. No one ever said “we can’t find the heartbeat” which I think kept us all calm, but we all knew something was very wrong.

Thankfully within a minute of getting hooked up to the monitor, Ezra’s heartbeat came across loud and clear and it wasn’t until I saw the look of sheer relief on my midwife’s face that I realized how scary the experience actually was. It happened so fast and the contractions were already hitting so close together that I didn’t have time to process what the hell just happened and by the time I did it didn’t matter because there he was, thump-thump-thumping away on the monitor.

After all the excitement, my contractions were a strong and regular 2 minutes apart {so yeah, gradual gel MY ASS}. The L&D nurse, who was so sweet and reassuring, checked me and I was almost a three. My midwife cancelled her appointments to stay with me and said that they would need to monitor me for an hour or so now that the bleeding had stopped but I should be able to go and pack things up if I wanted to try to labor at home for a while, as I didn’t seem to be dilating quickly. Poor Keaton had been sitting through all this, and while we reassured him that mama was just fine and that this is how having a baby starts, I could tell he was a little wigged out. We were waiting for my mom to come and get him but I thought if we could just go home so I could throw together a bag for me and get the kids stuff set, it would be so much easier.

Only by the time the hour was up my contractions were coming 30 seconds to one minute apart, just one on top of the other on top of another, with barely time to catch my breath. The midwife said, nope, no going home for you, so I kissed Keaton goodbye and my mom threw together a few items and brought them when she picked him up. After he was gone I felt like I could finally commit myself to the fact that sometime in the coming hours we would welcome our third child. Now it was time to get down to the business of getting this baby born.

Next up? I get to the actual birth part of this never-ending birth story. Probably…

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