The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I was updating the family calendar with doctor's appointments, rehearsals, concerts, and the like, and it occurred to me that we really only have a few weeks of winter left. For better or worse, the winter has gone by much faster than I anticipated due to many things, all good, bad, and ugly.

From top left, clockwise: ice on the inside of the front door, the worst day of winter, rags stuffed in the gap around the door on said day, and isn't New England wacky?

A not so ordinary day in the life...

My Monday this week ended very differently than it started. I guess it started at the same time Mr. Husband and I ended our Sunday, because instead of going to bed at a reasonable hour like sensible parents of small children, we decided to end our tour of the Star Wars prequels like crazy teenagers. What better way to bond with one's spouse than watch a movie where you're constantly shouting questions at the screen about plot holes and giant gaps in logic?

So, midnight: crawl into bed.

Birth Story: Sir Toddler

In the spirit of Throwback Thursday, I'll join the ranks of many mom bloggers and post a birth story. And like the fangirl I am, I'm linking up with bigger and better blogs--today, Camp Patton.

Sir Toddler’s birth story comes with a small amount of necessary exposition. To start, the hospital where I was planning to deliver was by far not the closest to our home. It was close to where I worked. My husband and I were planning on finding out the sex of our child at 20 weeks. However, Sir Toddler did not cooperate at my fetal survey ultrasound, remaining stubbornly cross-legged for the whole procedure. I was convinced, although not committed, that we were expecting a baby girl.

Four days before my due date, on Marathon Monday/Patriot’s Day in New England, I decided to go for a walk to see if I could get labor started. I managed to induce some mild Braxton-Hicks, but I decided to just give up and walk home when I got a phone call from my husband. He’d been watching the Boston Marathon on TV and saw the bombs go off. I hurried home and we watched the news coverage in shock. The rest of that day is a blur to me, except I voiced aloud to my husband my reluctance to go to work the next day.

I woke up at 4:00 AM, with contractions much more intense than any I’d experienced. Was this really happening?! I timed the contractions for an hour before waking up Mr. Husband. We called my OB-GYN practice endured 30 minutes of the ridiculously complicated phone triage system before we were told to time the contractions for another hour and call back. By the time I got through with the second phone call, we were both up and showered. The contractions were starting to hurt my lower back and we were nearing rush hour. “Are you ready to come to the hospital?” asked the nurse on call. Yes! Please.

Off we drove to the hospital, as I made all of the necessary phone calls to inform my employer. The midwife who checked me declared me 1 cm dilated, and sent us out for a walk. It was a warm, sunny spring day, marking the beginning of the short window in which New England has enviably beautiful weather. However, I was distracted by pain radiating around my legs with each contraction. Despite our best efforts to help things along, I did not progress and we were sent home.

I did everything I could to ease the pain of the contractions. I tried to nap, but I woke up every five minutes with each contraction. Taking a warm bath provided some relief, but our cramped bathroom space wasn’t the most comfortable. I tried to eat, but didn’t have much appetite for anything besides peanut butter on graham crackers. Mr. Husband and I worked our way through episodes of Justified as contractions continued to intensify, and a few less savory labor signs made their appearance. The nurses on the phone suggested we make another venture to the hospital before afternoon rush hour began.

This drive was considerably less comfortable than the last. I was relieved to find out in triage that I had progressed to 4 cm and could be admitted. I gowned up just long enough to get me to my room and take a picture, and spent the next hour in the shower.

When I couldn’t bear the steam any longer, I tried walking around to help with the pain in my legs and lower back, but it was unbearable. The nurse who checked my progress said that Sir Toddler was occiput posterior (face-up), and I was still at 4 cm. It was at that point that Mr. Husband convinced me that I needn’t be a martyr, and I asked for the epidural.

When the anesthesiologist arrived at around 6 PM, they asked Mr. Husband to leave, and suggested that he order dinner before the cafeteria closed. I asked him to order for me too, but they told me, “No food with the epidural!” (I wish I had known that beforehand, because I was ready to eat my own arm!) I got the epidural and accompanying IVs, and then settled in bed with completely numb legs. I spent the next few hours sleeping and being turned from side to side to convince Sir Toddler to flip to a face-down position, while my husband tried to sleep and watched the Red Sox lose spectacularly. At some point, my water broke, which was a very strange sensation. Around 12:45 AM, I woke up and suspected that I was complete. The nurse who came in confirmed my suspicions, and off we went a-pushing.

This part of childbirth in movies is a crazy intense-a-thon of screaming and sweating and doctors scurrying around, but my experience with Sir Toddler was very relaxing. Mr. Husband and I chatted with the nurse, and in between pushing she had me breathe through an oxygen mask. At about 1:20, Sir Toddler was just about ready to arrive. More nurses poured in to warm blankets, set up a mirror, and the OB-GYN, a slim young woman with a nose piercing, rushed in and saw me pushing. 

“Blow this one out!” she said.

Mr. Husband remarked, “It has to be a girl! Look at all that hair!”

“One more push to deliver,” and suddenly they lay a very slimy and confused looking baby on my stomach. The baby had a FULL head of hair, a cone-shaped head and… 

“It’s a boy!”

“What do you think you’ll name him?” asked the doctor.

I grinned and looked at my husband as I rattled off this brand-new boy’s name. He settled onto my chest and stopped crying. After a blur of stitches (ugh), cord clamping, weighing, measuring, and his first meal, Sir Toddler was wheeled off to the nursery with Mr. Husband for his first bath. I was left alone to eat my sandwich (the most satisfying hospital meal I’ve ever had, I was so hungry!), the nurse helped me into the wheelchair (which was hilarious because she was my size and I couldn’t feel, let alone move, my legs) and I was reunited with Sir Toddler in my new hospital room.

As it turned out, the nurse in the post-delivery wing was the mother of my husband’s classmate’s roommate (say that five times fast), so she “got us the room with the best view!” At this point, it was about 2 AM. My husband and I settled in to try to sleep, although I woke up every time Sir Toddler breathed with any noise, paranoid that he would die of SIDS. We were exhausted, but so full of joy. After all of the tragedy we had seen two days before, we had witnessed a miracle.

Beware of Toddler

Schedules, rhythms, routines, seasons. They were part of my life as a teacher. Motherhood has its rhythms and seasons as well, but routines are unpredictable. As much as classroom teaching was subject to changes based on the varying needs of my growing students, life with small kids is volatile.

If I'd written this post a few days ago, I would have mentioned how Sir Toddler was reaching a happy medium. He's no longer waking up in tears in the middle of the night. He has started napping in his bed, or, if not napping, at least sitting quietly. He's always had a cheerful disposition and for the last year and a half has had an impressive obedient streak for his age. When we went to the playground on Monday, he didn't shy away from the other kids but charmed several school-age children into playing with him (the public schools were out for Rosh Hashanah). I pushed Lady Infant in the swing, chatted with my fellow playgroup moms, and was reveling in reaching the stage where I could more or less let my son play independently on the structures.

Then he fell down the steps and banged his head on the baby-sized structure. I didn't even notice the enormous goose egg welling up on his brow at first because his hat obscured it. (Fortunately, apart from an ugly bruise, he is ok!) Yesterday and today Sir Toddler has had some ugly tantrums over the most mundane things...being forced to choose his snack from what we actually had in the pantry, not wanting to go for a stroller ride (usually one of his favorite things), and not being allowed to play with the trucks at Target because we were pressed for time.

(I bought him a cheapity cheap truck ONCE. For the beach. Two months ago.)

It was an awful moment for everyone (except for Lady Infant, who is usually the fussy party). I wanted to melt into the ground while I pushed my sobbing, screaming, flailing toddler, still sporting his shiner from the playground, to the checkout, braving the palpable discomfort of the other shoppers and employees. I felt like I should have been wearing a T-shirt that said, "I didn't hit my kid! He's usually really good at the store! Please don't judge me!" But there was nothing I could do except ignore him and get through the checkout as quickly as possible.

Indeed it was an awful moment. But it was just a moment. He was over it by the time we got to the car. I'll probably see more public displays of Sir Toddler's burgeoning temper as he learns to communicate his feelings, manage his emotions, and come to terms with a world where he can't get everything he wants. That season has its limit and he'll eventually outgrow these tantrums (I hope!). At the same time, this season I'm also seeing his ability to put together sentences, have short conversations, remember the words to songs and sing snippets independently, and occasionally play with his baby sister. This season, he loves to give me unsolicited hugs and kisses, tells me I'm pretty, and asks me to sing his favorite songs to him. And that season has its limits, too.

Being a parent of small children is hard. It was hard with one baby. It was hard with one toddler. It is hard with a toddler and a baby, and from my brief glimpse into teaching adolescents, I know parenting will still be hard with teenagers. I certainly don't consider myself an expert on parenting, and you won't catch me telling a mom with a screaming baby, "Enjoy them while they're little!"

All I can do is try to get through the bad parts of the season, and savor the good. Because the season won't last.

Catching Up

As just about everybody who reads this blog already knows, we've been keeping pretty busy lately, with both big and small things. I took lots of pictures "for the blog," so in order to not waste all those photos here is a nice looooong catch-up post.

Big: We went on vacation.

This "cottage" is the roughly same square footage as our apartment, except with no shared walls.

This was our first-ever trip as a family of four. (I supposed you could count our trip to Florida last December as a family trip--I was almost-too-pregnant-to-fly with Lady Infant--but since we were staying with family it was a much different experience than the process of renting our living space.) We got an end-of-summer rate on a cottage "90 yards from a private beach!" in the town where my husband grew up.

90 yards and about 90 steps. I actually couldn't fit all of the stairs in the picture, so I took this after descending the first set.

In any case, the beach was worth it.

I love New England beaches. Call me a weirdo who likes cold water.

Nursing on the beach? Check.

Invite your cousins and their trucks.

I love this picture.

We did a day trip to the beach earlier in July with the kids, but it was so much easier to manage them in shorter spurts. We had agreeably hot, sunny weather while we were there, so we could take the kids down for a swim, go home for lunch and naps, and come back, hitting low tide both times. We stayed four days and three nights, the kids slept great, and despite bringing two diaper-clad minions, we got our security deposit back!

Big: We're moving Sir Toddler to a bed.

Despite previous declarations that never would I ever 1) purchase a toddler bed, 2) purchase a toddler bed from IKEA, or 3) purchase a mattress from IKEA, we wound up doing just that after a fruitless trip to Jordan's and countless hours wasted scouring Craigslist. (When you drive a small sedan that only fits disassembled furniture in flat packs and Jordan's only has overpriced twin beds that are four feet off the ground and made entirely of MDF, assembling Swedish furniture with the aid of smirking stick figures is the easiest option). We purchased the TROGEN adjustable bed and the corresponding mattress that comes in three pieces, and I'm actually glad we did since the soon-to-be shared kids' room is not huge.

The adjustment period to the bed is going...okay.

The first day, Sir Toddler was eager to nap in his new "big boy bed!" and I put him right in, assuming that the little wooden side pieces would keep him from rolling out. He fell asleep, amazingly, and roooolled onto the floor with a thump. We found him sobbing with a bitten tongue, and ran out to Babies R Us to buy a side rail. To add insult to injury, it took 20 minutes to get through the line and then the rail didn't work with a slatted bed base. Sir Toddler spend that night in his crib, and the next morning I put two rolled-up towels under the fitted sheet, and an unused mattress section on the floor next to his bed.

The second and third days, Sir Toddler spend his naptime hanging out in his bed, but not actually sleeping. It didn't occur to him to get out of bed on his own. Each night, we have enticed him with a "special light" (a nightlight, which we didn't use with him in the crib) to get him to sleep in his bed. Both nights, he has woken up confused and scared in the middle of the night, but stayed in bed.

Today, the jig was up. Sir Toddler realized that he could get out of bed during naptime and started roaming around his room. I hope he sleeps well tonight, because three days without naps made for a whiny, weepy evening. For both of us.

Big: Lady Infant is pulling up on furniture.

Life as we know it is over.

I keep snapping pictures that make it look like my children are playing together peacefully....

...when in reality Lady Infant, in her quest to be involved in whatever her brother is doing, is just learning how to annoy her brother.

Little: Baby teeth!

Little: Pigtails!

Lady Infant has long hair on top that hangs in her eyes like so...

(photo credit)

So I spent 45 minutes trying to wrangle her into pigtails. She did not like it, Sam I Am.

Big: Our backyard is no longer a minefield of feces.

Our neighbors of notpickingupaftertheirdog fame finally moved out and we've finally cleared up the last of the messes (although not before tracking some onto the kitchen floor, blergh). This is a game-changer. Today, with a slow start to the morning, the threat of rain, a napping baby, and and antsy two-year-old, I could just let. him. play. outside. Of course, since our yard isn't fully fenced in and still shared, I was out making sure he didn't bolt or get into our other neighbors' stuff, but it was nice to just let him be a little boy and explore nature.

He spent his playtime picking wild "yucky berries" that had fallen from a tree and mashing them in his fingers. Good times.

I have visions of maybe getting a sandbox. Or even a Cozy Coupe.

Disclaimer: I'll be political for the first time on this blog.

It's time for me to sign off, because I have a team/quarterback to cheer on...

(.gif credit)

...no thanks to Roger Goodell.

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Toddler Talk

Sir Toddler is starting to string together sentences. Combine that with narrating everything he sees from a 2-year-old's perspective, and we've got some gems.

(starting grace before dinner, after being scolded for goofing off during grace at lunch that day)

"Faver, Son, Howey Spiwit, Amen...dis is not funny."

Sometimes we get, "Faver, Son, Howey Spiwit, Amen. Good job."

Alfie Kohn would hate us.

(At a Mass being celebrated by my husband's recently ordained best friend)

Me: "Look, Fr. [Priest] is praying to Jesus."

ST: "Faver, Son, Howey Spiwit, Amen. Bess us Yord..." (proceeds to say a jumbled but hilarious grace)

(later during the consecration of the Precious Blood)

ST: "Faver [Priest] eat beer."

(Whenever his sister cries)

"[Lady Infant] just c[r]anky." or "[Lady Infant] just c[r]y."

(During a discussion of beverages)

ST: "Mama drink coffee."

Me: "That's right, mama drinks coffee. Does Daddy drink coffee?"

ST: "Daddy drink coffee."

Me: "Does [Sir Toddler] drink coffee?"

ST: "[Sir Toddler] drink milk."

Me: "Does [Lady Infant] drink coffee?"

ST: "[Lady Infant] EAT MILKIES!"

Right.

Running (around) with Children

Before children:

Wake up, bright and early and well-rested since Mr. Husband generally doesn't wake up crying in the middle of the night.

Put in contacts, use the bathroom, dress in running clothes.

Run before it gets hot. Feel like a gazelle.

Come home, stretch, and shower. The end.

With children:

Wake up. Feel groggy as all get-out, but decide that I can conquer the world today because Lady Infant didn't begin her you'll-never-sleep-train-me shenanigans until 5 AM.

Diapers for the small crowd, coffee for the large ones, and breakfast all around. Low blood sugar only ensures toddler shenanigans.

Debate with self about how to wear out Sir Toddler to ensure a nap. A quick sniff of the air signals round two of diapers.

Wrangle kids into clothes.

Realize it's already 9 AM. Let's skip the shower and try to rock workout chic.

Since I'm dressed in running clothes, I guess I should finally use the jogger for actual jogging.

Round three of diapers.

Fill water bottles, check diaper bag, put shoes on shoe-wearers. Remember that the tires were under-inflated during our last stroller jaunt.

Secure Sir Toddler in the living room with gates, restrain Lady Infant in the jumperoo in the kitchen, and retrieve tire pump from basement. Also grab diapers from the washing machine but I really want to get going so instead of hanging them up, I leave them in a wet heap in the kitchen.

This is what happens when I leave Lady Infant alone in a room for a few minutes.

Walk past fussing Lady Infant, hop over gate-hurdle one, leave tire pump, grab keys, hop over gate-hurdle two, out the door to retrieve stroller from the trunk of the car.

Assemble stroller. Did I mention that we have to take the wheels off to get it to fit in the trunk of our family vehicle?

Drag stroller unto the front porch. Sir Toddler has discovered a secret compartment in the tire pump that contains tiny needles. Confiscate, take tire pump outside, and pump tires while toddler frets about possible loud noises that may ensue from the tire pump.

Drag stroller onto the grass, retrieve children, diaper bag, and water, and get children buckled in before somebody walks by and decides that our stroller is up for grabs. I dream of a garage. Or a driveway.

Remember that Mr. Husband reported that the stroller was pulling in one direction the very first time we used the lock on the front wheel. Can't remember which way or how to fix it, so we run with the front wheel set to swivel.

Commence pushing roughly 3/4 of my body weight on wheels. Hot, sweaty, slow, and pathetic is the name of the game. Snap a shadow selfie.

As we near home, I realize that I will go insane if Sir Toddler doesn't nap today. Stop at a little spot in the town center to let him run himself ragged.

By the time we get home, everyone is whine-crying for lunch. Including me. Unbuckle everyone, bring children and diaper bag inside, run back out and drag stroller onto the porch. Make sandwich for toddler, slice peace for baby, restrain everyone in boosters, and hang up diapers while everyone eats. Cook and eat lunch standing up, and oh, I'd better look up the instructions on fixing the swivel wheel incaseitsreallycomplicatedandwilltakeallnaptimetofix...

oh. ok.

Wash dishes and water plants while kids are relatively content.

Convince Sir Toddler to go upstairs with me to "help change Lady Infant's diaper."

Round 4 of diapers. Put children in cages/cribs so I can

finally shower,

get dressed,

fix the stroller,

disassemble it and put it in the trunk,

and wonder when I'll have the mental energy for another morning like this.

the end.

A Sunday Outing

1:40 PM. Decide to go for an outing due to a)restlessness, b)weather that is gorgeous but too cool for our original plan of a beach trip, and c)to wear out the toddler who is rattling the bars of his crib after a notnap. Choose a new park that we've never been to together and don't know exactly where it is.

2:00 PM. Everyone who wears such things has diapers and shoes, the diaper bag has full water bottles and emergency Cheerios, and Lady Infant is buckled into her bucket. Persuade Mr. Husband to take both kids to the car so I can sneak a snack and not share it with Sir Toddler before I lock up.

2:10 PM. Comment on the odd route weaving through back roads that Siri has chosen.

2:40 PM. Comment that we could have taken more familiar main roads in the same amount of time, and how strange that this park is accessible by such small neighborhood roads. This is done over the background noise of Lady Infant fussing and Sir Toddler repeatedly requesting that we get out of the car and go for a walk.

2:43 PM. Siri is directing us to park on a neighborhood street and walk through someone's backyard to access a distant border of this park. WHAT. Reference Google Maps on Mr. Husband's phone, since the navigation has sucked my phone's battery dry.

2:50 PM. Finally pull up to the parking lot of the park and discover that the parking fee is per person, rather than per car. Well, we've come this far...at least the kids are free.

2:52 PM. Discover the source of Lady Infant's distress: a diaper bomb that has ruined her adorable outfit. An awkward diaper change in the front passenger seat ensues.* The spare outfit is a little skimpy for the weather, but at least it's the correct size. This time.

2:53 PM. Briefly debate the merits of the double stroller versus making the toddler walk. The notnap that preceded this trip makes the decision for us, even though it means stopping to pick up every stick and leaf we came across.

(I've been told that babies should be worn high and tight, but please show me a structured (buckles please!) baby carrier that can be worn so by a 5'2" mother whose six-month-old is in the 70th percentile for length. She didn't get it from me.)

Sir Toddler was rewarded by one of his favorite sights, "Giant fan!"

The view wasn't too bad.

Not pictured: the mystery dead fish thing Mr. Husband found on the shore and insisted on investigating and photographing while Sir Toddler poked it with a stick. Gross. Lady Infant and I stood upwind of it and averted our eyes.

Success: Sir Toddler is tuckered out!

 3:55 PM. Buckle everyone back into the chariot, drive home, and send Mr. Husband around the corner on an urgent errand while I make dinner.

Post-hiking relaxation in a glass.

*Although it is always awful trying to do diaper changes in the front passenger seat (our compact sedan has few options now that the backseat is taken up entirely by car seats), at least it wasn't as bad as an ill-fated grocery trip wherein Lady Infant's diaper and outfit were changed into a completely outgrown long-sleeve onesie (on an 80 degree day) while Sir Toddler cried a river in the back seat about wanting to ride in the police car grocery cart. Naturally, once he was loaded into said grocery cart and Lady Infant strapped to my torso, he spotted the taxi grocery cart. There is nothing quite so glorious as an unaccompanied trip to the grocery store.

7 QT...because why not?

Lady Infant is napping, and Sir Toddler is enclosed in his crib for his lately inconsistent "nap" time, so here we are with my first ever link-up with This Ain't the Lyceum. Here are a few thoughts  kicking around here these days.

1. I made fancy shmancy oatmeal.

There's a (boring) story behind this: I've been trying to shake up breakfast a little bit since I've gotten really sick of cold cereal and the sugar crash that comes with it. Although my recipe of choice lately has been just salt+pepper+butter+oatmeal (bulletproof?), I did really fancy it up after I tried a recipe that called for 8 oz. of ricotta. Naturally, the grocery store only had 32 oz. containers, so I had to use up quite a bit of extra in the four seconds it takes for ricotta to go bad after it's opened. I made a (not pictured because we gobbled it up) ricotta cheesecake from The Italian Slow Cooker, and still had a bit left, so I decided to add it with some leftover lemon juice and sugar to fancy up some steel-cut oats. It was like having ricotta cheesecake with oatmeal, which was much tastier than it sounds. Try it!

2. It's August? How is that possible? Maybe because we had such a long wait for nice weather in New England, this summer has flown by, and I feel like my inability to get out the door before lunchtime with both kids has meant that we've barely taken the time to enjoy it. I'm trying to get over my disgust with our shared backyard-with-no-enclosure-full-of-weeds-and-anthills and the pointlessness of trying to improve rental land that is also a minefield of dog feces.

The rope is my attempt at a barrier to keep him out of several stinky messes. Seriously, what is wrong with people?

3. Lately, if I leave the two littles alone for a few minutes, I've been walking into scenes like this:

It warms my heart to see their relationship as siblings budding.

4. When do toddlers drop their naps? I'm hoping we have a few more months of napping, but my inability to get us out in the morning plus some probing for potty readiness means that Sir Toddler doesn't always get out the wiggles. We've been trying to get out in the morning here and there to help him along. 

He's learning how to walk with me instead of riding in the stroller, which helps wear him out even faster.

5. Lady Infant is finally starting some solids. She continues to earn her nickname of Queen Baby, as her Majesty won't sit in the high chair for very long without fussing, and showed very little interest in solid food at all until I whipped this out and stuffed it with chunks of cooked sweet potato:

She does have eyes. We're just not ready to plaster the internet with public pictures of our kids' faces.

I know there are easier-to-clean feeders out there, but someone gave us this one for Sir Toddler as a baby, and since he cried every time I tried to give it to him, it was just laying around unused.

6. Does anybody else hate the word "chunks"? And all other related words (chunk, chunky, etc.)? I'm stretching this, I know. #1 is so long, though!

7. If I've heard it once, I've heard it many times that it's pointless to force potty training on a kid who isn't ready. The thought of the whole process gives me nightmares because I haven't done it before and I'm not eager to spend so much time scrubbing poop and pee out of all of the upholstered purchases in the house. However, we spent two mornings now where Sir Toddler played peacefully sans pants and diaper for an hour, asked to put his diaper on, and then promptly soiled it. So I'd say we're halfway there.

Unrelated, I know. But how lucky are we to be walking distance from a construction site?