The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness

In 2007 I finished my B.A., watched my baby turn into a full blown child, started a blog, got married, renovated a house, and gave birth. Can I really say there have been better?

(Each row represents a month. I planned to write up what each picture represents to me, but I’ve got a hungry baby on the ‘ninny’, a husband offering me hot cocoa, a toddler wanting to play ‘forts’ and a bundle of new yarn to pet. 2007 has been a full year, and it only makes sense that we should end it in the same fashion.)

Plan for the day: Sledding, coffee, crafts and snuggling the baby. Blessings abound.

Alice is 3 weeks old today, and it’s as good a time as any to do a quick update. I swear I am working on her birth story. Right now all the facts are there, but I am hesitant to send it out into the world yet. Her birth was so much more than a record of times and sensations. In fact, one of the reasons I haven’t gotten further on it is that I can not find the right place to start. In some ways, her birth story begins in my childhood, when I was taught that birth belonged at home, with only sisters from the church at your side. Or maybe it starts when I was a teenager and heard my sister give birth, and swore I would just get a kid cut out of me before I went through that. Or does it start with her sister’s birth, and how that experience changed the core of me? Is it fair to compare her birth to her sister’s, or to tie it into any of this? That isn’t her story, it’s mine, but it is the story of how I came to be the first one to touch her, to hold her – it’s the story of how I came to deliver my baby into my own hands… I don’t know. I’m working on it. I promise to post it here soon.

We’ve reached that place where it feels like she has just always been here. Loving her has been different than it was with Ella. I hesitate to write that, because it is so loaded with assumptions, but it is simply this: until I held Ella in my arms, she did not register in my heart. Her pregnancy was so much more fearful than Alice’s, so a part of me did not dare love her until she was ‘real’. Alice, on the other hand, has been my daughter since the moment I felt the first twinge. I don’t feel like I fell in love with her in the way I did with Ella, because I was already there. It has been a gradual, calm love, rather than the shaking love that would overcome me periodically when Ella was a newborn. She has been a part of our family for months – it’s just that she has been a bit louder in the last few weeks.

I am still waiting for the ‘new’ to wear off of her for Ella, but so far she is still infatuated with her little sister. She can not walk by without kissing/squeezing/patting her, and I have to remind myself to be patient with her constant, frantic love. There are only so many times that you can say “Stop kissing your sister” before you realize that very shortly now, you will be saying “Stop hitting your sister!” so you should enjoy the love while it lasts. At least right now Ella wants to play with her, even if Cricket sleeps through their tea parties.

We’ve hit a bump with breastfeeding, though I think, with the help of our local LLL, we have it ironed out. Alice ‘clicks’ when she is latched on, which is a sign that she is breaking suction and gulping in air. Well, that and the projectile vomit when she doesn’t burp enough. It started last week, and I’ve been shoving the tip of my finger in her mouth while she nurses to keep the suction going, but that is a crap-solution. The LLL leader suggested that it may be that my oversupply is making it hard for her to coordinate all of the things she needs to do to nurse (and not be drowned in the process) so I am expressing into prefolds before each nursing session to try and ease the fire-hose effect of my milk let-down. So far it’s helped a bit, but I think she just needs time to relearn to latch on correctly. A week of a bad latch (and me compensating for it by sticking my pinkie in there) is a third of her life with a bad habit. It takes time to unlearn it. I regret that it took me a while to admit I needed help – me and my ego thought I had this breastfeeding business down, but then mastitis and a bad latch kicked my butt.

Small random things: she is an excellent sleeper , and we get 4 hour stretches at a time most nights, tucked under mama’s arm. She loves being in the sling, and can nurse in public (though noisily announcing herself with clicking…). We are cloth diapering both girls almost full time right now, though it means using old-school prefolds and pins until Alice grows a set of thighs and fits into her small diapers. We still can’t figure out what color her eyes are, and she may end up being the only dark eyed person in our family. We are all just smitten by her, and think we will keep her.

So, three weeks of life down, only 5200 or so to go. Before Alice was born, a friend of mine with boys 22 months apart warned me that “the first few weeks are.. intense. It gets calmer after that.” At the time, I thought “intense” was code for “hell”, and that she was just trying to prepare me without scaring me too much, but I think she chose her words carefully because “intense” is about the only word to describe the last three weeks. Each moment has been equally trying and rewarding, crammed full of energy and emotion. It’s been… intense. I’m looking forward to this promised calm that is around the corner.

We’re on hour #3 of water play today, which helpful since we are also on day #2 of a migraine that gives me blind spots and makes my brain feel like it is coming out of my nose. Good times all around. Luckily caffeine seems to be taking the edge off, but also makes it impossible for me to sleep soundly. Or maybe that is the fact that my house is made of NOISE.

I changed the header on the main blog page, and it makes me wish I had any CSS skilz (or knew anything really about this blog setup other than how to push ‘publish’). Luckily my kids are cute and hopefully distract you from the fact that it’s a boring, generic layout, because my plate? Full-ish.

And just for the sake of recording precious family memories, Christmas was great. We packed up early and went to Tom’s parents for the “Christmas morning” experience, and then around 1 people started showing up for the big family party. Considering that there are 30+ people at this party, it was fairly mellow, though ‘mellow’ isn’t a word I think can ever be applied to life with a toddler and a newborn. Ella made out like a bandit, which I am torn about – I mentioned before that I really don’t want to gifts to be the focus of her Christmas memories, but at the same time it’s a blast to see her get so excited about every gift (everyone else’s included, since she helped open 90% of what was under the tree). Regardless, as soon as I feel like I can lean over without my brain slamming into the front of my skull, I am instating the great toy-box-and-closet-purge-of-2007, to make room for the trunkload of toys and tiny clothes that came home with us. It was nice to see family, since we haven’t seen the majority of them since the wedding, but it was even nicer to come home and watch Superbad with my husband, and then fall asleep with our girls between us, all the important things in life within arms reach.

May the day bring you enough candy canes and sugar cookies to keep you on a sugar high through New Years.

• I am now officially down to my pre-pregnancy weight. Don’t be too envious – squish belly is still in full effect. Nothing like having a deflated beach ball around your midsection to make you feel great. I am anxious to put away my pregnancy pants, but don’t want to fight this flop into a real waistband. That’s right – pants with a button intimidate me. Good thing I’ve got this inflated rack to distract you from my elastic waistband.

• Cookie day tomorrow at the MIL’s. I already made the sugar cookie dough, and plan to make the dough for a couple variations of butter cookie, Chocolate peppermint crinkle, and maybe some of these, in the morning. Oh, and no-bake cookies also.I was going to just make cookies here, but I like the idea of a cookie making tradition at grandma’s, for the girls. Plus, my kitchen stays (semi) clean. Woot.

• In the comments of this article about kids and gifts (The Four Things Children Really Want for Christmas), I found a great suggestion:

Peg Kerr said:

The smartest thing we did as a family about Christmas was to use an idea my sister had given me, the Five Gifts of Christmas. Each year, we would give our two daughters:

1. Something to love, to teach nurturing (for our daughters, this generally meant a doll. This worked well for us. For younger children, it might mean a stuffed animal. For older children, this might be a pet, or pet supplies. This category can stretch a little. You might think it means nurturing/caring for something like a garden, so you could buy garden supplies. Or perhaps a bird feeder (caring for animals).
2. Something to help them be artistic (paints, bead kits, other art supplies)
3. Something to help them be athletic (jump ropes, soccer ball, stilts, etc.)
4. Something to read (books were always a big hit in our house)
5. Something for them to do with parents (a board game, a puzzle. One year we got them tickets to a play for us to see together).

This worked very well for us, because it was simultaneously limiting and yet creative. The kids liked it, too. We felt the gift-giving experience was well-rounded, and once we had picked the five gifts, it was easy to tell ourselves we were “done,” without that nagging sense that we needed to get them another gift.

A little late this year, but I don’t think we went too far overboard. For Alice: we got her life, and a few footie pajamas. I think that is a pretty good haul. For Ella: an aqua doodle, markers and a notepad are all artistic, a little stuffed mouse to love, a couple books of course, a box of puzzles that we will do together… Oh, and a set of orange plastic traffic cones, from her dad. I.. don’t know. But that is athletic, right? Ha.

• Guess who is going to an Ani Difranco concert in April? Meeeeeeeeeee! Oh, and Tom. It will involved leaving the girls for 4-5 hours, which freaks me out (Alice will only be 4 months!) but I will deal with that when I get there. For now I am all giddy and happy that Tom finally listened when i told him what I wanted for Christmas. (My exact words were “I’ll buy myself a ticket on the 26th if you don’t get me one for Christmas, so just buy it, okay?” And then he DID. Amazing.)

Guys! Why didn’t you tell me it was only three days until Christmas?! Holy.. lord. Jesus. Baby Jesus. In a sleigh.. no, a manger.

I can’t even begin to make a list of what all I had hoped to accomplish before Christmas, and have given up on. I am trying to be gentle with myself, because obviously when I try to be super-mom my boobs revolt and sent me to bed for 36 hours, but Booo is what I say. Ella is going to Pam’s for a few hours tonight and I will try to at least wrap the few presents I managed to order/put together before Cricket’s birth. Tom has tomorrow off, so I’ll also make a list of things we still need (like peppermint schnapps! Ohh hot chocolate, how I love to spike you! Or this works too.) and send him out into the madness, possibly with a toddler. Mwahahaha. I also might make sugar cookie dough, which I can just throw in the fridge and pull out when I need to distract Ella for a couple minutes (because this girl loves to use the cookie cutters. If I wasn’t so scared, I would make her some play-doh, but I like my floors too much.)

So, the girl’s Christmas outfits are not handmade, the majority of Ella’s gifts are second hand books and toys, and anyone who doesn’t live with me is getting a gift certificate. I can live with that. This year. Next year I’m locking both the girls on their side of the craft room and using up some of this fabric I am drowning in. That photo I linked to above? I think the fabric is sexing it up down there in the basement and multiplying, because there is no way it would all fit in those cubbies now. Of course, that may have more to do with my compulsive fabric buying, and the fact that my mother in law owns a fabric shop (and a storage unit of her own random fabric collection) but whatever.

My grandma sent the girls some little quilts for their birthdays, and I love that they have great-grandma blankies. This doll is from her also, and is among Ella’s favorites. I have a strange relationship with my mother’s side of the family, partially carried over from my mom’s own muddy relationship with them, but also of my own doing. I would say “It’s hard to explain” but really, whose family workings are easy to explain? Regardless, I am glad we (meaning, I) have started talking again, since I truly do want my kids to know their family, even if they are so far away. My grandma also sent a piggy bank that had been my aunt’s for the girls, and three unicorn figurines that had been my mom’s. One is a potpourri holder, and has had the same smelly scent in it since I was little, and as soon as I opened the box I felt six again. It was a very welcome Christmas present.

Head over to Toddled Dredge tomorrow for the conclusion of her advent series, which has been thought provoking and refreshing, even for those of us with a… hard to explain relationship with religion.  Because other people have an easy to explain relationship with the Lord? I don’t know. Really – I don’t know. Maybe someday I’ll try to explain why my view of religion can only be described as muddy, but for now, head over and read Veronica’s post. The clarity of her vision is inspiring.

Excuse me while I crawl into Ella’s cardboard playhouse and hide.

Is it tomorrow yet?

I really intended to write positive post today. I even made a list: things I am excited about (postnatal yoga! I can bring Alice!); things that have amazed me (the way Ella says “It’s okay Alice, I love you” when Alice cries, and how happy I am that they will have each other for comfort); things that just needs to be said more often (My husband is amazing). Then there is Alice’s birth story, Ella’s nursing story, a million happy photos I’ve taken lately.. I wanted to share all of this joy with you…

And then I woke up with mastitis.

And found a venomous email in a seldom-checked account from someone I care about but cannot seem to stop offending without realizing it.

And Tom is working 15 hours today.

And I am just tired. And sick. And empty.

I feel like this blog has taken a turn lately, where I am just using it to complain and mope, which really isn’t very illustrative of what ours days are like around here. Well, except today. Today I’m hiding in bed, with my heating pad, my girls, and a new book. Tomorrow, or maybe the next day, we’ll work on that list. In the mean time, consider making some homemade marshmallows. I’ll be right over.

Soda Vs. Pop. This makes me giggle because #1 – SO TRUE, and #2, oh grad school. So many man hours went into putting this together.

Cat and Girl.  I’m slowly making my way backwards in the archives and have been snickering enough over here that Tom finally asked what I am looking at. Oh, just this. And this. Plus this one. Bonus points for literature jokes. Har!

When I am excited about a book, I tend to start marking it up, underlining passages and scrawling notes in the margins. I read quickly – both by nature and due to years of necessity (be it as an English Major (for realz, you wouldn’t guess it by my awesome command of language, aye?) or as a mom (on a good day, Ella sits on her potty for 5+ minutes at a time, andI can get a couple pages in). It’s not uncommon for me to get through a book a week, and anything that takes longer usually gets put into the “Eh” stack, unfinished. That stack has gotten pretty tall in the last few months. While there are plenty of things I do not miss about being in school, something I do miss is the constant stream of quality books that were being thrown at me. It has been a while since I read something that made me want to restart it as soon as I finished it, but I just finished Richard Russo’s Empire Falls today (read mostly at 2am) and looooved it. Apparently I am about 6 years behind in my devotion (oh, look, it won a Pulitizer Prize and was made into a HBO mini-series. I guess other people liked it too…) but of the stack of .50 cent books I bought at Goodwill a few weeks ago, this is the only one that has been worth it. Resurrection: predictable. Fortune’s Rocks/The Pilot’s Wife: Both suffering from a lack of development, and some very uninspiring writing. Hadn’t realized they were by the same women until just now, but OH now I can see it… Icy Sparks: An “eh” book that I eventually ended, but wished I hadn’t. Ehhhhhhh. While I Was Gone: Strong start, but then it just drags and drags. And drags. Next on my pile is Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, and I SO badly want to like this book. Please tell me I won’t hate it.

And because I can’t write a post not about my kids, Ella weighed in at our pediatrician appointment yesterday at 27lbs(54th percentile), and 3ft 1inches tall (97th percentile).  Alice is now 8 lbs (69th percentile)(up a full pound from birth! Yay Boobs!) and 21.5 inches long (97th percentile).  So basically my kids are long and skinny. I wonder where they get that from…

Ella has started hitting us.

*sigh*

I’m really shocked, since it’s come out of nowhere. Oh, I know why she is hitting us (loss of control, feeling ignored, jealousy) but we are not a family that spanks and I can’t think of any time she has been hit by another kid, so I’m not sure where she learned that it was an effective way to get attention.

So far she has only been aggressive with Tom and I (smacking him in the face when he was putting her to bed, hitting me with her fists when I was changing the baby and Ella thought I was hurting her, etc) but it really worries me that if we don’t get a handle on the habit now, soon she will hit Alice. I know it is so hard for her to control her emotions, so I am trying to be patient and supportive (while being firm that we do not hit) but I have to admit it makes me feel like a pretty big failure when my daughter feels this angry and confused, and the only way she can express it is through aggression. Tom thinks that it’s all just part of human nature, and that she is just going through this stage, but being the big hippie I am, I want to blame TV or the government or something, even if that thing is me. I don’t feel like this is a part of Ella’s personality that she is struggling with, but rather that this is a reaction to her lacking something she needs. *sigh sigh siiiigh*

The fact that I can’t find a picture of her without her sister from the last week is probably indicative of where my attention has been, aye?

So, we are upping her one-on-one time with each of us, not giving her the reaction she wants when she does hit, putting her in “time out” (more so that I have a minute to calm down, than to punish her), and giving her words and signs to tell us she is mad/sad/wants to cuddle. I’ve read that some people give their kids a ‘safe hitting toy’ to beat up on when they are angry, but I’m not sure how I feel about this. Regardless, isn’t that treating the symptom, not the cause? I don’t know. If there is anything I’ve learned about parenting over the last two years, it is that I don’t know anything. Go with the flow, roll with the punches. Or at least learn to duck.

(Ps: A huge thank you to Michele, who sent us the sweetest surprise package, full of babylegs, yarn and Christmas onesies. There is really nothing better than surprises in the mail, and this made my day. I’ve been meaning to post about how grateful I am for the support and friendship I have felt lately, because really – really really, thank you to those of you who have brought food, come over to distract Ella and let me shower, lent me clothes and diapers, sent such sweet gifts, left comments, called to tell me to “Sit down and relax” because you know I needed to be reminded, sent midnight emails “just because”, and all the other little things that has made this last week and a half as easy of a transition as we could have hoped. Sure, there will be bumps in the road, but they are easier to manage when I know I have people to call and whine about it to. *wink*)