The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness

2009 – I dare you not to dance from Ivy mae on Vimeo.

(embedded video)

When I was trying to choose music for this video, I asked Ella to pick between a few, and she turned them all down. ”I want to use the ‘Battu battu’ song mama!” My arguments that we should use a song that was in English so we could understand it didn’t sway her, because ”Oh Mom, you know what they are saying. It’s all about how even if you are sad, if you are with your friends and dancing, everything is okay.” I can’t think of a better way to sum up our year.

So, here’s to 2009, which was filled with so much laughter and song, even if we didn’t always know the words.

Making cookies at grandmas on Christmas Eve,

+ Homemade marshmallows with cocoa,

+ Early morning belly snuggles before opening stockings,

+ Opening gifts with the family

= A very merry Christmas

I had to cut the day short, since I am still sick as a dog most days, but more on that in a long overdue pregnancy update. Since the girls and I left early before the full family party began, it was a low key day, which was my Christmas wish. Tom brought us home plate fulls of food, I read half of a new book, and the girls enjoyed not being haggled about putting away their toys.  Polliwog saved the day!

At our house, we have something called “morning rules”. No, not “Morning Rules!” because if you need to know one thing about me, it is that I do not think morning is awesome, but rather morning rules means this: If you wake up before mommy, and you are not bleeding or have poop in your diaper, you play quietly in your room until you hear me wake up. Otherwise, best case scenario, you risk being put down for a nap at 7am. Worst case goes something like today, where I threaten to throw away all your new Christmas toys before 8am, forget to feed you until 10am, and fall asleep on the couch while laying on the remote, so you watch at least a half hour of Die Hard.

On one hand, morning rules achieve something pretty simple: I get more sleep. I think we can all agree that a well rested Ivory is a much nicer Ivory, so I consider this a win/win for all of us. But morning rules does attempt something larger, and that is to teach the girls that soon there will be times that I can not be at their beck and call. I am here, I have not abandoned you, I will come if you need me, but you can entertain yourself quietly while I attend to something or someone else. I did something similar with Ella when I was pregnant with Alice, in setting up ‘quiet time’ on the days when she didn’t nap. Not only did it give me time to rest regardless of whether she napped, but I think it also helped Ella transition when Alice was born, because she did not feel suddenly cut off from my constant attention. I’m hoping the same is true for Alice, though she does have the benefit of having someone to play with during quiet time. Bonus that I do not break up piddly fights when they are having quiet time, so they have learned what is a telling-mom-worthy offense, and what is just going to get you reminded “MORNING RULES” while I bury my head under a pillow.

I’m thinking if we can sneak in “midmorning closet time”, ”a half hour to dinner outside time”, and “5pm bedtime!” then I can officially retire. I would still have to feed them, but a bowl of goldfish crackers in their rooms would suffice until Tom gets home, right?

The longer I go between posts, the harder it is to get up the motivation to write. So, it has taken me all day to figure out how to write a very simple sentence:

We sold the house. We signed the papers a few weeks ago, and are planning to celebrate New Years at the little house. I’m been hesitant to say anything, because A) the universe likes to mess with me, and B) the sell is a bit more complicated than a conventional one, in that it will not technically happen until 2012. We are leasing the house to a local elder care business, with the condition that they buy it in 24 months. And while we were hesitant at first of anything but a convention “hand the keys over” sale, after having lawyers look over the contracts, and looking at the financial benefits of this plan, we are going ahead with it. The buyers assume all responsibility of the house (aka, we won’t be playing landlords) and the contracts protect us, even if  they back out in month 23. Since they will be putting a lot of improvements into the house, and will have a substantial amount of money invested from Day 1, there is no motivation for them to cut and run. The buyers are a local couple with loads of business references, and they have been willing to reword contracts and meet with lawyers any time a new concern has come up. I admit I’ve been much more suspicious of this arrangement than Tom has been, but I think we’ve established that his is a trusting nature because for him The Universe Provides. And, in this case, it seems that it has.

Now if only the toilet at the little house were not in the bathtub.

Don’t worry,  Tom gets to spend Christmas Eve grouting, painting, putting in the vanity/cabinets and reinstalling the toilet.

As it is, the house will not be finished when we move in. The upstairs bathroom and bedrooms will be done, and the kitchen will be usable, but the downstairs will not be finished (insulated, drywalled, mudded, painted) until spring. Tom and Mike have spent every free night/weekend over there, but as with any large project, it is the small things that seem to take the most time and money. Hopefully by the time the baby is born we will have bedrooms downstairs, but if not, that is okay. Tom apologizes about it constantly, but what he forgets is that I wanted to move over there months ago, before they had replaced 90% of the bathroom, before the electrical was finished, before there was a refrigerator or a door with a working lock. All of these things feel like a bonus.

So, goodbye big house, hello little house.

Even if you are not on twitter, or do not know someone involved in the controversy around Shellie Ross and her son Bryson, you likely have heard the story from CNN, ABC, Fox, or even your local news. If not, the short version is this: Shelly spent the day tending to her yard, chickens, and Christmas decorations, tweeting about her progress. That afternoon, her two year old son fell into the pool and drowned. Critics are saying her tweeting contributed to his death, but most people (including the lead investigator) see it as irrelevant. It was an accident, and one that is tragically common.

And while there is a lot of great posts out there about the situation, what I keep coming back to is all the near misses in our lives – how many times have I had to slam on my brakes or lay on my horn to avoid a distracted driver who could have hit us? How many times has Alice tried to swallow a bite of apple that was a bit too large? How many times has Ella hit her head and *possibly* done damage? The time Ella ate unknown berries in our backyard; the time I nearly dropped newborn Alice on an icy sidewalk; the time 18 month old Ella figured out the front door and got to the end of the driveway before I realized it; the time I drove home drowsy; the time Ella went under at the pool and for a split second I could not grab her; the time Alice grabbed my open rotary cutter off my craft table; the times they have tried to dash away in parking lots; the times they have turned blue from coughing; the times they have had reactions to medications; the times I have been doing dishes, cooking dinner, changing a diaper, talking on the phone to a friend, trying to meditate for 2 minutes and I have heard a wail from the other room…

It is a hard fact to accept, that we as parents have no guarantees that we will get to watch these little people grow up. We do everything we can to keep them safe, but for some, no amount of effort is enough. Yes, I’ve kept my children safe for four years now, but it’s been purely by Providence that I have a list of near misses, instead of tragedies. Does that make me a better mother than Shellie Ross, or the parents of the other 5,200 children who will die from accidents this year? The truth is that it does not. I am as guilty of being distracted as she was, and as we all are. We all have to do laundry, we all need a quiet moment to ourselves, we all look away at the wrong moment, we all trust that things will be okay, because we love our kids and that should keep them safe. Sometimes, we are wrong.

When we sign up to be parents, we don’t get to choose who our children will be, how we will get along with them, how many years we will get to spend with them before one of us is gone. What we do get to choose is how we will spend those days we have with them.

I hope Shellie and Bryson had as many happy days as we have.

Before crafting:

After crafting:

The final product: a tree which can be stripped down in 20 minutes on December 26th.

Ella – Today did not start out the way I had planned for you. We all woke up much to early, after a night of nightmares, cold toes and rattling trees, and at 8am I threatened to make you take a nap, even though it was your birthday. You scowled at me, doing your best impression of a 14 year old version of yourself, and then burst into tears. I joined you on the couch, and we talked about all the things we had planned for the day – taking cupcakes (actually hippie carrot cake muffins) to school, going shopping for balloons, going to Gemma’s house to play, special birthday dinner, brownies and homemade whipped cream for desert – and you finally hesitantly agreed to put your shoes. “But Mama,” you asked, “are you sure you don’t want me to stay home with you and cuddle all day?”

Happy birthday sweet girl. We all adore you so much.

Alice, for all the reasons I am glad you claimed your own birthday (instead of waiting 20 minutes and being born on your sister’s birthday), perhaps the most overlooked is that December 8th just happens to be National Brownie Day.

(Can’t Fail Brownie recipe here)

Today you are two, and we went around the table at dinnertime and listed all the things we love about you (or at least as many as we could in an hour). I love you more than all the twinkle twinkle stars in the sky, or as Ella put it, more than alllll the sprinkles on all the cupcakes in the world. And darlin’ that is a whole lot of love.

I love you from your nose,

down to your Christmas colored toes.

For those who are cuious, this is how our Advent-ure is going:

1. Take a picture for Christmas cards
2. Make Christmas cards.
3. Eat holiday ice cream after dinner. (We ended up eating ice cream before dinner, because I am an awesome mom. Of course, then they were hyper and too full to eat dinner, which inevitably became cranky and hungry by bedtime. They can’t say I never tried.)
4. Write a letter to Santa. (Ella asked for dance classes and a princess doll. Santa is not going to come through on those, though she is getting an awesome microscope, so hopefully she forgives him. Alice asked for candy and a baby.)
5. Make gift tags
6. Bake Christmas cookies and decorate them. (When I pulled this out in the morning and realized that there was no chance of us getting to this before the birthday party, I lied and said told them it said “Invite your friends over and eat cupcakes!” I don’t think they were too disappointed. Also: considering never teaching them to read.)
7. Paint our toenails Christmas colors.

2008:

2009:

Oh what a difference a year makes.

We had a ‘small’ party for the girls today, but it turns out that just our core group of friends and family fills up our house, which is the best kind of problem to have. A better round up of what I made, (and what my super talented friends made!) later, because right now I am going to go cuddle with my sweet girls. Their birthdays are not actually until Tuesday and Wednesday, but today it is all too obvious to me how fast they are outgrowing their babyhoods.