Parenting
What I think my day looks like: What my day really looks like: So now I’m on instagram. WHOOOOOAAAAA NELLY! It’s all because of two ladies: Jacqui & Grace. Follow them & their blogs/social mediums? Better or trouble! But I need your help. How do I operate it? How do I connect? How do I find other things I’m into? What the helllllo are ###HASHTAGS###? Come be my friend? Maybe when I figure it out I’ll get the old grammar whammer up here on ye old blog. It’s crowded. Speaking of that, what would you like to see/not seen on the home page around here? Can you be my consultant? Won’t you be my neighbor? Punchy mom after long day with kids. Forgive the iPhone photo dump. X to the O. Best line of the day: SuperBoy shows me his finger complete with long booger adhered: “MAMA WHERE CAN I PUT THIS? In your nose?” Um. I have enough of my own. #dutchnoseproblems #peoplewithbignoses #bignoseshavebigboogers –see what I mean about the hashtags? She’s not too sure about this boy bonding going on here.
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So you have a bad day, taking . . . down. Sing a sad song just to turn it around. You say . . . don’t lie. Something something something. You had a bad DAAAAAY. You had a bad day. Maybe I should sing this for Kelly’s lip-sinc contest? Dear Nurse Having a Bad Day, I’m so sorry my two children and I are bothering you at your workplace. I’m so sorry that one of them is in the sling, fussy and unhappy because I interrupted his nap to drag him to this place of needles. I’m so sorry my four year old is inquisitive and squirmy and trying to read his free copy of Highlights {doesn’t that take you back?} from the lobby–a copy which you are quick to inform him MUST STAY IN THE LOBBY. Did you have a bad night? Did you not get enough coffee? I am genuinely sorry. I understand. I also had a bad night with a four year old who couldn’t sleep, a thunderstorm with lightening and thunder so pounding I literally leapt up in bed and snatched my baby to my chest shaking when I thought our house had been hit. It hadn’t. He didn’t like that kind of middle of the night wakeup that didn’t involve immediate nursing. I also haven’t had breakfast. Because I was sleeping til the last minute, trying to avoid the puddle spots all over the bed, some dried, some fresh of either spit up, or a leaky diaper. I…
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What am I, Italian? Love the hand gestures, dork. My parents generously offered to watch the big kids for a weekend getaway for us and BabyLoves to go to the Lodge. It’s our magical home away from home in Wisconsin. The acreage includes hills, a trout stream, paths in the woods, lots of woods, more bugs and dirt than you can shake a stick at. It’s paradise. We scooted out Friday night in time for the stars to guide our path. We slept in. We talked all day. I mean, literally. It was probably the first time we’d had uninterrupted conversation for . . . years? I took my time cooking in the kitchen. No rushing, cajoling to eat, or fake “gotta go potties” so they can escape. Just sweet meals with my sweet man and big baby. Heaven. Later that night my parents dropped off the big kids so SuperBoy & AA could camp in a tent in the yard–a big notion drawn from reading the Hardy Boys aloud. And they could all go fishing. Not sure if there were any worms on those hooks. Not sure if they had hooks. That little white speck? That’s SweetPea–view from kitchen window! That little red speck? SuperBoy harassing her. This reminds me of a Thomas Cole sort of painting. Enormous landscape; small people. Because a girl needs to know how to catch dinner: And a boy needs to know how to wash up afterwards. And my heart & hands are full, wearing my…
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Three kids. Oh. Wow. We have to adjust and adapt. Lots of this lately: Baby wakes up and has wet a little through onto the bed. Spit up. On me. The bed. I remove his diaper and think–where’s a clean one–while I’m fumbling for it, his lovely water fountain of pee erupts like a happy geyser. Me wet. Bed wet. Pillows wet. Still fumbling for a clean diaper. Cursing my glasses as I can’t find them. Get new diaper. Before I get it on, the churning of the poo begins and then me, bed, pillow (wet), clean diaper, and freshly awakened husband sprayed by a hose of poop. Then things like this happen. Big kids in tub with me and baby. SuperBoy decides to dump water on his sister who in turn decides to practice her swimming kicks–in his face. They’re both crying, the baby in my arms is trying desperately to get away from me, scooting scootching toward them, the fight, the thrill, the fray. I’m hollering for AA to come get the baby so I can deal with the big kids. When we do all get out of the tub, dripping in annoyance with each other, and I put her on the toilet, she promptly forgets her head is her center of gravity and falls off. Splat. Right onto her head by way of a stool catching the corner of her temple. Screaming. Everyone. So you could say it’s a little busier around here. We’re still determined to be as crunchy, natural, odd-ball as possible. Despite…
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A wonderful electronic friend of mine (one of my sisters says that’s a weird way to introduce people on my blog–but it’s TRUE!), Kendra from Catholic All Year, wrote a book. And not just any old Catholic book (as if there is a serious category for “any such x-religion book). It’s a little guide to confession for kids and parents before the Big Day. If you’re still following with this conversation and you’re not Catholic, I’ll give you the quick version: Catholics (and other Christians) believe that people were born with something called “original sin” on their souls, their spiritual life within. After baptism, that’s wiped off by the Godparents & parents making promises and declarations on the baby’s behalf. But subsequently, because we are human, we build up spiritual dirt on that soul by choosing to do things, say things, etc that separate us from an all-loving God. Specifically, we break some or all of the Big Ten (commandments). By going to a priest to say confession and ask for forgiveness of those sins, we get grace infused in our hearts by God (grace is His life within us), and our soul is wiped off again. Now you’re thinking, why do you have to say your offenses out loud? Can’t you just apologize in your head to a loving God? Won’t he or she forgive you? Sure. But consider the psychological piece of this. If you don’t have to verbally articulate what you did, when you did it, and…
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I wrote about loving your body after a baby after my last baby. I had to re-read it since I’ve had this one. Postpartum is this awkward transitional time when your skin tries to remember where it was before the Great Stretching, and your breasts try to gauge how much milk to make for this baby, and your belly jiggles and your face has lost its color, and you’re just plain in the middle of it all. As I write this, our little baby is almost three months old. I’m still so postpartum. I haven’t lost much weight since I had him. My body feels that heavy jiggle jiggle never-wear-a-bathing-suit-again feeling. My hair has clumped out on the side of my head, leaving the look of a bad side side bang job. I still occasionally slip into a hot bath when everyone is done with a day of needing to be held, loved, sternly glared at, fed, diapered, read to, praised, censured, hair patted out of their faces. The hot water like a deep breath for my skin, my motherly parts all tuckered out. My girlfriend Blythe just wrote this beautiful post on her blog, The Fike Life, about loving the nursing mom who had to dash after her toddler, displaying her soft tumtum to the world inadvertently. And how it gave her permission to not be perfect, not worry about being beautifully put together. We need that permission. “But one day I watched a veteran mother of many pop…
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