Minnesota Blogger Get Together Rescheduled

Attention Minnesota Blogging Friends! Erin of it's all happening and I have set a new date for our Great Minnesota (Blogger) Get Together and I hope you can make it.
 

WHO - Anyone with a blog & their family who lives around the Twin Cities area. Erin & I will bring our families, but plan to have our husbands be mostly in charge of the kids so we can talk without that half-distracted/flustered thing going on.

WHAT - A time to socialize, be outside, and eat & drink at a great local restaurant.

WHEN - 10:30am on Sunday, August 19

WHERE - We will meet outside Sea Salt Eatery at Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis.

WHY - Come for some chatting about html and widgets! I kid, I kid. But this will be an opportunity to meet people with a similar drive to document our lives and a chance for the spouses/partners to commiserate about said documentation :) Also, the first few minutes are almost guaranteed to be full of awkward since we all like to communicate by writing. Who doesn't want to participate in that!?

Rain plan: Check our blogs that morning if weather seems iffy.

Contact Info: erinkkr@gmail.com and navigatingthemothership@gmail.com - We both have iPhones and will be checking frequently that day.
 

Summer Day in the Life Heads Up

I will be doing my quarterly Day in the Life post on Sunday, August 5 and it will be posted on my blog on Monday(ish). If any other blogger wants to play along, all you need to do is pick one day to document between now and Saturday, August 11. You will take photos throughout the day and then type up a post and let me know the link by the end of SUNDAY, AUGUST 12. Then I will put together a round-up post on Monday, August 13 with links to all of the Day in the Life posts so we can stalk each other.

The Usual Fine Print

• Pick a day between now and Saturday, August 11 and take pictures all the live-long day. You might want to keep notes of what goes down so you don't forget later on when typing up the post. I often will take pictures that I know I won't use, but will serve as a reminder of what was happening.

• Make sure to include pictures of YOU during the day, even if that means mirror self-portraits (turn the flash off!) or using that good old timer. And don't forget to include pictures of the mundane - your make-up on the bathroom counter, the messy office desk, your lunch, what you bought at Target, a note your spouse scribbled for you. That's part of what makes it so interesting.

• It's up to you how detail-oriented you want to be. I go detailed, but there is no need for you to do the same. 

• This is not just for the mommy blogger set. I actually prefer it to be a mix of people in all different sorts of lives. And please, please, please play along if you live outside the US & Canada! I heart you, foreigners.

• You will need to have your Day in the Life post published on your blog by Sunday, August 12 and you need to email me when you are finished: navigatingthemothership@gmail.com I will publish the round-up post on Monday, August 13.

Here are some of my previous Day in the Life posts:

Spring 2012 (Full Week)

Winter 2012

Fall 2011
Spring 2011 (Full Week)

Winter 2011

Fall 2010

Spring 2010 (Full Week)

Round-up posts:

These are the Days of Our Lives Spring 2012

These are the Days of Our Lives Winter 2012

These are the Days of Our Lives Fall 2011
These are the Days of Our Lives Winter 2011

Who's in?

The Door That Won't Quite Shut

Not too long after I wrote this post, in which I talked about being 99% okay with having only two children, I had a weird moment. It was 9 or 10 o'clock at night and I'd had some wine and was juuuuust about to start my period. So, perhaps a wee bit emotionally incontinent, you know? I was working on Oliver's one year video and I shared what I had so far with Husband. There was something about the dreamy way that video filtered out the bad and showcased the good that got to him. He turned to me and said in such an earnest voice, "Do you ever think about having another? Sometimes I think I want another baby."

And I started crying.

Husband looked at me with a look of surprise and pretty much burst out laughing. I half laughed, too, and explained that I just felt so bad that I couldn't jump on board with that if that was what he wanted. Pregnancy is too hard on me, my body is so prone to hemorrhaging at birth, plus there was the risk factor with my blood type not being compatible with the kid's blood types, which means future babies are at risk for anything from jaundice and anemia to needing multiple transfusions.

Now. Yes, it was the wine and the period hormones and general elevated life stress (house hunting, Husband going through a rigorous interview process for a promotion - which he got!) that made me more prone to reacting strongly. But the fact that there was a reaction? Well, it told me that maybe I'm not so Two and Through. That maybe that other post had a bit of "the lady doth protest too much" to it. That I haven't quite convinced my inner self that I don't want any more kids. It was easier to feel that two was our limit, or push myself to feel that way, when Husband was very insistent that any more children would be too many for him. But when he wavered, I suddenly felt something shift.

The door that I had thought was shut very tightly against the possibility of another child, of being a family of five instead of a family of four, had popped back open. I could see some light peeking through the crack.

Preparing to get my IUD pushed the "Maybe Baby?" question even further to the front of my mind. I went back to the midwife for the consult and some pregnancy amnesia took hold as I fondly remembered all those prenatal visits and the excitement surrounding a new life growing in me.

I could get a whole foot in that open door. Maybe...?

I asked to get tested to get some more information around my blood incompatibility. How dangerous and high-risk would a pregnancy be? Should we be using two different kinds of birth control?

The test came back negative to being Rh sensitized. I am likely in the less serious category of having an ABO sensitization. I have many other questions about this - it's such a complex thing - but it does seem that future babies are not at great risk for needing transfusions, although the possibility for anemia and jaundice remains.

And then we bought the new house. There was so much happiness and light and excitement and extra space and after doing the final inspection, Husband and I took a little walk in our new neighborhood. I turned to Husband and said, "I feel like I want another baby."

Husband had been thinking the same thing.

The door blew wide open for a minute there.

Then we returned home to the actual presence of our lovable but oh so demanding kids. Baby #3 seemed less desirable.

But I couldn't quite stop thinking about it, even bringing it up in therapy. Maybe I was experiencing some weird biological drive that I needed to override? Cave bigger! Need more babies!

The door was mostly closed. But it was blowing gently in the wind.

Open...
I know exactly when I ovulate each month, to the point where I can narrow it down to a few hours. That feels like information that should be used for something, you know?

Closed...
OMG two kids. So freaking exhausting. And three? HELL to the no.

Open...
But going from two to three will be easier for me than the transition from one to two was. I know this in my heart. I accurately predicted that zero-to-one kids would be reasonably easy (since it was a positive career change for me) and one-to-two kids would be very hard. Life is already crazy around the clock so it wouldn't totally rock my world.

Closed...
Oliver has been letting me re-live the newborn days with all the teething drama, except he is now a 26 pound newborn and carrying him around all day has my biceps looking very impressive. But the multiple night wake-ups and early mornings are killing me. Wow - I am done, done, done with that. Sleep deprivation does not become me. Two is my mental and physical limit.

Open...
Goddamn my kids are awesome. What would a third be like? Would it be a girl or a boy? It would just be another 1.5 years of really hard times and then a lifetime of joy...

Closed...
I like that I am reclaiming my life and time and body. I have been nursing or pregnant since August 2008 and that means this has been going on for FOUR years. That's enough.

Open...
If I were to get pregnant, my parents are moving here soon and my mom could help during the roughest times. I could take meds for the nausea. I could tell them to shoot me up with pitocin the second I deliver to slow the bleeding. I could...

Closed...
Going through another childbirth experience? Oh, and the puking, the puking, the puking of pregnancy. I can't. Thrush! How could I forget about Battle Thrushtastica 2011 & 2012? And what about the risk of another round of postpartum depression? Another baby is a terrible idea. Terrible.

Open...
When Placenta Lady Kelly delivered my placenta pills, she was so sure there would be a third baby. Is Placenta Lady Kelly a soothsayer? Is a third baby in the cards? I did always imagine three.

Closed...
I would probably break my vagina and bladder if I had another baby. I like my vagina and bladder in their current state. No more babies.

Open...
I sit flipping through an US Weekly. Look! Jennifer Garner & Ben Affleck have a new baby! Three kids for them! And that means...absolutely nothing. But three kids. It keeps grabbing my attention. Along with all those pregnant ladies that keep crossing my path. Instead of looking at them through the clouded vision of my own less-than-joyous memories of being pregnant, I'm doing that semi-creepy gentle smile thing at them. Aw...pregnancy! Babies! Fun!

Closed...
It seems like three kids is really hard on parents and marriages, at least if I'm to go by the blogosphere. Do I want to do that to myself? I think I will lose some of my parenting ability if I brought a third into the mix. I couldn't parent as well, at least not for a couple years while I'm so tired and overwhelmed. And I don't want to put that stress on my marriage, especially as we are just getting really and truly back to normal with life.

Open, closed, open, closed.

Right now the door is closed. I keep pushing it closed. But I never hear a click when I shut it.

Letters to Oliver: One Year

Dear Oliver,

This letter is coming 4 days before the end of the month, or in other words, it's 27 days late. BUT! Better late than never. There! A life lesson from your mother.

Photo Credit: Studio Same

I don't have a picture of you on the chair because life has been a little, no, not just a little - it's been A LOT - crazy this past month. Your Grandpa and Nana and Papa were all in Minneapolis starting mid June and then your birthday happened and then we moved and then Nana and Papa stayed with us and it's just been a lot. So I missed out on the chair picture. Boo. But this will be a long and picture-filled letter so that should make up it.

Here is the run-down of life during your last month as a baby. Thank goodness for the list feature in my iPhone or I would never remember all the details.

This month packed in a lot in terms of your development, but perhaps that isn't so different from all those other baby months. I will never stop being amazed at all the changes that can take place in the first year of life.

You are a fantastic eater and drinker. No baby food for you (except for those smoothie pouches that I give you on occasion...you and your sister are all about those). Nope, Biggie Boy wants what we are eating and preferably for us to not cut it into tiny pieces. We can hand you whole carrots to gnaw on, a piece of bread, anything it seems, and you eat it appropriately.

My Nervous Nelly ways have me watching you carefully, of course, but you manage so well. You drink from a cup and think straws are fun, but we'll stick with bottles between meals since I don't think you have a dependency on them and it's a quicker way to get the milk into you.

You still nurse 2-3 times a day in addition to 2-3 bottles a day. You eat a looooot of food and take in more milk/formula then the pediatrician recommends. Plus you eat snacks. But you need it, because you are huge.

I have proof of your hugeness after your one year visit: 32.3 inches (97th percentile), 26 lbs & 6 ounces (89th percentile), and 98th percentile head circumference. So I suppose it makes sense that you would eat like a hungry two year old when you are the size of a two year old.

But you know what is not like a two year old? Oli, dear, you still have a little soft spot on your head. STILL! And the hair that is covering that soft spot & gigantic cranium? Oh Bubby, it's getting really curly. Curlier than your sister's hair was at one year. I love it.

Your molars are threatening to poke through any day, if your big swollen gums are any indication and it has been affecting your attitude. You are moodier and clingier some days and want to be carried much of the time. Your sleep has also changed - earlier mornings, longer naps - and I don't think it's simply related to the weather. I hope (for all our sakes!) that they poke through soon.

You have been showing a strong preference for me and you will cling to me and cry when I leave. However, once I'm out of sight you do okay, though it tugs on my mama heart to see you upset.

We call you Bubby most of the time. It's really cute to hear your sister say, "Oh, Bubby!" You continue to adore her and want to be near her much of the time. This is not necessarily reciprocated 100% of the time :)

We think you have begun talking, or at least you are making consistent noises about consistent things. And if we were to give you a definite first word it would be "Wazziz?" Translation: What's this? So...you skipped words and went right to sentences! GENIUS. But maybe this is Mommy and Daddy (and Nana and Abby, your babysitter) all being overly eager to say you can talk? And yet...all those people can't be wrong, right?

You started pointing very regularly this month and it's fun to see what catches your attention. The lighting aisle at Home Depot was perhaps the highlight of your summer.

And you are walking! In spite of hitting all those other milestones on the very early side, you held off on taking steps until now. You are only doing a few steps here and there and remain mostly content to crawl because you are one fast and efficient crawler.

Photo Credit: Studio Same

So that was the last month of your babyhood. Another fun-filled month of our Bubby.

Love you to bits, my baby boy,
Mama

Photo credit: Studio Same

Project 52:29 Parenting means... Summer Feels Like Summer

Learn more about my Project 52 here and check out styleberry BLOG for links to more Project 52s.

I feel like I've said a variation on this statement many times, but here it is again: Parenting forces us to live outside ourselves and our own desires, but that is often a good thing. We just moved into a new house and I want so badly to dig in and organize and decorate and do a bunch of other boring grown-up things.

But that doesn't much work out with you two wee ones around. So instead we are outside a lot of the time; running through the sprinklers, eating popsicles, and going to the beach.

When I'm old and gray, I'm know that the memories of our summer outside will mean a whole lot more than the memories of reorganizing my new kitchen.

 *         *         *         *          *

How does anyone get anything done with small children, especially house project-type work? It remains such a mystery to me. If you have ideas - please send them my way. TV only buys me about 45 minutes before B is back to wanting to talk and play with me/us. And is Oliver is awake? Fuggedaboutit. That boy needs all of my attention right now.

I have to admit I'm feeling frustrated with my lack of time to do stuff around here. The hours in which the children are awake have extended by a couple hours on both ends with Oliver waking at 5 AM and Bella not falling asleep until 9 PM some nights. I feel so caught in between wanting to meet their needs, especially for Oliver as his molars sloooooooooowly poke their way through (Was it so excruciatingly slow and drama-inducing for B? Did I block it out?), but I also want to do my thing! 

As I gain parenting experience, I can see more and more clearly that all things DO pass and this shall pass, too. Oliver will go back to sleeping through the night and quit with the 5 AM alarm clock bizness. Bella will soon feel more adjusted to living here and more settled into a routine now that the grandparents are no longer staying with us and Daddy is back on his Monday-Friday schedule. The whining and naptime & bedtime shenanigans will revert back to normal levels.

In the meantime, I will do what I can, when I can, and try not to get all fussypants about not having a perfect cleaning & meal planning & exercise routine in place already. (And I should probably point out that the likelihood of me following any routine on a consistent basis is slim, but how I looooove planning it out.)

Time to play dollhouse again, while I try not to look at all those half-finished projects around us. :)

Project 52:25 Parenting Means Establishing Normal

I try to subtly but deliberately give my children the knowledge that there are differences between people, differences to be celebrated.


And when I came upon this scene, which was (as explained to me) people dancing at a wedding, I was delighted. There was a mommy dancing with a daddy, and a wife dancing with a wife,  Dora dancing with a girl, and another mommy dancing with a daddy.


Now, this might not mean anything. Or it might mean something great: that I have been successful in trying to teach Bella that normal is more of a limitless word than a limited one.

*     *     *     *      *

Race. Gender. Developmental & Physical Disabilities. Culture. To name just a few topics. My little family touches a bit on culture and race, with the kids being 1/4 East Indian (their paternal grandfather is from India and Husband was born there) and 3/4 Caucasian, but my children are certainly in the majority when it comes to most things.  Our lives include friends who are lesbians in a committed relationship, and a cousin whose parents are divorced so that helps to expose them to differences in other people/families, plus living in the city meant seeing different colors of skin and types of clothing (or in other words - this sometimes meant different religions). But now that we are living in the suburbs, I realize that exposure to the world at large is going to be more limited. So what should I/we do, if anything?

I don't want to force heavy messages of tolerance and acceptance on the kids, but I do want them to be exposed to life in all of it's variety. To this point, I check out books from the library that touch on topics or things that are new to Bella (a couple recent ones that spring to mind are a book about a girl with Down Syndrome and a book talking about all the different types of families that covered divorce, living with grandparents, having two moms or two dads, etc.) I mix them in with the other books and don't point out why I checked out that book. The goal in my mind it just to introduce it, but not give it any special weight.

I have also tried to be conscious of the dolls and images I provide her and Oliver. When I went to buy Bella some Little People figures for her dollhouse (and was horrified by the Little People prices) I found and purchased this set of six diverse figures.

I haven't commented on any of them, i.e. I haven't pointed out the wheelchair or the glasses or the skin colors, and neither has Bella. She just plays with them.

I want my children to be open-minded and compassionate and to put it simply, to be kind people. I want them to feel confident to stand up to others and to be a voice against the bullies, like my 12-year-old nephew was at school recently. That takes guts - something I didn't really have as a kid. I want them to learn about the ways people might be different ahead of time, so that when they meet a little girl at the park who is different from them, they approach her and whatever that difference might be with an open-minded curiousity or - even better - they approach her with the thought that it's just another kid to play with. Is it possible to teach that? Am I being overly naive and optimistic? I don't know. But I want to try.

I would love to hear more from you guys on how you approach this type of thing. What is the best way to shape viewpoints? How can we teach acceptance? How can we attempt to keep our children open-minded? How can I instill sense of kindness in my children when the realities of bullying and teasing and group-think are seemingly built into a kid's coming of age?

Moving On

Ahhhhhhh.

We are now living in our new home. Out with the old...

and in with the new...

Getting the entire townhome packed up went pretty quickly, especially once I had the help of my mother-in-law and Husband late last week. Prior to that I had to contend with doing a lot of packing while a certain one year old kept undoing my work because taking things OUT of boxes is way more fun than putting them in.

The actual day of our move went very smoothly, thanks to hiring movers (Quality Moving - highly recommend!). Those poor movers and our six half-flights of tight stairs in the townhome. We plied them with a lot of Gatorade and water, along with Egg McMuffins and Jimmy Johns and then hefty tips at the end of the day.

My mother-in-law very helpfully watched the kids for much of the day. I don't want to picture what we would have done without childcare help that day. Husband and I were on turbo speed right from the get-go on Saturday, trying to get everything squared away.

Oliver helpfully dumped a box of crackers not once, but twice. That boy...

 

Unpacking has been a little slow going, given that Oliver is a whirlwind of chaos right now (molars broke through his gums in the last week, poor Bubby). So pretty much all productivity halts during his waking hours. Then he naps and I go into overdrive getting things accomplished. However, my in-laws have begun an 11 day stay with us starting yesterday, so I will have some help to unpack during the day and get fully settled into our home.

Did you catch that? Visitors for 11 days. Ahem.

(Long meals and many hours of socializing each day and night are NOT EASY FOR ME AT ALL. As an introvert it is re-he-HEALLY hard to feel "on" all the time. So it wouldn't matter who the visitors might be - 11 days is tricky and tiring for me. But it will all work out as my in-laws are kind of used to my anti-social ways and I can find a lot of places to hide as needed in our bigger space so I can recharge. Plus having help is great and we'll probably get a date night out of it and it's great for the kids to have this rare type of long and concentrated time with their grandparents.)

I'm hoping to carve out some solid routines as we settle in - things like exercise and cleaning and writing time. Both Husband and I want to clean up our less-than-desirable habits. We want to start fresh here in this space. And space is the operative word. Like I'm going to have a desk that doesn't get ransacked by children each day. And I could set my sewing machine up or other crafty endeavors downstairs, away from toddler and baby hands. And I have my bedroom back (versus sharing it with one kid or another) so I can read at night in my bed. Or maybe do other things in the bed, rather than being forced to do them, you know, elsewhere.

Ahem again.

I get excited by things like that pretty much every 5 minutes. I'm really, really happy here, in case you haven't picked up on it.

Here are a few more pictures in which I show little to no enthusiasm about the move.

First time unlocking the door to my new home with my new key. We came directly here following the closing. (And I continue to have these "Wow!" moments. Like, look at my sprinkler watering my yard!)

Ta da! It's ours!

First glass of wine in the new digs after a pleasantly exhausting day of moving.

First morning. Oli made sure I caught the sunrise over the lake. We want to get a little rowboat or something (the lake is not swimmable, but you can boat & kayak & fish in there). I'm so going to pretend Husband is Ryan Gosling and we are in the Notebook.

A playroom! A PLAYROOM! No more trying to clear paths in the living/dining room multiple times a day!

I love having a driveway and place for the kids to draw with chalk and play.

We realized that this really cool trail called the Luce Line can be accessed from just steps from our house. It goes on for miles and miles and it's just for hiking, biking, cross-country skiing and horseback riding so no worries about cars.

I was neutral about this discovery.

Okay, my little tornado is about to wake up so I need to wrap this up. More soon!

Happy Birthday, Oliver!

I can't imagine that there will ever be a year in my life that matches this past one in terms of being both the most challenging and the most rewarding, all at the same time. This messy, difficult year is something I treasure in my heart, though I don't know if I ever thought I would get to this place.

In Oliver's birth story I wrote:

How odd it is to finally meet someone with whom you are going to have one of the most spectacular love affairs of your life with. It's like you already know the future, but here you are living in the present doing the most basic of get-to-know-yous. I don't love him yet. But someday I will. I caress his bruised face and the world feels still.

And from where I sit today, unbelievably in love with that baby boy, somehow more all the time, I still can't believe he's here and he's mine. That somehow he wasn't just born this morning, but in fact 365 mornings ago. That we have a whole year under our belt. That we are bonded for life and I love him in a way that will never be matched in quite the same way - it's unique to my love for Bella and my love for Husband.

The days are long but the years are short. Yes, exactly that.

I put a lot into Oliver's first year video. Partly because he's our last baby and I want to really mark this occasion, but partly because it's such a lovely, lovely thing to look back on this past year (plus) in a positive light. To gloss over the puking, the post-birth complications, the thrush, the thrush, the thrush, the thrush, the thrush (was that all the times we got thrush?), the postpartum depression, and all the rest of the gunk and instead see only all of those happy moments linked together into one glorious year. Well, it's all very chipper except for that one picture right in the middle...one of those iPhone pictures I sent to Husband at work on a particularly challenging day. Ha :)

I'm proud of this video. Perhaps more proud than any I have made before. It validates my effort to document life relentlessly, even when it all feels like poo. And it reminds me that, despite momentary whiffs of stinky, life is grand and exactly what I want it to be.

And I'm proud of me. I - no, WE - survived this past year. We adjusted to parenting two kids and all that entails. We figured it out and we persevered through the yuck and all along the way nurtured our boy. Our dreamy, wonderful, and just plain delightful boy. (And let's not forget that great girl of ours, too. As she would say, "I need care and attention, too!")

So here it is. From telling Husband about being pregnant (his reaction still cracks me up every time) to finally compiling all those belly pictures in a meaningful way, to the birth, and then beyond. It's Oliver's entire life up to this point.

Happy birthday to my baby boy. And happy day of birth to me.