Dear Mr. Claus,
Thank you for hiring us to audit your Naughty/Nice list this year. Enclosed, please find the report on the Lacey Family of Wilmington, Delaware.
The youngest Lacey, William Jeffrey, started off the year clearly naughty. First, after causing his mother to go slightly crazy after being two full weeks overdue, he then had the audacity to weigh 11 pounds, 3 ounces at birth. However, he has shown remorse and spent the rest of the year applying himself diligently to repairing his image. His smiles, infectious laugh and his excellent sleeping habits have allowed us to firmly recommend William as “Nice”.
Next, we investigated Jack, aka “Muqtada al Toddler”. Jack is an enigma. He displays characteristics of naughtiness, for instance, his tendency to destroy his sisters’ artwork or by throwing a Thomas Tank Engine with deadly accuracy. This behavior, coupled by his obvious lack of remorse, would place him squarely on the black list, but his adorable smile and hilarious way of saying “okay!” has charmed even this seasoned auditor. We recommend Jack as “Nice”.
While Maggie has been up for review several times in past years, this year, we are happy to report that Maggie has grown into a wonderful big sister and an excellent preschooler. Maggie shows an ability to see the best in everyone and is quick to compliment a friend or to kiss a boo boo when necessary. This year Maggie also added swimming to her resume, and she is a regular fish in the water. While still having her moments of “exuberance”, Maggie is most definitely “Nice”.
Ellie has set the bar high for her siblings. She can now add star Kindergartner to her list of accomplishments. Ms. King, Ellie’s teacher, says she is kind and friendly and she is showing great aptitude for school. Ellie has a strong interest in science and loves to create little experiments in the back yard. She is clearly still “Nice”.
There is one addition to our regular audit of the Lacey Family. Caroline Aime, a 17 year old from France, joined the family in August as an exchange student and has already become more like another daughter than temporary guest. In addition to being sweet and kind, Caroline has already received Distinguished Honors at McKean High School, one of only 3 seniors to do so. She is loved universaly by the family, especially the dog Joey, who is hopeful everyday that today might be the day his love is returned. Caroline is firmly “Nice”.
As a side note, though we don’t generally audit dog behavior, Joey deserves special mention for his 11 years of steadfast service to the Laceys. Particularly in the last year, while he has endured pokes and prods, been pressed into service as both Prince Charming and a stepstool, he has done it all with wag of the tail and only one or two room clearing farts a day.
Finally, I’m saddened to disclose that there was an ethical problem with the initial report on Erin Lacey. Apparently, her husband Jeffrey, in a misunderstanding of semantics, tried to bribe the first auditor to put Erin on the “Naughty” list. Once the gifting ramifications were made clear to Mr. Lacey, he requested that Erin be placed back on the “Nice” list and that his actions be fully disclosed. Mr. Lacey, despite this transgression, is also recommended for “Nice” status for his continued efforts to tame four wild animals into productive members of society and for enduring forty-two weeks of pregnancy without once trying to drive Erin into the middle of nowhere and leave her for dead.
All in all, the Lacey family has had a productive and happy 2010. They are extremely grateful for their wonderful friends and family and sincerely hope that they have an even better 2011.
Regards and Merry Christmas,
Elves of India, Inc.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Go Big Red!
You probably know me well enough to know that I love me some Facebook. I love the random nature of seeing the daily minutiae of the lives of people from all different parts of my life listed in my news feed. It's like "This is Your Life" everyday. My first friend from childhood talks about his new baby, and then right under it, my girlfriend is asking for advice about digital cameras, and then there's something random from one of my relatives.
Lately, there's been a lot of talk from one group of friends... my high school friends. You see, my high school football team was in the state championship playoffs and this past Saturday, they lost in the final seconds to Dunbar High. Apparently there was some controversy over the last play, in which Dunbar scored, breaking the tie and winning the game. This is the kind of information I wouldn't know, if not for Facebook. You might think this is just superficial FB crap, but to the people of Cumberland, MD, there is nothing more serious than football.
We moved to Cumberland when I was 10, almost 11. Fresh off living in Detroit, MI, a place my entire family hated for the 11 months and 4 days we lived there, my first impression of Cumberland was made by the sign posted on the way into town "Cumberland, MD - Home of the National Marbles Champion 1981". My thoughts were along the lines of, "wow, this town does not have much to brag about." Moving from Pittsburgh to Michigan had been pretty traumatic for all of us, and I was just prepared to hate everything about this new hick town my parents had landed us in.
My feelings of dread were not relieved by our new house. It was unique in it's splendid ugliness. The front door was painted safety orange with brown trim. Apparently, the previous owners had gotten a good deal on this orange and brown paint, because the entryway and living room were the brown and the kitchen was the orange. The downstairs powder room had wallpaper that rivals Repub's... silver and black metallic with yellow fuzzy diamonds. My bedroom looked as though someone had color matched a Pink SnoBall. It was putrid pink, even for an 11 year old girl. If I remember right, my parents' bedroom was the same safety orange, cause really, why stop at the kitchen? And their master bath was spectacular in it's tackiness, complete with shag carpeting.
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| Me, age 11 |
Determined to make a good impression, I dressed for my first day in my favorite blue sweater, the one that I hoped made people notice I had blue eyes hidden behind my ginormous glasses. I got on the school bus with no problem and thought maybe this would be okay. Maybe I would make a good impression. Maybe I would finally be like Elizabeth from Sweet Valley High and everyone would love me.
I noticed something strange pretty quickly: my bus was decorated with red and white signs and streamers. This seemed odd to me, but I didn't really absorb it as I was busily trying to disappear into the seat. However, when we drove through Cresaptown, I couldn't help but notice that people, some of them adults, were yelling stuff at the bus. One kid actually threw a rock. What the hell? Who throws rocks at a school bus??? The kids on my bus were yelling out the windows back at them. Was I in the middle of some bizarre small town gang war? I saw that the buildings and cars we were passing were decorated with blue and white. Slowly, I looked around at my new classmates. Every single one of them was wearing red and white. My blue sweater, so perfect that morning, suddenly felt two sizes too small and extraordinarily hot.
It was Homecoming. See, in Cumberland, there are two public high schools. Fort Hill and Allegany. Fort Hill, or Big Red, is where I would go. But at this point, I was only in 6th grade, and going to Washington Middle School. However, Cumberland is somewhat of a geographical anomaly - it's 3 hours to everywhere. Equidistant from Pittsburgh, Baltimore and DC, affinity to any of these cities is tenuous. It's alliance to the high school team that defines this town.
Of course, my first day of school was Pep Rally Day, when the Fort Hill Sentinels made an appearance to their younger fans. Every kid was dressed in red and white, and I stuck out like a big blue thumb. The hated Allegany Campers (and I have no idea to this day why they were named that) school colors are blue and white. My mortification was epic.
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| Erin & Kellee |
We moved from Cumberland when I was 17. College and life have happened in the 20 years since high school, and if not for the power of social networking, I would never know that Fort Hill was robbed of their States chances last weekend. Not that knowing materially changed my day, but somehow it's nice to know that those traditions are still there and that part of my childhood lives on. Cumberland seemed like a hick town when we drove in, but it was a great place to be a kid and I'll alway consider myself priviledged to have lived there.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Sunday Sermon
When Caroline decided that she wanted to come stay with us for the year, one of her few requests was that we go to Mass each Sunday. Jeff and I are pretty much your standard "C & E" Catholics - we go on Christmas and Easter, and even then it's wholly dependant on how the children are behaving. But how do you turn down a 16 year old that wants to go to Mass?
Taking the whole family to church every Sunday is not an option. I'm a firm believer that if you're spending the whole time entertaining/diciplining your two year old, you might as well not be at church anyway. I don't want to be a distraction to others either, however, Ellie is five and that's plenty old to learn how to sit still for an hour. So we decided that one of us parents, Caroline, and Ellie would be attending each week.
Each week, Ellie whines and complains and moans and cries about going. Yesterday it was my turn to take the girls and I was prepared for the onslaught of "It's boring! I don't like standing. I'm hungry. I'm Jewish." that I knew would start as soon as I told her it was time to go. Luckily, I had the threat of a birthday party to hang over her head and with the proper motivation ("If you don't stop complaining, you're not going to Mr. Taylor's birthday party") we were off. Of course, there was much kvetching and dramatic sniffling from the back seat and I commented offhandedly to Caroline that yet another generation learns to hate going to church and that started me thinking about my own journey through the practical part, not the religious part, of churchgoing.
My dad is the driving force behind my church upbringing. He's Catholic and has gone to church every Sunday, with very few exceptions, my whole life. As a child, my recollections of church are of being lost in a forest of adult legs, staring at the pew and tracing the wood grain patterns with my fingers. My favorite part of Mass was when my dad would carry me up to receive Communion. Communion was also my least favorite part, for when I got old enough, he would leave us in the pew and I believe he acted as an usher from time to time. Sunday school was always kind of a drag, but I LOVED my first Holy Communion... I loved the dress, I loved the hairpiece I wore, I loved the party afterwards and I certainly didn't look askanse at the gifts.
After that, Communion continued to be my favorite part of Mass, but not for the 'transubstantiation' (when the bread becomes the body of Christ in Catholic mass), but rather because in good Catholic tradition, we weren't allowed to eat before Mass. So the wafer was generally the first thing I'd eaten that day and they're actually kind of tasty.... in an unleavened bread sort of way. Jeff and I both discovered our mutual taste for Hosts recently and had a good laugh about how we both wished you were allowed to get in line for another. I can rememeber being very stressed out about chewing it though, cause there just seemed to be something terribly wrong with the idea of chewing up Jesus' body. I would hold it in my mouth for as long as I could and try to let it melt. This almost always resulted in the wafer sticking like plaster to the roof of my mouth, causing me to spend the rest of Mass surreptitiously trying to scrape it off with my tongue.
As a teenager, my favorite part of Mass was actually the drive home. And not cause it was church was over, but rather, after my brother went into the Army, it was just me and Dad in the car. It was probably the only time I was alone with my dad and we had the best conversations. We would talk about boys, college, careers, religion... you name it, we talked about it. These were the times when my dad told me that I was capable of anything I put my mind to, and that I should never accept less than total respect from my boyfriends, and he may not know how carefully I listened. Lord knows I tried to pretend like I wasn't. To this day, I love going to church with my dad. It's like putting on your comfiest pair of slippers.
Now that I'm a grown up, my favorite part of Mass is the time after Communion, when the priests are putting everything away and there's a few minutes of just music. People are still kneeling and praying, and I usually take this time to talk to my grandparents. When I was a kid, I'd talk to my grandfather Moran, who died when I was 7. I'd tell him about myself and I'd use that time to consider if he'd be proud of me. These days, I tell my grandmothers about my kids and what they're doing, and I still talk my grandfather and ask him for advice. I think I've always had the idea that my problems might not be important enough for God to get to right away - it's not world peace or anything - but my grandparents have to be interested, right?
So for now, I know that I'll have to deal with complaining and whining for a few more years... as each kid gets old enough to be allowed to go to church. Hopefully, they'll have something of the same process as me though and find out that church is a quiet place to think and that being still isn't always a bad thing.
Taking the whole family to church every Sunday is not an option. I'm a firm believer that if you're spending the whole time entertaining/diciplining your two year old, you might as well not be at church anyway. I don't want to be a distraction to others either, however, Ellie is five and that's plenty old to learn how to sit still for an hour. So we decided that one of us parents, Caroline, and Ellie would be attending each week.
Each week, Ellie whines and complains and moans and cries about going. Yesterday it was my turn to take the girls and I was prepared for the onslaught of "It's boring! I don't like standing. I'm hungry. I'm Jewish." that I knew would start as soon as I told her it was time to go. Luckily, I had the threat of a birthday party to hang over her head and with the proper motivation ("If you don't stop complaining, you're not going to Mr. Taylor's birthday party") we were off. Of course, there was much kvetching and dramatic sniffling from the back seat and I commented offhandedly to Caroline that yet another generation learns to hate going to church and that started me thinking about my own journey through the practical part, not the religious part, of churchgoing.
After that, Communion continued to be my favorite part of Mass, but not for the 'transubstantiation' (when the bread becomes the body of Christ in Catholic mass), but rather because in good Catholic tradition, we weren't allowed to eat before Mass. So the wafer was generally the first thing I'd eaten that day and they're actually kind of tasty.... in an unleavened bread sort of way. Jeff and I both discovered our mutual taste for Hosts recently and had a good laugh about how we both wished you were allowed to get in line for another. I can rememeber being very stressed out about chewing it though, cause there just seemed to be something terribly wrong with the idea of chewing up Jesus' body. I would hold it in my mouth for as long as I could and try to let it melt. This almost always resulted in the wafer sticking like plaster to the roof of my mouth, causing me to spend the rest of Mass surreptitiously trying to scrape it off with my tongue.
As a teenager, my favorite part of Mass was actually the drive home. And not cause it was church was over, but rather, after my brother went into the Army, it was just me and Dad in the car. It was probably the only time I was alone with my dad and we had the best conversations. We would talk about boys, college, careers, religion... you name it, we talked about it. These were the times when my dad told me that I was capable of anything I put my mind to, and that I should never accept less than total respect from my boyfriends, and he may not know how carefully I listened. Lord knows I tried to pretend like I wasn't. To this day, I love going to church with my dad. It's like putting on your comfiest pair of slippers.
Now that I'm a grown up, my favorite part of Mass is the time after Communion, when the priests are putting everything away and there's a few minutes of just music. People are still kneeling and praying, and I usually take this time to talk to my grandparents. When I was a kid, I'd talk to my grandfather Moran, who died when I was 7. I'd tell him about myself and I'd use that time to consider if he'd be proud of me. These days, I tell my grandmothers about my kids and what they're doing, and I still talk my grandfather and ask him for advice. I think I've always had the idea that my problems might not be important enough for God to get to right away - it's not world peace or anything - but my grandparents have to be interested, right?
So for now, I know that I'll have to deal with complaining and whining for a few more years... as each kid gets old enough to be allowed to go to church. Hopefully, they'll have something of the same process as me though and find out that church is a quiet place to think and that being still isn't always a bad thing.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Back in the saddle
It's been a while since I posted and I have a couple good reasons. Things in the Lacey household have been a little bit crazy for the last two months. September started strong with the typical back to school madness, all of which was completely overtaken at the end of September by the catastrophic illness of my bestie's daughter Molly. Kristen has written eloquently and bravely on her CaringBridge site, so if you're interested in Molly's story go to https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/mollydunne/createorsignin.
Meanwhile, in LaceyLand, we've had our own shares of stress and strain and in typical Erin Lacey style, I try to see as much absurditiy as possible. Which leads us to tonight's story. On Sunday, October 10, Jack awoke seemingly fine, but it became apparent very quickly that he was having some kind of issue. I thought it was an ear infection and, with him being a third child and all, decided that he would still have an ear infection on Monday and left him home with Caroline, while the rest of us attended a party for our friend Andee.
Monday morning, I awoke to the sound of Jeff getting Jack out of bed and saying something to the effect of "Holy crap!" I leapt out of bed - and by that I mean dragged myself into a sitting position and then took a minute to curse all things morning. Once I collected myself, I came down to the dining room to find Jeff holding a very odd looking Jack. The entire right side of his little face was swollen and he looked generally miserable. Jeff took Maggie and the baby to drop Mags off at preschool and Jackieboy and I went off to urgent care.
Strangely enough, this happened on the first occasion in the five years of going to Dr. Field that she wasn't available when I needed her. This is our doctor who, when Jack was a baby with croup, called us back on a Sunday and had us meet her in her office, but asked us if we could wait to meet her until after her cake came out of the oven. However, Dr. Field's father in law had passed away over the weekend and she was at his funeral on Monday. We got to the Lantana Square Urgent Care only to find out that it was closed until noon. I called Dr. Field's office in hopes that her trusty office staff could tell me where I should go next, and when I described Jack's symptoms, she stopped me at facial swelling and told me to go to the ER.
Having just spent a good bit of time at AI Dupont, I was leary of going there again. It seemed like a bit of a bad dream to be pulling in with my own child. They whisked us right back to a room and within twenty minutes of being there, Jack had IV and a CT scan and a diagnosis of Parapharyngeal Abcess. Basically this means that he's had an infection in the WAAAAAAY back of his throat. Treatment? Two days of IV antibiodics. WHAT?!?!?!? My mind started to race... I'd need a change of clothes, someone to watch the other kids, can Jeff take off work? I hadn't even had breakfast, now was I allowed to leave him to eat?
We were admitted and taken to the care of the Gold Team on 4F. Jeff got us settled in and then left for the night. Jack was pretty dehydrated so in addition to the antibiodics, he was also receiving fluids. At some point after Jeff left, Jack went to sleep. A couple hours later, the alarm indicating the fluids had run out started to blare. Not wanting it to wake Jack, I ran out to the nurses station and called in Nurse Nancy (that was really her name and it pleased me endlessly). Nurse Nancy came in and while she was changing the bag, I noticed the gauze covering the IV site was bloody. One second later, it became apparent why... Jack had rolled over in his sleep and pulled the IV needle right out of his hand. The IV fluid had just pumped out all over his crib and his gown. Nurse Nancy told me that she'd get the "IV nurse" up there to fix him up.
IV Nurse, who's name I've forgotten, has absolutely no luck with sticking Jack. Probably the worst part of the whole experience was wiping the streaming tears from Jackie's face while they stuck him three times, trying to get a vein. Finally IV nurse said that she couldn't do it, so they were going to have to call transport. Transport? I asked. Turns out that when they have a particularly difficult IV to put in, Transport is the go-to. I guess they have to put IVs in kids while bouncing in ambulances or airplanes, so it sort of makes sense. In walks the Transport Nurse, the best of the best, the savior of my poor Jack, and she looks at me over Jack's sad little form and I immediately notice that her right eye is looking at me, but her left eye is looking at Nurse Nancy. A little shocked by this, I immediately tell myself not to worry about it. What's a little bit of a strabismus? Obviously the Nurse Nancy thinks that she's the best choice. Then Transport Nurse reaches out to take Jack's arm to inspect his veins and then I notice that she only has two fingers and half of a thumb n her right hand. Strangely enough, the thing that interested me the most about this latest development was how was she going to get a glove on? Quick as a flash, Transport Nurse, walleyed as she was, had a new IV in and Jack's arm taped within an inch of it's life. So that will teach me to judge a book by it's cover!
The rest of our stay was uneventful. On Wednesday morning, we were released back into the wild and Jack was given a clean bill of health a couple days later by the returned Dr. Field. There is nothing like having your friend's kid be critically ill to put things in perspective, and in the grand scheme of things, this was a blip. Before we left, the nurses in 4F were asking us if Jack was acting more like himself, and at the time it was a BIG no. I told them that when he started throwing stuff at them, it was time for us to go. Last thing Jack did before we left was throw his full sippy cup and hit me right on the top of my foot... it was time for us to go!!
Meanwhile, in LaceyLand, we've had our own shares of stress and strain and in typical Erin Lacey style, I try to see as much absurditiy as possible. Which leads us to tonight's story. On Sunday, October 10, Jack awoke seemingly fine, but it became apparent very quickly that he was having some kind of issue. I thought it was an ear infection and, with him being a third child and all, decided that he would still have an ear infection on Monday and left him home with Caroline, while the rest of us attended a party for our friend Andee.
Monday morning, I awoke to the sound of Jeff getting Jack out of bed and saying something to the effect of "Holy crap!" I leapt out of bed - and by that I mean dragged myself into a sitting position and then took a minute to curse all things morning. Once I collected myself, I came down to the dining room to find Jeff holding a very odd looking Jack. The entire right side of his little face was swollen and he looked generally miserable. Jeff took Maggie and the baby to drop Mags off at preschool and Jackieboy and I went off to urgent care.
Strangely enough, this happened on the first occasion in the five years of going to Dr. Field that she wasn't available when I needed her. This is our doctor who, when Jack was a baby with croup, called us back on a Sunday and had us meet her in her office, but asked us if we could wait to meet her until after her cake came out of the oven. However, Dr. Field's father in law had passed away over the weekend and she was at his funeral on Monday. We got to the Lantana Square Urgent Care only to find out that it was closed until noon. I called Dr. Field's office in hopes that her trusty office staff could tell me where I should go next, and when I described Jack's symptoms, she stopped me at facial swelling and told me to go to the ER.
IV Nurse, who's name I've forgotten, has absolutely no luck with sticking Jack. Probably the worst part of the whole experience was wiping the streaming tears from Jackie's face while they stuck him three times, trying to get a vein. Finally IV nurse said that she couldn't do it, so they were going to have to call transport. Transport? I asked. Turns out that when they have a particularly difficult IV to put in, Transport is the go-to. I guess they have to put IVs in kids while bouncing in ambulances or airplanes, so it sort of makes sense. In walks the Transport Nurse, the best of the best, the savior of my poor Jack, and she looks at me over Jack's sad little form and I immediately notice that her right eye is looking at me, but her left eye is looking at Nurse Nancy. A little shocked by this, I immediately tell myself not to worry about it. What's a little bit of a strabismus? Obviously the Nurse Nancy thinks that she's the best choice. Then Transport Nurse reaches out to take Jack's arm to inspect his veins and then I notice that she only has two fingers and half of a thumb n her right hand. Strangely enough, the thing that interested me the most about this latest development was how was she going to get a glove on? Quick as a flash, Transport Nurse, walleyed as she was, had a new IV in and Jack's arm taped within an inch of it's life. So that will teach me to judge a book by it's cover!
The rest of our stay was uneventful. On Wednesday morning, we were released back into the wild and Jack was given a clean bill of health a couple days later by the returned Dr. Field. There is nothing like having your friend's kid be critically ill to put things in perspective, and in the grand scheme of things, this was a blip. Before we left, the nurses in 4F were asking us if Jack was acting more like himself, and at the time it was a BIG no. I told them that when he started throwing stuff at them, it was time for us to go. Last thing Jack did before we left was throw his full sippy cup and hit me right on the top of my foot... it was time for us to go!!
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
A day at the Y
Well, this isn't the blog I thought I was going to write tonight, but I had to share this story... cause it's a typical Erin Lacey story.
So, I go to the Y with more frequency than I used to, and my favorite thing to do is right the "Expresso" stationary bike. It's got a screen and it allows you to pick different "tours" that appear on your screen and it is supposed to feel more like you're riding outside and less like you're riding a bike while watching TV. As far as gym equipment goes, it's a little more complicated than your average treadmill, and people are forever getting on the bike next to me without a single clue how to get the thing started. Therefore, I've developed some skill at explaining the way the thing works, while still pedaling.
Yesterday, I was pedaling on the "Bent Spoke" when I notice a group of people come in the gym. I'm a total nosy neighbor at the gym. I do the same thing at church. I know I'm supposed to be meditating and reflecting on my own workout/sin, but really I spend a lot of time looking at people's outfits and wondering why anyone would wear pantyhose in this day and age. This particular group stood out though, and it was apparent it was a group from an adult care program of some variety. The bike next to me stood open and the caregiver set up a young lady of about 20 on the seat. The caregiver fiddled with the controls for a moment when the guy on the other side of her offered to help. I kept pedaling and watched as he got her set up on the race track tour.
Part of the fun of the TV screen is there are other racers on the tour with you. You can pass them, or if you're in the mood, you can ride your bike right through them. The guy on the other bike kept telling the girl that she could race the other people and she answered a couple times with "Do I have to pass them?" I thought to myself that this guy was nice for helping, but he wasn't really listening to her. He finished his ride and left. I noticed that she was still having a little trouble with the pedaling and steering, so I mentioned that she didn't need to worry about the steering cause the computer wouldn't let her run off the track. She said that she was uncomfortable cause the straps holding the pedals on her feet were loose and asked if I'd fix them. So I jumped off my bike and fixed her right up. I hopped back on and continued to chat with her, keeping up a running stream of encouragement. The whole time, in the back of my head, I'm hearing one of the kids' Bible camp songs, about loving a stranger like a neighbor and I'm mentally breaking my arm patting my back for being so nice.
I was watching her screen and I could see that she was rounding the last turn before the finish line. "You're almost there! Just make it around this turn and you'll see the finish line!" I say. I was so excited for her to finish. In my head, I'm thinking that maybe there's a volunteer opportunity here, this is so rewarding! Special Olympics, maybe? "Just a little further! You can do it!" Wow, it's really awesome to watch someone accomplish a goal. "Keep it up! There's the finish line!" We're mere feet from the finish line when she looks at me and says, "Can you please stop talking to me? It's really distracting me."
So, I go to the Y with more frequency than I used to, and my favorite thing to do is right the "Expresso" stationary bike. It's got a screen and it allows you to pick different "tours" that appear on your screen and it is supposed to feel more like you're riding outside and less like you're riding a bike while watching TV. As far as gym equipment goes, it's a little more complicated than your average treadmill, and people are forever getting on the bike next to me without a single clue how to get the thing started. Therefore, I've developed some skill at explaining the way the thing works, while still pedaling.
Yesterday, I was pedaling on the "Bent Spoke" when I notice a group of people come in the gym. I'm a total nosy neighbor at the gym. I do the same thing at church. I know I'm supposed to be meditating and reflecting on my own workout/sin, but really I spend a lot of time looking at people's outfits and wondering why anyone would wear pantyhose in this day and age. This particular group stood out though, and it was apparent it was a group from an adult care program of some variety. The bike next to me stood open and the caregiver set up a young lady of about 20 on the seat. The caregiver fiddled with the controls for a moment when the guy on the other side of her offered to help. I kept pedaling and watched as he got her set up on the race track tour.
Part of the fun of the TV screen is there are other racers on the tour with you. You can pass them, or if you're in the mood, you can ride your bike right through them. The guy on the other bike kept telling the girl that she could race the other people and she answered a couple times with "Do I have to pass them?" I thought to myself that this guy was nice for helping, but he wasn't really listening to her. He finished his ride and left. I noticed that she was still having a little trouble with the pedaling and steering, so I mentioned that she didn't need to worry about the steering cause the computer wouldn't let her run off the track. She said that she was uncomfortable cause the straps holding the pedals on her feet were loose and asked if I'd fix them. So I jumped off my bike and fixed her right up. I hopped back on and continued to chat with her, keeping up a running stream of encouragement. The whole time, in the back of my head, I'm hearing one of the kids' Bible camp songs, about loving a stranger like a neighbor and I'm mentally breaking my arm patting my back for being so nice.
I was watching her screen and I could see that she was rounding the last turn before the finish line. "You're almost there! Just make it around this turn and you'll see the finish line!" I say. I was so excited for her to finish. In my head, I'm thinking that maybe there's a volunteer opportunity here, this is so rewarding! Special Olympics, maybe? "Just a little further! You can do it!" Wow, it's really awesome to watch someone accomplish a goal. "Keep it up! There's the finish line!" We're mere feet from the finish line when she looks at me and says, "Can you please stop talking to me? It's really distracting me."
Saturday, July 31, 2010
You've obviously mistaken me for someone who gives a crap
I've often been told that I have "one of those faces." The kind of face that makes people feel free to tell me their innermost secrets. Once, while sitting on a wall in Boston Common reading a book, a man sat next to me and began to tell me how he was there for a parole hearing for his brother and that he really didn't know if he thought he should get paroled but thought his mom would want him to tell the parole people what they wanted to hear, etc. Another time, I had a woman tell me on the subway in excrutiating detail about her various surgeries. In my effort to be polite, I have been privvy to way too much information.
Last night, when Jeff got home from work, I was about one "Mommy, can I?" away from shot putting Maggie across the room. Jeff gently suggested that I leave the house, telling me that sometimes it's more fun to be around the kids when I'm not there. Never one to let pride get in the way of an escape route, I bolted some dinner and got the hell out of Dodge. Not really having a plan, I went to Kohls. I was just kind of wandering around aimlessly looking at housewares and dreaming of a day when I will have breakable things on end tables, when an employee noticed my slow progress through the aisle.
"Can I help you find something?" she asked.
"No, I'm just enjoying wandering around." I said, "I don't have any kids with me so I'm taking my time." In hindsight, I know that this was my mistake. Giving any additional information is seen as in invitation by crazy people to talk.
"How old are your kids?" she asks. I told her about my circus of kids and predictably, she tells me that I'm going to miss the days when my kids were small. "I know I will." I respond. "But right now, missing my kids sounds like fun." She then tells me that her son is 26 and she misses when he was little. Foolishly, I say, "That's a great age though, I think that's when you start to appreciate your parents." I tried to walk away, but this was the opening she had been waiting for.
"All my son wants to do is get wasted as fast as he can!" she tells me. I looked longingly for an escape route, but shifted my feet and got comfy. Cause there's really no polite way to get out of this conversation. I mean, "Sorry that your son is a wastoid, but could you tell me how much this fingerbowl costs during Kohls PowerHours?" doesn't exactly flow off the tongue. My new friend tells me about how her son was the sweetest five year old who was such a great sharer and a caring boy and now he doesn't care about anything. Her fridge was covered in his artwork. She went on and on and I tried to maintain a neutral look on my face while trying to figure out what I could say to end this conversation and get to the 70% off rack I could see out of the corner of my eye. "Maybe this is the year that he'll pull it together." I say, backing away now. She followed, hanging on my words hopefully. "I know I learned a lot more in my late 20s than I did in my early 20s." Still backing. Finally I hit the hard tile of the main aisle. "Good night, and good luck!" I say waving goodbye.
I guess I could have just not engaged with her at all. The smart thing to do would have been to just say "No" when she asked if I wanted help and then went on. But maybe, our little conversation helped her feel better about something that was obviously bothering her. I hope that I was able to at least make her night go faster. I guess I have one of those faces cause I figure that spending five minutes with a stranger isn't a total waste of time. You never know what people are going to tell you and that's kind of fun, it's like an adventure every time. I come by it honestly, my mom is the same way. Mom struck up a conversation with a man in a bar in Dewey Beach once and it turned out that it was Captain Lou Albano. But that's a whole other blog!
Last night, when Jeff got home from work, I was about one "Mommy, can I?" away from shot putting Maggie across the room. Jeff gently suggested that I leave the house, telling me that sometimes it's more fun to be around the kids when I'm not there. Never one to let pride get in the way of an escape route, I bolted some dinner and got the hell out of Dodge. Not really having a plan, I went to Kohls. I was just kind of wandering around aimlessly looking at housewares and dreaming of a day when I will have breakable things on end tables, when an employee noticed my slow progress through the aisle.
"Can I help you find something?" she asked.
"No, I'm just enjoying wandering around." I said, "I don't have any kids with me so I'm taking my time." In hindsight, I know that this was my mistake. Giving any additional information is seen as in invitation by crazy people to talk.
"How old are your kids?" she asks. I told her about my circus of kids and predictably, she tells me that I'm going to miss the days when my kids were small. "I know I will." I respond. "But right now, missing my kids sounds like fun." She then tells me that her son is 26 and she misses when he was little. Foolishly, I say, "That's a great age though, I think that's when you start to appreciate your parents." I tried to walk away, but this was the opening she had been waiting for.
"All my son wants to do is get wasted as fast as he can!" she tells me. I looked longingly for an escape route, but shifted my feet and got comfy. Cause there's really no polite way to get out of this conversation. I mean, "Sorry that your son is a wastoid, but could you tell me how much this fingerbowl costs during Kohls PowerHours?" doesn't exactly flow off the tongue. My new friend tells me about how her son was the sweetest five year old who was such a great sharer and a caring boy and now he doesn't care about anything. Her fridge was covered in his artwork. She went on and on and I tried to maintain a neutral look on my face while trying to figure out what I could say to end this conversation and get to the 70% off rack I could see out of the corner of my eye. "Maybe this is the year that he'll pull it together." I say, backing away now. She followed, hanging on my words hopefully. "I know I learned a lot more in my late 20s than I did in my early 20s." Still backing. Finally I hit the hard tile of the main aisle. "Good night, and good luck!" I say waving goodbye.
I guess I could have just not engaged with her at all. The smart thing to do would have been to just say "No" when she asked if I wanted help and then went on. But maybe, our little conversation helped her feel better about something that was obviously bothering her. I hope that I was able to at least make her night go faster. I guess I have one of those faces cause I figure that spending five minutes with a stranger isn't a total waste of time. You never know what people are going to tell you and that's kind of fun, it's like an adventure every time. I come by it honestly, my mom is the same way. Mom struck up a conversation with a man in a bar in Dewey Beach once and it turned out that it was Captain Lou Albano. But that's a whole other blog!
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Thoughts on the first days...
I have several friends who have recently had their first babies. Thinking about them with their new little baby in their house has really brought back a whole flood of memories of bringing baby Ellie home and what it was like to have our first baby.
When leaving the hospital, first Jeff had to take all the crap we'd brought with us out to the car. I can remember thinking that the nurses must have thought we were such assholes. We had a laptop, movies, CDs, books, two suitcases, and all the stuff that you steal from the hospital. I don't know why we had so much stuff, but it was as if we'd been at the hospital for a month, rather than 2 days. Jeff wheeled me and Ellie down and we all got in the car. It was raining, and warmish for January, and as we drove past the other cars on the road, my kept thinking how strange it was, our whole world had shifted on it's axis and these other people driving by had no idea. I wanted to shout at people, "Don't you know I had a baby?!?!?!"
We arrived at our townhouse and went in to introduce the dogs to Ellie. Like most childless dog owners, we had treated our pups as our kids and we were nervous about their reaction to the baby. My parents took one of Ellie's hats home from the hospital so the dogs could sniff it and get used to her smell. We had watched "Baby Story" on TLC with the dogs in the room to help them get used to the sound of a baby. We carefully planned our arrival home so that Jeff would walk in without the baby and greet the dogs, so that they wouldn't feel "replaced." In a nutshell, we forgot while treating our dogs as children that they are, in fact, dogs and they really don't give a crap about a new baby in the house unless it affects mealtime.
I remember arriving home, putting the carrier on a chair and wondering, "okay, now what?" My mother was staying with us and had already been at the house for a couple days, so it was in pristine condition - every surface cleaned within an inch of it's life, every scrap of clothing washed, folded and put away. The house felt foreign, felt like I was visiting my house after someone else had moved in. I was a stranger in a strange land, a parent in a house that had been childless.
I'm sure we ate something and then made some phone calls to friends and family. What I do remember more clearly was that first night. Oh holy night. Our perfect baby had been a wonderful sleeper in the hospital and I know that I secretly thought it was my natural parenting ability. That first night, and the next day, a Friday, will forever be called "Cryday" in the Lacey lexicon. No one, not the nurses, not the doctors, not our friends with kids, had warned us about day three, when Ellie got hungry and my milk hadn't come in.
Breastfeeding hadn't been going well since jumpstreet. Starting all the way back at our breastfeeding class, the lactation consultant teaching the class completely freaked me out. She made it sound like every doctor, nurse, orderly and quite possibly total strangers, would be trying to sneak my baby formula in a bottle, thereby ensuring "nipple confusion" and the failure of my ability to breastfeed. I tend to be dramatic when pregnant. In the hospital, the nurse, an angry woman with bad breath and unfortunate facial hair, had basically grabbed my breast and shoved it in poor Ellie's face. Now, I'm a pretty self conscious person, and not really into having strangers touch me while naked. Ellie screamed, I cringed... it was bad all over. After several attempts, the nurse told me that she had to eat before midnight or else I HAD to give her a bottle of formula. The minutes ticked by, I kept trying, but she kept refusing. Midnight came and the nurse brought us the little "ready to feed" bottle and told us she'd be back to check on us. I don't know what came over me, but I got out of my bed, took the bottle and poured most of it down the sink drain. Ellie wasn't born until 4:30 PM, and something just told me that this nurse was checking a box off, not really thinking about our situation. When the nurse came back, I smiled at her and pointed at the bottle. Score one for the boob nazis. Sure enough, about an hour later, Ellie threw up an astonishing quantity of brown gunk, amniotic fluid as it turned out. About an hour after that, she nursed and all was right with the world.
However, that was day one and this was day four, and oh what a difference a few days made. Ellie was up all night. She'd scream, I'd nurse, and she'd sleep for 10 minutes. She'd scream, I'd nurse, and she'd sleep for 10 minutes. And so on, until my poor boobs felt like I'd been nursing a bench grinder. Finally, sometime around dawn, when Jeff went to give her to me again to nurse, I had a little freak out - "There has to be something wrong with her besides being hungry!" I yelled. Then I demanded he open the pack of pacifiers that we had, but hadn't given to her for fear of "nipple confusion". I nursed and then ever so carefully took myself out and slipped the pacifier in, a slight of hand I'd get very good at in the next months.
Sleep deprived and disheveled, we took Ellie to her first doctor appointment. In the car, the silence overwhelmed us... for the first time in hours, Ellie wasn't crying. I called my mom and informed her that we would be driving to Mexico and back. At the doctors, I cried silently the entire time. The doctor assured Jeff that this was totally normal, and to expect frequent outbursts of crying from me for no good reason. Ellie was a little jaundiced and had lost more weight than the doctor liked, so we were sent to get labs and with an appointment for a weight check in a couple more days.
More crying from both Ellie and me. Finally, my mom was on the phone with my Aunt Barb, who gave me the following advice: Drink a beer. Now, that's Aunt Barb's advice in pretty much any given situation, but this time she had the old wives behind her. It's an old wives tale that beer will bring in your milk. Well, never one to question good advice, we went to a mexican place and got take out and picked up a 6 pack of Coronas. Lo and behold, sometime in the night, I was visited by the milk fairy and spent the next two weeks drowning poor Ellie in milk as my supply worked itself out.
That first week, my mother didn't do a lot of things... she didn't offer unsolicited advice, she didn't hold the baby endlessly, she didn't try to manage our baby for us. What she did do, I can never repay her for. Meals showed up on the table, clothes continued to get washed and put away, and the poor dogs, who fell from their pedestals faster than Oprah gains and loses weight, still managed to get fed and watered. She was truly the hero of the week. I hope that my kids think I'm 1/100th the mom that my mom is. After Ellie was older, she did tell me that the first night, she stood inside the guest room, which was next door to the nursery, hand on the door knob and talked herself out of coming to help us. I would have welcomed her help that night, but I'm sure that it was better in the long run that we did it ourselves.
After Mom left, and I stopped crying over nothing, there was a night where I looked at Jeff and said, "there's still another person in the house." It was the moment that I really understood that parenthood fundamentally changes everything in your life in a way you can't grasp until you've experienced it. Everything around me was the same, the thing that had changed was me.
When leaving the hospital, first Jeff had to take all the crap we'd brought with us out to the car. I can remember thinking that the nurses must have thought we were such assholes. We had a laptop, movies, CDs, books, two suitcases, and all the stuff that you steal from the hospital. I don't know why we had so much stuff, but it was as if we'd been at the hospital for a month, rather than 2 days. Jeff wheeled me and Ellie down and we all got in the car. It was raining, and warmish for January, and as we drove past the other cars on the road, my kept thinking how strange it was, our whole world had shifted on it's axis and these other people driving by had no idea. I wanted to shout at people, "Don't you know I had a baby?!?!?!"
We arrived at our townhouse and went in to introduce the dogs to Ellie. Like most childless dog owners, we had treated our pups as our kids and we were nervous about their reaction to the baby. My parents took one of Ellie's hats home from the hospital so the dogs could sniff it and get used to her smell. We had watched "Baby Story" on TLC with the dogs in the room to help them get used to the sound of a baby. We carefully planned our arrival home so that Jeff would walk in without the baby and greet the dogs, so that they wouldn't feel "replaced." In a nutshell, we forgot while treating our dogs as children that they are, in fact, dogs and they really don't give a crap about a new baby in the house unless it affects mealtime.
I remember arriving home, putting the carrier on a chair and wondering, "okay, now what?" My mother was staying with us and had already been at the house for a couple days, so it was in pristine condition - every surface cleaned within an inch of it's life, every scrap of clothing washed, folded and put away. The house felt foreign, felt like I was visiting my house after someone else had moved in. I was a stranger in a strange land, a parent in a house that had been childless.
I'm sure we ate something and then made some phone calls to friends and family. What I do remember more clearly was that first night. Oh holy night. Our perfect baby had been a wonderful sleeper in the hospital and I know that I secretly thought it was my natural parenting ability. That first night, and the next day, a Friday, will forever be called "Cryday" in the Lacey lexicon. No one, not the nurses, not the doctors, not our friends with kids, had warned us about day three, when Ellie got hungry and my milk hadn't come in.
Breastfeeding hadn't been going well since jumpstreet. Starting all the way back at our breastfeeding class, the lactation consultant teaching the class completely freaked me out. She made it sound like every doctor, nurse, orderly and quite possibly total strangers, would be trying to sneak my baby formula in a bottle, thereby ensuring "nipple confusion" and the failure of my ability to breastfeed. I tend to be dramatic when pregnant. In the hospital, the nurse, an angry woman with bad breath and unfortunate facial hair, had basically grabbed my breast and shoved it in poor Ellie's face. Now, I'm a pretty self conscious person, and not really into having strangers touch me while naked. Ellie screamed, I cringed... it was bad all over. After several attempts, the nurse told me that she had to eat before midnight or else I HAD to give her a bottle of formula. The minutes ticked by, I kept trying, but she kept refusing. Midnight came and the nurse brought us the little "ready to feed" bottle and told us she'd be back to check on us. I don't know what came over me, but I got out of my bed, took the bottle and poured most of it down the sink drain. Ellie wasn't born until 4:30 PM, and something just told me that this nurse was checking a box off, not really thinking about our situation. When the nurse came back, I smiled at her and pointed at the bottle. Score one for the boob nazis. Sure enough, about an hour later, Ellie threw up an astonishing quantity of brown gunk, amniotic fluid as it turned out. About an hour after that, she nursed and all was right with the world.
However, that was day one and this was day four, and oh what a difference a few days made. Ellie was up all night. She'd scream, I'd nurse, and she'd sleep for 10 minutes. She'd scream, I'd nurse, and she'd sleep for 10 minutes. And so on, until my poor boobs felt like I'd been nursing a bench grinder. Finally, sometime around dawn, when Jeff went to give her to me again to nurse, I had a little freak out - "There has to be something wrong with her besides being hungry!" I yelled. Then I demanded he open the pack of pacifiers that we had, but hadn't given to her for fear of "nipple confusion". I nursed and then ever so carefully took myself out and slipped the pacifier in, a slight of hand I'd get very good at in the next months.
Sleep deprived and disheveled, we took Ellie to her first doctor appointment. In the car, the silence overwhelmed us... for the first time in hours, Ellie wasn't crying. I called my mom and informed her that we would be driving to Mexico and back. At the doctors, I cried silently the entire time. The doctor assured Jeff that this was totally normal, and to expect frequent outbursts of crying from me for no good reason. Ellie was a little jaundiced and had lost more weight than the doctor liked, so we were sent to get labs and with an appointment for a weight check in a couple more days.
More crying from both Ellie and me. Finally, my mom was on the phone with my Aunt Barb, who gave me the following advice: Drink a beer. Now, that's Aunt Barb's advice in pretty much any given situation, but this time she had the old wives behind her. It's an old wives tale that beer will bring in your milk. Well, never one to question good advice, we went to a mexican place and got take out and picked up a 6 pack of Coronas. Lo and behold, sometime in the night, I was visited by the milk fairy and spent the next two weeks drowning poor Ellie in milk as my supply worked itself out.
That first week, my mother didn't do a lot of things... she didn't offer unsolicited advice, she didn't hold the baby endlessly, she didn't try to manage our baby for us. What she did do, I can never repay her for. Meals showed up on the table, clothes continued to get washed and put away, and the poor dogs, who fell from their pedestals faster than Oprah gains and loses weight, still managed to get fed and watered. She was truly the hero of the week. I hope that my kids think I'm 1/100th the mom that my mom is. After Ellie was older, she did tell me that the first night, she stood inside the guest room, which was next door to the nursery, hand on the door knob and talked herself out of coming to help us. I would have welcomed her help that night, but I'm sure that it was better in the long run that we did it ourselves.
After Mom left, and I stopped crying over nothing, there was a night where I looked at Jeff and said, "there's still another person in the house." It was the moment that I really understood that parenthood fundamentally changes everything in your life in a way you can't grasp until you've experienced it. Everything around me was the same, the thing that had changed was me.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Getting there (and getting ready) is half the fun
In 22 days, I will be on the beach enjoying a frosty adult beverage while my children play at my feat, making sandcastles and memories at the same time. However, in 21 days, I will still be in hell, driving the second day of a 10 hour long journey to Oak Island, NC.
Vacations are a part of my family tradition, like noxema on sunburns and corn niblits in butter sauce at every holiday meal. One of my earliest memories is of swimming in a kidney shaped pool at a hotel and being confused why anyone would shape a pool like a kidney. My brother and I jumped into that pool endlessly, while my dad would stand some appropriately scary distance away from the edge and then give us a push back to the side of the pool. I learned to dive in that pool, taught by my dad to put my hands on my head like a shark.
When I explain where we're going on vacation, people often say that we're crazy for driving so far, or that we're brave for going so far, or that they would love to go there, but it's too far to drive. When I was a kid, we would drive 625 miles from Pittsburgh, PA to Myrtle Beach, SC just about every year, until we found Oak Island in 1986. We would always take two days to get there, stopping overnight somewhere a bit more than halfway.
Vacation doesn't start with the drive though, it starts with a list. Or several lists. It moves from list to pre-packing, when my mother would begin to lay seemingly random items on the dining room table. A shirt. A book. A bottle of wine. Soon a pattern would emerge and in the last week before we left, the table was covered, the floor had stuff on it, and you couldn't wear anything you might want to take to the beach cause if it wasn't on the table, it wasn't getting packed.
The last evening before we left, the anticipation would be intense. My brother and I were sent to bed early with admonitions to go to sleep quickly cause we were getting up early in the morning. I don't know what time my mom would wake us, but I do know that it was always dark. We'd pile into the car, and I'd try to go back to sleep with my head on my pillow resting on the back window. Sometime around dawn, my parents would find us a restaurant to eat breakfast. My brother did not eat breakfast food as a kid. He always wanted a hamburger, which was hard to rustle up at 7AM. Now that I'm a parent, I have a whole new perspective on what my brother and I put my parents through. So he'd ask for a hamburger, the waitress would check, then tell us no they can't make him one, and then Mike would be grumpy. Being the near perfect child I was, I happily ate my Frosted Flakes, out of the little perforated box of course.
Back in the car with my cranky brother, the games would begin. I think you should be able to get a dividing line painted down the middle of your back seat as an option in sedans. I know that one year, we did this drive in an unairconditioned, black Camaro with leather seats, but I don't really remember it. I think I've blocked it out because the pain caused by peeling my poor young thighs off of those seats was simply too excrutiating to remember. I do vividly remember the sea foam green interior of my dad's company car, a Chevy Impala. I remember how the velour upholstery got warmed by my body heat and would never get cool. I remember how velour, though soft to the touch at first, would eventually start to hurt after sitting on it too long. I remember that Mike would draw a line in the seat by running his finger down the seat, creating a dark green line in the upholstery and then dare me to cross said line. And of course, being a younger sister, I crossed it many times.
It was the 80s, so there were no pesky car seats to tie us down. I would take the shoulder strap of the seat belt and put it behind me and then curl up in a ball on the seat to sleep, with the lap belt running from my mid chest, over my hip and behind me. Another favorite position was upside down, head on the cooler that always ended up on my side of the car, behind my dad, cause I was short. I used to look longingly at conversion vans as we drove by, thinking that those people knew how to travel.
My mom is a master of making up games. We did all the standbys... "A my name is", "In my grandma's attic I found", car bingo, license plate bingo. Over the years, other games were added. We would bring the Trivial Pursuit cards and ask each other questions. We made up a game that involved hitting the room of the car every time you saw a car with a cargo carrier and shouting "Snail!" One year, my parents rustled up a tiny black and white television with an antenna and we managed to watch snow interrupted occasionally by television programs. When we were young, there was the CB radio to keep us amused. I actually miss CBs. It's like cell phones on a party line with it's own language... breaker 1-9... what's your 20? My dad's handle was "Lieutenant" and I loved to hear my grandpa, "The Judge", call over the radio to warn him of a smokey at mile marker 129 northbound. I had no idea what it all meant, but it sounded fantastic. We made truck drivers honk their horns for us by madly pumping our arms up and down and waved at people in other cars to get them to wave back. And the scavenger hunts... oh man, that's a whole other blog's worth of entertainment!
Becuase we'd left so early, we'd always get to the hotel fairly early and we'd have the whole evening to hang out. The overnight in the hotel was always a favorite part of vacation. I mean, no where else could you walk down a hall in your PJs and get ice in a little tiny brown bucket. To this day, I love the sound of the ice machine in hotels. It's the sound of summer vacation starting. There was always a pool and that is where my story started, in the pool on the way to summer vacation.
Jeff's first year going to the beach, I prepared as my mother taught me... I made lists and began to put stuff out in a one layer think spread across the guest bed. Jeff, in his effort to be the man with the most, packed it all on Tuesday night. I spent Wednesday in a panic. I couldn't see what was in the bags, and I hadn't checked off my list. Thursday, I unpacked and repacked everything so I could check off my list. We got up and drove to Emporia, VA and spent the night at a really crappy Red Carpet Inn. It didn't have a pool, but it did have an ice machine. Now Jeff knows that the lists and the stress and the drawn out car ride are all part of vacation and he just goes with it. Cause the getting there starts in January, when we book the place to stay, continues through the year when Mom and I write the scavenger hunt, and is ending when we are getting into the car, and it's definitely half the fun!
Vacations are a part of my family tradition, like noxema on sunburns and corn niblits in butter sauce at every holiday meal. One of my earliest memories is of swimming in a kidney shaped pool at a hotel and being confused why anyone would shape a pool like a kidney. My brother and I jumped into that pool endlessly, while my dad would stand some appropriately scary distance away from the edge and then give us a push back to the side of the pool. I learned to dive in that pool, taught by my dad to put my hands on my head like a shark.
When I explain where we're going on vacation, people often say that we're crazy for driving so far, or that we're brave for going so far, or that they would love to go there, but it's too far to drive. When I was a kid, we would drive 625 miles from Pittsburgh, PA to Myrtle Beach, SC just about every year, until we found Oak Island in 1986. We would always take two days to get there, stopping overnight somewhere a bit more than halfway.
Vacation doesn't start with the drive though, it starts with a list. Or several lists. It moves from list to pre-packing, when my mother would begin to lay seemingly random items on the dining room table. A shirt. A book. A bottle of wine. Soon a pattern would emerge and in the last week before we left, the table was covered, the floor had stuff on it, and you couldn't wear anything you might want to take to the beach cause if it wasn't on the table, it wasn't getting packed.
The last evening before we left, the anticipation would be intense. My brother and I were sent to bed early with admonitions to go to sleep quickly cause we were getting up early in the morning. I don't know what time my mom would wake us, but I do know that it was always dark. We'd pile into the car, and I'd try to go back to sleep with my head on my pillow resting on the back window. Sometime around dawn, my parents would find us a restaurant to eat breakfast. My brother did not eat breakfast food as a kid. He always wanted a hamburger, which was hard to rustle up at 7AM. Now that I'm a parent, I have a whole new perspective on what my brother and I put my parents through. So he'd ask for a hamburger, the waitress would check, then tell us no they can't make him one, and then Mike would be grumpy. Being the near perfect child I was, I happily ate my Frosted Flakes, out of the little perforated box of course.
Back in the car with my cranky brother, the games would begin. I think you should be able to get a dividing line painted down the middle of your back seat as an option in sedans. I know that one year, we did this drive in an unairconditioned, black Camaro with leather seats, but I don't really remember it. I think I've blocked it out because the pain caused by peeling my poor young thighs off of those seats was simply too excrutiating to remember. I do vividly remember the sea foam green interior of my dad's company car, a Chevy Impala. I remember how the velour upholstery got warmed by my body heat and would never get cool. I remember how velour, though soft to the touch at first, would eventually start to hurt after sitting on it too long. I remember that Mike would draw a line in the seat by running his finger down the seat, creating a dark green line in the upholstery and then dare me to cross said line. And of course, being a younger sister, I crossed it many times.
It was the 80s, so there were no pesky car seats to tie us down. I would take the shoulder strap of the seat belt and put it behind me and then curl up in a ball on the seat to sleep, with the lap belt running from my mid chest, over my hip and behind me. Another favorite position was upside down, head on the cooler that always ended up on my side of the car, behind my dad, cause I was short. I used to look longingly at conversion vans as we drove by, thinking that those people knew how to travel.
My mom is a master of making up games. We did all the standbys... "A my name is", "In my grandma's attic I found", car bingo, license plate bingo. Over the years, other games were added. We would bring the Trivial Pursuit cards and ask each other questions. We made up a game that involved hitting the room of the car every time you saw a car with a cargo carrier and shouting "Snail!" One year, my parents rustled up a tiny black and white television with an antenna and we managed to watch snow interrupted occasionally by television programs. When we were young, there was the CB radio to keep us amused. I actually miss CBs. It's like cell phones on a party line with it's own language... breaker 1-9... what's your 20? My dad's handle was "Lieutenant" and I loved to hear my grandpa, "The Judge", call over the radio to warn him of a smokey at mile marker 129 northbound. I had no idea what it all meant, but it sounded fantastic. We made truck drivers honk their horns for us by madly pumping our arms up and down and waved at people in other cars to get them to wave back. And the scavenger hunts... oh man, that's a whole other blog's worth of entertainment!
Becuase we'd left so early, we'd always get to the hotel fairly early and we'd have the whole evening to hang out. The overnight in the hotel was always a favorite part of vacation. I mean, no where else could you walk down a hall in your PJs and get ice in a little tiny brown bucket. To this day, I love the sound of the ice machine in hotels. It's the sound of summer vacation starting. There was always a pool and that is where my story started, in the pool on the way to summer vacation.
Jeff's first year going to the beach, I prepared as my mother taught me... I made lists and began to put stuff out in a one layer think spread across the guest bed. Jeff, in his effort to be the man with the most, packed it all on Tuesday night. I spent Wednesday in a panic. I couldn't see what was in the bags, and I hadn't checked off my list. Thursday, I unpacked and repacked everything so I could check off my list. We got up and drove to Emporia, VA and spent the night at a really crappy Red Carpet Inn. It didn't have a pool, but it did have an ice machine. Now Jeff knows that the lists and the stress and the drawn out car ride are all part of vacation and he just goes with it. Cause the getting there starts in January, when we book the place to stay, continues through the year when Mom and I write the scavenger hunt, and is ending when we are getting into the car, and it's definitely half the fun!
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Damn baked goods comparison
Jeff has a guy he works with who once lifted his shirt, squeezed around his belly button and called the ensuing bulging flesh the "bagel". Today I realized that if I did the same thing, it would be more "bundt cake" than bagel. Bummer.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Amateur night
Wednesday nights are Ellie's ice skating night and Jeff always takes her. It's sort of their little daddy/daughter time. She does lessons and then they free skate together. Well this Wednesday, Jeff had a late meeting and he wasn't going to make it home in time to go to the lesson. So, it was me and four kids who hit the road Wednesday night.
Though we've lived here for almost 5 years, the route 273/route4/route 896 area of Newark remains a mystery to me. Everytime I drive in that area, I feel like I must be lost. Jeff used to say that he thinks Washington, DC employees a team of people to go around changing road signs, and I feel that way about Newark. It's like the brain, it can be studied but never fully understood. Of course, skating lessons are in that vicinity and knowing this, I googled "University of Delaware Skating Rink" and dutifully looked at the map. We left with PLENTY of time, cause I knew I had to get four kids there, out of the car, into the building, get skates on Ellie, get her on the ice, and maintain some kind of order over the other three.
Jeff had told me to make sure I dressed everyone warmly, since it is cold inside the ice rink. So Maggie's got on a hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants, Jack's in long sleeves and jeans and I have a blanket over the baby's carseat. Ellie was dressed in her typical leggings with jeans over ensemble. Keep in mind that Delaware is currently hotter than the surface of the sun. So the whole way to the rink, the kids are screaming that they're hot, and truthfully by the time we arrived at the rink they'd probably all lost weight from sweating.
Needless to say, I got lost. I tried calling Jeff, but he was not answering. I thought to myself, "C'mon Moran, you can do this, Newark's not this big. Stoned college students find their way around all the time." Suddenly I remembered that my good buddy Kristen is a UD grad, and luckily, she also answers her phone with regularity. Kristen was kind enough to not only give me directions, but to stay on the phone with me like some kind of directional 911 operator.
We found the place with moments to spare. I started herding the troops in the door and I notice something suspicious... everyone coming out of the rink is dressed in normal clothes. That's not totally accurate, the obvious skaters were wearing long sleeves and pants, but the spectators were all in shorts. Great. So lesson learned, in 100 degree heat, even the ice rink is warm and you look like an asshole if your kids are wearing sweatshirts.
Anytime I enter a building that is not specifically designed for small children, I get the same feeling I do when playing pinball and you get the "multi-ball" prize. Trying to keep my eyes on all the kids, trying to make sure that they're going the right direction and occasionally whacking one so send it the way you want it to go. I herded them all over to the bench and that's when I realized that I don't have the prepaid skate rental card. Luckily, the woman at the desk took pity on me and didn't make me take all four kids back to buy a skate rental. I grabbed the skates and ran back to where all the kids were sitting. Skates get on and that's when I realized I'd forgotten the helmet and gloves. Damn. Oh well, what's a little head injury between friends, off you go Ellie.
Ellie skated out to what I hoped was her class, since I had no idea and I take the kids over to the bleachers. To get to the bleachers, you have to pass the vending machines, and every parent knows that vending machines hold the key to happiness. Every little brightly colored package contains pure child joy. Maggie immediately started begging for M&Ms and Jack just started shouting at them in two year old garble. We found a seat and I started trying to dole out the crayons and stuff I brought to entertain the kids. My next mistake was to actually try to watch Ellie doing her lessons. I looked away, and when I looked back, Jack was gone. I could hear him calling me, so I wasn't stressing, but I didn't want to lug Will around in his carrier while chasing Jack, so instead I did that thing where I backed away from Will, still facing him, trying to get a visual on Jack. I headed towards the vending machine, thinking I would find him with his face pressed against the glass. Backing up, backing up... I can see all the machines but one and there's no Jack, and his yelling is getting more frantic. One more step and I see Jack, with his arm stuck up to his shoulder inside the vending machine.
An interesting thing happened next. The lower half of my body turned to run and free him, while the upper half turned and realized that to do that I'd have to lose sight of Maggie and Will. Then the upper half turned to save Jack while the lower half tried to go back to get Maggie and Will. So after watching me do this parental watusi, a woman sitting near the car seat offered to keep an eye on him while I saved Jack from vending machine amputation. Isn't it funny how it's completely socially acceptable to let a total stranger watch your children in a public place, but not your luggage in an airport?
So disaster averted, Jack still has the use of both arms, baby's asleep, middle children have snacks... what the hell is all over Jack???? I looked at Jack and was shocked to see that in one minute he's covered in mess. Brown and red mess. While my brain tried to process how he got so dirty so fast, he smiled at me and spit out the chewed up M&Ms he had in his mouth and smeared the results all over his shirt and pants. My first thought, I'm ashamed to admit, was "That's a Gymboree shirt, damnit!" I looked at the clock with some desperation, how much time could be left? 20 minutes. All this had happened within the first 10 minutes of her lesson. Good God.
When people see me with all four kids, and they invariably say "you have your hands full!", my standard response is "There's never a dull moment." And I mean it. Luckily, we made it through the rest of the lesson unscathed. I marched everyone back out to the car and proceeded home with the single minded thought that I would be able to turn them all over to Jeff when I got home. My hopes and dreams were crushed when I rounded the corner at Flint Hill Road and saw his car wasn't there. So I did the only thing I could think to do... I drove around the block a couple more times until I saw he was home, cause I was keeping them all strapped to car seats until I had back up.
The next night... I sent Jeff to Maggie's gymnastics lesson with all four kids and had a glass of wine while getting my hair done. Ahhhhh.......
Though we've lived here for almost 5 years, the route 273/route4/route 896 area of Newark remains a mystery to me. Everytime I drive in that area, I feel like I must be lost. Jeff used to say that he thinks Washington, DC employees a team of people to go around changing road signs, and I feel that way about Newark. It's like the brain, it can be studied but never fully understood. Of course, skating lessons are in that vicinity and knowing this, I googled "University of Delaware Skating Rink" and dutifully looked at the map. We left with PLENTY of time, cause I knew I had to get four kids there, out of the car, into the building, get skates on Ellie, get her on the ice, and maintain some kind of order over the other three.
Jeff had told me to make sure I dressed everyone warmly, since it is cold inside the ice rink. So Maggie's got on a hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants, Jack's in long sleeves and jeans and I have a blanket over the baby's carseat. Ellie was dressed in her typical leggings with jeans over ensemble. Keep in mind that Delaware is currently hotter than the surface of the sun. So the whole way to the rink, the kids are screaming that they're hot, and truthfully by the time we arrived at the rink they'd probably all lost weight from sweating.
Needless to say, I got lost. I tried calling Jeff, but he was not answering. I thought to myself, "C'mon Moran, you can do this, Newark's not this big. Stoned college students find their way around all the time." Suddenly I remembered that my good buddy Kristen is a UD grad, and luckily, she also answers her phone with regularity. Kristen was kind enough to not only give me directions, but to stay on the phone with me like some kind of directional 911 operator.
We found the place with moments to spare. I started herding the troops in the door and I notice something suspicious... everyone coming out of the rink is dressed in normal clothes. That's not totally accurate, the obvious skaters were wearing long sleeves and pants, but the spectators were all in shorts. Great. So lesson learned, in 100 degree heat, even the ice rink is warm and you look like an asshole if your kids are wearing sweatshirts.
Anytime I enter a building that is not specifically designed for small children, I get the same feeling I do when playing pinball and you get the "multi-ball" prize. Trying to keep my eyes on all the kids, trying to make sure that they're going the right direction and occasionally whacking one so send it the way you want it to go. I herded them all over to the bench and that's when I realized that I don't have the prepaid skate rental card. Luckily, the woman at the desk took pity on me and didn't make me take all four kids back to buy a skate rental. I grabbed the skates and ran back to where all the kids were sitting. Skates get on and that's when I realized I'd forgotten the helmet and gloves. Damn. Oh well, what's a little head injury between friends, off you go Ellie.
Ellie skated out to what I hoped was her class, since I had no idea and I take the kids over to the bleachers. To get to the bleachers, you have to pass the vending machines, and every parent knows that vending machines hold the key to happiness. Every little brightly colored package contains pure child joy. Maggie immediately started begging for M&Ms and Jack just started shouting at them in two year old garble. We found a seat and I started trying to dole out the crayons and stuff I brought to entertain the kids. My next mistake was to actually try to watch Ellie doing her lessons. I looked away, and when I looked back, Jack was gone. I could hear him calling me, so I wasn't stressing, but I didn't want to lug Will around in his carrier while chasing Jack, so instead I did that thing where I backed away from Will, still facing him, trying to get a visual on Jack. I headed towards the vending machine, thinking I would find him with his face pressed against the glass. Backing up, backing up... I can see all the machines but one and there's no Jack, and his yelling is getting more frantic. One more step and I see Jack, with his arm stuck up to his shoulder inside the vending machine.
An interesting thing happened next. The lower half of my body turned to run and free him, while the upper half turned and realized that to do that I'd have to lose sight of Maggie and Will. Then the upper half turned to save Jack while the lower half tried to go back to get Maggie and Will. So after watching me do this parental watusi, a woman sitting near the car seat offered to keep an eye on him while I saved Jack from vending machine amputation. Isn't it funny how it's completely socially acceptable to let a total stranger watch your children in a public place, but not your luggage in an airport?
So disaster averted, Jack still has the use of both arms, baby's asleep, middle children have snacks... what the hell is all over Jack???? I looked at Jack and was shocked to see that in one minute he's covered in mess. Brown and red mess. While my brain tried to process how he got so dirty so fast, he smiled at me and spit out the chewed up M&Ms he had in his mouth and smeared the results all over his shirt and pants. My first thought, I'm ashamed to admit, was "That's a Gymboree shirt, damnit!" I looked at the clock with some desperation, how much time could be left? 20 minutes. All this had happened within the first 10 minutes of her lesson. Good God.
When people see me with all four kids, and they invariably say "you have your hands full!", my standard response is "There's never a dull moment." And I mean it. Luckily, we made it through the rest of the lesson unscathed. I marched everyone back out to the car and proceeded home with the single minded thought that I would be able to turn them all over to Jeff when I got home. My hopes and dreams were crushed when I rounded the corner at Flint Hill Road and saw his car wasn't there. So I did the only thing I could think to do... I drove around the block a couple more times until I saw he was home, cause I was keeping them all strapped to car seats until I had back up.
The next night... I sent Jeff to Maggie's gymnastics lesson with all four kids and had a glass of wine while getting my hair done. Ahhhhh.......
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Breaking the Law
So my girlfriends and I were chatting about our upcoming family vacations and we all agreed that we are much more stressed out in the car since having children. I don't mean the "my kids are screaming and I've listened to Wheels on the Bus 432 time" stressed out, I mean the irrational feeling that someone's going to rear end us at any minute, wiping out my whole family while I walk away unhurt kind of stressed out.
Before Ellie was born, I worked just inside the Capitol Beltway in lovely Largo, MD. The Capitol Beltway is the Thunderdome of commutes - it's kill or be killed out there. Before that, I drove in Boston, where the roads seems to have been laid out according to some evil Southern plot to kill as many Northerners as possible. I'm was not a timid driver. But then I got pregnant and something happened... I turned into my mother.
My mother has spent most of her life employing a passenger brake on my father's cars. They started dating in high school, and though I have no proof I'd be willing to bet that my father's "adventurous" driving probably affected her ability to stay completly upright in the passenger seat. Susan Moran, in addition to her many other talents, has the ability to completely disappear in a car. At least, if you're following my parents, you'll notice that my mom's head starts out at a normal height and as the speed increases, her head gets lower and lower in the car and eventually, somewhere around 50mph, poof! She plumb disappears.
Anyway, I've digressed, as per usual. So I was talking to some friends about this terrible anxiety I have in the car and I said that I was considering asking my doctor for a prescription for Xanax. I've never taken any anti-anxiety medication, but pretty much everyone I know has taken Xanax for some reason or another, so why not me? Trish, being the tried and true friend she is, right away offers to give me a couple of her Xanax so I wouldn't have to go to the doctor. I mean, is there a better friend than one who will share her prescriptions with you? I don't think so. During this conversation, I also remembered that I owed Trish money for something unrelated. So as we're parting ways, I tell her that I'll have her money at school pick up and she responds with "Okay, I'll bring the pills then too". Quickly, I realized that it would sound like to anyone overhearing that part of the conversation that Trish was my dealer and we would go to jail. Luckily, no one seemed to notice, and Trish sure enough did bring me a couple Xanax to "smooth the edges".
I did take one of "mommy's little helper" on the way to our family reunion in Shenandoah, and spent a while in a sort of haze... until I realized we'd gone the wrong way around the Beltway cause I was stoned and told Jeff to go east instead of south. I sobered up and started to pay attention then.
A couple days later, I was being followed by a cop and it dawned on me that the pills were still in my purse and if the nice police officer decided to pull me over and somehow got it in his head to search me, I'd be arrested for possession. So I drove very carefully, or gently since I am from Maryland, and came home and threw the pills away.
Between sounding like a druggie, screwing up the directions, and worrying about cavity searches, I decided that anti-anxiety medication makes me anxious.
Before Ellie was born, I worked just inside the Capitol Beltway in lovely Largo, MD. The Capitol Beltway is the Thunderdome of commutes - it's kill or be killed out there. Before that, I drove in Boston, where the roads seems to have been laid out according to some evil Southern plot to kill as many Northerners as possible. I'm was not a timid driver. But then I got pregnant and something happened... I turned into my mother.
My mother has spent most of her life employing a passenger brake on my father's cars. They started dating in high school, and though I have no proof I'd be willing to bet that my father's "adventurous" driving probably affected her ability to stay completly upright in the passenger seat. Susan Moran, in addition to her many other talents, has the ability to completely disappear in a car. At least, if you're following my parents, you'll notice that my mom's head starts out at a normal height and as the speed increases, her head gets lower and lower in the car and eventually, somewhere around 50mph, poof! She plumb disappears.
Anyway, I've digressed, as per usual. So I was talking to some friends about this terrible anxiety I have in the car and I said that I was considering asking my doctor for a prescription for Xanax. I've never taken any anti-anxiety medication, but pretty much everyone I know has taken Xanax for some reason or another, so why not me? Trish, being the tried and true friend she is, right away offers to give me a couple of her Xanax so I wouldn't have to go to the doctor. I mean, is there a better friend than one who will share her prescriptions with you? I don't think so. During this conversation, I also remembered that I owed Trish money for something unrelated. So as we're parting ways, I tell her that I'll have her money at school pick up and she responds with "Okay, I'll bring the pills then too". Quickly, I realized that it would sound like to anyone overhearing that part of the conversation that Trish was my dealer and we would go to jail. Luckily, no one seemed to notice, and Trish sure enough did bring me a couple Xanax to "smooth the edges".
I did take one of "mommy's little helper" on the way to our family reunion in Shenandoah, and spent a while in a sort of haze... until I realized we'd gone the wrong way around the Beltway cause I was stoned and told Jeff to go east instead of south. I sobered up and started to pay attention then.
A couple days later, I was being followed by a cop and it dawned on me that the pills were still in my purse and if the nice police officer decided to pull me over and somehow got it in his head to search me, I'd be arrested for possession. So I drove very carefully, or gently since I am from Maryland, and came home and threw the pills away.
Between sounding like a druggie, screwing up the directions, and worrying about cavity searches, I decided that anti-anxiety medication makes me anxious.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Dad, you probably shouldn't read this
So, when people find out we have four kids, there is usually some joke made about "don't you know what causes this?" Our standard response is "Eating after midnight, right?" That's partially cause that answer is a dumb as the question, and partially because it seems like we eat after midnight more often than we do anything that would actually cause pregnancy. We referred to Will as Bullseye in utero cause it he was the result of a good shot.
It's an age old joke - put a quarter in a jar for every time you have sex in the first year of marriage and then take one out for every time you have sex in every year after and you'll never run out of quarters. Every newlywed couple swears this won't happen and pretty much every couple I know that's been married for more than five years knows better.
With four kids under six, it's probably not a big surprise that my libido is a little off. Besides my hormones being totally whacked, I'm completely "touched out" by the end of the day. When the kids go to bed, the last thing I want to do is cuddle. I want to lay on the couch with my crossword puzzles or the remote control and not move, not get anything for anyone, basically be a lump. I read in a parenting magazine once (back when I read parenting magazines) that women get all their "physical contact needs" filled by their children and should remember that their husbands have "physical contact needs" too. I think I stopped reading that magazine about that time. Cause, really, seriously, the magazine wasn't happy just making me feel guilty for not making homemade peanut butter or doing some other sixty-five step craft with my two year old? Now they had to tell me I should give more blow jobs?
Then another day, I heard a report on NPR about a study that showed men whose wives felt like the housework and parenting duties were equally shared in their households had more sex. Now that tidbit I passed along to Jeff. But the thing I got from it was that sex in marriage is a big enough issue that someone did a study about it, most likely a man. Which got me thinking, Jeff does plenty of housework and we all know that he's the dad with the most, and he's not getting it all that often, how rarely do the "slacker" husbands get it?
I've done a lot of thinking about this problem recently and I realized something profound just last night... though I do get touched approximately 938,837 a day, rarely am I touched in a way that is "giving" rather than "receiving." I mean, my kids touch me to ask for a snack, to tattle on a sister, so I can lift them up, put them down, help them jump, hold them steady, kiss a boo boo, and even hugging is more like a contact sport than a comforting thing. So by the end of the day, my touching quota has been met in spades, but I'm emotionally drained. (I know, I know, I'm supposed to look at my children and feel overwhelmed with love every second of the day. Newsflash, a lot of the time, I look at them and just feel overwhelmed) So though I cringe at the thought of more touching, I need to remember that Jeff is the only one who can really fill tathe emotional quota. So I asked him for a hug last night, and it was the best hug I've gotten in a long, long time. It was just a hug, with no ulterior "this backrub could turn into a full body" vibe to it. I can't tell you how much better I felt, and how much more interested I was in that hug turning into something else.
So ladies, tell your husbands to do more housework, take more time with the kids, but mostly, tell them to give you a hug!
It's an age old joke - put a quarter in a jar for every time you have sex in the first year of marriage and then take one out for every time you have sex in every year after and you'll never run out of quarters. Every newlywed couple swears this won't happen and pretty much every couple I know that's been married for more than five years knows better.
With four kids under six, it's probably not a big surprise that my libido is a little off. Besides my hormones being totally whacked, I'm completely "touched out" by the end of the day. When the kids go to bed, the last thing I want to do is cuddle. I want to lay on the couch with my crossword puzzles or the remote control and not move, not get anything for anyone, basically be a lump. I read in a parenting magazine once (back when I read parenting magazines) that women get all their "physical contact needs" filled by their children and should remember that their husbands have "physical contact needs" too. I think I stopped reading that magazine about that time. Cause, really, seriously, the magazine wasn't happy just making me feel guilty for not making homemade peanut butter or doing some other sixty-five step craft with my two year old? Now they had to tell me I should give more blow jobs?
Then another day, I heard a report on NPR about a study that showed men whose wives felt like the housework and parenting duties were equally shared in their households had more sex. Now that tidbit I passed along to Jeff. But the thing I got from it was that sex in marriage is a big enough issue that someone did a study about it, most likely a man. Which got me thinking, Jeff does plenty of housework and we all know that he's the dad with the most, and he's not getting it all that often, how rarely do the "slacker" husbands get it?
I've done a lot of thinking about this problem recently and I realized something profound just last night... though I do get touched approximately 938,837 a day, rarely am I touched in a way that is "giving" rather than "receiving." I mean, my kids touch me to ask for a snack, to tattle on a sister, so I can lift them up, put them down, help them jump, hold them steady, kiss a boo boo, and even hugging is more like a contact sport than a comforting thing. So by the end of the day, my touching quota has been met in spades, but I'm emotionally drained. (I know, I know, I'm supposed to look at my children and feel overwhelmed with love every second of the day. Newsflash, a lot of the time, I look at them and just feel overwhelmed) So though I cringe at the thought of more touching, I need to remember that Jeff is the only one who can really fill tathe emotional quota. So I asked him for a hug last night, and it was the best hug I've gotten in a long, long time. It was just a hug, with no ulterior "this backrub could turn into a full body" vibe to it. I can't tell you how much better I felt, and how much more interested I was in that hug turning into something else.
So ladies, tell your husbands to do more housework, take more time with the kids, but mostly, tell them to give you a hug!
Friday, June 18, 2010
Perspective is a funny thing
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Stop it you StinkyBucketSmeller!
Nanny Nanny Nah Nah! The universal refrain of childhood. When we embarked on this child rearing adventure, like all first time parents, Jeff and I had a fantasy about what our children would be like. For the most part, in the early days, Ellie complied with that fantasy. Ellie was a lovely baby; smiled when anyone smiled at her, rarely threw tantrums in public, and generally pooped before we got in the car. She was also very docile. The first time she tried to put her fingers in an outlet, I shouted "No!" and that was the end of outlet curiosity. To this day, she's very aware of rules and in general, good about following them. Except for one. No Name Calling.
I don't know how it happened. I don't call her names. Jeff and I don't fight in front of the children. All the parenting magazines told me that if we limited her TV watching, fed her green vegetables, and only bought her educational toys this wouldn't happen. Alas, my darling girl has turned into a name calling, back talking, teasing, tongue sticker outer. Sigh.
Being teased is a right of passage for all kids, I guess. And those of you that have siblings know that there is no one God's green Earth who teases you more than your sister. However, I was a kid that was much more likely to be on the receiving end of teasing rather than the giving end. A pretty shy kid, I wore glasses, had crooked teeth, and bad hair complicated by a bad decision to get a perm in 1986. My parents moved us around a couple times and we eventually landed in Cumberland, MD, home of the 1984 State Marbles Champion. This is where I earned the nickname "Batgirl" for my horrendous octagon shaped glasses, that I got cause I read a book in which a shy girl gets octagon shaped glasses and almost immediately becomes popular. Not so much.
Needless to say, I'm now sensitive to the issue of name calling. I try to tread a fine line between intervening and letting it go, and I'm afraid that I'm simply going to confuse the issue. Besides, it's a terribly complex thing to explain to a 5 year old... some names are okay to call people - smartypants for instance. And something can be stupid, but someone can't? What if the name is accurate - calling the lady in the too small outfit a fatso is accurate for sure, but definitely not allowed. They're often extrodinarily creative names; "fartybabycarrotface", "poopydinnertablesitter"... you almost have to give them credit for originality.
A couple years ago, I was sitting at the pool with my friend and we were complaining about how hard parenting is as we watched our kids, all 5 and under at the time, play in the baby pool. A woman leaned over to us and said "I hate to interrupt, but this is the easy part. Little kids have little problems, big kids have big problems." She's absolutely right, and Ellie's still pretty little. I'm afraid that this is just the tip of the iceberg for us, and I'm bracing myself for the ride. Wait until school starts!
I don't know how it happened. I don't call her names. Jeff and I don't fight in front of the children. All the parenting magazines told me that if we limited her TV watching, fed her green vegetables, and only bought her educational toys this wouldn't happen. Alas, my darling girl has turned into a name calling, back talking, teasing, tongue sticker outer. Sigh.
Being teased is a right of passage for all kids, I guess. And those of you that have siblings know that there is no one God's green Earth who teases you more than your sister. However, I was a kid that was much more likely to be on the receiving end of teasing rather than the giving end. A pretty shy kid, I wore glasses, had crooked teeth, and bad hair complicated by a bad decision to get a perm in 1986. My parents moved us around a couple times and we eventually landed in Cumberland, MD, home of the 1984 State Marbles Champion. This is where I earned the nickname "Batgirl" for my horrendous octagon shaped glasses, that I got cause I read a book in which a shy girl gets octagon shaped glasses and almost immediately becomes popular. Not so much.
Needless to say, I'm now sensitive to the issue of name calling. I try to tread a fine line between intervening and letting it go, and I'm afraid that I'm simply going to confuse the issue. Besides, it's a terribly complex thing to explain to a 5 year old... some names are okay to call people - smartypants for instance. And something can be stupid, but someone can't? What if the name is accurate - calling the lady in the too small outfit a fatso is accurate for sure, but definitely not allowed. They're often extrodinarily creative names; "fartybabycarrotface", "poopydinnertablesitter"... you almost have to give them credit for originality.
A couple years ago, I was sitting at the pool with my friend and we were complaining about how hard parenting is as we watched our kids, all 5 and under at the time, play in the baby pool. A woman leaned over to us and said "I hate to interrupt, but this is the easy part. Little kids have little problems, big kids have big problems." She's absolutely right, and Ellie's still pretty little. I'm afraid that this is just the tip of the iceberg for us, and I'm bracing myself for the ride. Wait until school starts!
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Summertime memories
When I close my eyes and think of my childhood summers, the first thing that comes to mind is Noxema. My dad is a great believer in Noxema. Sun burns, minor cuts and scrapes, bug bites… there’s nothing that couldn’t be cured with Noxema. Once on vacation, my brother threw me into a pool, almost. I hit the side of the pool with my back and some well intentioned person told my parents, after they dragged my bloody screaming self from the pool that with an injury like that, I may have permanent disabilities. My dad made me walk up four flights of stairs and applied Noxema liberally to my wound. He swears to this day that my unaffected ability to walk can be credited to that creamy white miracle cure.
Friday, April 23, 2010
I remembered...
So, I remembered what I was going to write about last night... the adventures of my car. Last week, I was sitting at a stop light, when BAM!, my car gets hit. I thought that I had been rear ended, so I put the car in park and got out to look accusingly at the person behind me.
When I got out to look however, the person behind me was far behind me, no way she'd hit me. I looked around and saw my driver side passenger door and there's an enormous dent in it. On the ground next to my car was a tire. Just a tire. I looked around to find the car that must be pulled over with three tires. There's none to be found. I must have had the dumbest look on my face, cause the woman in the car behind me yells out the window that the tire fell off a truck going the other way.
I got back in the car, after wrestling with whether or not I should take the tire with me, and started towards home. I decided that it must have fallen out of the bed of a truck, cause surely if it was off a moving vehicle, it would have had to stop. Grumbling to myself about insurance deductibles, I stopped at the stoplight in front of my development. That was when I banged a U-turn and went in search of the vehicle with the missing tire. And about two miles up the road there was a truck pulling a horse trailer pulled over, driver and passenger on the side of the road. I pulled up behind him and asked out the window, "Did you lose a tire?" They nodded... yay me! Mystery solved. The horse trailer had "duelie" tires, two tires on the back and one had come off. The driver was on the phone, and I lost my temper a bit when he didn't hang up to talk to me. "You hit me and I have a two week old in the car! You need to deal with me." I told him. This got him moving.
Because it's me this happened to, of course there's a weird twist. The truck and trailer didn't belong to the driver or passenger, turns out they were just driving the horses from Delaware Park for their trainers. And they didn't speak English. And they couldn't find the registration or insurance. I asked the driver for his boss' phone number and he hands me his Iphone with the contact name "Boss" with a number listed. Skeptical, I asked him to call it. Sure enough, a nice lady answered and I explained what happened. She gave me all the information I needed and I went on my merry way, all proud of myself, feeling like Cagney or Lacey (well, I always feel like Lacey I guess) for having discovered the tire's owner.
Again, because it's me and I live in Delaware, there's another weird thing... I was at swim lessons for the girls when I saw another mommy I know. She's a horse trainer too and I told her what had happened. She looked very surprised and pointed at another mom, "That was her trailer." What? The number I'd called was a Florida number, and the insurance company had confirmed the truck was registered in Florida. Turns out, the owners live half the year here, and her kid is in swim lessons at the same time as mine. So I introduced myself and told her that her insurance company was very nice. It was slightly awkward!
So for a couple days, I got to drive a Chrysler Town and Country - ahh... that's how the other half lives. Ellie actually offered to give me her allowance so we could buy it. Keep dreaming honey. We're driving the Blueberry until the wheels fall off.... wait a minute... I know someone that happened too!
When I got out to look however, the person behind me was far behind me, no way she'd hit me. I looked around and saw my driver side passenger door and there's an enormous dent in it. On the ground next to my car was a tire. Just a tire. I looked around to find the car that must be pulled over with three tires. There's none to be found. I must have had the dumbest look on my face, cause the woman in the car behind me yells out the window that the tire fell off a truck going the other way.
I got back in the car, after wrestling with whether or not I should take the tire with me, and started towards home. I decided that it must have fallen out of the bed of a truck, cause surely if it was off a moving vehicle, it would have had to stop. Grumbling to myself about insurance deductibles, I stopped at the stoplight in front of my development. That was when I banged a U-turn and went in search of the vehicle with the missing tire. And about two miles up the road there was a truck pulling a horse trailer pulled over, driver and passenger on the side of the road. I pulled up behind him and asked out the window, "Did you lose a tire?" They nodded... yay me! Mystery solved. The horse trailer had "duelie" tires, two tires on the back and one had come off. The driver was on the phone, and I lost my temper a bit when he didn't hang up to talk to me. "You hit me and I have a two week old in the car! You need to deal with me." I told him. This got him moving.
Because it's me this happened to, of course there's a weird twist. The truck and trailer didn't belong to the driver or passenger, turns out they were just driving the horses from Delaware Park for their trainers. And they didn't speak English. And they couldn't find the registration or insurance. I asked the driver for his boss' phone number and he hands me his Iphone with the contact name "Boss" with a number listed. Skeptical, I asked him to call it. Sure enough, a nice lady answered and I explained what happened. She gave me all the information I needed and I went on my merry way, all proud of myself, feeling like Cagney or Lacey (well, I always feel like Lacey I guess) for having discovered the tire's owner.
Again, because it's me and I live in Delaware, there's another weird thing... I was at swim lessons for the girls when I saw another mommy I know. She's a horse trainer too and I told her what had happened. She looked very surprised and pointed at another mom, "That was her trailer." What? The number I'd called was a Florida number, and the insurance company had confirmed the truck was registered in Florida. Turns out, the owners live half the year here, and her kid is in swim lessons at the same time as mine. So I introduced myself and told her that her insurance company was very nice. It was slightly awkward!
So for a couple days, I got to drive a Chrysler Town and Country - ahh... that's how the other half lives. Ellie actually offered to give me her allowance so we could buy it. Keep dreaming honey. We're driving the Blueberry until the wheels fall off.... wait a minute... I know someone that happened too!
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Wait, I had a really good idea... no, it's gone
The other day, an old friend stopped by for a bit. She has two kids, aged 7 and 10. I only had Jack and Will with me at the time, the girls were at school. In the hour and a half she was here, I got up and down no fewer than 946 times. Well, I may be exaggerating, but it was probably at least 15 times. I never think about how much up and down and running back and forth I do until I have someone with me that doesn't have to do it.
Since then, I've been doing a little observation and I realized that I don't have any conversation between the hours of 7AM and 8PM that aren't interrupted. I can barely get one complete sentence out, forget a whole conversation. After some unscientific observation, I've realized that none of my friends do either. The average conversation sounds like this:
Me: "Oh, hey I saw something at Kohl's that I... Put that down!"
Friend: "I like Kohl's but I ususally end up at... don't hit him!"
Me: "I was talking to... yes you can have a snack"
Friend: "What was I saying?"
It's shocking that any of us know anything about each other at all. It's even more amazing that, though I seem to never finish a sentence, I feel like I talk all day. Jeff often asks if I'm mad at him cause I don't want to talk after the kids go to bed, but the truth is, I just flat out don't have anything left to say.
Recently some helpful person told me that women lose up to 10% of their brain cells during pregnancy. This means that I've lost 40% of my brain in the last five years. I have hope that it will come back, but I'm not optimistic. Just to prove my point, I opened this blog to write about something and then forgot what it was. So I wrote about forgetting things instead.
Go figure.
Since then, I've been doing a little observation and I realized that I don't have any conversation between the hours of 7AM and 8PM that aren't interrupted. I can barely get one complete sentence out, forget a whole conversation. After some unscientific observation, I've realized that none of my friends do either. The average conversation sounds like this:
Me: "Oh, hey I saw something at Kohl's that I... Put that down!"
Friend: "I like Kohl's but I ususally end up at... don't hit him!"
Me: "I was talking to... yes you can have a snack"
Friend: "What was I saying?"
It's shocking that any of us know anything about each other at all. It's even more amazing that, though I seem to never finish a sentence, I feel like I talk all day. Jeff often asks if I'm mad at him cause I don't want to talk after the kids go to bed, but the truth is, I just flat out don't have anything left to say.
Recently some helpful person told me that women lose up to 10% of their brain cells during pregnancy. This means that I've lost 40% of my brain in the last five years. I have hope that it will come back, but I'm not optimistic. Just to prove my point, I opened this blog to write about something and then forgot what it was. So I wrote about forgetting things instead.
Go figure.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Teacher Maggie
So much of parenting is recapturing your own sense of wonder. I think it's easy as adults to forget that our kids are exploring and learning all the time, and that they don't have "places to go and people to see". Every morning, as we try to get everyone ready and out the door, I silently curse the girls "surprise" that I need them to get dressed and fed and combed. We do this everyday girls, I say everyday.
Today, I was hurrying Maggie out the door and she was not paying attention. I started to count, "Maggie, get in the car before I get to 5 or I'll take your toy away... 1, 2" only to be interrupted by her saying in an equally frustrated voice, "I'm getting you a present!" Sure enough, she comes around the car holding a branch from our forsythia bush. It was beautiful and sweet, and I was reminded that sometimes you just got to let your kids be late to school so that they can learn.
Today, I was hurrying Maggie out the door and she was not paying attention. I started to count, "Maggie, get in the car before I get to 5 or I'll take your toy away... 1, 2" only to be interrupted by her saying in an equally frustrated voice, "I'm getting you a present!" Sure enough, she comes around the car holding a branch from our forsythia bush. It was beautiful and sweet, and I was reminded that sometimes you just got to let your kids be late to school so that they can learn.
Friday, April 9, 2010
A night in the life of the Lacey's
5:30 - Jeff gets home
5:45 - Family sits down to eat dinner
6:00 - Jack starts throwing food
6:01 - Erin starts asking if it's Jack's bedtime yet
6:15 - Girls are running around, playing "Catch the Ellie" or something like it
6:23 - Jack throws his sippy cup at Erin's head
6:24 - Jack goes up to bed for his own safety
6:43 - Girls ask if they can have a treat
6:44 - Girls are reminded that being good is it's own reward
7:00 - Girls head to bed, Will has his dinner
7:03 - Girls begin to fight over who is picking the Calvin and Hobbes book
7:04 - Jeff tells girls that it doesn't matter who picked it cause they both get to hear it
7:12 - Jeff finishes books, starts story time
7:13 - Ellie tells Jeff he's telling the story wrong
7:14 - Jeff threatens to leave the room
7:25 - Song time starts
7:30 - Jeff goes to our room to wait for the girls to fall asleep
8:30 - Erin wakes Jeff up
8:45 - Erin and Jeff realize that there's nothing on TV to watch and go back to bed
9:00 - Will poops
9:30 - Baby is back in his cradle, lights off for Jeff and Erin
11:00 - Will wakes up
11:30 - Will is back down
12:30 - Ellie sneaks into our room
12:35 - Erin and Jeff make a "nest" for Ellie on the floor of our room
1:30 - Will is back up
2:00 - Will is back asleep
3:00 - Jack wakes up
3:30 - Jack stops crying, goes back to sleep
4:30 - Maggie wakes up, wants to go downstairs
5:00 - Erin and Jeff talk Maggie into our bed
5:30 - After being kicked for 30 minutes, Erin goes to sleep in the girls' room
6:00 - Jeff gets up with girls, Will wakes up
7:00 - Jack wakes up
7:30 - Erin gets up, Jeff goes to work
So... if I seem out of it, now you know why!!!
5:45 - Family sits down to eat dinner
6:00 - Jack starts throwing food
6:01 - Erin starts asking if it's Jack's bedtime yet
6:15 - Girls are running around, playing "Catch the Ellie" or something like it
6:23 - Jack throws his sippy cup at Erin's head
6:24 - Jack goes up to bed for his own safety
6:43 - Girls ask if they can have a treat
6:44 - Girls are reminded that being good is it's own reward
7:00 - Girls head to bed, Will has his dinner
7:03 - Girls begin to fight over who is picking the Calvin and Hobbes book
7:04 - Jeff tells girls that it doesn't matter who picked it cause they both get to hear it
7:12 - Jeff finishes books, starts story time
7:13 - Ellie tells Jeff he's telling the story wrong
7:14 - Jeff threatens to leave the room
7:25 - Song time starts
7:30 - Jeff goes to our room to wait for the girls to fall asleep
8:30 - Erin wakes Jeff up
8:45 - Erin and Jeff realize that there's nothing on TV to watch and go back to bed
9:00 - Will poops
9:30 - Baby is back in his cradle, lights off for Jeff and Erin
11:00 - Will wakes up
11:30 - Will is back down
12:30 - Ellie sneaks into our room
12:35 - Erin and Jeff make a "nest" for Ellie on the floor of our room
1:30 - Will is back up
2:00 - Will is back asleep
3:00 - Jack wakes up
3:30 - Jack stops crying, goes back to sleep
4:30 - Maggie wakes up, wants to go downstairs
5:00 - Erin and Jeff talk Maggie into our bed
5:30 - After being kicked for 30 minutes, Erin goes to sleep in the girls' room
6:00 - Jeff gets up with girls, Will wakes up
7:00 - Jack wakes up
7:30 - Erin gets up, Jeff goes to work
So... if I seem out of it, now you know why!!!
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
The trauma of childhood
So last summer, Dale, Jeff's dad, bought an enormous wooden playset for our kids. The Trading Post it's called. It's huge. If anything catastrphic happens to our house, we could, all six of us, live in it. It's a thing of beauty. However, we already had a Little Tykes playset that our friends had given us several years before. the night before the Trading Post was to be installed, Jeff had begun to disassemble the Little Tykes set. Ellie freaked out. Melted into a total puddle of toddler. So the Little Tykes set stayed.
Almost a whole year later, there were still two playsets in my backyard. In my spazzing out during my last week of pregnancy, when I started pretty much throwing everything out that wasn't nailed down and one of the casulties was the playset. Friday was the day it was scheduled to go to a new family.
I'll go on the record here and say that Jeff was against this project, cause he knew that Ellie would freak out. My response, being the hard hearted mommy I am is that into every life some tears must fall and we simply don't need two playsets. Also, we plan on using the proceeds from the sale of the set to build an enormous sandbox, so don't cry for Ellie, Argentina.
Anyway, Friday came, and I took the kids to Johna's so they wouldn't have to witness the dismembering of the playset. Saturday, we went to Mom and Dad's house for Easter weekend, and no one noticed the missing playset before we left. The girls spent a couple days in Salisbury and they came home today. The girls wouldn't nap, so in a fit of frustration, I sent them outside by themselves. I sat down at the computer to do some important Facebooking, and that's when I heard the realization hit.... "Where's my PLAYSET????"
I went outside to see Ellie in tears, trying to get Maggie to be upset with her. "Maggie, it's gone! It's gone! Where did it go?" I grabbed Ellie up onto my lap and gently explained that the Easter Bunny had taken the playset to another family. I said "you know how you got a new Zhu Zhu pet from the Easter Bunny?" She nodded and I continued, "well, you got a new toy, so we had to give another away." Zhu Zhu pet for a playset? C'mon Mom, even a 5 year old knows that's a shitty trade.
Ellie is normally my mild mannered child, but when she melts down, it's a full on Silkwood. She was on my lap explaining to me how much the playset meant to her when she pulled out, "It was on my list of things to do this summer." I had to literally bite the inside of my lip to keep from laughing. "You have a list?" I asked. "Yes! I was going to swing, roller skate, pick flowers, play ball, slide on the colored playset, ice skate, and pick more flowers." Kid's been making plans without me apparently.
Finally, I was able to convince her that her entire summer wouldn't be ruined, and I told her that she could pick the spot for the sand box. The combo of many hugs and kisses and some control seemed to do the trick and she was fine for the rest of the evening.
Lesson learned? You can't pull as much over on a 5 year old as you can a 3 year old!
Almost a whole year later, there were still two playsets in my backyard. In my spazzing out during my last week of pregnancy, when I started pretty much throwing everything out that wasn't nailed down and one of the casulties was the playset. Friday was the day it was scheduled to go to a new family.
I'll go on the record here and say that Jeff was against this project, cause he knew that Ellie would freak out. My response, being the hard hearted mommy I am is that into every life some tears must fall and we simply don't need two playsets. Also, we plan on using the proceeds from the sale of the set to build an enormous sandbox, so don't cry for Ellie, Argentina.
Anyway, Friday came, and I took the kids to Johna's so they wouldn't have to witness the dismembering of the playset. Saturday, we went to Mom and Dad's house for Easter weekend, and no one noticed the missing playset before we left. The girls spent a couple days in Salisbury and they came home today. The girls wouldn't nap, so in a fit of frustration, I sent them outside by themselves. I sat down at the computer to do some important Facebooking, and that's when I heard the realization hit.... "Where's my PLAYSET????"
I went outside to see Ellie in tears, trying to get Maggie to be upset with her. "Maggie, it's gone! It's gone! Where did it go?" I grabbed Ellie up onto my lap and gently explained that the Easter Bunny had taken the playset to another family. I said "you know how you got a new Zhu Zhu pet from the Easter Bunny?" She nodded and I continued, "well, you got a new toy, so we had to give another away." Zhu Zhu pet for a playset? C'mon Mom, even a 5 year old knows that's a shitty trade.
Ellie is normally my mild mannered child, but when she melts down, it's a full on Silkwood. She was on my lap explaining to me how much the playset meant to her when she pulled out, "It was on my list of things to do this summer." I had to literally bite the inside of my lip to keep from laughing. "You have a list?" I asked. "Yes! I was going to swing, roller skate, pick flowers, play ball, slide on the colored playset, ice skate, and pick more flowers." Kid's been making plans without me apparently.
Finally, I was able to convince her that her entire summer wouldn't be ruined, and I told her that she could pick the spot for the sand box. The combo of many hugs and kisses and some control seemed to do the trick and she was fine for the rest of the evening.
Lesson learned? You can't pull as much over on a 5 year old as you can a 3 year old!
New Sideshow Freak - the eternally pregnant woman!
Believe it or not, I started a blog in February about how well I was coping with being pregnant. I thought I was doing really well with holding it together. Then... the waiting began. You see, though I always go a week late, I had (once again) convinced myself that I would have this baby early. I talked a good game about how I didn't expect to have the baby before March 15, but in my heart of hearts, I thought I'd have a late Feb/early March baby. Boy, was I wrong.
Mom, in true best Mom on the planet style, basically moved in with us in the month of February to help me (read keep me from killing the kids). I told her that someday, the girls would know how grateful they should be to her for being here, cause the amount of beating they would have received was greatly reduced. After a week or so of being here, Mom gently suggested that we put the girls back in pre-school and I quickly realized that she was right. My ability to do anything creative or fun had really been sucked entirely out of my body. So we signed them back up and after a couple gigantic snow storms, they started in March.
March 9, my due date, rolled up on the calendar and now my dad joined the party. He was pretty convinced I would have the baby quickly, and wanted to be here to help at a moments notice. (here's where I'll tell people that don't know, my parents live about 2 hours away and we all thought this baby would pretty much fall out of me, this is why being close was important) No baby on March 9. No baby on March 10. Do you see a pattern? I had an ultrasound at 40 weeks to check on Bullseye - they predicted the baby weighed 11 pounds 3 ounces. We all laughed. This baby wouldn't be anywhere close to that, those late ultrasounds are so inaccurate. This baby would be 10 pounds probably, but no more...
By March 15, I started to lose my sense of humor. People started telling me that we'd HAVE to name the baby Patrick or Patricia if it was born on St. Patrick's Day. My response? Would I name the baby Jesus if it was born on Christmas? NO.
Advice on how to go into labor poured in. Seriously? I thought, I've had 3 babies, don't you think I've tried all this crap? But try it again I did. Indian food, raspberry leaf tea, castor oil, chinese food, coffee ice cream... nada. Walk, walk, walk! People said. Like it's my fault that I'm not in labor cause I'm lazy and obviously not doing enough to go into labor. March 17 went by, I wanted to have a ceremonial burning of the "Baby's First St. Patrick's Day" outfits. March 18, 19, 20.... In my more morose moments I felt like I was disappointing everyone by not having the baby. My parents had basically put their lives on hold and were living in my house. My poor dad is hobbling around on a bad knee, but hadn't scheduled an MRI cause he was at my house helping me out. And in the background, the voices started... there's something wrong... there's a reason this baby isn't being born. I'm going to have to have a c-section, the baby's got a problem, something's not right...
If I went two weeks overdue, I would automatically be transferred from the Birth Center to Dr. Cookse's care at Christiana and I'd be induced. Mom superstitiously believed that I was waiting for Dorinda to be on call before I'd have the baby and would ask if she was on after each visit. Sunday, the 21st, I got the stomach bug that had already struck down most of the house. I woke up and was immediately ill. After having a boo hoo in the shower, I called Jeff upstairs and told him that he needed to make everyone leave the house for the day. I basically wanted to sit on the couch and feel sorry for myself all day, without anyone observing the puddle of depressed pregnant woman I was going to become.
Monday the 22 was it, the deadline. At 9AM, I had an appointment to have my water broken, a non-pharmaceutical induction method. We showed up only to be told the baby was still too high to break my water. (If you break your water and the baby is high, the umbilical cord can come out first and that's a big problem) After a little discussion, Dorinda suggested that I try castor oil again. Okay, sure, why not. So she goes and gets the biggest dose of castor oil I have ever seen in my life. It was a dixie cup FULL. In case that doesn't sound like much, go get a dixie cup, fill it with Wesson Oil and drink it. I made if halfway through the dose, gagged, but rallied to finish it. I tried to imagine it was Jagermeister. After a chaser of cranberry juice and a spoonful of peanut butter to kill the taste, we were sent to go eat some breakfast and walk for a couple hours, with orders to return around 1. The last thing Dorinda told me on the way out the door was that if I wasn't having contractions by then, or the baby hadn't moved down at all, I would be going to the hospital that night to be induced.
To Cosmo's Diner we went, where Jeff's mom joined us. After breakfast, we went to Babies R Us, cause seriously, where else can a woman that pregnant go without drawing alot of attention to herself? I started feeling some crampiness, but chalked it up to the castor oil. We bought some binkies for Jack and headed back to the Birth Center, where I was now completely certain I would find out what time my induction was scheduled. On the way, I told Jeff that I had gotten right with the idea of going to the hospital. Jeff asked me what I wanted at the hospital - drugs or no drugs? I said DRUGS. Absolutely. If I was going to the hospital to get a pitocin drip, I was getting the full court press. Drugs, a couple days in the hospital, the whole works.
We got back to the Birth Center and I had just gotten the words, "I'm feeling a little something" out of my mouth when a contraction like a freight train hit me. Suddenly, I was in full "labor song". My mom burst into tears. That morning, I was 2-3 cm. When they checked me now, I was 5. Hooray castor oil. The old wives know of what they speak. Sarah, the midwife, began filling the water birth tub and now contractions were coming every three minutes or so and they were getting more intense. I kept looking at the level of the water in the tub, thinking when can I get in? Everyone had told me that the water would really help ease the pain and relax me, and I was ready to be eased and relaxed. Finally it was ready and things started really rocking and rolling. Kristen arrived to be my photojournalist and Johna came in for moral support.
The whole time I was in the tub, I was trying to concentrate on the things that my friend Michelle Uy had told me about hypnobirthing - each contraction is one closer to the baby, my body is doing the things it needs to do, etc. It was now around 2 and we all took bets on when the baby would make it's arrival - 3PM was the general consensus. Great, I can do this for an hour, I thought, I can do anything for an hour. I was fully dialated except for a "lip" of cervix by 2:45 and was definitely feeling the urge to push. Sarah did some midwife magic and we thought we got the lip out of the way. Out of the tub I came and onto the bed, which hurt like a son of a bitch. So we tried the birth stool, which is basically a chair with the middle cut out. Strangely enough, contractions on the birth stool were not particularly painful, but they also weren't effective. I was pushing and pushing and pushing, and nothing was happening. Now the crazy voices in my head began to take over. Every person who had told me a c-section story had a moment in my head. It was 3:30 and I said to Sarah, "This isn't right. I don't push for hours." I only pushed for 8 minutes with Jack for crying out loud. Sarah kept assuring me that things were fine, but I wasn't believing her. I totally lost my head and at one point told Jeff that he needed to do something cause no one was listening to me. Sarah went to go get Dorinda for a consultation.
Now, let me tell you about Dorinda. Jeff and I joke that when she's not delivering babies, she's busy changing the seasons, cause she's actually Mother Nature. Dorinda Dove is EXACTLY what you think a midwife is going to be like. She's capable, confident, and caring without being schmaltzy. She delivered both Maggie and Jack, and in both cases, she came in at the end of my labors to do it. She swept in the room this time and the whole energy of the room changed. Up to then, it had been very quiet, except for the beepclick of Kristen's camera. Sarah is an excellent midwife, but the quiet confidence of Dorinda seemed to open up all my support people. I know that my mom was relieved to see her, it made it feel like if something was wrong, Dorinda would fix it, or know when to call it.
Dorinda checked me and found the cervix was still there. She pushed it out of the way, and then moved to let Sarah take back over. She didn't leave though, she stayed with us, and for that I will always be grateful. She sat by my head and told me what to do. If she had told me I could push for five more hours, I probably would have believed her. The other thing that changed was Kristen and Johna began to cheer me on. Because they could now see the progress I was making, and because they're good enough friends that I know they would bullshit me, I knew if they were excited, I really was making progress. I can still hear Kristen's excited voice telling me I was doing it. They probably don't realize how much that really helped me. People think it's weird that I have a lot of people at my births, but it works for me. I thrive on that kind of energy.
Finally, the baby made it's way into the world.... and it's a BOY! William Jeffrey Lacey. He was completely grayish blue though and didn't cry when they put him on my chest. After a couple scary seconds, with oxygen and much rubbing by the midwife and nurse, he began to cry and pink up. Everyone was immediately taken with how BIG this child was. My first thought was, Thank GOD That's over!, but my second was "Holy crap, look at his cheeks!" Turns out that he was "sunny side up" or upside down in the birth canal. What this means is that A) his head didn't put equal pressure on my cervix which is probably why I didn't go into labor earlier and B) that I had to push the widest part of his ENORMOUS head out. Babies' heads are like little transformers and when they're born the right way, the head compresses to be born. Not my boys, cause Jack was the same way. Stinkers.
Normally, the staff of the Birth Center is in no hurry to take your baby away from you to measure him, but this time, you could tell they wanted a weight on this kid. So when I was getting myself taken care of, Colleen, the nurse, weighed the monster baby... 11 pounds 3 ounces... just like the damned ultrasound said.
In the end, we have a beautiful baby boy to complete our family. Three boys and three girls, including Jeff and me. Joey is the deciding vote, but he's neutered so he can go either way. We couldn't feel more blessed and I now feel like our family is complete. Each girl has a little brother to bother her, each brother has a sister to introduce him to cute girls. Life at the Lacey's is good.
People keep asking me how I feel, am I having baby blues, etc. I think I got all my baby blues out in the last two weeks of pregnancy and now I'm just so happy to not be the endlessly pregnant woman that I can't imagine being anything but all smiles.
Thank you again to everyone who supported me during this journey... from the beginning to the LONG awaited end. Every joke, every FB post, every phone call or babysitting duty, they were all appreciated. I have to especially thank Jeff, my patient and wonderful husband, who dealt with all the ups and downs of this pregnancy. I joke all the time that I got a deluxe model husband, but it's times like this when a man's quality really shows! Stay tuned, I'm sure there will be more craziness to come, just not pregnant crazy!
Mom, in true best Mom on the planet style, basically moved in with us in the month of February to help me (read keep me from killing the kids). I told her that someday, the girls would know how grateful they should be to her for being here, cause the amount of beating they would have received was greatly reduced. After a week or so of being here, Mom gently suggested that we put the girls back in pre-school and I quickly realized that she was right. My ability to do anything creative or fun had really been sucked entirely out of my body. So we signed them back up and after a couple gigantic snow storms, they started in March.
March 9, my due date, rolled up on the calendar and now my dad joined the party. He was pretty convinced I would have the baby quickly, and wanted to be here to help at a moments notice. (here's where I'll tell people that don't know, my parents live about 2 hours away and we all thought this baby would pretty much fall out of me, this is why being close was important) No baby on March 9. No baby on March 10. Do you see a pattern? I had an ultrasound at 40 weeks to check on Bullseye - they predicted the baby weighed 11 pounds 3 ounces. We all laughed. This baby wouldn't be anywhere close to that, those late ultrasounds are so inaccurate. This baby would be 10 pounds probably, but no more...
By March 15, I started to lose my sense of humor. People started telling me that we'd HAVE to name the baby Patrick or Patricia if it was born on St. Patrick's Day. My response? Would I name the baby Jesus if it was born on Christmas? NO.
Advice on how to go into labor poured in. Seriously? I thought, I've had 3 babies, don't you think I've tried all this crap? But try it again I did. Indian food, raspberry leaf tea, castor oil, chinese food, coffee ice cream... nada. Walk, walk, walk! People said. Like it's my fault that I'm not in labor cause I'm lazy and obviously not doing enough to go into labor. March 17 went by, I wanted to have a ceremonial burning of the "Baby's First St. Patrick's Day" outfits. March 18, 19, 20.... In my more morose moments I felt like I was disappointing everyone by not having the baby. My parents had basically put their lives on hold and were living in my house. My poor dad is hobbling around on a bad knee, but hadn't scheduled an MRI cause he was at my house helping me out. And in the background, the voices started... there's something wrong... there's a reason this baby isn't being born. I'm going to have to have a c-section, the baby's got a problem, something's not right...
If I went two weeks overdue, I would automatically be transferred from the Birth Center to Dr. Cookse's care at Christiana and I'd be induced. Mom superstitiously believed that I was waiting for Dorinda to be on call before I'd have the baby and would ask if she was on after each visit. Sunday, the 21st, I got the stomach bug that had already struck down most of the house. I woke up and was immediately ill. After having a boo hoo in the shower, I called Jeff upstairs and told him that he needed to make everyone leave the house for the day. I basically wanted to sit on the couch and feel sorry for myself all day, without anyone observing the puddle of depressed pregnant woman I was going to become.
Monday the 22 was it, the deadline. At 9AM, I had an appointment to have my water broken, a non-pharmaceutical induction method. We showed up only to be told the baby was still too high to break my water. (If you break your water and the baby is high, the umbilical cord can come out first and that's a big problem) After a little discussion, Dorinda suggested that I try castor oil again. Okay, sure, why not. So she goes and gets the biggest dose of castor oil I have ever seen in my life. It was a dixie cup FULL. In case that doesn't sound like much, go get a dixie cup, fill it with Wesson Oil and drink it. I made if halfway through the dose, gagged, but rallied to finish it. I tried to imagine it was Jagermeister. After a chaser of cranberry juice and a spoonful of peanut butter to kill the taste, we were sent to go eat some breakfast and walk for a couple hours, with orders to return around 1. The last thing Dorinda told me on the way out the door was that if I wasn't having contractions by then, or the baby hadn't moved down at all, I would be going to the hospital that night to be induced.
To Cosmo's Diner we went, where Jeff's mom joined us. After breakfast, we went to Babies R Us, cause seriously, where else can a woman that pregnant go without drawing alot of attention to herself? I started feeling some crampiness, but chalked it up to the castor oil. We bought some binkies for Jack and headed back to the Birth Center, where I was now completely certain I would find out what time my induction was scheduled. On the way, I told Jeff that I had gotten right with the idea of going to the hospital. Jeff asked me what I wanted at the hospital - drugs or no drugs? I said DRUGS. Absolutely. If I was going to the hospital to get a pitocin drip, I was getting the full court press. Drugs, a couple days in the hospital, the whole works.
We got back to the Birth Center and I had just gotten the words, "I'm feeling a little something" out of my mouth when a contraction like a freight train hit me. Suddenly, I was in full "labor song". My mom burst into tears. That morning, I was 2-3 cm. When they checked me now, I was 5. Hooray castor oil. The old wives know of what they speak. Sarah, the midwife, began filling the water birth tub and now contractions were coming every three minutes or so and they were getting more intense. I kept looking at the level of the water in the tub, thinking when can I get in? Everyone had told me that the water would really help ease the pain and relax me, and I was ready to be eased and relaxed. Finally it was ready and things started really rocking and rolling. Kristen arrived to be my photojournalist and Johna came in for moral support.
The whole time I was in the tub, I was trying to concentrate on the things that my friend Michelle Uy had told me about hypnobirthing - each contraction is one closer to the baby, my body is doing the things it needs to do, etc. It was now around 2 and we all took bets on when the baby would make it's arrival - 3PM was the general consensus. Great, I can do this for an hour, I thought, I can do anything for an hour. I was fully dialated except for a "lip" of cervix by 2:45 and was definitely feeling the urge to push. Sarah did some midwife magic and we thought we got the lip out of the way. Out of the tub I came and onto the bed, which hurt like a son of a bitch. So we tried the birth stool, which is basically a chair with the middle cut out. Strangely enough, contractions on the birth stool were not particularly painful, but they also weren't effective. I was pushing and pushing and pushing, and nothing was happening. Now the crazy voices in my head began to take over. Every person who had told me a c-section story had a moment in my head. It was 3:30 and I said to Sarah, "This isn't right. I don't push for hours." I only pushed for 8 minutes with Jack for crying out loud. Sarah kept assuring me that things were fine, but I wasn't believing her. I totally lost my head and at one point told Jeff that he needed to do something cause no one was listening to me. Sarah went to go get Dorinda for a consultation.
Now, let me tell you about Dorinda. Jeff and I joke that when she's not delivering babies, she's busy changing the seasons, cause she's actually Mother Nature. Dorinda Dove is EXACTLY what you think a midwife is going to be like. She's capable, confident, and caring without being schmaltzy. She delivered both Maggie and Jack, and in both cases, she came in at the end of my labors to do it. She swept in the room this time and the whole energy of the room changed. Up to then, it had been very quiet, except for the beepclick of Kristen's camera. Sarah is an excellent midwife, but the quiet confidence of Dorinda seemed to open up all my support people. I know that my mom was relieved to see her, it made it feel like if something was wrong, Dorinda would fix it, or know when to call it.
Dorinda checked me and found the cervix was still there. She pushed it out of the way, and then moved to let Sarah take back over. She didn't leave though, she stayed with us, and for that I will always be grateful. She sat by my head and told me what to do. If she had told me I could push for five more hours, I probably would have believed her. The other thing that changed was Kristen and Johna began to cheer me on. Because they could now see the progress I was making, and because they're good enough friends that I know they would bullshit me, I knew if they were excited, I really was making progress. I can still hear Kristen's excited voice telling me I was doing it. They probably don't realize how much that really helped me. People think it's weird that I have a lot of people at my births, but it works for me. I thrive on that kind of energy.
Finally, the baby made it's way into the world.... and it's a BOY! William Jeffrey Lacey. He was completely grayish blue though and didn't cry when they put him on my chest. After a couple scary seconds, with oxygen and much rubbing by the midwife and nurse, he began to cry and pink up. Everyone was immediately taken with how BIG this child was. My first thought was, Thank GOD That's over!, but my second was "Holy crap, look at his cheeks!" Turns out that he was "sunny side up" or upside down in the birth canal. What this means is that A) his head didn't put equal pressure on my cervix which is probably why I didn't go into labor earlier and B) that I had to push the widest part of his ENORMOUS head out. Babies' heads are like little transformers and when they're born the right way, the head compresses to be born. Not my boys, cause Jack was the same way. Stinkers.
Normally, the staff of the Birth Center is in no hurry to take your baby away from you to measure him, but this time, you could tell they wanted a weight on this kid. So when I was getting myself taken care of, Colleen, the nurse, weighed the monster baby... 11 pounds 3 ounces... just like the damned ultrasound said.
In the end, we have a beautiful baby boy to complete our family. Three boys and three girls, including Jeff and me. Joey is the deciding vote, but he's neutered so he can go either way. We couldn't feel more blessed and I now feel like our family is complete. Each girl has a little brother to bother her, each brother has a sister to introduce him to cute girls. Life at the Lacey's is good.
People keep asking me how I feel, am I having baby blues, etc. I think I got all my baby blues out in the last two weeks of pregnancy and now I'm just so happy to not be the endlessly pregnant woman that I can't imagine being anything but all smiles.
Thank you again to everyone who supported me during this journey... from the beginning to the LONG awaited end. Every joke, every FB post, every phone call or babysitting duty, they were all appreciated. I have to especially thank Jeff, my patient and wonderful husband, who dealt with all the ups and downs of this pregnancy. I joke all the time that I got a deluxe model husband, but it's times like this when a man's quality really shows! Stay tuned, I'm sure there will be more craziness to come, just not pregnant crazy!
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Things I've learned about men
Many moons ago, Jeff and I were caravaning on the way to Pittsburgh to visit family with my parents, when we all stopped at a rest stop to take care of nature. As my mom and I went to the ladies, I had the random thought that it might be strange for Jeff to go pee with my dad. Seeing as how they all stand up next to each other and such. I mean, I wouldn't want to squat along the side of the road with my mother in law, as much as I love her. So when we got back into the car, I asked him if it was strange. Jeff looked at me like I had asked him if it was strange that birds fly and fish swim. Patiently, Jeff explained to me that, no it isn't strange, and then launched into describing the rules that define male bathroom etiquitte. There are tacit rules that boys learn at some age - personally I think they must teach it when they separate the boys and girls in health class, or maybe it's just part of the DNA in the Y chromosome. All men know it implicitly. There's even a game on the internet - The Urinal Game - where men can test their knowledge.
From that day on, it was as if a whole world had been opened that I never knew existed. There are two kinds of houses - open bathroom doors and closed bathroom doors and my family is firmly in the closed bathroom door camp. As I child, I believed my father slept completely clothed. He would emerge, fully dressed as if from Zeus's forehead. And as a teenager, I mostly tried to not think about my older brother's bathroom habits. From then on out, I lived with women. So when Jeff opened up this door to the secret life of men, I had to find out more: What are urinal cakes? Do men really pee in troughs at ball games? Why didn't the guy that sat next to me at my old job at least try to hide the newspaper he carried out with him every day at 3:30?
Jeff still tries to maintain some of the secrecy... for instance, he won't give me a straight answer about why it takes 45minutes for men to poop. I have several theories, depending on how annoyed I am that day. One is that the mother ship "uploads" her commands via the toilet. My mom and I spend much time debating this concept, but in the end, I've decided that women have missed a huge opportunity here and have ceded the bathroom majority to the men. For a while I considered slipping Jeff an iron pill every day to see if his productivity went up in direct proportion to the decrease in bathroom visitations.
I'm not sure why I'm sharing this on my blog, other than I'm tired of bitching about being pregnant, but Jeff wants me to add this final thought - Ladies talk proudly to each from stall to stall, because men are not allowed to speak.
From that day on, it was as if a whole world had been opened that I never knew existed. There are two kinds of houses - open bathroom doors and closed bathroom doors and my family is firmly in the closed bathroom door camp. As I child, I believed my father slept completely clothed. He would emerge, fully dressed as if from Zeus's forehead. And as a teenager, I mostly tried to not think about my older brother's bathroom habits. From then on out, I lived with women. So when Jeff opened up this door to the secret life of men, I had to find out more: What are urinal cakes? Do men really pee in troughs at ball games? Why didn't the guy that sat next to me at my old job at least try to hide the newspaper he carried out with him every day at 3:30?
Jeff still tries to maintain some of the secrecy... for instance, he won't give me a straight answer about why it takes 45minutes for men to poop. I have several theories, depending on how annoyed I am that day. One is that the mother ship "uploads" her commands via the toilet. My mom and I spend much time debating this concept, but in the end, I've decided that women have missed a huge opportunity here and have ceded the bathroom majority to the men. For a while I considered slipping Jeff an iron pill every day to see if his productivity went up in direct proportion to the decrease in bathroom visitations.
I'm not sure why I'm sharing this on my blog, other than I'm tired of bitching about being pregnant, but Jeff wants me to add this final thought - Ladies talk proudly to each from stall to stall, because men are not allowed to speak.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Hear that? That's the cavalry!
Apparently I must have sounded pathetic in my last blog post, cause yesterday I got a call from my old friend Naida, who decided to take pity on me and drive from Boston to visit and cook. Naida, in addition to her many other talents, is a trained pastry chef, so there was definitely an element of "ooh, we're going to eat really good all weekend" to my excitement.
I met Naida in my pre-mommy days, and it's good to have someone from the long ago and far away to give me some perspective on my life outside of mommydom. It's so easy to forget that six years ago, I had a life that didn't involve constantly watching for life's hidden dangers, like wall outlets and magnets. We used to work together, in my wild and crazy single days living in Boston - you know the days my kids will never believe I had.
As moms we so easily give up our whole selves to our kids, we need to remember that our kids don't define us. That's part of the reason I am so glad to have friends like Naida from the 'old days', and also why "Moms Night Out" is vital to my sanity. Without my fellow moms, I'd go totally mad!
I met Naida in my pre-mommy days, and it's good to have someone from the long ago and far away to give me some perspective on my life outside of mommydom. It's so easy to forget that six years ago, I had a life that didn't involve constantly watching for life's hidden dangers, like wall outlets and magnets. We used to work together, in my wild and crazy single days living in Boston - you know the days my kids will never believe I had.
As moms we so easily give up our whole selves to our kids, we need to remember that our kids don't define us. That's part of the reason I am so glad to have friends like Naida from the 'old days', and also why "Moms Night Out" is vital to my sanity. Without my fellow moms, I'd go totally mad!
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