Seemed like a good idea...

One of the things we wanted to do as a family over the holiday break was to take a quick little overnight trip to Chicago.  We go there every couple of months in order to attend the temple, which was the main goal of this trip, but we also wanted to have a little extra time so we could spend more time in the city.

Neil was unsure about whether we should go, since I had just started antibiotics for bronchitis the day before (sidenote:  I am so, so, so tired of being sick...I have been sick almost nonstop for 5 weeks and I am so tired of living in that dark pit where I'm too exhausted to do anything and the world seems like a horrible, dark, cruel place with no bright spots and nothing to live for), but I really hated to avoid yet another looked-forward-to activity based on my illness, so I said we should just go.

The drive up was pretty indicative of the rest of the trip--we sat in standstill traffic for a full hour (at which point I had Luke on my lap, since we were just sitting there with the engine off, and I tried to entertain him by taking pictures of the two of us, only to discovered that an unnamed child had snuck the camera into bed with them, taken 39 videos in the dark, and completely drained the brand-new battery).  Then we got to Chicago and discovered that the museum parking was full. Then we finally got into the Museum of Science and Industry and waited for an hour to get tickets (and, of course, all of the cool exhibits were sold out, which meant we had several tantrums from the unnamed child who wanted to go inside the U-boat).  Then we went around the museum with the other 15,000 (not exaggerating--I asked a guard) people who were there that day.  Isaac threw a huge tantrum when he couldn't see his favorite train and so Luke woke up after only 45 minutes of napping and the ensuing tantrum was spectacular beyond all belief!  (I did, however, manage to get enough camera juice to take a shot of Luke with the baby chicks.)

Not something I would recommend.  

We left early and drove to the hotel, got the kids settled, and then both Neil and I went to the temple that evening.  I can sum up how the night in the hotel room went by saying that the same unnamed child decided at 1 am that s/he was done sleeping and would rather read, and proceeded to turn on the lights to make this possible.  (I wish I could say that this was the only time it happened that night, but it was not.  And did I mention that I was really sick with bronchitis?)

Anyway...the next day was better.  We made a super-quick stop at Anthropologie to replace the bowls we've broken in the last six months, ate lunch at our favorite Thai place in Lincoln Park, and then went to the Peggy Notebaert museum in Lincoln Park, which we had never visited before and which was absolutely delightful.  There were only a handful of patrons and so despite the fact that it was many magnitudes smaller than the MOSI, it was much more enjoyable!

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I don't really know why I'm bothering to log this post--maybe just for reality's sake, and perhaps to comfort anyone else whose glorious holiday plans haven't worked out quite right.  And also because I am desperately hoping that someday I have a really good relationship with all of my children, and when they struggle with their children and are convinced that they are the worst parent ever and that their children will hate them forever, they can look back on this post and think, hey, Mom thought the same thing.  (Or maybe they'll just think that they still feel the same way, but I hope not.)  And maybe someday I will be able to reread this and think how far my relationship with that unnamed child has progressed, and be grateful for the lessons that we have both learned in the process (please, oh please please please!)

Also, I really need to get better, because this is ridiculous.

2 months and some catching up

Two months!  Already!  I can hardly believe it.  We're starting to see some "smiles" (like that winner just above) and occasionally get a 3-hour stretch at night. 

Luke weighed 15 lbs 6 oz when we were at the pediatrician today (24.25 inches long)--bigger than Isaac at ten weeks, and at the time I thought Isaac (who was just over 14 lbs) was enormous.  It's funny because I am always so stressed (so, so, so stressed--to the point where I have to consciously relax while he's eating) about whether Luke is eating enough--he only nurses for 3-4 minutes on one side and then he's done, and nothing I can do will make him eat more.

Looking at my blog I realized I haven't posted in a week, which is a long time for me.  We've had lots of visitors--my mom and my sister Ruth were here last week, and we got to spend an hour or two with some friends from Provo and another from Texas--but I think mostly I just haven't felt like I have anything nice or fun that I want to record about our "regular" life.  I'm not being a very nice or fun mom right now...we're really struggling to get everyone to sleep at night, and so the kids are all horribly cranky and I've been reading Positive Discipline and making good resolutions and then blowing them all as soon as the whining and hitting and complaining starts again.  I'm looking forward to swimming lessons starting next week to force us into a more rigid schedule (and praying that the new room arrangement we're going to try tonight works...seriously, last night all 4 kids were still awake and yelling at 10 pm, and then they finally fell asleep and Luke woke up at 10:45, and then we got him to bed at 11:12, and Juliet woke up screaming at 11:21, and Neil and I finally turned off our light at 12:14.  Plus Luke is still waking up six or seven times at night--sometimes he just needs a pacifier and sometimes he needs to eat, but it's always loud!)

I think the most difficult thing for me right now is that I'm a very routine-bound person, and I have no idea what's going to happen from minute to minute.  New babies always throw me for a loop, but for some reason I'm having a really hard time getting back to a normal schedule this time--I think because I'm so tired that I'm just taking things five minutes at a time, and it feels like trying to move a mountain to even think about getting everything figured out.  The only time I feel normal these days is when I run.  Things are hard right now.  Understatement. 

On a more positive note, we picked raspberries and blueberries last week, and raspberry jam is the best taste ever.  It takes me back instantly to summers in Idaho picking berries from my grandmother's raspberry canes--I can almost smell the dusty wind blowing over the desert.  And my "no junk July" thing has been going really well (although I did indulge and eat the Parisian chocolate my sister brought me, and the Mexican pastries that Neil's friend Phil brought us), but I have passed up all kinds of treats and instead eaten half my weight in hummus and cucumbers.  And when we were at the pediatrician's today I weighed myself (do you think those scales are adequately calibrated if you weigh more than 50 lbs?) and I've lost all but a pound of the weight I gained with Luke (which means I still have more weight I want to lose, but hey, 22 lbs down from where I was two months ago!).

And now I'm going to go mop my kitchen floor, which is covered in Neil's delicious lemon meringue pie, thanks to Isaac (a pie which I did not eat.  Talk about self-control.  If only I could exert this kind of domination over my temper).

gratitude

We've been doing our gratitude chain again the last two weeks; we have a million strips of cut-up paper and after breakfast we all take turns writing down what we're thankful for that day.  I love this ritual.

Today I was thinking about how grateful I am for my body's resilience.  I've been slowly building back up again, as the nurse told me I could, and it is wonderful (I just hope the doctor agrees with her assessment; I'm going in on Wednesday).  I still need much more rest than I would normally, but exercising again has made such a difference.  Last week I replaced some of my normal "run days" (usually I run 5 days a week but last week I only ran 3) with yoga, which was lovely.  I've forgotten how much I really love that mind-body connection, and it feels soooo good to settle into those deep stretches.  I slept so much better last week with exercising again than the week that I was on bedrest, which was really quite miserable. 

I'm also thankful that my food-making energy has been restored.  We've been eating much more interesting meals this last week, and I think the children are grateful for the cessation in quesadillas.  We ate a lot of tortillas for awhile there, so many, in fact, that Neil dubbed them one of our five food groups.  My house smells like banana bread right now and the freezer is stuffed with carrot-raisin and pumpkin-chocolate chip muffins (thanks to baking all of Abigail's kindergarten snacks at once) and it's delightful. 

To be entirely honest, most days I still feel a little down, a little not-quite-myself, but I'm getting better at overcoming that, I think.  Better at looking for the bright side and focusing on what I really need to do, rather than all that I wish I was doing.  So much of my family's attitude towards the day is based on mine, and I've really been making an effort to foster a more loving and kinder environment.  I struggle with keeping my temper and being patient--oh, being endlessly patient in the broken-record-repeating-instructions that is parenting!!--and I have a long way to go, but I think I've come a long way too.  Sometimes it's interesting to consider the woman I would be if I didn't have young children.  I think I would probably be more successful in the eyes of the world, but I would not be nearly as kind. 

image thanks to kim davis photography

choice and consequences

It's been an interesting morning. I hope we can look back at it as a turning point.

The end result is that Abigail is not allowed to be in any room by herself. She has to be in the same room with a parent for the next three days, unless she is asleep. We're talking a lot about how we all have free agency, but the choices we make have consequences (i.e. if you sneak outside while Mommy is nursing the baby she can't trust you, and if you climb up and get the markers on the 'fridge while Mommy is in the shower, color all over the furniture and walls (all. over. all over. everything). and then hand off the markers to your sister when you hear Mommy coming you lose even more trust. And when you lie about the whole thing, well, even worse).

We'll see how this goes. As I said before, I'm hoping that this is a turning point that teaches about consequences, about lying, and about not tempting other people towards misbehavior.

One thing I do have to say is that I think the best choice I made today was to call Neil and ask him to leave work for an hour, because I was not at a point where I was thinking rationally and for the first time I really didn't feel like it was the best option for me to be alone with the kids right then, especially since I'm sick and Isaac was up most of the night (the best part--right after I discovered the marker and all three kids were yelling at once and I was still in my bathrobe with wet hair, the Jehovah's Witnesses knocked on the door).

So while I felt really bad about asking him to come home from work, I think on the whole it was better for our family for me to just leave the house for an hour, cool down, and then be able to come back and deal with the situation more calmly. I don't think I would have been able to make that call a year ago.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that nobody's perfect, and nobody can be calm and patient and reasonable all the time, and I think it's good to acknowledge sometimes that you just have to step back. And take a break. Not a long break, but enough. And you're all the better for it.