Anneliese at Almost Seven

Okay so there are golden birthdays, but is there such a thing as a golden due date? If so, this is Anneliese's. It's October 7th again, and she's almost 7!

Anneliese these days is made up of big feelings, rainbows, chapter books, dolls and doll dress-ups, spaghetti, coconut, craft projects, an odd blend of sassy and compliant responsibility, a head of loose teeth (though not enough missing for her taste), running, swimming, dancing, Olympics, creativity, bright smarts, and one of the funniest kindest hearts I've ever known. She's into girl strength and also silly girlishness. She's a beautiful singer. She loves school and sleeping late. She does cartwheels the way some people talk with their hands. She's the object of affection and attention from both her siblings. She is our middlest, and she is beloved.

I can't believe it was seven years ago she was inside me and we only knew her as Beanie, the awaited baby daughter I was so excited to finally have.

Once in a while, something your heart has huge hopes for, turns out to be exactly as good as you'd hoped. For me, being Anneliese's mom is one of those things.

I love you, little Beanie. Happy due date.

Happy Birthday, Charlotte!

I am posting this in the wee hours of Charlotte's 5th birthday, from the beach, our annual trip with my dad. This is our second year on the road for her special day. Basically she's going to start expecting a trip every year for her birthday, and I will have very wide eyes (and say no) (but secretly want to say yes).

She was really excited to claim a top bunk when we got here today, something she quickly named as her birthday right (she didn't get a top bunk at GWL for Nathan's birthday, and has been talking about it ever since). But some hours after bedtime she got scared up high, appeared for several "bathroom breaks," one of which ended in tears and fears -- so we did a bed shuffle and now she is sound asleep beside me, my sweet baby girl who wants to be a big girl but clearly still isn't, in so many ways.

Oh, my heart.

So while I am busy having difficulty comprehending the passing of time, and also that my child is five, my youngest baby, and thinking about how much a youngest baby growing up just wreaks havok on the mom feels -- as I'm thinking about all that, I am also just now remembering I intended to make a cake tonight, and whoops! Got distracted by ice cream and the Olympics and totally forgot. It's nothing that I can't do in the morning, of course -- our "party" plans for the day are very vague, because, yknow, vacation -- but it just goes to show that while youngest kids can pull extra at your heartstrings, they also get a teensy bit forgotten. POOR THIRD CHILD, ETC.

But she is indeed five, and she will have cake, and the cake will be wearing sunglasses, I think? I hope? and she does squeeze my heart, this little Booler. She is growing up right before our eyes; most days it feels like the perfect balance of happy/sad.

Some of my favorites from the last year:


If you can't see the embeded video, click here to watch on YouTube.

(If you love memory lane like I do, here are her first, second, third, and fourth years too.)

Oh sweet little girl, I both ache for your diminishing babyness, and love the race into your big-kid-ness. I love you more than you can ever know. Keep dancing, every time you feel a dance in you. This year and always.

Happy birthday, dear Charlotte.

Narcolepsy and Asthma

It's been a big medical week around here!

First, Mark finally had a follow-up with his doctor with the results of his sleep study from this summer, and it turns out he has.... narcolepsy. (I was going to add a drumroll, but I put that in the title, so you already knew, didn't you? You did.) Yes, legit effing narcolepsy. WHAT EVEN, Y'ALL.

We were expecting a diagnosis of sleep apnea (he has many of the symptoms, not the least of which is snoring that might break our marriage, or at least our marriage bed) but... narcolepsy? Although, once we got some info about what it really is (not what Hollywood thinks it is), it totally makes sense. Like, we both were like OH AHA WELL DUH. Things we had just sort of gotten used to as quirks or "whatever" patterns in our life and house, that we hadn't realized were as bizarre as they really are -- suddenly make sense. Honestly we both felt dumb for not wondering about narcolepsy sooner.

ANYWAY so it's super treatable and he can take a daily med and even just one week in, it's amazing and I love it and I know for him it will be an adjustment of course, but for me, this sh!t is awesome and I am so glad to suddenly have a chatty energetic husband in the evenings after work, and we don't have to store our catching up until his days off, and I don't have to keep him awake through the evening so he doesn't ruin his night of sleep, and and and and and. Our lives are about to get better, I think.

(Snoring is unrelated. His doctor has ideas on that too. But not solved yet. I invested in fancy earplugs.) (By fancy I mean normal earplugs that are neon green.)

(And no, the irony of Mark's narcolepsy being married to my horrible sleep-broken failure insomnia is not lost on us.)

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Second, we finally took Charlotte into the pediatric pulmonologist for whom we've had a referral for many many many months, but because of schedule logistics (side eye to Mark's job) haven't been able to make happen. And she has asthma.

This is not a surprise. An urgent care doctor mentioned it when she was a toddler, after she had had several pneumonias and every cold that hit our family seemed to be thrice as bad for her as for anyone else, and go straight to her chest. She's had many courses of breathing treatments and albuterol over the years, and it's one of those things that we worried about, but not acutely, because it was only bad when she was sick.

But then in the last year when she started gasping when she cried hard (more than other babies gasp when they cry) and wheezing was one of the first signs of her getting a cold, we decided to finally take her to a specialist per the earlier suggestions.

Anyway, we took her, they measured her breathing, she has a very average normal asthma. It's all okay. I mean, I don't love that she has to deal with it, but she (probably*) won't need daily preventive treatments (*we are tracking inhaler usage on an as-needed basis, and if after three months, certain patterns emerge, she may after all -- but for now they think likely not) and they said she can be as active as she wants to be. The albuterol is effective for her and she is a champ at the mask and inhaler, so it's all okay.

Maybe cold season will be easier for her this year, armed with these additional tools.

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She also wrote her name for the first time this week. I should say, "write" is a very loose interpretation of what she did -- which was really mostly just drawing. She copied the letters from the name tag on her table in her preschool class. She knows none of those letters except C. So maybe I should just consider this really good art, not actual writing.

But either way I am keeping it forever, because obviously.

Mean Mommy, Blah

I'm having one of those bad mom mornings where the kids are up too early and I haven't slept more than a few hours a night in five nights, and the bickering is too much, and when someone cries because they need me, it makes me feel angry instead of compassionate.

One of those mornings where parenting looks ugly on me.

I'm so tired.

And nothing about this season is particularly tiring (aside from bad sleep, everything (except the bickering) has been fine all summer, and fine this weekend in particular. AND YET. Mean mommy is out, in full force. I am so irritated and so done. I was done by 7:30 this morning, to be honest.

By the time I had chased each child to their room (where they stayed) (unheard of) and closed my own door to listen to a podcast for an hour, and then delivered Nathan to his day camp (the drive was in total silence, there and back, the kids didn't even ask for anything from the drive through when I stopped for a sweet tea) (!) I realized... I have fully scared them into submission today.

Charlotte dug something out of her hamper so she could wear my favorite color. 

Nathan packed all the healthiest things into his lunch box for camp and didn't even ask for a brownie (I would have said yes, for the record). 

Anneliese has been holding Hattie close and walking around quiet as a church mouse.

Y'all, that doesn't feel good. It sucks. I know it's okay to have mornings where we are hurt and frustrated at each other, but damn, compliance earned by fear of my anger just feels hard and gross. It's not the first time it's happened, but it's still a gut check every time.

There's no conclusion or happy ending takeaway here, other than maybe to name and own that it's not always sunshine and roses and making the best of the chaos. Some people are good at that, or at least good at telling people that, but I'm not always.

I'm crabby at them and mad at myself and BLAH. Some days are just hard.

Unrelated to anything, other than BLAH in general: Nathan banged his head really hard on a door frame last night and it was a pretty giant goose egg pretty quickly. He's fine this morning (the most fine of everyone here actually) but it sure looks painful, doesn't it?

Send us all some virtual forehead kisses today? We need them.

Inefficient. And Overwhelmed.

I'm fighting a bad spell of sleep and general overwhelm about life this week, and I don't have a ton to say about that, but I do have this to say, about one part of the overwhelm:

Raising humans is terribly inefficient work.

"I don't need to do alone time, I'm not even tired!"
Mmmmkay.

I don't mind hard work, I really don't. My bosses have generally loved me as a worker, in every job I've had. I was a good student. I am a focused task-doer. But when I work hard I want it to result in... something.

Being a housewife/SAHM/homemaker/whatever term you like for it: I have never worked harder in my life, nor felt less successful at achieving the end I'm working towards.

Behavior/teaching things with the kids get reminded and then forgotten and then reminded again. Meals get prepared and then complained about. Messes get cleaned then re-messed. I live in chaos, far more than I ever would have guessed I can tolerate.

It is all just so... inefficient. There is hardly a thing I can do one day, one morning, one hour, that I won't have to immediately repeat within a coming window of time. The same work! Again! And I don't just mean the household stuff but also just the general rearing of what I hope will be future good citizens. It's like trying to frantically build something while someone else, or a team of someone elses (often the very tiny humans you are trying to raise, themselves), take it apart, working against me. And I just have to keep doing it over and over again, be faster than them and smarter than them to find productivity and progress despite them, even though it's for them, and hope that one day it will be the day that it doesn't come apart.

And keep telling myself that in the meantime, it still matters, and I have to keep trying, even when I feel like I'm getting nowhere. Some days I believe myself. Some days I don't.

Someone told me years ago that being effective is more important than being efficient, but, oh man, I don't know, MY KINGDOM FOR A HAPPY MEDIUM.

Reunited And it Feels So... Tired?

My whole family is together! Under one roof! For the first time this month!

And we are all tired.

This is what happens when Charlotte tries to skip a nap:

Nathan is still recovering from post-Montreat exhaustion:

And Anneliese cannot get enough sleepy snuggles with me, or my new blanket.

(I do not hate any of this.)

:)

It's Day Camp Week. Also, I'm Tired.

Lest you think everything is sunshine and roses around here (I don't want to use the internet to vent alllll my problems, nor do I want to pretend that my life is always shiny; it's a fine line), it isn't. I'm tired this week. Like, life weary.

The big kids have been in day camps through our parks and rec offerings in Raleigh. (You'd think this might make my week seem easy and low key, but camp has been a neutral force on that front, at best.) Anneliese does an art camp all morning, and Nathan is doing a lego camp in the afternoon, at a different location. Surprisingly the schedule has worked okay, but it is a lot of driving during trafficky times, and a lot of fussy crying lunch hours while I try to feed all three big kids, and get a bottle into the baby, and get us moved from one parks facility to another. I have been packing lunches to eat while we go, but I'm not ashamed to admit we also drove through for chicken nuggets twice already.

Also the dryer is broken (again!) (whole separate problem from before! what are the chances? please file this under Always Something) so add some laundry drying stops at Another Nathan's house during those lunch runs too. (He is out of town but his house/dryer is near one of the camps, so.)

This is the only picture I got of Anneliese's "camp" and it has nothing to do with art, and it isn't even at her camp, but Nathan's. She was walking in with our packed lunch and her sunglasses and said "Guess who I am? I will give you a clue! I am mommy!" (I don't get it, but okay? She looks sweet though so I will take it.)

And this is the only picture I got of Nathan's "camp" week, again having almost nothing to do with lego camp, other than it was taken in his camp room holding a camp toy and proclaiming he had a solution to how we could make a sperm whale cake for his birthday (which is what he has been asking for, and of course I don't know how to do that, is he for real??) -- just make a cake, and put a sperm whale on the cake, and look wouldn't this one be so cool?

Sperm whale toy has now been ordered, and Amazon officially doesn't understand my purchasing patterns. Oh and also, Nathan loved lego camp. Anneliese loved art camp too, despite my being too beside myself to be super aware or memory-making about it all. *sigh*

In heavier news, I saw a man on a motorcycle get hit by a car (he did not survive) and it is heartbreaking and horrible, of course for the family more than me (not about me at all! I know this! I know!) but it still was somewhat traumatizing to witness. AND in an unrelated incident I hit (bumped) another car in a parking lot and I left a note and asked everyone at the rec center playground if it was theirs and it was not, but no one has called which means maybe nothing will come of it? But it feels unsettling, like, did I do the right thing? Should I have called the police to file a report on myself? (There was no mark. It was nothing. But still.) Bah.

(Car-crash type events, incidents, whatever -- they make me stressy. It is a Thing.)

Unrelated to any of this, my mom is trying to plan her Final Arrangements and they are, um... unusual. To the point that she wants to get all of us siblings on board now, which is fine, okay, but it sure makes for an awkward phone conversation when she caught me with a spare moment ("spare" haaaaa) feeding the baby a bottle while the big kids played on the indoor playset at the rec center waiting for Nathan's camp doors to open. Weird! Morbid! The other parents were backing away slowly, I could sense it.

So ALSO, Mark is traveling a lot. His new job is good for him, for experience and title and interesting things to work on, but he works a lot more. Like, a lot more than he used to, and a lot more than I was expecting. And that work includes traveling, not because the job itself involves travel (it doesn't, in theory), but because there are trainings and meetings and blah blah blah I don't know. It seems to be a lot of Special Exception Case trips and extra shifts and going in for storms, etc etc etc, and I guess Special Exception Case things are normal at the beginning of any job. But it has been several months now and I am ready for him to have more than a day or two off every several weeks. He is finally coming home tonight from his third trip to Charlotte this month and I am just done.

(I normally am more supportive than I feel/sound right now. I promise. It's just that my days feel long and they also feel like they never end, because they go all night too, and I'm at my limit of being... needed. I am feeling a panic-level need to be alone. I am counting the hours.)

This might be obvious, but I haven't been sleeping well either. And ugh there is hardly any feeling worse than being wired and exhausted at the same time. While lone-wolfing it for the third week in this month, with four kids, one of whom yells at unpredictable intervals because she's still at that stage of infancy where if she is awake she is fussy, save lots of jiggling and attention which is sometimes fine but sometimes feels overwhelming with three other kids also needing me, which means everyone ends up somewhere between fussy and frustrated. (I know there are worse feelings. Of course there are. Have some perspective, right? But for where I am this week, it is hard for me to remember what those worse feelings might be, because frankly this sucks. Like, grade-A level suuuuuucks.)

Ready for some brightsiding now?

This afternoon Anneliese has her cutie friend Beatrice over to play, and Nathan is still at camp, and both Charlotte and Ali are sleeping quietly upstairs. (People in my house reliably take naps! I do not take this for granted!) I am sitting by the pool now watching their playdate happen; I brought my leader's manual outside so I could start reading through it and planning my small group sessions for my Montreat conference in a few weeks, but it turns out that blog-venting some frustrations a sentence at a time takes less eyeball- and brain-power than that so I'm doing this instead. And if I am honest, watching them swim and laugh and excitedly ask me for jumping pictures is definitely the best moment of my week.

And my time to be alone will come soon. Not soon enough, but it will come. Please come, alone time.

A Saturday

A bird flew into the house right as I sat down to write this post! But then like three seconds after I tweeted about it (and screamed like a little girl) (birds are gross), it flew right back out. So basically that was way less of an adventure than what just flashed before my eyes in a fit of dread.

Also I have officially closed the deck door.

In less exciting news, what I was going to type into this little blog box before nature invaded my space, was this snippet I overheard at the lunch table earlier: "Daddy, guess what's my favorite sauropod that starts with A? No, no, it's not apatosaurus, that's my third favorite." So in case you're curious where we are on the dinosaur thing these days, we're THERE. (Do I laugh or cry?)

Anyway, Mark and Another Nathan are at a movie this afternoon, so I thought this would be a good day to make a chocolate buttermilk cake (WITH COKE IN IT), because why not? Cake is good. This is from Maggie's favorite cookbook ChocolateChocolate, and the best part of how Maggie sent the recipe was the part of the email where she said HAAAA SIFTING! because apparently she and I are the same about that, and yeah nope. I sifted one scoopful, waited to care, still didn't, and sifted no more. It is my way.)

But look how fun baking is with new colorful measuring spoons! Everything good is always better in fun colors. That's my motto. Just go with it.

So basically I messed up in several ways (mostly the frosting, because I carelessly mis-measured, didn't have enough ingredients to fix it, and then compensated for that all wrong (you all want to bake with me now, right?) but it is still delicious! So good! I recommend this cake.

(You put the icing on right out of the oven when the cake is still hot, and apparently my family could not wait til it had cooled, hence the mess. But! Still good!)

*******

End of the day finishing-this-post update: I feel blah and tired, but we played outside, and the cake is still good, and by the time we did showers, Anneliese had bug spray, ketchup, bubbles, and play doh in her hair. Getting that mess detangled caused a sh!tshow of crying we better not re-enact this year, or ever.

Also, I found this picture of Charlotte taking an adorable nap in our bed. I have no idea when Mark took this, and she is doing no such thing now, so let's just pretend, shall we? Okay.

DST Sad Face

Okay so I do this thing every time the clocks change, where I talk about what time is actually is versus what time it feeeeels like, and if Certain People did not limit me to talking about this for only a week, I would talk about it much much longer because it is a thing! It is!

(I also do this thing every time the clocks change where I don't actually change any clocks. Including the one in my van. Or on the oven. Or the alarm clock we keep by the tv because our dvr (inexplicably!) does not have a clock on it. Also my alarm clock on my nightstand has been flashing for a solid month since the power went out in the last ice storm and I haven't done anything about that either. I am a super wife. You all want me around. You do.)

So anyway, this time of year my clock-chatter means I spend a week marveling at playing outside after dinner, and driving to evening activities in daylight, and moving kids' bedtimes later and not feeling guilty about it. And I spend the week ALSO complaining about rushed mornings when we lose our extra hour before school, and feeling bad for waking babies up from naps because they slept too late because they fell asleep too late because I know the clock says 2 but it only feeeels like 1.

(This whole phenomenon affects everyone* far less than I like to pretend it does. But just go with it. Give me this one thing!) (And any other things I choose to make a fuss over.) (*Everyone = Mark has to get up at what feeeels like 3:45 in the morning so it totally affects him, for real life, as the kids would say.)

ANYWAY I would like to blame this picture on DST, but Charlotte actually looks like this pretty much every day after her nap these days, anyway:

Isn't it sad and funny and also kind of awesome?

So, happy DST everyone! And also, every time someone says Daylight Saving Time (not! plural! not savingS!) an angel gets its wings. This has been your DST PSA, thank you and goodnight.

Things I Cannot Abide Right Now

Because I have unspecified crabbies, and I'm not sure what to do with that besides make a list and be internet venty, here are some things I cannot abide right now:

1- The weather. Sure, it's great today, but it will be crud again on Thursday and I'm over it. (Yes I know it is so so so much worse in other parts of the country. I send my warmest spring thoughts.)

2- Oil pulling. People are apparently swishing oil in their mouths, to... get their mouths clean? No, y'all. Stop that. You hippies need to simmer down. Everyone just BRUSH YOUR TEETH.

3- Amongst other really frustrating church complaints these days, I am very over Certain Church Types who hate the internet. (Correction: are scared of the internet.) And other terrible churchy communication in general, and I mean that on SO MANY LEVELS but I am trying not to be so complainy about church so I will not start a rant.

4- People who are pissed that the new Annie is black. Yes, a little girl. Acting in a movie. Which apparently she shouldn"t be.... because of how she looks? What year is this? FOR THE LOVE.

5- Being a terrible sleeper. If I could magically change one thing about myself, it might be this. Partly to make better sleep decisions, and partly for those decisions to just, for once, work. I would love to have the ability to sleep when I wanted to, where I wanted to, without thinking about it. If you have this luxurious ability, do me a favor and please don't take it for granted.

6- Crappy in-laws. Not MINE, I should say. But I know and love several people whose in-laws are being crappy to them. Including one set of in-laws who put those booze-breastmilk test strips in the diaper bag after babysitting during a date night. Why so gross, in-laws of the world?

7- This dumb HuffPo article going viral (I'm not linking to it, it doesn't need any more hits, google it if you must) saying kids should not use handheld devices until they are twelve. Not just shouldn't use them, but the government should make it illegal for kids to use them. Are you effing kidding me? How does this bullsh!t go viral? And as the ever-delightfully-pedantic Miriel pointed out, "handheld devices" is woefully unspecific. Shall we have the government ban forks and spoons and pencils, too? Also, I don't think the word "technology" means what that writer thinks it means.

And how I feel tonight is: people are dumb, y'all.

Okay in the interest of a happy healthy mindset OR WHATEVER, here are three things I feel damn glad about this weekend:

1- We had a great night out with friends on Friday, including this delightful little bikini-tini at dinner, which tasted like a freaking vacation:

You know that's pretty. You know you want one.

2- Nathan is currently trying to pluck out "twinkle twinkle" on his cello and he can't quiiiite get it (because he hasn't learned enough notes yet for it) but dang it is adorable to listen to him try.

3- Mark got some decent news about some work stuff this week, and it is making him feel light and happy. Light and happy looks good on anyone, but it's especially super when it's on your beloved.

Never Grow Up, Never Ever

On weeks or weekends when Mark is on night shift (or on his annual ASP trip, like right now), I usually let Nathan spent one (ish) night(s) with me in our bed. He's a snuggler, I'm a snuggler, we both love it, so we indulge.

And those nights make me want him to never grow up. Never. Not ever. #fiveforever

Cold Holden Beach: the How-To Guide

We spent our annual Bumgarner spring break at Holden Beach again this year, and since Easter was so early (or since spring weather is just pissing me off these days, one of those) it was unseasonably cold.

If you're ever wondering what to do with a big group (including four small children) at the beach for a week when it's too cold to be at the beach, I have a practical how-to list of ideas:

1.) Bundle up (ish) and play outside anyway.

2.) Snuggle with your adorable nephew.

3.) Accidentally catch a stingray. (!!!)

4.) Learn to share a bed with your favorite sibling.

5.) Read a lot of books. Send a few emails. Make a few phone calls.

6.) Have a family dinner, then eat leftover ham all week mmmmm.

7.) Make cupcakes in ice cream cones.

8.) Bond with your daddy.

9.) Have your sister organize an egg hunt. (Bonus: have her fill some of the eggs with wiggly rubber frogs which will accidentally terrify your middle child and have probably traumatize her enough to never open another easter egg again in her life, like ever.

10.) Turn on your best smile, and the chilly beach will smile with you. True story.

Thanks as always for our fun week, Dad!!!

Every Parent's Road Trip Dream

If you are a parent on a road trip, there is no better sight than this.

For the win.

Sleeping Cherub

Had enough photos of my creatures sleeping yet?

Didn't think so.

Nathan was so looking forward to singing in worship during holy week (he's in the Cherub Choir, which is all kindergartners, and he is very particular that we call it Cherub Choir, not children's choir or heaven forbid just choir), that he put his robe on hours and hours before we needed to leave. And then sat on his bed for a minute. And then apparently his eyes got very sleepy. Or so he tells me.

So that settles the question of whether a sleeping kid is made even more adorable in a choir robe, then.

Anneliese in the Armchair. Again.

I told myself at the beginning of this year I was only going to blog when I wanted to, and not because I felt like I should. So, I am behind. Without apology.

I promise we haven't spent the last however many weeks just sleeping, but in sleep-related news, Anneliese has taken to napping on her chair instead of her bed. The bed is for night time, the arm chair is for napping.

It's rather an old man approach, don't you think? Except the part where she sprawls on it like a bed anyway.

But the good news is her sleeping face hasn't changed at all since the early weeks when we rocked her all night in this very chair, in our master bedroom at the old house. She looks exactly the same. I sort of love that about sleeping baby faces. (Well, my sleeping babies' faces anyway. Mine don't change. They don't.)

Night night love you, as always, Anneliese.

Meh

I'm not sure I have much blog-worthy to say today, but here I am anyway. Be excited? (Don't be.)

Mark and I had a lovely night in Charlotte. We wandered through downtown and visited the building where we went to several proms together. We had a delicious dinner (duck! we are fancy!) (don't read this, vegan Grandma) and did fully exciting things like take naps on hotel beds wearing our shoes because yes we are that tired.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, our children were in various states of quiet and not-so-quiet with their sleepover hosts. Which left me the next morning feeling happy and relaxed and oh so grateful for a night of quiet and good sleep (I slept more than eight hours! without waking! and then lounged in bed for two more! #indulgent) but also feeling gross and guilty that other people had to endure tough nights with MY kids for the sake of MY sleep and... ugh. You know. (And also the cash on the nightstand when Mark left for work stuff in the morning, despite clearly being for the car valet, made me feel a wee whore. Just sayin.)

But overall, great date night, I'm glad we did it. And the past couple days have consisted mostly of laying low and resting my lungs. Juggling cars with Mark and Another Nathan (of course we all need stuff done in the same week, including a whole new windshield for me). Packing everyone up for a Mexican dinner out. Trying to fight a blah feeling because nothing is terrible today but nothing is awesome either. And I just feel sort of... meh.

Best. Blog post. Ever. Right?

Nathan has been tired and coughy and whiny.

Anneliese has happy so long as we keep her busy.

Charlotte has been delightful as usual.

Y'all, sometimes I forget we have three kids. Whoa.

V-Day Sick Suck

Okay I need to complain a little, but it's not the crabby post some might go for on Valentine's Day. Still, look away if you can't stand it.

I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.

I don't think we've had more than a day since Thanksgiving when all five of us felt healthy. Really. We are not normally sick people, but it has been a sicky sucktacular winter this year. Pinkeye and stomach bugs and bronchitis and pneumonia and fevers and one cold after another. My counter is covered with steroids and antibiotics and medicine cups and syringes and cough syrups and pills. My eyes and brain are fuzzy from label names and directions and trying to keep track of who has what symptoms on any given day, who is starting or finishing which meds, what time they need them, which dosage, etc etc etc etc it never ends.

I got a taste of healthy spring fever in St Croix. With Anneliese finally (haaa?) over her bronchitis, I had almost convinced myself if I could kick the pneumonia (p-neu, as we now affectionately call it), that spring and happiness and healthiness were on the horizon.

But then the RSV grossness moved to Charlotte.

And then right when she perked up, Mark had an allergic reaction to something, spontaneously erupted in hives, swelled up in the lips and face, and we spent a fun exhausting evening last night at the ER, on meds to contain the reaction.

And in the meantime, the nagging achiness in my back and chest got me worried that my p-neu wasn't actually gone, and went for a follow-up x-ray. The good news is my lungs are clear, the bad news is the cartilage in my ribcage is inflamed, something called costochondritis which was probably caused by me coughing for a month (OF COURSE I INJURED MYSELF COUGHING), so what started as a vague achiness now feels like a ribcage injury, and there's no real treatment except advil and resting it and letting it heal which is basically impossible because I have to breathe and OH MAH GAH it is always something.

I can't remember my last night of good sleep. I don't know when to hope for one again. And now Nathan is coughing from his chest.

*head on desk*

*sob*

So, happy Valentine's Day? Eat some chocolate and kiss your loved ones and don't let out a cough anywhere near me, because each cough triggers one step closer to the end of my sanity, and you don't want to be the last one. I promise.

Hugs and smooches or whatever.

Thursday Miscellany

Eight quick takes:

1. I thought that turning Charlotte around in her car seat would help me keep her awake during our 1pm car rides to get Nathan from school. Um, it has not. (These dozes regularly ruin afternoon naptime, in case you were curious.)

2. Nathan has started packing his own lunch for school. He climbs up on a stool, makes a sandwich or bagel, gets some grapes or string cheese or applesauce or whatever else he wants to bring, fills his water bottle, and always remembers an icepak from the freezer, a spoon from the drawer, and exactly half a paper towel. He is either a control freak or he's stumbling into newfound independence (if it's the former, don't tell me). And I am either a really terrible mommy or a really awesome one (if it's the former, don't tell me).

3. I got new glasses. Tell me they are cute and trendy.

4. We got the fliers for this year's Awkward School Photos. Oh goody, now they come with a fake magazine cover. Something I've always never wanted or needed! And even if it were a good idea (it isn't), this one isn't even well done. Laugh at it with me, please.

5. Are y'all watching Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood yet? It's the newest incarnation of Mister Rogers, a re-imagining of his land of make-believe. It's sweet and smart and it will bring back memories. Tell your kids and tell your DVRs. I wouldn't lead you wrong on this, friends. Daniel Tiger is where it's at.

6. After a string of hard weeks, Anneliese is suddenly having a good one. She's sweet and kind and helpful and, well, delightful. If it manifests like this, I'm happy for her to make a liar out what I told the internet last week.

7. For anyone keeping score at home, it's been three-plus weeks and Mulch Mountain is indeed still standing strong in our front yard. Oh and it's still steaming. I don't care how much heat is generated from the wood-chipping process... that ain't right. Our mulch is creeping me out, y'all.

8. We bought our house again yesterday. Yay?

Oh Anneliese

I know that each of our kids will fade in and out of easier and more difficult seasons (and I'm dreading the day when they're all three teenagers at the same time), but right now it's our dear middle child who's giving us a run for our money.  I keep alluding to our ongoing frustrations with this stage, and I keep getting sweet comments and emails and snippets of conversation affirming her wonderful cheerful demeanor (true), her good listening when she's in x person's care (true), and how she can't possibly be as naughty/frustrating/defiant/etc as we think she is (false).

I know full well that at preschool, for grandparents, at church, for sitters -- she's generally compliant and manageable and happy and, well, easy. But at home, every day, especially every morning when she and I are both barely awake, dang if she doesn't try my limits. Test them. Push them. Push past them.

I have tried a healthy handful of times to write a post explaining the madness, but none of them is exactly what I want to say. It's too critical of her yet too defensive of her. Also, too critical of me yet too defensive of me. I'm scared I don't know how to be blog-honest anymore. I don't know when it happened* but I don't like it. So while there probably aren't great (yet still guarded) words to explain how frustrating Anneliese has been lately, for some reason I sure want to try anyway.

She's just... into everything. Drawers she shouldn't be in. Grabbing things from other people's hands. Slamming doors just to make noise. Hitting siblings, seemingly just to hear them shriek. Emptying clothes from closets. Into everything.

But unlike Nathan before her (who was easily corrected with a warning, a reminder of the rules, and follow-up consequences), Anneliese is incredibly and proudly defiant. She doesn't care about consequences. Punishments don't upset her, and we can't seem to find a toy or privilege that truly bothers her to have taken away (even Hattie!).... likewise one that as a reward is enough to motivate good behavior. She just. doesn't. care.

It's maddening.

I tell her fifteen times to do any one thing. And I know, I KNOW, that's not good parenting. I know that telling her a hundred times just teaches her that she can get away with not doing it the first ninety-nine. But I also don't want to teach her that if she doesn't do it the first time, *I* will do it. So I find myself telling her to put toys away, to put her shoes on, to climb into her car seat, over and over and over again before she finally does it. And I don't know how to stop.

There's also the story of how she and I got locked into the closet in between the girls' bedrooms last week, for almost an hour. In the dark. In the heat. With a diaper full of poop. While I was glasses-less blind and post-shower naked. Which would be a funny story if it hadn't been so panic-inducing (no seriously, there were tears and panic) and if I weren't so overwhelmed by the string of naughties that led to the situation in the first place. (It involves lots of lock/door manipulating to try and foil her attempts to bust into Charlotte's room when they're both supposed to be sleeping which she does all the time; clearly our efforts backfired in a big ol locked-in-the-closet way.) (And in case you were curious, I CAN scream loud enough to wake a sleeping five-year-old through three closed doors, but I am NOT strong enough to break down even one of those doors on brute strength alone, nor am I crafty enough to pick a lock with random things I found in the closet -- pieces of my childhood telescope or the strings of a guitar. MacGyver fail. Sweet baby Nathan for the rescue-win.)

A sign of how far the frustration has come: when I wash my hands in the bathroom, I feel angry. Just the smell of the soap, which Anneliese finds and makes a mess of several times in any given week, triggers angry overwhelmed feelings. My hand soap smells like anger. This is so not okay, to feel like this.

Sure, I can remove the things that cause her worst offenses (remember the markers?) - but for everything we remove/take away/hide, there's always something else to get into. Aside from living alone with Anneliese in a padded room, I don't know how to prevent this particular into-everything brand of naughtiness.

She's stubborn and persistent and determined. I think this will serve her well later in life, but damn if it doesn't make her a difficult toddler in the meantime. Can she really not control her impulses? Because I think she can. She's almost three!  But I don't know if this is normal toddler stuff, or if she's acting out, or what.


Sometimes when the hard mornings have passed and she crawls in my arms and snuggles, and makes her thumb-sucking praying hands, like she has done since she was an infant, I just want to kiss her hair and cry a little.

Oh sweet Anneliese, I don't know what you need. I don't know what I need.

What I do know is that I hate it's so hard right now (for you too!) and that I love you more than life itself. We'll figure it all out somehow.

*Yes I do.

Update on the Antics

So after a month or more of naughty nonsense, I am happy to say that things are going a tiny bit better in the world of should-be-sleeping.

Let me start by saying that we figured out it is indeed Anneliese causing most of the chaos.  Sure, Nathan partakes, and gladly so. But when we remove him from the equation (like when he sleeps in our room), she still wakes up at oh dark thirty; it's not him waking her. Even though he starts off in our bed to read every evening, she still disassembles the doorknob safety and creeps out into the hallway; it's not him tempting her out.

In short, she's the problem. (Well, Nathan isn't exactly part of the solution, so...)

The most important thing we did is buy this:

Yes, that is an alarm clock for a toddler. A thirty dollar alarm clock for a toddler. (I KNOW. But we were that desperate, and the twitterverse said it would work, so I dropped the moolah. I don't even know who I am anymore.)

It's kind of genius, actually. It's an alarm clock that instead of buzzing, turns green when it's time to get up. (Well, technically it does buzz if you want it to. And of course Anneliese has figured out how to set it to buzz at random times. Of course she has.) It's perfect for kids who are old enough to understand there are times when they need to stay in their rooms, but not old enough to understand the time itself. So basically we put thirty dollars (and all our hopes and dreams) into this thing.

And it mostly works. Sometimes she comes out when it's still white and I have to gently bring her back into her room and remind her to wait. She doesn't love it, but she does it. When she does finally get to come out of her room, she feels like it's on her own terms and she's happy to be a big girl about it.

(Step two would be finding better fancier doorknob safeties that she can't disable. They have been ordered. But it hasn't come to that yet.)

By the time she comes downstairs, Charlotte and I have had an extra hour of sleep, which sets the day off way better, obviously. And Nathan has had his own quiet time and is sufficiently awake enough himself for human interaction.

While Charlotte and I nurse and snuggle and wake up slowly, the big kids play a little together. Sometimes it's not awesome (like when they color on each other with markers or soak each other with the hose -- activities that are mostly harmless until they're not) but mostly it's completely adorable, like Nathan helping Anneliese open her yogurt or put her shirt on.

Oh those two. Cue heart melting.

sweet pic by emu

So, yeah. The moral of the story is everyone is less cranky when Anneliese falls asleep without distraction, then stays in her room a bit longer in the mornings.

And that's the update on the antics.

{Disclaimer 7/16: I wrote this last week so it's been sitting (waiting for pics) since *before* we had a terrible horrible no-good very bad morning involving more naughtiness than I can even put into a blog right now. Post for another day. Suffice it to say, it got worse before it got better, and I'm still just clinging to a thread of hope about that better part. There was marker. And there was magic eraser. And oh there were tears. Uggggggggh.}