Catching up

I'm cuddled under a blanket on the couch watching the weather channel--not thee Weather Channel, but a local one that plays 24hr weather and symphonic music--while Dylan naps and Katie quietly talks from her pack n play. She's avoiding sleep. I've only got a little over an hour before I have to get the kids packed and ready to go to the doctor's office for Katie's 9 month well-baby appointment. Can you believe she's nine months already?! She celebrated her last day as an eight month old yesterday by cutting her first tooth! She hasn't been sleeping all week, waking up time after time through the night and not going back to sleep until I held her close and rocked her. She was pained by those sore gums.



Last night, after that pesky tooth finally broke the skin, she slept great. Maybe that sleep regression episode will be a thing of the past. Knock on wood. I tried to take a picture of the tooth but it's really hard to see still although it is easily felt if you press your finger to her gums.



Yeah, I don't think you can see it, maybe there's just a glimpse of a tooth. It's on the bottom left, her bottom right. I'm so glad she seems to be feeling better. I can't say I didn't mourn the loss of my tiny baby when I first felt the tooth yesterday morning. She's so big now.

Her new favorite thing is to pretend to feed people. If she's got a teether in her hand she's trying to stick it in your mouth and laughing loudly if you play along and pretend that it is yummy. She also crawls into the playroom with Dylan and plays for a long time with him.



They're two peas.





We spent time with my honorary niece this week since our dear friends are visiting from England.



The kids always get along great and watching Teagan and Kate finally old enough to interact is awesome!







And the most important event in our week is that yesterday we welcomed our third niece and fourth nephew into the world and they are just so so perfect! Sam was 6lbs and Lainey was 5 lbs 15oz. I am so smitten! We've been facetiming and my sister has been sending lots of photos and videos. I'm feeling really sad that they live all the way on the other side of the country but at least I'm getting to see a lot of them. They are such beautiful babies.


Sam (L) & Elaine (R)

I paced around all day yesterday waiting for them to be born. Dylan is really excited about them, too. He is curious as to why they are crying and what they are looking at and has all sorts of questions. He is now telling me that Katie was in his belly once and when I correct him and say that she was actually in Mama's belly, he laughs and tells me that she is his baby sister.

Carrie and I think that Lainey looks a bit like Kate, even though they are not technically blood related. Here's Katie at two days old:



I look forward to watching our kids grow up.

Dylan is in full Christmas mode. He has already picked out what he wants from Santa and surprisingly he hasn't wavered in his decisions. He want's a "big machine, a big bulldozer, Thomas the Train, and Batman on a motorcycle." It's crazy to think that last year he was two and just starting to understand what Christmas is all about. This year he is PUMPED. Here is last year's letter to Santa:



And Christmas 2010:



2011:



2012:



I am counting the days until next friday--the day after Thanksgiving--when we can go buy our tree from the local firehouse and decorate the heck out of this house. Sean is not a huge Christmas fan like I am and so I'm not allowed to go crazy about Christmas until Thanksgiving is over. No Christmas music, no lights, no wreaths. But you just wait until next Friday. I'm going to eminate cheer until New Years!

When life gets too progressive

I'm pretty sure things are going to shit and I'm not referring to the government shutdown.

I'm trying to burn a disc of photos of our field trip to the farm for Dylan's teachers. They asked me if I could make them a CD and I'd be glad to if I could figure out how the heck to burn photos to a disc. I know I just threw away a bunch of blank CDs because I hadn't used them in so many years that Dylan has since scratched and scattered them all over the house. I tossed them thinking that I'd never burn a CD again. I went to the store this morning and bought a bunch of DVD+Rs. I asked the guy in the photo department if there is a difference between DVD+R and DVD-R. He said that there was a difference like ten years ago but that most computers use both these days.

So I went to burn the disc and nothing happened. The computer didn't even register that there was a blank disc in there. Hmph. I figure maybe I'm Mac illiterate, so I try with my Windows laptop. Nothing. And now I'm trying to upload these 75 photos to Walmart.com and maybe I'll be able to print out a disc for 1-hour pickup. I don't know. I guess I'll have to find a different kind of blank disc if this doesn't work.

Technology is dumbing me. Yesterday I was sitting outside trying to figure out what concoction I could muster up to kill the weeds in Dylan's bricked play area where he likes to ride his bike. I thought about boiling hot water. I thought about pouring vinegar on the weeds. And then I kind of shook my head at myself and started doing something Earth-shattering. I WEEDED. Like, pulled that grass up just like back in the olden days.

And TV remotes? What are those? We use our phones for everything now. If I'm trying to sleep in and Dylan wants to watch his truck documentaries downstairs I can actually put them on for him without leaving my bed. That's pure laziness.

Even turning on the lights is no longer an issue. All of our lights are on switches or timers. No more walking across the room to turn on a light, no sir! Need to get from Walmart to Target? Switch on Google Maps and let it talk me through my route. Do real paper maps even exist anymore?

Oh, there was a power outage? We wouldn't have noticed except that our stove has a clock that DOESN'T SET ITSELF. Can you believe that? We actually have to set that clock like back in the dark ages.

When I was a kid we didn't have state of the art technology. I owned a tape deck which could only record songs off of the radio, so when I wanted to record a tape of myself singing and playing the piano for my grandmother I rigged up a recording studio. We had an old rotary phone and we had a cordless phone. I discovered that I could pick up our cordless phone conversations over a radio signal. I would call over to my mother's apartment and have her put her phone down and then I would use the rotary phone as a microphone to mic my voice and the cordless phone would pick up the piano and all of it would play through the radio where I would then record my song. Nowadays all I have to do is turn on my camera or hit record in Garageband and voila! a music video or MP3.

I'm finding myself wishing that life wasn't so technologically easy these days. I want to go back to a candy bar style cellphone that barely texts and keeps a charge for two weeks. I want to have to look online at Mapquest when I need directions, or hell, at a real map! I want a world without Facebook. But I'm addicted to my iPhone, and navigation that assures me I will never be lost, and posting constant statuses about what I'm thinking or doing and then checking back to see what my friends have commented on my status about what I'm thinking or doing.

It's an addiction.

I photograph my baby girl everyday, just as I did my son. I never made a conscious decision to photograph him everyday, it just sort of happened and by the time I got to day 8 my friends told me that I HAD to keep going now since I had made it that far. I blog everyday, too, even when I have nothing to say. But I've got a few family members who live far away--particularly my sisters and my aunt--who enjoy reading about our day, so I blog. I love doing it: writing, photographing, sharing.

I also envy Sean, who doesn't know how to write a Facebook status and told no one except our accountant that we were expecting when I was pregnant with Dylan. What's it like to not share every little aspect of your life with four hundred other people?

Sometimes I think I'd love to live in the cabin in the woods of Vermont. No cell service, no computer, no answering machine, no need for clocks and watches. But then I know that I'd be out in that gorgeous scenery snapping a thousand photos a day and I would never get to share them with anyone. I'd miss that interaction online. And although I'm sure I'd get a lot of soul searching done, I'd probably get lost too often while driving.

The road map to happiness is not found in the mirror

Nearly three: I. Love. This. Age.

We stood in line for preschool drop off this morning and a little boy started up a conversation.

"My brother is at school. My brother Sam goes to school. And I go to school. I pee before I go to school. And I poop as soon as Nana picks me up."

The boy's mother smiled a bit but didn't seem shaken at the randomness that her small son was unloading to a complete stranger. We are all in this together here at preschool. All of the moms and dads at preschool drop off are unshowered, weathered, slumpy. We have tiny sons and daughters who say the darnedest things and so we watch our mouths around them and hope that they don't repeat what we say behind closed doors.

Yesterday, as my friend's three-year-old inquired about whether or not Kate was a boy or a girl, he said, "Does she have a 'gina?" And my friend and I just smiled as we matter-of-factly explained the differences between boys and girls.

Have I mentioned that I love this age?

And a new friend of mine--introduced through preschool drop off--mentioned that she was wondering if any of us parents are really put together. We all scrambled for warm winter clothes this morning when we realized that the temperatures had fallen into the forties. Who needs to be perfect anyway? Kate was wet from spitting up and Dylan had dog hair sticking out of his dark blue sweater. And I...I didn't even look in the mirror this morning nor did I brush my hair, not because we were running late, we were actually quite early, but because vanity and mirrors aren't as important as morning couch snuggles with the babies.

I looked into Katie's closet this morning and realized that all of her warm winter clothes were too small for her. I bundled her up in Dylan's old teddy bear suit, zipped the boy into a puffy red vest which was newly labeled Dylan M with a Sharpie and some painters tape since there wasn't a tag to write on, and threw a sweatshirt on myself as we loaded into the car. After drop off Kate and I spent our girl time sans brother at the store buying her a whole new wardrobe.

I told Dylan as we pulled into the parking lot that I hadn't looked in the mirror. "But that's Okay," I told him, "because what matters is how you feel on the inside and how you feel about yourself." I hope my kids grow up feeling confident in their bodies. I want my daughter to love herself for her character and not simply because she looks good in her makeup.

It's that kind heart under the bear suit that counts.

On the death of a friend

I didn't want to have to write this post, but I knew it was coming. I almost don't want to write about it because the person I write it for is gone. There is this big hole in my heart suddenly and a loud silence in my Facebook inbox. She and I wrote to each other everyday and now, nothing; the last message I sent to her from the day before last waits unanswered.

I'll let her tell her story to you:



On the day I was diagnosed with cancer Scarlett reached out to me.

Conversation started October 2, 2012

I have cancer too. And mine started while I was pregnant we just didn't know it. I know how hard it is to hear those words "you have cancer." It doesn't feel real. You never think it could happen to you but then it does. And it sucks. Everything about it sucks from the treatment to the way people look at you. You just have to stay positive no matter what. If not for you but for your kids. My little girl has helped get me through everything. [...] I've been through surgery, chemo and radiation. I recently had a recurrence and am trying all kinds of meds now. At this point I will never be cancer free but we're trying hard to get the cancer under control so I can be around for as long as possible. I wish you the best and will be thinking of you. Stay positive and keep smiling

We hadn't spoken to each other despite the passing hello since we were kids and suddenly we were in this fight together, her cancer giving me a new appreciation for how insignificant my cancer was in comparison. We vented to each other about absolutely everything: the hurt we felt each time we had to be in the hospital away from our babies, the pain of surgeries, the side effects of radiation and chemo, our husbands--both named Sean--and how they were handling our cancer journeys. Her daughter Elodie is almost a year older than Dylan and so we had them write letters to each other and knew that if we lived closer together our kids would probably be great friends.



In June, Scarlett wrote to me and told me that she was stopping treatment. She hadn't told anyone except her husband and her mother and she needed to talk about it. She apologized for "burdening me". Burdening ME. That's the kind of person Scarlett was. Always thinking of others. The doctors had given her 6-12 months to live and she told me that although her body was failing quickly, her mind wasn't and she wasn't going to give up hope.



Our conversations turned heavy with talks of what she should leave behind so that her daughter would know her, whether or not she would live to see her 31st birthday (she did, it was last Friday), which cancer drugs worked best for nausea. You want perspective? Talk to a friend who isn't sure she is going to live through the week. You realize right quick what matters in life and what you should sweep under the rug.



I'm glad Scarlett is no longer in pain. I'm so unbelievably upset that she had to fight this battle in the first place. And when I look at my little babies and my husband I will think about how Scarlett's baby girl is now without a mother. Hug your loved ones, often. Tell them you love them. And never give up.

I love you, Scarlett.

Alive

Mother Nature was stunning today.

First, on our sunset run, everything was golden or green and reflections bounced off of the mirrored lake.










Second, I couldn't fall asleep tonight so I slipped outside with a sweatshirt and my camera to photograph the stars. The annual Perseid meteor shower is peaking overnight. I saw four meteors--two huge bright ones--but I didn't capture any with the camera. Although the sight of the stars alone is breathtaking.



I came inside after only an hour because I started hearing some rustling in the bushes by our back fence and remembered that we smelled skunk a few nights ago. It's getting cold out anyway and I'm going to take a midnight bath.

Today I found a sense of peace that I haven't felt in a long time. It's hard to describe. It is the feeling of watching a loved one suffer through a serious illness and finally pass peacefully; the end of a battle. This overwhelming feeling of joy and good health I've been carrying with me since mid-June has replaced the woes of cancer treatments and 132 pills per week. I wake up in the morning wanting to accomplish things rather than struggling to get off of the couch.  I feel alive again.  There is something to be said about lying under the stars alone, it brings your thoughts to focus.

“Stars open among the lilies.
Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?
This is the silence of astounded souls.”
― Sylvia Plath, Crossing the Water

Suddenly everything is as clear as today's reflections on the water and everything that ever mattered to me is right here in front of me.  I feel stronger than ever.

Operation get healthy and 30 day ab challenge

My heart finally feels healthy enough to be able to get back into exercising. My husband is extremely athletic, he rides a bike to work and runs on the weekends, and I've always wanted to be able to share in that fitness passion of his, I've just been too sick to get out there.

My heart results are this: my heart has a few extra beats--totally normal--and occasionally my heart goes tachycardic, meaning it goes from a very slow pace to a rapid heartbeat, which is a bit abnormal. My doctor suggested I get on a new medicine which will slow my heart rate, but I really don't want to take any more medicine. So I am trying to strengthen my heart muscles by slowly jumping into running.

Sean is my biggest supporter.

We dropped the babes off at Grandma's and went for a run.



He could've run circles around me with how slow I ran, ahem walked, but he held my hand and told me to take my time.



I think I did a mile in 14 minutes and change--I didn't hit stop right away so the time isn't quite accurate. Not great. But I did it.



So when we came home from our first run, I saw that my friend Laura is starting a 30 day ab challenge. Perfect, I thought, I'm feeling athletic! Why not add an ab challenge?



I think Laura found this challenge on Pinterest here.

So she and I decided to do it together and to push each other for support because we both recently had babies and our abs--although we are quite skinny--are not at all strong. Having a baby reeks havoc on a belly. And since Sean and I are suddenly on a let's exercise kick together he decided he'd do it with me, too.

So here's my disclaimer:

I like to document things like this to see my progress; Laura made me promise to take a before and after picture. But even though I'm skinny I'm not quite comfortable with laying it all out there. So I went back and forth on whether or not I'd be posting my bare belly--unedited, flaws out for all to see--on this blog or not. So I guess I'll post this challenge publicly because it's an experiment and I do want to see if it works. I may change my mind in the morning.  Promise me you won't judge. 

Here is my before:



I don't mind the way I look although I feel like I could stand to gain a few pounds, but I really want to feel healthy again. I want to earn my muscles back.  I'm on track to kick this cancer to the curb. 

We took a video of our first workout and laughed at how ridiculous we look. But again, I'm laying it on the table and being honest about this challenge and maybe some of my blog friends will want to try it. Or it could just be a big fluke.



Pregnancy absolutely ruins your ab muscles, I can barely do a sit-up. 



By the end of the 30 days my goal is to be feeling strong like bull in the belly. And it looks like I've got a long journey ahead of me if I am struggling to do 15 sit-ups.

Anyone care to join us in our challenge?

This is my answering machine. Leave a message after the beep.

So we're actually in Vermont right now. Way upstate in the mountains at an incredible cozy cabin that used to double as my second home. The last time we were here is when Sean proposed to me six years ago. And then we adopted special needs rescue dogs and bought a house and haven't taken a vacation since. So we're probably in heaven right now barefooted in the woods or swimming in a stream somewhere. There is no cell service at the cabin so I most likely won't be blogging (in real time, anyway...I've scheduled these prerecorded posts) until we get back, but be prepared for a ton of photos upon our return.

In the meantime here is a video from our last trip to Vermont:



Beeeeeeeeeeep.

And the living is easy

We're in the middle of a heatwave, the longest heatwave so far this summer, and we've been having a total blast. Sean's dad had this great idea to go to our local pools and spray parks last week and I can see us frequenting them a lot to beat the heat until we break 90°. At the end of our days in the sun we smell like sunblock and feel sticky from our milkshakes and sleep like little babies to wake up feeling refreshed for tomorrow.



Speaking of feeling refreshed, I feel so great these days. Mentally, physically, refreshed. I'm fortunate to have an incredible support system in my husband. I know having a sick, slug of a wife wasn't easy, nor was driving me to cancer hospitals and doctor visits and putting aside his emotions to be strong for me, but he was absolutely incredible. I am thankful to have two awesome kids who make me smile and laugh constantly, a plethora of hugs, and a surplus of love. We are currently blowing up balloons in the living room and letting them fly around the room when we let them go, and laugh. I am thankful for the unending support of our family and friends, and I am thankful for feeling healthy for the first time in a very long time.

Here comes the sun.

The midnight ramble

All of my electronic devices want to shut down for the night, their batteries are drained, but I'm awake lying in bed in the dark between a sleeping husband and baby.  6% power, I'll make this quick. 

Last night we came up to bed to find a hundred baby spiders crawling on our bedroom ceiling.   Yeah, I know, creepiest thing ever.  Sean and I went to work taking turns holding the flashlight while the other squished baby spiders into wads of toilet paper.  I didn't sleep much last night even though I'm confident we killed them all and I woke up with a startle in the middle of the night  feeling like I was covered in giant spiders. 

But even though I didn't sleep much last night and most of the nights this week, I still can't fall asleep until after midnight.  I'm guessing it might be my thyroid levels since I am pretty hyperthyroid now.  Not that I'm complaining; I'd much rather have too much energy than too little. 

Sean biked home in the rain yesterday to a chicken dinner with broccoli and noodles and said, "It smells like New Jersey in here." so matter-of-factly and I can't stop chuckling when I think of it.  All of these years later and he still makes me laugh, hard. 

Dylan's the same.  He's been fascinated with how things work lately: what's in our eyes?...what's in our iris and pupil?...what's in the rods and cones?...what is a screw made of?...what's in the metal?...where does the poop go?...into the tiny pipe in the wall?...where do you go when you die?...do you go up to the sky like a bird?...mom, do you have a penis?...

I love his inquisitive questions.  He wants to know about everything.  How thunder works, what slugs eat, if his half-dead squirmy wormy is a boy or a girl. 

I remember being warned about the "why?" stage.  That it doesn't get more annoying than hearing "whhhhhhy?" all day long, but I'm really enjoying our talks. 

No, Mama doesn't have a penis.  Your poop goes to the sewage treatment plant down the street. I don't know what happens when people die, and no you cannot fly like a bird so don't try it or else you'll end up in the hospital with stitches. Atoms are in metal and everything around us, we are all made up of matter and particles and you will learn more about that in sophomore year chemistry. Now eat your lunch. 

Dylan is Sean's son for sure. I can almost see Sean's thought process churning through Dylan's mind before these questions arise.  

But as smart as he is, he still cannot tie his shoes or wipe his own butt or drink out of a water bottle without spilling it down his shirt now and then.  He's growing up so quickly--telling me, "But be careful, Mama!  Don't burn yourself!" as I maneuver the hot glue gun--but he's still so little.  And I don't care if he's six feet tall, he will always be my little baby. 

Thoughts from a mother who makes mistakes

This morning I woke up to find pee all over the couch because Dylan didn't remove his nighttime Pull Up diaper and decided he would just pee everywhere because he was still wearing a "diaper". So I scrubbed the couch to get the urine out. And Dylan announced that he had to pee again just as I sat down to relax. He's been going without incident these last two weeks, runs to the bathroom whenever he needs to go and doesn't ask for help. Well on his way to the bathroom I told him I'd pause his Mickey Mouse show so that he didn't miss it while going to the bathroom and he interpreted this as being in trouble. Mom's shutting off my show! So he flipped out en route to the toilet. Don't turn off my Mickey! He paused in his tracks. And then he peed all over the floor. But it got better than that. Not only did he pee in his shorts and down his leg and into a puddle in the den, but then he tried to make it to the bathroom WHILE PEEING. So there was pee everywhere. Little footsteps of pee and splashes of pee, EVERYWHERE. God forbid I paused Mickey Mouse, buddy.



I didn't know whether to be furious or an emotional wreck. You're not supposed to make kids feel badly for having an accident and normally I tell him that it's OKay to have accidents as long as he tried his best, but today I knew he didn't try his best, he was throwing a tantrum, and so I'm pretty sure he felt the steam coming out of my ears as I mopped up his large trail of urine with a harsh, "Get out of this room! Go watch your show!".

I sent Sean a picture of the house covered in urine with a nice Happy fucking Tuesday caption and then I sat in the kitchen to cool off.

You know, all of us mothers pretend like we have our shit together. That we can parent these little ones while riding a unicycle and cooking dinner and still keep a giant smile on our faces. We want others to call us "Mother of the Year!" and we want our children to behave perfectly as if these little toddlers are grown ups who should know better. When my small boy hit another child at Mother Goose hour last year I went home and cried my eyes out, feeling like the biggest failure because MY son had hurt another child. But when our children are the ones getting hit by their toddling friends we smile and say, "That's OKay" to reassure the parent that hitting is absolutely normal when our babies can't form a sentence to express their feelings. Parenting is a double standard which we inflict on ourselves.

I'm not June Cleaver. I'll be the first to admit it. I yell at my kids and act like a brat now and then. We watch so much TV some days that our brain cells explode. I don't always feed them vegetables or force them to wash their hands. I slip up and swear like a sailor when they're in earshot. I'm not proud.

So I pull Dylan aside and tell him that I am not mad at him. That he is doing so well on the big boy potty and it is OKay to have accidents as long as he is trying. He replies, "You are sweaty!" because my hands are hot as I hold him close, and kisses me on the cheek. He's not mad at me because I am his mama and he doesn't know how upset I was with him in my mind as I cleaned up his mile-long trail of urine.

The truth is, we moms are tired. Raising babies is hard. And we've all heard the cliche that parenting is the hardest job you'll ever have but it's also the most rewarding--the understatement of the year on both accords. We get no sleep, no personal space, no privacy. We give up our lives for our children and only feel like ourselves again in those few hours between when the kids go to sleep and when we do, staying up as late as possible to soak in those extra minutes of absolute silence.

Dylan didn't want to go to bed last night and he used every trick in the book to stay awake. I'm hungry! I have to pee! No, I have to pee downstairs! I'm thirsty! I have a boo boo on my head! I need medicine! Can you read another book?! Finally, after I tucked him in over and over again and said "goodnight" as I walked out the door, Dylan jumped out of bed and ran after me, yelling, "Mom. I'm angry!"

I scooped him up as he repeated it: "I'm angry, Mom!"

Even though I tried not to laugh, I couldn't hold it in as I spoke. "You're angry, baby? Are you angry because you have to go to bed?"

I commended him for using his words to express himself. I told him that it was OKay to be angry. And that if he wanted to get out his anger he could shout into his pillow--like this--to get out that bad energy. He rolled over and cuddled his Teddy bear, curling up in his sheets as if he had finally accepted that it was time for him to go to sleep.

As tired as I am raising these babies, moments like this are my reward. Moments like this prove to me that I'm doing something right. He isn't that little baby hitting his peer at library group because he can't express himself anymore, he is a bright young boy who is using his words.

...and using the big boy potty.

Maybe I was more upset this morning because I felt like a failure. He failed. Two accidents in one morning. I don't want to be a full-time mom when it means cleaning up pee all day. I want to go to work like my husband and talk to customers about something other than Mickey Mouse and going pee-pee. My husband must think the same about me. How he wants to be home relaxing on the couch instead of arguing with a vendor about part number 048110 being shipped incorrectly. He'd rather be home with our children, playing in the pool and swinging on swings, instead of dealing with a bunch of strangers all day.

Life is hard. Parenting is hard. Supporting a family financially is hard. But that's life.

I took a Wellbutrin. I took a few minutes to write it all down on this blog. I hugged my child and told him that he is doing a great job despite a few bumps in the road. The best therapy is realizing that I don't need to be perfect in order for my children to be great kids. Sometimes it is OKay to admit, "I am angry."

No fireworks here

Fourth of July.



We didn't do much, although the weather was glorious. Katie is still recovering from her croup and Sean and Dylan are not far behind, all three of them still coughing pretty good. Sean thinks he is well enough to ride his bike to work again tomorrow, he's been sick since last Thursday, and we made a bet. He says riding his bike will clear out his chest and make him feel better. I say riding his bike is going to make him sicker.

"What shall we bet?!" I asked him on the drive to the grocery store, "A back scratch? Foot rub?"

"If I die from biking tomorrow you can have my 401K and life insurance, how's that." He responded.

I laughed.

My husband makes me laugh.

As for Katie, she's still coughing but less lethargic.



Dylan was never this sick at this age. But Dylan didn't have an older brother like Kate does to get him sick. To see her cough like that is a bit scary, but she'll be fine.

So we stayed home for most of the day. I made smores with Dylan and we made pizza together for dinner and watched Despicable Me up in our room for family movie night so the day wasn't a total wash. I wish I could've cleaned more and brought the kids swimming, but it was a nice day nonetheless.

Happy Independence Day to this beautiful country of ours! Stay safe, everyone.

Environmental fail

This is how recycling day works: the truck comes every two weeks--Friday mornings at 9:30AM. Sean puts our giant blue bin out on the curb on Thursday night. But yesterday he came home from work sick and plopped onto the couch and so our recycling bin never made it to the street.

Fast forward to this morning. Katie woke up just as sick as Sean and so I was downstairs on the couch feeding her a bottle. Sean came downstairs after his shower wearing only pants and noticed that the recycling truck was two houses down from us already! Two hours early!

"We're going to miss recycling unless you can get the bin outside in time for the truck, it's here already and I'm not dressed!"

I was half-dressed--jeans and a shirt, no bra and no shoes--but I was determined to succeed. I gently threw the baby at Sean and rushed outside. But the truck was moving along fast and so I started shouting, "WAIT! WAIT!" as I manhandled this giant blue bin down our driveway. The truck was at our neighbor's house and I was on my way towards him. I noticed the driver was wearing earphones and was not looking at me as I shlept the monstrosity towards the street.

And then it was over. He drove past our house. I had not made it.

Defeat swept over me and I turned around and dragged the thing back towards the house. Little Dylan's head was poking up from the window watching me. I looked over at our neighbor's kitchen window and my neighbor and her kids were smiling and waving. I tried to hide my pointy boobs and my shame as I waved back. Defeat. Serious defeat.

With shoulders slumped I walked back inside and announced, "I didn't make it."

"You do know that thing has wheels right? My love was dragging it like a giant brick!" Sean joked.

And then do you know what I did? I bawled like a baby. Sean gave me a hug and a you'll gettum next time speech, thrown off guard because his wife was crying like a total luny over a bin of recycling.

"I'm so embarrased!" I said through tears. "The neighbors were laughing at me! And I'm outside with no bra on like some total idiot!" I walked into the bathroom and began picking up the kids' clothes from last night's bath. Dylan trailed behind me.

"Don't cry, Mama. You're OKay. Is this a bandaid? Can you go get my truck?"

Helluva way to start a Friday, I thought. A sick baby and a whole shit ton of defeat.

We are now watching a movie while Katie sleeps, and I've all but forgotten how upset I was about the recycling. What a weirdo. I cried over not being able to recycle.

Take us out to the ballgame

Our nephew Alex is turning nine and decided he wanted to throw his birthday party at a baseball game. Dylan talked about going for weeks. He was so excited on Friday that he even settled in for a two-hour nap because I told him that the more he slept the later we could stay out at the game.

I left my camera at home and instead took a bunch with my phone:












So maybe they're not the best quality photos, but the memories will sure be there for a lifetime anyway.