sixth sense, mommywise

Sometimes I will have a feeling like a jolt of panic which makes me go check on whichever child I am concerned about, usually the baby (almost 9mo.) right now. Sometimes there is some cause for alarm (she has woken up and is crying), and sometimes it is a false alarm and I am relieved. But the times I get that feeling and there is something wrong I am sure glad for my over-zealous fight or flight response.
 For instance, about 20 minutes ago I was in the garage loading the laundry with a bunch of new clothes that the kids got for Christmas and I was taking the tags off so it was taking longer than the usual dump in dirty clothes and close the lid. I knew that baby Jillian was with her big sister and probably sitting on her lap in the living room just a few feet away so I wasn't concerned, but then all of a sudden I needed to see her and stopped mid load and opened the door to see baby sitting on Juniper's lap as predicted but with a funny look on her face, and I was just in time to see her spew a pretty good sized spit up which is not exactly normal for her at this age. I picked her up immediately and did a finger sweep as I quickly realized she was halfway choking on something. On the second or third gagging finger swipe I pulled out an entire live oak leaf (hard, shiny with pokey points on the edges but small enough to get to the back of her throat). Crisis averted! She was unaffected and was laughing and babbling within seconds, and the kids were not too worried either, but it made me realize that for one I can't leave her where there may be stray leaves, and two I should always listen to that inside voice that says, "something is not right"... because even if it is wrong 9 times, if you listen the 10th time and it is correct then you have used your intuition to save you a great deal of pain and possible suffering!
I have also been using a gentler tactic with both Juniper and Jonah and trying to use my intuition to sense what they need to feel better when they are melting down. I am reading Raising your Spirited Child right now and I am learning about temperment and how it affects behavior. Also I am redefining the labels that we give our children especially when we are annoyed and conveying them in a positive light (dramatic instead of loud, curious instead of nosy, exuberant instead of wild) and it helps me and other adults be more appreciative of their beauty and zest and have more patience for them because it is part of their unique nature.

Digging a hole in the sand...

What does a stay at home mom do all day?? We pick up poop, wipe up food, scrape off mud and get paid in hugs!
Some days I look around and I see a mess, there are crunchy things on the floor of the dining area, there is some new coloring on some fabric or some wood furniture with permanent pen. There are sticky spots on the hardwood floor, and greasy fingerprints all over the french doors. There is mud on the hallway carpet in the shape of rainboots, and clothes of various types everywhere, tossed off from being too wet, or muddy or itchy or the wrong color or just because it is now time to be a princess. But when I step away from my role as unpaid maid and housemanager slash nanny slash gardener slash... you get the idea, when I step away from all that and see the remains, the signs of life from four very active and usually happy young children, all the sticky handprints become something more valuable than gold, the muddy rainboots better than any stocks I could own and the couch that has I heart you written in green pen more comfy than any brand new white leather couch... ok who am I kidding I want that couch. Anyway! the point is that the mess is the by-product of love and I wouldn't change that for the world!
Now I better get going and pick up Juniper from her pre-school and then come home and get to cooking and cleaning because those are just a couple of my many many jobs!

Life, death and diamonds

One good thing about being a mom is that you can't buy into all the end of the world banter, because if you did you would have to be huddled in a cave some 30 feet underground with a years supply of  goldfish crackers, water and sippy cups.
We have the instinct to protect our children from immediate or perceived danger but what are we to do with all of this apocalypse nonsense? Well, it does make me reflect momentarily (read panic attack in the middle of the night) on mortality and death. My mom says "no one makes it out alive" and that is the truth, but yet many of us are afraid of going too early, or not making a meaningful difference in the world, or simply being forgotten.... forever.  Why does this feeling of mortality grip us? Why are we sad for the inevitable future that will certainly exist without us? Do we mourn for the eternity of time before we were born?

Last night I had an image of our lives as a necklace, the beads are the years we are alive and the quality of them is determined by the way we live and how we interact with the world. There is chain on one side of the beads to represent the unending time before we came to existence, and the other side of the chain represents the eternity of time after death, and eventually they come together to make a circle. It's not that I believe that we will come back again, but almost like we were always here and always will be, and our beautiful beads (the years of our life) are the sparkle of the necklace, and what makes it special and unique.
We cannot control when we are born, and have almost as little control over when we die, but we can say kind words instead of angry ones, we can give instead of take, we can create instead of consume, and we can take each step of every day with the intention of polishing those beads of our life until they shine like stars.  Imagine the chain of a beautiful baby who only lived one year, but that one year is a diamond, clear and bright, and singly beautiful. That short life still has the same length of chain but instead of many different beads, it just has the one perfect diamond.
So.... if my husband ever decides he wants to buy me a beautiful diamond necklace with one perfect diamond, it will always make me think of each tiny life we have created, including the one who never made it out of the fallopian tube... a life in the blink of an eye.

Baby Bliss

And then they were six! There is a delightful little soft and sweet baby sleeping in my bed right now! She is almost 4 months old already and we have had quite a ride in this crazy life so far.
The day after Jon went back to work when Jillian was three weeks old I discovered we had LICE! So gross is this idea to me that I can barely believe it happened and I didn't totally lose it.
First I found bugs in Junipers hair while snuggling in bed and combing out her rat's nest. There were LIVE bugs in her hair. I pretty much freaked out and went directly to CVS and bought the harshest chemical rinse to supposedly kill the lice and their eggs.... big mistake. Not only did the stuff not kill the lice AT ALL but I became extremely allergic to an ingredient in the wash and developed horrible eczema all over my face! It was so awful!  We washed and cleaned and treated hair (now with several different natural remedies) and only had to do it all THREE times!! That's right, not once not twice, but thrice lice!!
The moral of the story here is don't panic, think it out and harsher is not always more effective for killing beasts big or small.

Fire in the hole!

Wow! Today I got a jolt of adrenaline that I am still coming down from!

It has been freezing here in our house and something is not right with the furnace and heater so we have been making fires. Feeling very industrious I emptied the ashes from the fireplace into the paper bag in the garage that contains the past few days worth of ashes. Then I make a fire and go about our business, all three kids home, getting over colds, relaxing and eating etc.

I remembered I had to wash Jonah's bedding and went into the garage to start the wash to find a smoldering bag of ashes. I immediately took the bag out to the deck while it burst into flame. Trying to decide what to do, I thought it might just burn up the bag and then burn out, it certainly seems to happen that way when I'm trying to make a fire in the fireplace, so I tossed it into a plastic bucket near the hose spigot.

I turn on the hose and squeeze the handle of the sprayer and nothing happens. I start to panic as nothing I am doing is producing water and the fire is getting bigger and quickly melting the bucket creating blobs of blue plastic and ash to be smeared around my deck, still trying to get water out of an hose that is obviously on I begin to worry and think I might need the fire extinguisher soon if I can't get any water out. Finally I see Jonah's water bottle that sprays which he was playing with yesterday, open it and dump it out on the rising flames. Who knew ashes and embers could cause such an inferno!? So I figured out that the hose was frozen solid which is why no water was coming through, but at the time it seems like a bad joke from the universe, right near water yet unable to extinguish a fire before melting an entire bucket and scaring myself plenty. Pretty exciting for a boring sick day!

That's all from the sleepy pregnant mom of three, could those adjectives have anything to do with this incident?? I am going to buy a metal bucket which my mom told me to do ages ago because of the possibility of exactly what happened! Thanks mom :)

Wow! 2012 already?

Ok I'm back, the last post was dated some time in 2008, so as you can see I've been away from my desk for a while, but I think I might have something to say now that I'm a few years older and wiser... ha! Speaking of changes, I am changing quickly as my belly grows bigger with baby number 4.... it sounds like a lot every time I say it, but I'm sure that once I meet the newest member of our family it will seem like she has always been here. The ultrasound technician was pretty sure she is correct in identifying the parts that determine girl or boy, so we will be waiting to see who "little sister" is. Jon is very set on the name Jillian, which I also like but I'm not ready to decide yet, there are lots of names I like, and this is very likely the last time I will be naming a baby! Some other contenders are: jacqueline, jade, jayla, jamaka, jamila, jaya..... any more suggestions?

So aside from running out of time to write this post, because it's time to go to music class with Juniper, I am feeling a bit like someone has replaced my personality with that of an evil witch with no patience for children! Agh! I really hope this is a passing hormonal phase because I adore children (especially when they belong to someone else...ha ha) and I tend to work with children even when I don't have my own with me. The one I am carrying is kicking steadily and tumbling around in her little cocoon. More to come on the gestation and changes of our little family!

losing steam...

So, it seems that my initial enthusiasm for "blogging" has started to wear off, and I have lately preferred taking a rest or catching up on my housework to typing on the computer. Considering that half of our keyboard here was picked off by the little computer bandit, it's amazing that I can type at all. (blame any typos on this)

Sometimes when I'm having a hard day it is difficult to think of anything interesting to write here, and I certainly don't want to write about how annoyed and frustrated I am, although I suppose it may help to put it all in perspective.

Sometimes I feel that if we don't stay on top of Jonah's behavior and start to get a little lax, he immediately starts to push the boundaries. He is testing us and looking for his boundaries all the time. Tonight he was crawling on the table and looking at me, enjoying my reaction (which I tried to keep neutral) I told him that he could sit down and eat or get down and go into his room. So he sat, for a while, and then tried it again. It is more and more apparent to me the importance of consistency with rules and routines. If I let him crawl across the table one time, then the next time I try to tell him not to do it will be twice as big of a battle.

A big issue these days is teeth brushing. Jasper does great, he lets me brush with a relaxed open mouth, it wasn't always like this. I see with Jasper that if you try to force something he reacts just as strongly in opposition. I suppose this is the case also with Jonah, because he was allowing me to brush his teeth for a while (I would count to ten) but now he screams and squirms and I basically have to restrain him in order to get his teeth clean. He wants to do it himself, but of course doesn't do a very good job, and honestly his teeth are not looking so great. I don't want him to get cavities, and he drinks a lot of juice! Yikes! I told Jon we have to go back to wiping his teeth with a cloth after meals when he gets his face wiped, but he may fight that too now.

I know that it is an important part of development to assert ones independence, but sometimes it is bordering on hysteria. Now Jonah won't wear jeans or anything buy "comfy pants", so ok, he wears sweats everyday, you have to pick your battles. But the teeth brushing is a non-negotiable issue. It is getting to the point that I dread bedtime because I know we have to listen to him scream and cry for a few minutes while I force him to get his teeth brushed. Not really a mellow part of the pre-bedtime ritual.

Jasper is doing great, he is being a very sweet big brother and usually stays calm when Jonah has his tantrums. We are getting back on the plan of helping Jonah go to his room to express his loud emotions by himself until he is ready to use his nice voice. The more we stay consistent with this plan and do it as soon as he starts, the better it works. He really is a sweet boy, loving and nurturing to his friends and family, he just gets possessed by the toddler demon sometimes and turns into a whining, clingy, wild thing! Anyway, back to Jasper, who doesn't seem to get as much press these days, because 'the squeaky wheel gets the grease'...

He is such a happy little guy, he loves his feldenkrais lessons, and his swim time, and he still seems to love his time at preschool. There are still some things that need to be worked out there in order to be sure that his time at school doesn't interfere with the work he is doing with Patricia Flora (our feldenkrais practitioner and learning specalist). We aree seeing his development continue slowly as his hips start to open up and he is getting a better sense of his lower back and head. It often seems like with both boys we take one step forward and two steps back, but we are slowly progressing.

This fetus growing in my belly is quite active and making her presence known. She is bumping all around all day and night, and I can't help but think, "it's three in the morning and she's awake, will she be awake after birth at this time?" She is nice and quiet for now, but I realize that it's going to make this busy family really full when she joins us in person. Jonah got to feel some really good kicks the other day, and the look on his face was priceless. It's like he really understands that there is a baby in there and she will come out and say "hi". Tonight he said "I want to feel the baby," and he put his hands on my belly (which is getting pretty big now). It was very cute, and he talked to her too. So sweet. I want Jonah and Jasper to feel really happy and excited about this positive addition to our family. I feel that we are so blessed to have these beautiful boys, and that another little miracle of life is just icing on the cake. I almost can't believe that we will have three kids (under the age of four) in June! Luckily we have lots of love to give and so do our boys and our families, so I'm pretty confident that this little being will have a happy, fulfilled, and successful life. So far the only people who have felt the baby kick besides Jonah are Oly and Sidra, so they are deemed honorary aunties!

I have so much to do to get organized before the baby comes. It still seems pretty far off, but I know that as it gets closer (and the baby gets bigger) I will be less able to do any major cleaning or organizing. So I'm going to try to get at least one big thing done per week, and slowly start scratching things off my list (as well as adding to the list as the weeks go by).

We are going to have to figure out sleeping situations, beds for the boys and who is going to get up with whom. I was hoping to have Jonah potty trained and sleeping in a toddler bed before the baby comes (ha!). Now those don't seem like realisic goals anymore, with only three months to go. We are planning to get a bigger bed for Jasper, and move his little bed into Jonah's room, and then give baby the crib. I don't know how this plan will actually play out, but I will try to document it, especially if all goes well :)

Well if this all sounds a bit like a to do list, it probably is, and I should get to bed and get some sleep (before the first wake up). Night night!