Lux et umbra vicissum…

I have a friend from college who’s expecting a baby soon. Maybe I should say I have two friends who are expecting a baby soon because I was friends with both her and her husband. Their names are Jeannine (Nean) and Jeff. They’ve wanted a baby for a bit, so this is incredibly exciting for everyone… especially them, of course. 🙂 (side note: Jeff has his own blog, and I’ll link to it because I love them dearly, but please note that I completely disagree with him on politics. 🙂 Love ya, Jeff!)

Anyway, this is actually the first friend I’ve had who hasn’t given birth before her due date. I forget when her due date is at this point (they’ve changed it at least once), but I believe it’s this week. I guess that means she still has a chance to go early, but chances are she’ll be like me and go late instead. Amazing how going overdue is different when it’s not me! 🙂 Now I’m just waiting with excitement instead of having rising anxiety and irritation mixed in. Now, they’re praying pretty hard that this baby comes soon because of various things happening in their lives in December, but we were praying pretty hard for our first one to come early or on time, too and it didn’t work. She came 3 weeks late and Joel left for Africa on a 2 week mission trip when she was just 5 days old. 😛 Timing and whatnot. 😛 Anyway, it’s a lot easier to walk around saying, “They come when they’re ready!” when it’s someone else who has to carry them the extra time. 🙂

Jeff & Nean had a sonogram saying they’re having a boy, which is really cool. (I know these can be wrong at times, too, but it’s not terribly common anymore.) Note on the whole “determining the gender” thing. First of all, you can’t tell the gender by any of the “natural” means I’ve been told. I carried both my girls out front, one low and one high, both had “boy” heartrates, etc. Second, someone told us that you could “choose” your baby’s gender by when you had intercourse in relation to when you ovulated. (The idea, for various reasons, is that if you have intercourse a day or so before you ovulate you’ll have a girl, and if you wait till you actually start ovulating you’ll have a boy.) Well, our second one was another girl, so that doesn’t work, either. 🙂 I don’t really mind. As much as I’d like to have a mix of genders in the family at some point, I wouldn’t trade Branwen for the world. We’re planning on having more children (both biological and adopted if possible), so there’s still time. 🙂

Time to go for now. It’s about time for the baby to nurse again. It’s been a very full day and I’m ready to relax.

This one will be quick. Just finding it amusing thinking about how different it is dealing with a toddler than dealing with older kids or adults. Before I was a mother, I had my nursery duty and babysitting, but I mainly dealt with people who were at least over the age of 5. I’ve taught kids from age 5 on up (drama and piano lessons, then English for 5th, 6th, and 7th graders), but I hadn’t had extended time dealing with very young kids. I was the baby of our family, too, so I didn’t have younger siblings to deal with. I’m so used to being able to reason with my charges that I find myself trying to reason with Alexis when I want her to do something.
“You need to leave your coat on, sweetie.”
“Uh… no.” Alexis proceeds to remove her coat
“Alexis, we need to get going and when you take off your coat it takes longer. Please, we’re in a hurry…” I put her coat back on, then turn to grab the 20 pieces of baggage that we need to take on our 30 minute trip. I turn back around and Alexis is wiggling out of her coat again… etc.
You’d think I’d learn! As it is, I end up doing what I think most parents end up doing. I tell her to do something and either promise a reward for doing it well or promise a punishment for disobedience depending on what it is I’m trying to get her to do. But I’ll probably keep trying to reason with her from time to time, too. After all, it has to start working eventually, right?

I guess the thing that I think is sad is that it seems like some adults don’t respond to reason, either. It’s too easy to just stick to our pride and not admit that what we’re doing or what we’ve said is wrong. I’ll just hope and pray that my kids don’t end up being like that. In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to show my kids that sometimes the best way to figure out what’s right to do is by understanding all the reasons behind doing it.

I’m visiting my parents now while Joel is on travel for work. Before I continue, I should explain something. We don’t live down the street from any of our parents, but mine are closest, being only about 2 1/2 hours away. Also, though Joel’s parents love their grandchildren very much and would do just about anything for them, my parents experience them on a different level because Alexis and Branwen are their only grandchildren. On Joel’s side, there were four grandchildren before our kids arrived. I have one older sister, but she maintains thus far that she doesn’t want kids and is fulfilled by being an aunt. 🙂

So we arrived here, both girls with full-blown colds, on Monday night. The girls love it here, of course, since they’re spoiled rotten (even Branwen is far more entertained than at home), but I have an even bigger treat. 🙂 I have gotten more sleep here than I’ve had in a long long time. 🙂 One night when the girls slept pretty well, I actually got 10 1/2 hours of sleep (broken up a bit, to be sure, but still)!!! I think only another parent could appreciate that feat. 🙂

Of course, then the girls conspired against me last night and had a rather bad night again so I got more like 5 1/2 hours, but even then I get such a break just because my mother will help me take care of them during the day. I guess the girls aren’t the only ones getting spoiled! 🙂

I should begin this entry by saying that I’m going on too little sleep due to having two sick daughters. They’re not badly ill, but even a cold keeps them, and therefore their parents, up at night. Alexis may be waking up from her hard-won nap right now, too, so this entry may be shorter than planned.

Being tired, I’m not feeling very forgiving, especially to the person who, in my mind, helped to cause my tiredness. Thankfully, I can’t put a name to that person though I have a friend who can (and who wisely refused to fill me in). What am I talking about? Someone who chose to bring their sick child to our last MOPS meeting though we’ve been clearly asked, in writing, not to bring sick children to the nursery and young classes. My 2 yr old has always picked up colds very easily. I’ve been told this is actually a good thing because she’s building up immunities early on, but it makes things rather difficult for now. It’s especially bothersome because she has virally induced asthma, so about half the time when she catches a cold, we end up dealing with terrible coughing along with wheezing at the point where you’d think the cold would be over. And so I’m extremely annoyed to learn that one of the mothers deliberately chose to bring their coldy child and leave them in the 2 yr old classroom this past Friday.

This brings up the question of when it does become acceptable to bring your coldy child to a class. After all, there must be an age when you stop keeping your child home with every minor illness. They certainly won’t stay home from school if they have a cold. So when does that start? I don’t know, but even before I had kids I would have said that 2 seemed too early.

What makes it worse, of course, is the fact that I (and I’m not the only one) try to be conscientious and not bring my child in when she’s sick. Since I don’t have family in the area, that means I’ll miss whatever meeting is that day (Bible study, MOPS, or church). My friend, the one who saw the MOPS mother drop off her sick child, also has a sick daughter due to the child’s sickness, and she and her husband took turns attending different church services on Sunday so they wouldn’t pass anything on. We didn’t know before church that Alexis was sick, so she unwittingly passed on the plague in Sunday School. 😛 I find it interesting that I feel incredibly guilty about this though I didn’t know of her sickness, yet other women don’t seem to have any trouble doing it completely knowingly.

Another interesting topic which came up in nursery yesterday….
I was nursing my baby in between services, and there were three other women in the infants room helping with the babies. We all knew each other to some extent, and we struck up a conversation. However, somehow the conversation began to be mainly between two of the women on the topic of how their part-time jobs were a salvation to them and how they had the best of both worlds, working and taking care of their kids. One woman, noticing that the other lady and I had stopped talking as much, made a comment about how she really admired us stay-at-home moms and she didn’t know how we managed. I made a passing comment about how Bible study and MOPS really helped, but it struck me that suddenly I was feeling rather stuck. On one side, there was a group of people (personified, in my mind, by the MOPS group) telling me that I was doing the best of all jobs and I should be happy and proud, and on the other side was the career women, whether part-time or full-time, who were telling me I was missing out. I tend to lean toward the first view, though there are certainly times when I would like to get out of the house and work my mind a bit more. Seems to me there will be time for that later, though. Not to say there aren’t moments when I want to make the time now, but I have to think there are moments when the working moms want to be home with their kids and can’t do it, either. Or, as the one lady in the nursery was saying, they spend time with their children but are exremely tired when they do. (Sounds familiar today.) 🙂 I don’t know. I just didn’t like feeling like I was put in a place where I had to act put-out by the job of raising my children when really, to me, it’s just as rewarding as a job outside the home. Rewarding in different ways, granted, but still rewarding.

Now I’m waiting to hear from my mother who will probably say I complained too much in this entry, but I’ll just blame it on the lack of sleep. After all, there are times, especially when we’re tired and rather frustrated, that a good bout of explanatory complaining can be just the catharsis we need. 🙂

I love the fact that I can stay home with my girls. It’s a huge blessing that we are able to live on my husband’s salary (albeit with budgeting) so that I can stay home to raise our daughters. I can be there for their important moments; I can show them my love that much more and teach them things that I want them to know. However, loving the fact that I can take care of them doesn’t mean always loving the actuality of taking care of them 24/7. Joel gives me breaks when he can, but he’s tired, too. After all, he works throughout the week and then comes home to a not-so-well-organized house, a touchy toddler, and a sleeping, eating, or pooping baby. We love our girls, but they sure wear us out!

Today I would like to take a personal day. I have a stomach ulcer… well, really it’s called duodenitis. It’s the start of an ulcer in my duodenum. I’ve had it since late highschool. It acts up now and then after I’ve been under stress or sometimes when my back is too messed up. (There’s a part of the spine that can affect that part of the digestive track.) I think both of these things, stress and back issues, are at play today. It’s been a busier week than usual so I’ve been stressed and haven’t had a chance to get in to the chiropractor even though I’ve known that my back is out.

So anyway, I want to take a personal day. I’d like to call in sick. So I tell my toddler, “Mommy’s having some tummy trouble…” to which she responds, “No, Mommy’s not having tummy trouble! Clifford has tummy trouble!” referring to one of her beloved Clifford books. So I explain to her, “Mommy’s tummy is really hurting today,” at which point she runs into the living room saying she needs her diaper changed and then proceeds to pee on the changing pad as I’m trying to change her.

Hello? Lord? Could I have a personal day please?

What’s this? Alexis is entertaining herself with her books and her baby doll. Branwen is sleeping in the swing. I can go online for a little while and relax a bit. It’s only an hour or so before I can start getting lunch together and then put Alexis down for a nap. I think I’m going to make it.

Thank you, Lord.

I almost had the title as “Christmas Pictures… a horror story”, but I can’t really call it that. Everything ended up ok. It was just… an adventure.

So, we did our Christmas pictures yesterday at WalMart Portraits Studios (home of the cheap packages and the really expensive extra picture sheets). The photographer had been recommended by my friend Wendy who also got an appointment next to mine so we could have both our 2 yr olds there together. You may think that’s what caused the trouble. Au contrair! That was my salvation. Wendy and Emma kept Alexis adequately entertained when I couldn’t and Wendy held Branwen on multiple occasions for me when I needed to do other things. I don’t know what I would have done without them! But that’s not telling you half the story…

First, par usual, we couldn’t get out the door on time. Amazingly enough, we did manage to get out in enough time to make it to WalMart by 9:50 (the appointments were at 10 and 10:30), but that was because I was aiming to get there by 9:45 and thought it would take me longer to drive there than it did. Still, I had to exchange the dress shoes I had picked up for Branwen because I accidentally picked up newborn instead of the next size up, and my 7 week old is on the large side. 😛 Customer Service had a slow-moving line as they often do, so I waited quite a while to give them the shoes and say I wanted to exchange them for size. I ran back, couldn’t find the same kind of shoes, found some that would do, went back up and had to wait in line again. I was glad Wendy was there to take the 10 o’clock appointment so I didn’t feel quite so rushed.

We finally got organized and got into the picture area. Emma, Wendy’s daughter, was having her picture taken, so I started changing my girls into their outfits. That went pretty well. Alexis was good because she was entertained by Emma’s picture taking experience. Branwen decided to spit up on her outfit, but it cleaned up easily, so that wasn’t too bad. I got the girls ready and waited just a little bit for the photographer to be finished with Wendy and Emma.

Our turn came. Ok, here’s where the fun starts. Branwen is now hungry. I don’t want to take much time to nurse her because that can take a half hour… the length of the appointment. Alexis, on the other hand, is in a fine mood, but if you tell her to smile she gets a really scary-looking grimace on her face. It’s her idea of smiling on demand. So there we are, Wendy, Emma, and the photographer trying to get Alexis to give a real smile while I stand there holding my pinky in Branwen’s mouth. Every time Alexis looks like she’s about to smile, I pull my hand out of Branwen’s mouth as quickly as I can and the photographer snaps a picture. 😛 Needless to say, it took an awful lot of film to get any half-decent pictures. After maybe 20 minutes we did manage to get one that was very cute, so that was fine. So I ask the photographer, “How many more pictures do we do?” She responds, “Six.” I just about turned tail and fled at that pronouncement. However, she made a very reasonable suggestion: we would take the remaining pictures of just one of the girls at a time, 3 of Alexis and 3 of Branwen. Alexis did ok for hers. It was a little difficult to get that elusive smile, once again, but it came eventually (with much coaxing using bubbles, a feather on a stick, a Pooh Bear, and a soccer ball) and 3 pictures were taken, one of them being especially adorable. Then came Branwen’s turn.

Apparently Branwen takes after her mommy. She doesn’t like to have her picture taken. She would be fine as long as I was holding her, then we’d put her down to take a picture and she’d start crying. At some point, I decided I’d better nurse her after all (there was no one in the appointment slot after mine), and that calmed her down… a little too much. She fell asleep. I said, “Let’s just take the pictures of her sleeping.” That would have been great, only she woke up and started crying whenever we put her down. 😛 So how did we end up getting any pictures of her? The photographer actually put the fabric that had been on the table (looked a little like lamb’s wool) over my front like a barber’s apron and I held her, leaning way back so none of my head would be in the pictures. The pictures are definitely not ones that would be chosen for a WalMart Portrait Studio ad, but they were done and she wasn’t screaming in them. 🙂 Her eyes aren’t open, either, but… oh well. After trying for an hour to get nice Christmas pictures — well, you take what you can get.

I must say, I’m glad that’s over. And I’m not looking forward to next year. But as my mother has had cause to tell me, I shouldn’t borrow trouble. Maybe both of my girls will be perfect angels by next year and the pictures will be a breeze. 😉

It’s funny how much a toddler’s opinion can effect a person.

Joel took off yesterday and we went to the zoo with some friends of ours and the three kids (Alexis, Branwen, and our friends’ 21 month old, Abigail). It was one of those great idea excursions that you start regretting as you’re trying to get out of the house. 😛 After changing diapers, getting everything together, checking it twice, and still managing to forget something, we were on the road. It took about 40 minutes to get to the metro. From there, it took another… oh… hour or so to get to the stop we wanted. Then it was another 20 minutes or so to get to the zoo entrance. By the time we got to the zoo, it was almost lunch time. 😛 We saw roughly two animals before Alexis leaked through her pants and the baby was crying to eat. *sigh*

The trip continued in much the same vein with Alexis trying to run away constantly (but she was secured on a toddler harness, thankfully) and the baby crying to eat every 2 hours. 2 hours go very quickly in a place like the zoo. We did end up seeing several animals before feeling like we had to leave in order to remain sane and miss some of the rush hour traffic. The best was the sea lion, because we got there just as a handler came out to play with her. That was cool. But how much did the kids really enjoy it? The trip was mostly for them, after all. Alexis seemed to like running more than anything else (as well as yelling at passing people…. helpful things like, “DON’T SQUEAL, BOYS!” though the boys weren’t doing anything). She could run on the local playground if she wanted to. Don’t need a zoo for running. And Abigail seemed to mostly enjoy walking around, too, though she did seem to like the monkeys quite a bit.

We made it home and had our dinner last night (McDonalds because it was too late to try to cook something), and eventually Joel took Alexis upstairs to put her to bed. He and Alexis have a good bedtime routine involving a bedtime prayer, a little bit of play, and a good bit of quality conversation. 🙂 The conversation part usually starts with Joel asking Alexis what she did that day, but last night he didn’t get a chance to ask her. Instead, she started talking about the things she saw. “I saw lions and tigers!” she said. She was excited about the big Mr. Elephant and talked about the kangaroo. She… she… liked it!

As Joel told me about her conversation with him, my mood began to change. What had been a rather irritating day slowly became something to look back on with some fondness and, yes, amusement. It’s amazing how sometimes irritating experiences become worthwhile just because a toddler has enjoyed them. 🙂

Joel, my thoughtful husband, read my entry from last night and pointed me to John Donne’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” essay. I believe I read this essay in highschool, but by now all I remembered from it were the two most quoted lines (and if you don’t remember them, go read the essay).

Two things caught my attention on this reading. I love his comparison of death to a translator. He says the following: “God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.” Perhaps it’s just another euphemism… another way to make us feel better about death. But I like it. The other thing I noticed speicifically was that he mentions the idea of another person’s death making you think of the danger to yourself. He says, “if by this consideration of another’s danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.” So the way he looked at it, we can see that paranoia as a good thing because it can turn us back towards God. That seems like a much better reaction than living in a bubble.

Anyway, today is Halloween… All Hallow’s Eve… the eve before All Saint’s Day. Halloween does have an interesting history, and one which people don’t seem to agree on fully. It’s an old holiday, we can say that much. We can also say that the way we celebrate it now is, in historic terms, a recent thing.

Alexis is very much looking forward to dressing up as a clown this evening. 🙂 If I have time to find my clown costume, I may dress up, too. We’re going to a party at our church called a Hallelujah party. The kids go from room to room in the church, seeing puppet shows, playing games, and gathering candy. No scary costumes are allowed, so none of the parents of little ones have to be afraid to bring them. It’s a neat alternative to the more common trick-or-treating.

Time to go and try to rest before Branwen needs to nurse again and then Alexis wakes up from her nap. We have an exciting evening of toddler fun ahead of us. 🙂

How are you supposed to react when you find out that someone you know only slightly has had a child die? I received a phone call today that a lady from my Bible study had to rush her 1 yr. old to the ER the other day, and then the child died. It was bacterial meningitis. The child came down with the symptoms one day and was dead the next.

I don’t know the woman well. I barely know her by sight, truth be told. But her child’s death somehow puts my own children in danger. I suddenly want to say, “We’re now going to live in a bubble. We’re going nowhere and doing nothing other than spending quality time together being paranoid.” That, of course, would be ridiculous.

The other reaction I’ve noticed is a confusion, and I’m not even completely sure what I’m confused about. I guess it’s just the whole question of why things happen like they do. And death in general… it’s confusing. One minute someone is alive and seems to be doing fine, and then suddenly they’re not. Another woman in our area, someone from a MOPS (Mothers of Pre-schoolers) gruop in a different church, just recently backed over her 3 year old with her SUV. It wasn’t her fault. The child was supposed to be inside and no one had noticed him come out of the house. She, of course, couldn’t see him. So how does this affect me? Well, practically speaking, it doesn’t. But somehow… I just don’t understand. It makes me feel… empty… depressed, somehow.

Flashback… I worked at a special needs camp for part of a summer. I ended up leaving early because I felt like I couldn’t handle it anymore. I felt like a wimp when I left and cried for the whole drive home, only to find out later that I had mono and strep. That at least made me feel better about leaving. Anyway, before the campers arrived we had a week with just the staff so we could get to know each other and the grounds. The first evening there, I was seated across the dinner table from a blind gentleman who was probably in his 50s or so. During the meal, he wasn’t talking a whole lot, though he did talk a little bit and seemed slightly gruff. Partway through the meal he excused himself and made his way to the restroom. He hadn’t come back for a little bit, so one of the other male counselors went to check on him. He was dead. He died of a heart attack in the restroom. He went in thinking he had indigestion, apparently.

How do these people’s deaths affect me and my life? I don’t know them that well. My daily schedule and practices aren’t changed by their not being around anymore. But I still feel… dark. Their deaths still bother me, more than I somehow think they should. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to explain or adequately verbalize how I feel. I just don’t understand it myself.

And I only have two of them so far!

Well, Branwen (the youngest) now has blood mixed in with the thick yellow goopy stuff that comes out her nose when I suction her. Lots of fun. I’ve been trying to call her doctor to ask if there’s anything I should do about it, but their line has been busy. I’ve been trying to call for a while, so I wonder if something’s wrong with the phone lines.

We were supposed to go to a friend’s house today, but the morning just wasn’t working. Between the baby’s nose problems and the multiple diaper changes and all of us being kind-of tired from a not-so-restful night… well, it just seemed best to reschedule. Thankfully, this particular friend was very understanding. I felt bad on all counts, though. Alexis, my oldest, was excited about going, and I wanted to catch up with my friend a bit… we haven’t had a chance to get together in a while. Oh well. These things happen.

Well, that means we’ll have a slightly more relaxing day at home. We’ve had several things to do this week, so a day of rest will do us some good. We’ll read some books, watch some Veggietales, play a bit, and then maybe we’ll get a good night’s sleep tonight. 🙂 The day is looking up already.