Growing My Kids in Seattle

Wednesday ups and downs

2012-01-25T20:47:00.001-08:00

This morning I rolled over in bed, after many kicks in the face from Vivian (who actually didn't get into our bed until 7:30 AM, hurray!), picked up my iPod (yes, I'm that addicted to email and Facebook) and checked my messages. And popped out of bed in happiness, when I saw a message from the grad school that I applied to, letting me know I've been accepted for Fall 2012.

I think I made it about 20 minutes before I started freaking out a little. Then I went to overwhelmed with love for my husband. This program is going to take 1) my time and 2) his money. And he is nothing but 100% supportive. I can guarantee he will never complain about watching the kids or cost of tuition or things not getting done at home. I am so blessed.

And then the morning continued, and I realized that Ethan's "cold symptoms" weren't actually cold symptoms. And that they were actually infection of his g-tube (feeding tube) symptoms. So I spent the next while on Skype with Daniel and calling Children's and his primary care doctor. And everyone agreed that he needed to be seen.

Then I had to break the news to Ethan that, instead of going to school, he had to go to the doctor. Again. Poor kid has been through so much these past two years and justifiably is nervous about doctors and nurses. Fortunately, everyone pretty much knew what was going on based on his symptoms and his appointment was really minor, and we were soon on our way home with an antibiotic prescription.

Tonight I asked Daniel what we would do, if a day like today had happened while I was on a deadline for classwork or a test or paper, and he immediately said "I would just take a day off work, of course." Seriously, how did I end up married to someone like that? I do NOT deserve him.

This has been a tough month so far, with lots of germs and disruptions of our routines, but also with SO many reminders of how much I'm blessed. I have an amazing husband. And I have kids who remind me to stop and pray when things are hard. On three different occasions today, Ethan and Vivian were the ones who said "Mommy, can we say a prayer now?" I was ashamed that it didn't occur to me, but blessed to have kids who knew that was the right choice.

Now seriously, everyone needs to get well and go to school/work tomorrow. SERIOUSLY.

"Why is there a bicycle in your shower?"

2012-01-22T19:45:00.000-08:00

"Why is there a bicycle in the shower?" This question was posed to me last Sunday, by my best friend's fiance. He's been to our condo before, but apparently not to the guest bathroom. Or he just didn't notice the bicycle in the shower on that occasion. Yes, we store the bicycle in the shower, along with the steam mops, Vivian's stroller, and the outflow piping for our portable air conditioner. As we assured him, we do actually have another shower, so it's not like it's a major thing.

We had to explain that 1) we have no storage and 2) in the city, you just have to make things work. Even if it means using unconventional areas for storage.

This weekend we made great strides to improving storage here by rearranging the weird space in our guest bathroom. It's a long (almost 4 feet), narrow (14 inches or so), alcove right next to the toilet in the guest bathroom. We've been here almost 6 years (wow!) and for most of that time, we had a shelving unit that fit the width, but didn't go very deep. So we had three feet of wasted and inaccessible space behind the shelving unit. And anything we stored on the shelving unit got dirty, because it was near the cats' litter boxes.

Last week, while trapped at home, I made Daniel help me pull out the shelving unit, which we then cleaned and moved to our bedroom closet. And yesterday we bought shelves at IKEA and a panel to cover the opening to the space. So now we have what's essentially a new closet! I can store things! And get to them! And they won't get all dirty!

Things that make a city girl happy, right?

Other things making me happy today- the fact that Ethan is going to school tomorrow and Daniel is going to work. Of course Ethan has an inservice day on Tuesday (weeping), which is too soon after his surprise 10 days at home. But after this we have a whole three weeks or something until mid-winter break. Seriously, we never can get into a routine and stay there around here....

Snow Day Whatever

2012-01-19T11:18:00.000-08:00

I'm over this whole snow thing. That's how we work here. We get all excited and hope for actual snow. Then it arrives and we play in it and then we sit around and wish for it to go away.

There has been much mocking of Seattle on the news for our reaction to snow. Again, Seattle is as hilly (or hillier can't remember which) than San Francisco. And most of us don't own snow tires or chains, because it only snows on one or two days per year and we just stay home. And, since it's such a technology-centered city, most people can work from home, so they do. And it wasn't a "dusting", as some news sites apparently reported. We have 4 inches in the city (which is really unusual, thanks to the water being close, which warms up the city) and apparently 20+ inches in areas south of here. Yes, we do all go a little crazy and act like kids and squeal about the snow and all, but it's semi-justified :)

Off my soap box now.

So, Ethan's home from school today and Daniel's working from home. I just kicked him off the computer to write some review blog posts and now am refusing to relinquish it until I get to whine here on this blog. Ethan's always off school on Fridays, so his three-day weekend turned into a 10-day weekend. I keep mentioning on Facebook that I'm running out of ways to stay entertained, and people keep sending ideas for the kids.

The kids are not the problem. I am the problem. I don't do "relaxation" or down time. I am in constant motion, almost all the time. So when I'm homebound and our one computer is being hogged by my beloved (who keeps mentioning his "job" and the "mortgage" and my "Target credit card bill" as excuses for why he gets the computer and not me), then I need SOMETHING TO DO. The kids are fine. The kids have lots of toys. They have lots of books. Yes, they want my attention all the time, but I've discovered that, if I ignore them for 20 minutes or so, they eventually come up with some sort of imaginary play together. No, I'm the one who needs ideas. And I've been home a lot lately, so I've gone through most of my projects. And we need to get out to IKEA to get supplies for the big project I'm planning next.

So now I need to give up the computer (weep) and go find a cupboard somewhere to reorganize. Excitement in the snow!

Snow Day 2

2012-01-17T20:54:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is snow day #2 for us. Which is sad, because we have NO SNOW. Nothing remaining from this weekend, no newly fallen snow, nothing. Outlying areas have snow and all, and I get it. We are not people who can drive in snow and our cars are not equipped. But let's have some actual snow fall before we are all stuck in home because of the winter weather.

We made it out today to the Children's Museum, thank goodness. And Daniel made it home pretty early. But still. I am not a good stay-at-home parent. I have never pretended to be otherwise. I love my kids, but I do not love playing their games for hours on end. And I have kids who don't believe in playing on their own. They are so good at outsourcing, that they expect people to do things for them, even coloring. We were out for dinner Sunday night with my best friend and her fiance and he asked why the kids weren't coloring for themselves, but instead directing the adults where and how to color. Because that's how my kids work. And it wears me out!

Tomorrow will be day 6 of Ethan being home and I am running out of ways to stay occupied. Especially since there IS NO SNOW to play in on this snow day.

Help.

Our first official snow day

2012-01-16T23:53:00.000-08:00

It snowed this weekend in Seattle. We have MAJOR hills and cars and buses that are not equipped, so this means, as always, that we all freaked out. I offer you photographic proof:

At church, playing in the snow

A little surprised by the 10 mile drive from church to home

Normally, this would be a great view of the Seattle skyline

View from our home

The snow was, of course, gone by about two hours later. My best friend and I attended a local bridal show, and then we all went out to dinner at the fabulous new pizza restaurant that has happily shown up a block away and which I kind of want to marry.

Today Daniel claimed he was going to work from home, but then the weather was fine and the roads were fine and the long-range forecast was bad, so he went to work. And I entertained the kids for the first half of the day and then started thinking re-organization thoughts and poor Daniel came home to lots of mess. But then he again proved himself to be amazing and sorted out old clothes and helped me move shelving and I now, once again and as always, think he is beyond amazing.

Ethan is off school tomorrow, and the big storm isn't even due until Wednesday, which means I possibly have AN ENTIRE WEEK!!!! with these little people and perhaps even my husband, Mr. Annoyingly Perfect! underfoot. If you live nearby, let's make a plan to meet up at the local coffee/bar/mall/liquor store soon. I might not survive otherwise.

Dieting and feeding tubes

2012-01-11T13:23:00.000-08:00

I went back on Weight Watchers last week (hurray!) and rocked it last week, but have been doing dreadfully this week. I tend to stress eat, and getting ready for Ethan's surgery today and studying for the GRE every opportunity has been causing me a lot of stress. So I keep migrating to the snack pantry. Which doesn't even really have anything interesting in it, but that hasn't stopped me.

I need a new way of coping with stress, stat.

In other news, Ethan's procedure went well this morning. His new feeding tube is much more manageable and discreet and we are all happy. And Vivian's allergy test turned up negative, which is odd since she's been breaking out in hives after eating eggs. But I'm fine with that, since I had no desire to have more food complications in our house.

Now we're just sitting around, trying to figure out how to entertain ourselves today while Ethan is home from school. The sun is shining!

The Night Before Children's Hospital

2012-01-10T22:13:00.000-08:00

I have blogged this exact same thing on several occasions now- so you are all free to roll your eyes and think "of course you're stressed and unhappy!". But I always, always forget. Daniel and I feel so enormously blessed to live here in Seattle and to be within driving distance of Seattle Children's Hospital. There Ethan has gotten great care, great therapy, and great love. His Occupational Therapist at Seattle Children's was the first one to put things together and do the tests that diagnosed him with his condition. There he has gotten great care through the therapy, the NG tube, other tests and his G tubes.

But it is still so hard to drive there and go in and see all the other families. We spend all our time being grateful for the relative non-severity of Ethan's issues. Yes, our kid has a feeding tube and is developmentally delayed and doesn't eat, but compared to what we see around us- NO BIG DEAL.

Tomorrow I'm actually checking Ethan in and then am leaving Daniel to deal with Ethan's recovery while I take Vivian 2 blocks away to have her tested for food allergies. She's been showing alarming signs of food allergies lately, but if the tests come up positive, I may lose my mind. One kid per family with food issues, please!

Apparently I need to lose the bad attitude

2012-01-10T17:35:00.000-08:00

This morning my therapist told me that there have been studies showing that a negative attitude about something affects us more than we know. And that my bad attitude about math is probably actually preventing me from learning it well. When I mentioned this to Daniel, he said that he's been telling me the same thing for weeks. I informed him that I really only pay attention to people that I pay to give me advice, not the unsolicited opinions of those around me :)

I didn't study today (have been studying most days lately) and am feeling better now. I need to get back into it on Thursday and will be praying for a better attitude. And to remember that God seems to be leading me strongly in this direction and that He will provide. Hopefully He'll provide the mind of a math genius.

Ethan's having another surgery tomorrow to replace his feeding tube. Hopefully this will be the last one, as the first tube made space (as it should) for this simpler version of the tube. If he ever gets off of the feeding tube completely, we can simply remove it at home and the space will close up on its own. He's still eating just a microscopic amount of solid food per day, so I don't see that happening soon, but it's nice to know that it is in our future.

In other news, I discovered that I own hiking boots. In case you don't know me in real life, I don't wear boots. Or other sensible shoes. Most days I wear heels. So owning boots is very out of character. I think they might be from 2004, when I visited a friend in Alaska and also went on a camping/hiking trip with Daniel later that year. I was thinking about it last night and realized that I do one thing WAY outside of my comfort zone and normal range of behavior about every 7-8 years. In 1997, I went on a mission trip to Ecuador and went swimming in a river in the middle of a rainforest with some people from the local native tribe. Did I mention that my strongest phobias are about dirt, dark water and snakes? Yeah.

Then in 2004 I went to Alaska, randomly, to visit a friend. And hiked and camped with Daniel. He married me anyway, bless his heart. Apparently it takes me 8 years to build up a level of randomness, bravery and tolerance for the outdoors, then I use it all up on one adventure. Iceland has a lot of pressure on it!

I think I may be having a mid-life crisis...

2012-01-07T11:12:00.001-08:00

So, my 35th birthday is coming up in slightly under three months. And I've been telling Daniel that I wanted to do something special for it. We discussed having a party and I thought about going on a trip with girlfriends, but nothing really appealed. And then I got an email yesterday, advertising a really good deal for a trip to Reykjavik. Including a Northern Lights hunt (not a guaranteed viewing, but a much better chance than here in the city lights of Seattle!) And one of the sets of dates was while my parents will be visiting next month. And they were planning on taking the kids to visit my grandmother for a few days anyway.

Daniel and I talked about it, and we decided that now is the perfect time to do something like a trip to Iceland-it's not a trip we can take with the kids, and it's time to get out of our (read- Carrie's) comfort zone. So this morning we booked our vacation to Iceland! Me! The girl who doesn't even like to go outside in Seattle when it's 45 degrees or below!

I can't believe we're really doing this- but I am so excited!

In which I realize that I am going to have to learn to adjust my priorities

2012-01-05T13:25:00.000-08:00

I have spent the past week holed up in my house, either doing laundry or studying for the GRE. I'm taking it on 2/4, and suddenly it all has gotten very real. And I'm frustrated, because my brain is completely refusing to remember what I study every day, and I don't feel like I'm making any progress. Not to mention that my study time is limited to the time when Vivian is napping (hopefully), and I am nevesure exactly how long I'm going to have to study. Which usually means I'm in the middle of something when she wakes up and then I get snappy and stressed because I just want to finish what I'm in the middle of.

Yeah, not the mother of the year here. This is actually why I had to quit work in the first place, because I don't know how to leave things to deal with them later. I'm very much a "don't relax until everything is done" person. As is Daniel. Not a good thing for our marriage sometimes.

On top of the needing to study, there's the fact that it means that review posts aren't getting written and my house is not completely clean. Which makes me nuts.

I should explain my craziness about the house being clean. Another insanity that my husband shares. Both Daniel and I are children of people who grew up really, really, really poor. Not just "watching their pennies" poor, but living in a condemned house poor and such. Which in both our cases translated to a parent who really cared about keeping things nice and neat, because they had to work so hard for what they had. And in both our cases, it also translated into two people who are unable to function if things are not put away. And Daniel by no means expects me to do all this cleaning and is always happy to help, but as the stay-at-home parent I've gotten used to it being my job, because I am home and he works really long hours, and it just makes sense for me to take care of things here.

So suddenly I'm trying to study, clean, organize and blog, all in a brief period of time.

Daniel and I have been talking a lot about this, and we know we both need to make some adjustments, because, although the GRE will be done soon (thank goodness), starting this fall I will hopefully be in school again and that's going to require lots of time on my part. I'm so blessed to have a husband who is supportive in this, but I need to figure out what this is going to mean for the cleanliness of our house and such.

Now, does anyone have a brain that remembers all the silly algebra and geometry rules that they can loan me for the next month? Am dying here...

Farewell 2011!

2011-12-31T14:54:00.000-08:00

Ah, the end of 2011 draws near. So far we've spent this last day over at Green Lake, where I ran very slowly while the kids and Daniel played. I've also braved the madness at Trader Joe's to stock up on a few things for tonight and tomorrow. Daniel's off cleaning the car now, because I can't possibly start 2012 with a dirty car. And there's a Target trip still in our future tonight. We've managed to go to Target on Black Friday, the Saturday before Christmas, Boxing Day...(and many, many days in between) so let's round off 2011 with another crazy venture into the busy shopping world.

At Thanksgiving Daniel said that he was thankful for a good year, and at that time I wasn't sure if I was totally in agreement. Yes, it's been a fairly quiet one, overall. January and February were insane with the situation with our renter who didn't believe in paying rent, but that finally got settled (not financially, but she left, and that's all I care about). January also was when we did the first feeding tube for Ethan. Occasionally he'll see a picture of another kid with a NG tube on TV or at the hospital, and he'll say "Mommy? Remember when I had a tube in my nose?" And I assure him that the image is branded on Mommy's brain and will probably be there until the day I die. The gastric tube that he has now is still complicated at times, but it's much easier for me to deal with emotionally, and he's getting the calories that he needs for brain development and is gaining weight too. We are so blessed to have such an amazing hospital like Seattle Children's nearby, with all the amazing doctors and nurses and therapists that work there.

But it's also been the year that Ethan got into his special preschool and started getting tons of therapy and started making huge progress on the areas he's delayed in. And he made friends and started having this whole life outside our home. Which was weird, but also meant that I got to spend some more solitary time with Vivian, who pretty much grew up overnight this year. She went from a baby at the beginning of the year to a toddler/preschooler (who thinks she's a teenager) by the end.

And it's been the year when I finally admitted that I was not okay and got help from medication and my therapist. And when God showed me where He's leading me to spend my spare energy and passions. I submitted my application for grad school this week- keep your fingers crossed for me!

I think I have to agree with Daniel that it's been a pretty good year, when I look back at it. Challenging, yes, but that's life in the adult world. I'm blessed to have been able to share this year with such an amazing husband and wonderful kids. We have a home that we love and friends to share our lives with us. So, farewell to 2011 and welcome to 2012.

Math makes me want to cry

2011-12-30T13:11:00.000-08:00

I last studied algebra and geometry sometime in the late 80s, early 90s. And I did well at them the first time around, but I was 13-16 years old and still had all my brain cells. Now I am almost 35 and I haven't used my math skills (not in the way they use them on the test at least) in almost 20 years and I have been studying for a month and STILL just failed the practice test. Which makes me want to cry.

I did ace the verbal part of the test though. Because I have used my verbal skills in the past two decades.

Daniel took the kids out and (I AM STUDYING, DANIEL! Don't judge!! This blog post is taking 2 minutes to write while I eat lunch!) and I'm supposed to be learning everything that I can about geometry and algebra. I only have a little over a month before the GRE and I want to hide under my covers and cry instead of studying.

Sadly, I threw away all the Christmas cookies. Probably a wise choice, but I'm regretting it now.

Just when you think you know someone

2011-12-28T00:45:00.000-08:00

Daniel and I went out on our first date in May of 2004. That's a pretty long time ago. We got engaged in April 2005, and after that, we spent Thursday-Sunday of every week at each other's home. But we were not sleeping together, in case you were wondering. Then we got married in February of 2006. After which we did start sleeping together, as evidenced by the two small people who showed up in rapid succession.

I thought I knew Daniel really well. In the almost 8 years (really!?) that we have known each other, I have seen him get really mad or emotional probably twice. Which is really impressive, because I am a bit crazy and I have LOTS OF EMOTIONS! and I do not fight fair and I know his triggers and everything. Still, he remains calm. Daniel is one of those people that you should watch in a really serious situation, because if he is freaking out, you are doomed.

I think if you asked anyone who has ever met him, (other than his coworkers, who have muttered to me things about him being a crazy workaholic), you would hear that he is a nice, calm guy.

Tonight we went to our second hockey game as a family. We watch a lot of hockey on TV, because we get the Canadian station and Ethan is obsessed. And Daniel wanted to go to a game tonight and it was half price ticket night (and $2 beer night!) so we went. I thought I knew what to expect, since we had been to a women's hockey game during the Vancouver Olympics. And we walked in and there were lots of families and SO many tiny babies and other little kids and I felt comfortable.

And then the game started. And suddenly players were being slammed against the walls and sticks were flying and my dear, sweet, "nice" husband was joining in the crowd clamouring for a fight. And when a fight broke out (and went on for several minutes), my nice, passive husband was cheering and screaming along with everyone else. And a few minute later, he, who I have not in 7.5 years even heard say the word "darn" was screaming something about the opposing team "sucking".

BEFORE YOU HATE ME- I don't have a problem with any of this, I'm just trying to wrap my brain around hockey in general and my husband having a side of him that I had no idea even existed. I asked Daniel if perhaps hockey is the reason why Canadians have such a reputation for being nice, because they get all their bloodllust out on the hockey field. Maybe that's a good thing? I have been to NBA games and professional baseball games and I have never seen the mix of such a family-friendly environment and people screaming for fights and cheering the roughness. Maybe it's just because the stadium was small today and I am just not seated near these people. I don't know. Admittedly, I haven't ever been to a football game or other sport with crashing and slamming, so this is all new to me.

I'm just trying to figure all this out because I have a 4-year-old who, with a feeding tube is in the 4th percentile for size, and who dreams of playing hockey and soccer and football and every other sport that he sees. He talks about hockey constantly and is always playing that or football in our living room. Obviously I am going to be a sports mom in the future, so I need to get used to all of this. But it's so outside of my "girly" world.

On another note. Dudes- this week? With so many extra people around and so many outings and things to do? Kicking my butt. And tomorrow I get to go on a playdate with my son to visit one of his classmates and I don't know if I'm supposed to go or stay and I am FREAKING OUT! and Christmas vacation just needs to be over already.

The sound of silence (oh, and the washing machine)

2011-12-26T10:53:00.000-08:00

I'm alone in the condo, listening to the washing machine wash the first of what is going to be many loads of laundry. And also listening to the remnants of the turkey bubble on the stove as I make turkey stock for later use in soup. There are no other sounds, because I have been left all alone. Deep sigh of pleasure.

Daniel and the kids are off to lunch with Daniel's family. Given that we ate out on Saturday night and Sunday brunch, and had a big dinner here last night, I bowed out of lunch today. My system cannot take another high salt meal. I'm so old. It's kind of pathetic.

Also, I have lots of laundry to do and review blog posts to catch up on and then there's the GRE prep math book lurking on the counter. For the past month I've been saying "oh, I'll study and work on my admission essay the week after Christmas when Daniel's home to watch the kids." And now it's that week and I'm procrastinating by de-decorating the house and doing laundry.

Christmas went pretty well here. The kids started opening presents, one at a time, on the 23rd and continued until Christmas afternoon, so they're pretty happy campers. I'm proud that we spent less than $100 total on gifts for the four of us. I know we wont be able to keep that up when the kids are older, so I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

I am a little annoyed at one participant in the Christmas festivities- me. I am getting so used to being home and not having people around that when people show up with stuff and noise and disorder, it absolutely freaks me out. I was snippy on a couple of occasions this weekend and overreacted to minor things and wanted to slap myself at times. Seriously, I'm almost 35 years old... WAY too old to be acting like I did. New Year's Resolution, behave better!

Speaking of turning 35, now that we're done with Christmas, we can all focus on this big (and kind of scary) birthday that's only 3 months and 2 days off. I'm requesting a party from Daniel, but I'm not sure if we'll have the time/energy for that or not. And, given the things I detailed in the previous paragraph, that might be a good thing :) I also requested a new purse, then I won the purse I wanted last week on a Facebook giveaway, so that's taken care of!

Anyway, algebra calls. Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!

Things I still need to do before Christmas

2011-12-21T13:49:00.000-08:00

I'm looking at the date on the screen of my computer and am having a bit of difficulty comprehending the fact that it's December 21st already. Seriously, where did this year go? After a totally wasted day yesterday, when I may or may not have let the kids watch a bunch of TV and also watch me play a kids' game on the Wii for many hours, we left the house this morning for a shopping trip to Target and a playdate with friends.

Even though I went to Target, I neglected to do the top thing on my to-do-before-Christmas list- buy gifts for Daniel's parents and his brother and sister-in-law. Which is a problem, because they will be arriving here to celebrate Christmas with us in just a few days.

I also neglected to buy any groceries for Christmas dinner. Which I have known about for months, but somehow it never dawned on me that I actually had to plan and cook the darned thing. My brain has a total block on accepting the concept of cooking.

So, now I need to load the kids up in the car (hurray for a car day!) and head out and do the two things that I still need to do before Christmas- buy gifts and buy food. Both without spending much money, as I just paid our credit card bill (Merry Christmas to us- a major plumbing issue and a dental crown for me!) and I can't currently handle the idea of spending even another penny.

In other news, I started studying the algebra section of my GRE prep book and I think it's starting to come back to me. So that's good :)

Santa update

2011-12-19T18:50:00.000-08:00

So, I put the kids in reasonably good clothes on Friday and headed to the mall near Daniel's office, where I knew there was a Santa and generally not too huge of crowds. When we got up to Santa, I learned that photos with Santa aren't cheap- at this mall it was $18 for one picture. Which might be normal, I have no idea. But it was sticker shock for Daniel and I, and after discussing it, we decided we could use the money in much better ways. The good news though was that photos weren't required, and the kids were able to go sit on Santa's lap and meet him, which is all that really mattered to Ethan anyway. He asked the kids what they wanted for Christmas, they muttered something that no one understood, Ethan pulled on Santa's beard and we were done. Oh, and there were candy canes, so everyone was happy :)

Candy Cane eating break

Then today, in a quest to stay busy during this long week of Christmas break, I took the kids out for sushi for lunch, then we headed over to the Children's Museum. And when we walked in, one of the people who worked there said to us "would you like to meet Santa?". The kids did, so we headed to Santa. No lines, no other people. Free picture :) Now this is my kind of event. Again, the kids mumbled something to Santa about what they wanted for Christmas, and then they excitedly picked up their full size! candy canes and we headed off to play.

With Santa. Ethan is again, pulling on Santa's beard.


Santa tries desperately to understand what Ethan is asking for

So, Santa visits are done and the kids are happy (and really sugared up from all these candy canes). And I got a picture of them and Santa and we didn't have to spend any money. Win-win!

Christmas vacation is almost here. Send chocolate and wine, please.

2011-12-14T16:25:00.001-08:00

Yesterday Vivian had one of those fabulous, super-long naps that make mommies so happy. I got SO much done, which was such a blessing after having everyone home sick the week before and getting almost nothing done for days. Today she didn't nap (drat), but I still got a few last things done.

Which was important, because today was the end of the "Ethan off at school" days until January 3rd. I'm almost hyperventilating just thinking about that. I've barely recovered from Thanksgiving break and now another break is almost upon us. I love getting to spend time with Ethan, but I've gotten really used to my couple of hours of free time to do things (read- time to fold laundry without little people unfolding it again, and going to the bathroom without anyone on the other side of the door asking questions about what I'm doing in there) and a few hours of break from the constant bickering. Deep breath.

Ethan actually has school tomorrow, but I have things going on during the time he's gone and wont be home myself. One of those must-dos for tomorrow is to figure out what on earth to buy all his teachers and therapists! Nothing like leaving it to the last minute, hey?

On the plus side, Vivian and I went to the grocery store today and they gave us free advent calendars. Since it's the 14th, that means that we have 13 extra days on each calendar to make up for. I may go through all the extra by the end of the day Friday :)

And on a totally unrelated note, I made pomegranate relish this afternoon and am now in the middle of making a roasted beet salad. I feel the need to record this, given my hatred of cooking and usual total failure in the kitchen. I feel like I've been possessed by some Food Channel cook or something.

Santa Claus

2011-12-13T13:31:00.000-08:00

Daniel and I are both very ambivalent about Santa Claus. I didn't grow up celebrating Christmas at all, so there was definitely no Santa for me. When I did start celebrating Christmas, I was too old for it to be an issue. I remember my college boyfriend explaining his family's view on Santa, that they didn't have a problem with it, but that the parents worked hard to buy gifts, and they weren't giving away the credit for the gifts to someone else :)

Daniel apparently didn't grow up believing in Santa either- I don't think it's a big deal in Hong Kong and by the time he got to Canada, again he was too old to go for the idea.

Neither of us has a problem with Santa as one of the symbols of the season. But we don't plan to give the kids gifts from Santa, and I never saw the point of taking the kids for photos with Santa. Keep in mind that we are both insanely frugal, so it just didn't seem like a necessary expense.

Then came Sunday. We were downtown doing the whole Teddy Bear Suite/Gingerbread Village thing, and on our way back to the monorail, we walked past the downtown Santa. We watched the kids visiting with Santa, then we walked on. A couple of hours later, Ethan wandered into the room and said "Mom? When can I go meet Santa?" I explained that it wasn't something we planned to do. I think I said something about Santa not being real, and just being a symbol of the season. Ethan pointed out to me that he had seen Santa that day and he was in fact real. Outwitted by a 4-year-old. Then I asked why he wanted to go see Santa, and Ethan said "I just want to meet him."

So now I'm planning to take the kids to see Santa at a nearby mall on Friday. My parents, who are ardent anti-Christmas-other-than-church-stuff people are going to have a heart attack. But it's apparently important to my friendly little boy, so, what the heck.

In which I express my great desire for my husband to just go away for a little bit

2011-12-10T14:59:00.001-08:00

I love my husband. He is hands-down the best man for me. I rarely complain about him here on the blog because there's almost nothing to complain about. He's an incredible friend, husband, and dad. He's a hard worker and provides so well for our family. There's no one I'd rather spend my time with.

But right now, he is driving me insane. He's been sick all week and has pretty much not left the house except to go to work Monday-Wednesday. Thursday he worked from home (and monopolized our lone computer) all day. Then yesterday he was supposed to be taking a sick day, but still ended up working from home most of the time. Again, on my computer. Which is problematic, because my entire social life is online. And it's not like he was interacting with us. He was just sitting in the middle of my living room, in his pajamas (which I'm so tired of looking at now that I want to burn them), staring at the computer screen.

Between wiping Vivian's nose and glaring at Daniel and trying to mentally move him away from the computer, nothing much else got done this week. And I'm realizing how desperately I need a break from my family from time to time. It makes me appreciate them so much more if they go away occasionally.

Ethan and I left the house of germs today to go run errands and pick up my race bib and shirt for the Jingle Bell Run that I'm "running" tomorrow. Between the sicknesses and lack of training, it's going to be a pretty pathetic effort. But they give us a free pint of beer at the end of the race, so there's that. Yeah! Free beer at 10 AM! Outside in the rain and 40 degree weather! Whatever, I'm still drinking it. It's been that kind of week.

Green lights

2011-12-07T13:30:00.001-08:00

I would like to start this post with a disclaimer- this is the most random thing that I have ever complained about. And possibly the most ridiculous.

God is seriously big time green-lighting this grad school thing. It started in October at the Women of Faith conference. At that conference, the university that my brother attended was advertising. And at that point, the words "law and public policy degree" popped into my head. I did not want to hear those words, so I ignored them. But they wouldn't go away. So I finally went to the university's website and was relieved to see that they did not offer a law and public policy degree. Off the hook.

Then I randomly googled law and public policy and online degree. And another school popped up. One with an all online program. And a certificate program, rather than a full-on master's degree, but with the option to transfer credits to the master's program later. Oh, and it's a Christian school with faith-based learning. And it's really well known.

Then I started the application and tried to send it in, only to get an error screen for several days. A sign that this idea was a bad one? (I secretly hoped so). Then I got an email from the university saying that my application had been caught in a system upgrade and that they were waiving the application fee for me because of that. Seriously?

So then I was thinking "okay, I still have to write a big paper and pass the GRE and maybe I won't do well at that". Today I got another email from them, letting me know that people who are applying for the certificate program don't have to write the big paper, just a personal essay. And the GRE is optional, and really only needs to be taken if planning to enter the master's program later on.

I'm starting to think that I'm not going to get out of this. :) I'm going to have to learn to study again and spend my time doing something more than blogging or playing on Facebook.

I'm still going to take the GRE because I have the study books and it's scheduled and I have some time to study in the afternoons now, and I think that I probably will continue on to get my master's degree after Vivian goes to school in a few years.

So far the only negative is that certificate students don't qualify for financial aid, so we'll be doing this all out of pocket. Not ideal, but not something that's going to stop me from doing this. It's kind of funny- I've had lots of decisions to make in my life, and so many times I've dreamed of a big arrow pointing to the right choice or a neon sign saying "do this". This is coming awfully close to that neon sign and it's a little scary, to be perfectly honest. But it's nice to have the reassurance too.

Studying

2011-12-06T15:22:00.001-08:00

I'm studying math today. It is about as much fun as it was the first time around, 20 years ago. Fortunately, I've always been fairly good at math. Unfortunately, I've forgotten every speck of what I learned in middle school and high school. Today I started studying for the GRE, which is about 50% math. To see what I needed to focus on, I took some assessment tests. Basic math skills I did fine on, since those are actually useful, but geometry and algebra haven't entered my life in any real way since I walked out of the classroom.

Ironically, even though I spent several hours today studying math, I failed to spot the fact that our plumber overcharged us by $100 until well after he'd left. So much for real-world application of math skills. It's been a very expensive day- bunch of money to the dentist this morning for a crown, then a staggering amount of money to replace the pipe and faucet in our bathroom. Which, according to the plumber (who did look apologetic as he said this) were clogged up because of my hair. Yeah, I needed to be reminded of my role in this as I handed over my credit card.

So now I'm eating cookies and recovering from the agony of trying to remember algebra and geometry and of spending large sums of money on totally non-exciting things. It's definitely a Tuesday!

Kitchen smells

2011-11-29T13:55:00.001-08:00

Right now my kitchen smells like my kitchen back in Ukraine- the smell of cooking beets and onions, garlic and potatoes. Our farm box came this morning and contained beets and carrots and tomatoes, so I got the urge to make borscht. It's been a long time since I made it- mostly because you cannot make borscht in small amounts, so you have to have enough people around to make the time and effort worthwhile. As it is, we are going to be eating borscht for the next century.

My first roommate, another missionary, in our living room. Note the classy carpet on the wall decor. Very traditional

My Ukrainian roommate who taught me how to make borscht

Enjoying tea in the kitchen with friends. Notice the old radio on the wall over my friend Sasha's head. It's an old Soviet model that only plays one station, has no antenna and can only be turned on or off. It played music that the government chose. http://www.bellybuttonwindow.com/1997/russia/there_is_only_one_ra.html

There's something about this time of year that makes me think of my time in Ukraine. The memories seem to be especially strong when I'm walking out in the cold late autumn weather. I remember my mornings, bundled up in my warm coat and gloves, walking across town from my flat in the center of the city to the university a little way away. I remember breathing the cold air as I made my way through parks lined with pensioners and craftsmen selling items from their homes- old medals and Soviet souvenirs, matroshkas and other Ukrainian artwork. I remember making my way up the old staircase inside the university, in to the rundown and barely heated classroom where I would study grammar and vocabulary with my teacher and sip from small plastic cups filled with hot tea.

My building- I lived on the second floor- with the enclosed balcony (which was full of ancient things belonging to the landlord)

The University building where I studied

It seems like a lifetime ago that I was that person. Pretty much the only resemblance to that life is that I still live in a city... and right now my kitchen smells like cooked beets.

At Livadia Palace in Yalta

I had a thing about photographing Lenin statues

An unexpected twist in the road

2011-11-26T13:26:00.001-08:00

We survived Thanksgiving. Most of the day was pretty quiet- went running (along with most of the population of Seattle, or so it looked like), watched the parade on TV, then went to my uncle's house to bond with a couple of dozen relatives. These are relatives that I am not actually biologically related to and I see one branch of this family only about once a decade. My grandmother had the good suggestion that, since the local family and the family from the other city don't see each other often, we should try to not sit with our spouses and people we know well, but with people we don't talk to often. This backfired in a terrible way, as no one really could think of anything to talk about, and we were busy with the 12 kids who were sitting all over the place. It was the quietest gathering of 27 people ever, I'm pretty sure.

But the food was good and we made it through and yesterday Daniel took Ethan to work with him (hurray!) and I recovered and cleaned our house and did things like that. And when we went out in the late afternoon to Target, it wasn't too crowded and we still got some good deals. And Daniel bought a new pair of jeans. In the kids department. And you wonder why I have body issues.

Okay, so when I was about 3, my dad went back to school. He already had a degree but wanted a different one. I'm vague on the details, because I was 3. And then he got a master's degree at some point in time. Again, I'm vague on the details. My mom was a stay-at-home mom until I was 13, when my family realized that they could not pay for college on a pastor's tiny salary. So then Mom went back and got her master's degree and that took up several years when I was a teenager.

My brother has started a collection of master's degrees and certifications and things like that. He has been studying and in school pretty much non-stop for the past decade, with no plans to stop.

I got my master's degree when I was single, and always prided myself on the fact that I was done with all that and would never disrupt my family by going back to school. When Daniel and I married, I sighed a breath of relief knowing that he (disliking reading and very well established in his career) would not ever want to go back to school.

I smirked when friends at church and in my other life went through the "going back to school while juggling family life" thing. Because that would NEVER be us.

I should have heard God laughing at me about then. Because I spent a good bit of last week working on my grad school application.

For a couple of months now, I've been thinking a lot about the idea of pursuing a degree in law and public policy. I've gotten involved in the anti-human trafficking cause and have been learning a lot about advocacy and lobbying. And I've had the feeling that I really needed some education and could be a much more effective advocate with some further education. After a good bit of research, I found a program that really appeals to me- it's an online course of study through a major Christian university back east. Right now I'm just applying for the certificate program, but when the kids are both in school, I can transfer my credits over and go for another master's degree, if I so choose.

So now I'm filling out applications and buying GRE study books (darned test scores are only valid for 5 years, and it's been way longer than that since I last took it) and freaking out about writing an essay and personal statement and things like that. Oh, and wondering what the heck I'm doing, but at the same time really feeling that this is the path I need to walk down.

I'm not applying to start until Fall 2012, so this wont cut into my blogging and Facebook time for a while yet. I know you were all concerned :)

I am not going to survive this week

2011-11-22T12:41:00.001-08:00

It's Tuesday. It's raining. I did not get up and go running this morning. It's after noon and my kids are still wearing their jammies. And they are making me INSANE. Ethan's off school this week, and that means there's no break, ever. How quickly I got used to the quiet afternoons when he is at school and Vivian naps. This week it's constant bickering and shoving and Ethan is completely incapable of saying a single phrase without prefacing it with "Mom! Mom? Mom!" EVERY SINGLE TIME. He's doing it now.

I've been struggling with Ethan lately- I'm so glad that he's gaining weight and the feeding tube has been such a huge relief. But him getting more calories means more energy. And with Ethan that means that some of his sensory issues are dialed up too. He's a sensory seeker, which means he has to be touching someone and crashing into them and climbing and just constantly requiring input. And I prefer to never have anyone touching me ever. I've always been anti-physical contact. So much so that my grad school friends laughed at me because I required a large personal space bubble and would flinch if someone sat too close to me in class. So being climbed and bumped into and shoved all day by a little person is not my favorite thing. I love the hugs and kisses, but the rest of the constant touching makes me batty.

I really don't know how Ethan's teachers and therapists at school manage with 16 of these special needs boys.

Oh, and Vivian's response to Ethan's pushing and shoving all day is to shriek and overreact at the top of her lungs. ARGH. Thank goodness we have plans for tomorrow, because I think making it through today is going to do me in and I cannot do this for another day.

And did I mention that we are going to Thanksgiving with our usual group of relatives, but this year there are 14 extra people coming along. So there will be 27 people in my uncle's not huge house. I have trouble breathing when I even think about that. Thank goodness I am in charge of bringing the wine and can prepare properly :)

Now I need to stop whining and go work on being thankful for my kids and this free time we have together. Deep breath.

Decluttering

2011-11-14T13:43:00.001-08:00

We spent the long weekend up in Canada this weekend, hanging out with Daniel's friends and family, and actually finally getting to see my uncle. We hadn't seen him or his wife since our wedding, almost 6 years ago, so we were glad to finally have a less busy visit and to be able to make it to his home.

This weekend, when we weren't at home or at my uncle's house, we were hanging out with hordes of people. On Friday (which pretty much everyone had off school/work up in Canada), we made the gigantic mistake of going to the local mega-mall, where I'm pretty sure half of the population of Canada also was hanging out. Then we went to the Chinese mall, which was slightly less crowded. But not much. We also went to crowded restaurants, the very crowded science museum and in between places sat in a lot of traffic.

As you know, I am an introvert. And I am an introvert who spends 90% of her waking hours at home with the kids, not interacting with anyone except via Facebook or Skype chat. I don't usually talk on the phone (because I am scared of it), and I rarely even write emails any more. So I've totally lost what little ability I once had for being around lots of people.

This socialization overload has a weird effect on me- I develop the obsessive need to purge our home of everything unnecessary and to clean and tidy and organize. Even things like my Facebook feed or the number of blogs that I follow but don't read finally got to be too much. So, since we got home last night, I've been bouncing from project to project, tidying, purging, removing, etc.

I hope this little episode lasts long enough to get to the things that really need organized, like the junk drawer and the snack cabinet. Must stay crazy a little longer!!!

Romance

2011-11-05T18:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Daniel did one of the most romantic things ever- he came home at 1:15 PM. It's been a really hard week for him at work with some really late nights. But today they were not trying another of their (ultimately doomed) deploys, so he packed up and made it home early. And we were SO happy. We had a morning playdate with good friends, then only few hours of each others' company and then the fabulous Daddy was home and we were so happy.

And then last night my amazing church hosted a Parents Night Out, and we dropped the kids off and ran away to dinner and then to Target. It was so nice to have a meal without anyone throwing food or dancing next to the table. During our date, I kept thinking- we should be more romantic or we should have more romantic conversations. And then I realized- this is who we are. These are the conversations we had when we were dating- ones about the economy and technology and bank accounts. Because this is us. We are not romantic people (Although Daniel does bring me flowers fairly regularly) Neither of us likes overt displays of emotion. We operate best in a world that is controlled and calm. And that works for us, even if it's not the type of romance that you see in the movies.

So in my world, yesterday was perfect. My husband came home early, and was here for us. And then we spent time together at dinner and at Target. And we were happy.

Once upon a time, my life did not revolve around poop

2011-11-02T17:54:00.000-07:00

Poop. Poop, poop, poop. That's all we talk about or think about around here anymore. Has Ethan gone lately? How's his stomach doing? Should we run a feed tonight since he hasn't pooped lately? What about Vivian? How's she doing? MY LIFE IS ALL ABOUT THE POOP.

This does not fill me with a great sense of accomplishment as a person. Particularly since the whole pooping thing has turned into a giant power struggle with Ethan. He'll just sit there for HOURS and do nothing. He just stares into space and doesn't make any attempt to go and it makes me insane. Which I generally fix by lurking just out of his sight in the kitchen and trying to eat my weight in snack food while I wait for him to JUST DO SOMETHING ALREADY!!!

In 48 hours though, we will be ditching our kids at our church for a few hours for a free babysitting evening! Three and a half hours of free child care! Daniel and I have been so overwhelmed with Ethan's health and Vivian's recent viruses and Daniel's insanely busy job that we haven't even really had a conversation (at least one that wasn't about website deployments (his obsession of late) or poop (mine, obviously)).

Our big plans for the evening involve going to an Indian restaurant and then to Target. Because we are wild and crazy that way :)

In other news, anxiously waiting for the time change on Sunday morning so that I can actually run in the mornings again without worry of being attacked in the darkness. Because really, if you were some sort of bad guy and you had your choice of who to grab, I'm clearly the slowest runner out there and provide the best chance. At least that's my excuse for why I've not been running lately. What I really need is a running partner, but that's not terribly likely to happen.

And in other, other news, I have two social events scheduled for the next two days. I get to talk to other actual human beings (probably about poop, but I'll try to think of something else to contribute to the conversation). So happy!

Emotional stretching

2011-10-30T12:13:00.000-07:00

As I think most of you know, I was diagnosed with severe clinical depression back in the spring. And I started going to therapy and taking medication, and I'm overall doing much better. But I'm still not doing a good job of being in touch with my emotions or dealing with them. Over the last 15 years, I've become very disassociated from my feelings. It's just easier that way. Not healthy, but much easier.

But sometimes I have no choice but to come in contact with emotions. The past three weeks have been especially emotional, starting with Ethan's surgery and recovery. A little stretching of the emotions there, although I also had to be strong and in charge and responsible for Ethan's health and feeding, so I could kind of ignore it then.

And then last weekend I spent Saturday at an anti-human trafficking conference. Try not feeling emotions at a place like that. Again, I was able to mostly just put aside my emotions and think about the practical side of things- what the group I'm involved with can be doing, how we can get more involved, how I can be physically doing more. Emotions again successfully avoided.

Then this weekend I had the opportunity to attend Women of Faith here in Seattle. Two days of worshiping and laughing and crying and listening to women tell their stories on stage, and having my faith encouraged. All in a massive arena full of 5000 women. By yesterday evening, my friend and I were utterly emotionally drained. So many thoughts, so many feelings, so much input. I came home last night feeling tireder than I was after I ran my 10K this fall.

I told Daniel that attending the conference this weekend was like being dropped into an emotional marathon with almost no training. This emotional, personal stuff is hard work. But I'm glad that I went to Women of Faith- I heard so many things that I desperately needed to hear. I got so many reminders that I don't have to do it all and I don't have to do it perfectly. I got reminders of God's ever present grace and love. I got reminded that I am beautiful in His sight. And I got the much, much needed message that, if I am still walking this earth, then God's purpose for me is not fulfilled. Even the small things that I do in life can have a profound effect in years to come.

And now I need a nap :)

30.4 pounds

2011-10-24T14:01:00.000-07:00

* If you are my friend on Facebook, you might not want to waste your time reading this post. You've heard it all already :)

We started out our week by getting up while it was still dark and driving through the rain to Children's Hospital for Ethan's post-op check up. And all the grey and gloom of the day was soon pushed aside when Ethan weighed in- because he is up to 30.4 pounds!!!! He's never gotten above 29 before, so this was huge for us. He gained almost three pounds in two weeks! I am not a very emotional person, but I got a little choked up when the nurse told us what he weighs. What a blessing!

We were planning to go to a farm/pumpkin patch after our morning appointment, but today's predicted "partly cloudy skies" were doing a lot more raining than being partly cloudy this morning, so attempt #2 to go to this place was scrapped. We're hoping for Wednesday. We'll see.

And on the Vivian front, she continues to entertain and amuse us. Last night during bedtime prayers I burst out laughing and startled Daniel. Because while he was praying for Vivian, she raised her hand and said "Jesus! Here I am!" Funniest thing she's done in a long time :)

Also on the Vivian front, I've gotten her to sleep in her own bed for two nights in a row now, by telling her that her stuffed pandas (which number 7 or 8 now) get too lonely and cry when she leaves them to go sleep in Mommy and Daddy's bed. She's going through a very maternal stage, so this is seeming to work, as she loves and takes care of her pandas and didn't like the idea of them being sad. I'm not sure if that's good parenting or not, but I'm really tired of being kicked in the ribs by little toes.

Happy Monday!

Yawning

2011-10-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

We had a couple of gorgeous autumn days here, then the grey returned yesterday afternoon. We were all sad and increased our coffee consumption. Despite the grey and cold, I was determined to go out running this morning. I've pretty much done nothing healthy for the past 6 weeks and have instead sat around loathing myself and feeling lumpish. It's not a good thing.

So I managed to get up on time this morning and, after waiting for the sun to finally rise around 7:30, headed out on a run. In an attempt to NOT injure my legs (again), I'm starting over with the couch to 5K program. I had gotten into some bad running habits before, and I'm going to try to fix those and focus on running well, rather than running further. And it wasn't a bad run this morning. I didn't go far, but I was able to run and breathe and focus on form and I felt good at the end of it. And when I got home I felt all energized and "hurray me! I did something not self-destructive for once!".

Then the endorphins and coffee wore off and when I went to make my bed, it took every ounce of willpower to not crawl back under the covers. That's the problem with morning exercise for me, it makes me SO DARNED SLEEPY all day.

In other news, I'm going to my first human trafficking conference on Saturday. I'm looking forward to it, because I really do want to learn more about this topic and figure out more ways to help. But I also know it's going to be incredibly depressing and sad, so I'm stocking up on the wine and chocolate for Saturday night. Then I get to round out my weekend by going to try on bridesmaids dresses on Sunday afternoon, and staring at my round, pale self in lots of full-length mirrors. This is less depressing than talking about human trafficking, of course, but not what I would call fun or encouraging. Should be an interesting weekend :)

Ah, a perfect autumn day

2011-10-17T15:07:00.000-07:00

It's 3 PM. I'm sitting in my sun-filled living room, enjoying a diet coke and some quiet. Ethan returned to school on the bus today (I drove him to and from school on Thursday). Since I was about to lose my mind from all the fighting and whining this morning, I was very happy to buckle him into his seat on the bus, wave goodbye, put my headphones in and enjoy a nice stroll to the post office with Vivian. After which she napped. Bliss!

I am kind of glad in a weird way to see the return of the bickering and shoving, as it means Ethan is feeling better. We're still messing with the timing of his feeds, since he doesn't really sleep soundly when he's getting fed through the tube, but otherwise it's going well. He's still a little slow when he bends over, but otherwise is almost back to full strength. Last week was pretty awful, so I'm glad that this week is starting out better.

In other, weird news, I had an acquaintance from church come up to me yesterday and let me know that she'd run across my review blog while looking at reviews for a play at the local children's theater. And that, my friends, is why I don't write posts for the online adult store much anymore. Yes, I was only writing about candles and other totally G-rated stuff, but still. Oh, and my parents found the review blog last month too, so that's another reason.

Seriously, diet coke, a pile of neatly folded laundry, sunshine and quiet. Best afternoon ever :)

Today? It kind of sucked.

2011-10-13T23:18:00.000-07:00

Last night my parents called at the absolute worst time ever. We were all concerned because Ethan hadn't pooped in 4 days and I was rustling through my papers and trying to figure out who to call and I was annoyed at Ethan who didn't even seem to be trying.... and then my mom and dad called and I know it was a terrible conversation and I probably snarled at them.

I topped off the bad daughter routine with a psycho Mommy routine this morning, forever cementing me as the "least able to deal with things woman ever!" winner. Thankfully, we had decided and done major car-juggling so that I could drive Ethan to school, so I got to drop him off this afternoon and Vivian and I got to go to the grocery store AND Goodwill and we were happy and felt rewarded.

Ethan also refused to be friendly with his grandparents tonight on Skype and started hitting Vivian again, but we actually see that now as a good thing, since it means he's recovering. It's all about frames of reference, people.

I need a vacation.

Fanning the flames

2011-10-12T14:56:00.000-07:00

Okay, so this is totally NOT on the topic of Ethan and his surgery or Children's Hospital. For once. This is something that happened last week and I knew I had to write about it, but keep forgetting.

So, this takes place last Friday, at my oral surgeon's office. I had an implant placed a couple of weeks ago and had to go back on Friday afternoon for them to check it. And, since Daniel had missed work for my implant and would be missing this week for Ethan's stuff, I had to take the kids along. It was to be a fast appointment, and we have plenty of distracting electronic devices for them to play with, so no big deal.

And the kids were good, other than spilling a cup of ice water on my lap in the waiting room and disagreeing a bit on who got to hold the toy.

So the appointment was done and we were ready to check out. And the guy at the front desk starts talking to me loudly about my kids and how cute they are, and then began to say this: "You're my hero! I don't know how you stay at home with kids all day. You're just amazing!" (Not too bad so far, right?) And then he turns to the woman sitting at the desk next to him and said "I think she's just amazing! She stays home with her kids all day!" And THEN he says to me "(Name of the coworker sitting next to him) has a baby who is almost 1 and who is just starting to walk."

That's right! He gushed effusively about the wonders of stay-at-home moms IN FRONT OF HIS WORKING MOM COWORKER! I wanted to throw the remnants of the cup of ice water at him. Fortunately, before he made the comment about his coworker also being a mom, I had made comments about how much I enjoy the days when my son goes to school and how it is tough and I do often miss my job.

Working moms and stay-at-home moms have enough angst as it is, justifying our choices to ourselves and our friends and trying to figure out what works for our families, and (obviously well-meaning, but misguided) comments like this do not help. Personally, I know that I need to be at home now, especially with all of Ethan's issues. But that doesn't mean I'm going to be a stay-at-home mom forever or that I think I am doing a better job than I was when I was a working mom- in fact most of the time I worry that Vivian isn't getting all the education and stimulation that Ethan got when he was in daycare. Still, this is what's right for my family right now. But it has no relevance for what is right for anyone else and her situation.

And now I am done venting and it is 3PM and I think I need another cup of coffee to get me through the afternoon.

Home again

2011-10-12T11:27:00.000-07:00

We finally got discharged from Children's last night around 6 and made it back home to our place around 7. It was so nice to be done with all the hospital stuff and back where we all belonged. They took great care of us at Children's, but it's still not the most fun place to hang out.

Ethan's doing okay, but definitely is having a harder time recovering that we anticipated. I told Daniel last night that I'm really glad we had exhausted every single other option and knew this was absolutely what we had to do, because it's tough to watch Ethan be in pain on Monday and Tuesday and now just tired and not wanting to do much more than sitting.

Last night I was too exhausted to deal with a nighttime pump feeding (how quickly you lose the ability to deal with sleep deprivation!) so we held off until this morning. Probably a good thing, as Ethan finally broke down last night and spent a good 30 minutes just sobbing. Not because of pain or discomfort, just because of all he had been through in the past two days. I can't imagine being 4 and not understanding what's going on or why you're there or why you hurt. I remember being angry and frustrated after the four surgeries I've had in my life, and I was old enough to know what's going on every time.

The feeding tube does seem to be working well now, and it's WAY easier to use than the NG tube was. No checking tube placement or worrying that the tube is in the lungs or that it's too far out of the stomach. I just program the pump, load the bag and plug Ethan in. Definitely less stressful and worrisome than before. I'm running a small amount of food into him right now while he watches TV, then we'll start with nighttime feeds tonight.

On multiple occasions over the past week, people have asked me how I'm doing with all of this. And I keep having the same comment, that I'm tired, but fine. I don't know if this is how all parents feel, but I just feel like in the midst of the surgery and recovery and treatment, I don't have the time or energy to deal with my own emotions. I have to be paying attention to what's going on and advocating for my child and taking care of his needs. I'm sure there is some stress and other emotions lurking in the back of my brain, but the "what I need to deal with right now" part of my brain is not letting those through. Also, there's the fact that when you go to Children's, it's pretty likely that you're going to be surrounded by kids who are much sicker than your own. The girl that was in the same room as Ethan had been there for a month. A MONTH at Children's. So our two days there and Ethan's surgery didn't seem so bad after all.

In other news, Vivian has spent the past 4 days going from being alone with Daddy to being spoiled rotten by lots of relatives up in Canada to being back here with me (briefly) to being home alone with Grandma, to hanging out at the hospital for hours...and you can probably imagine what that ends up with in a 2 year old. Reprogramming of the toddler desperately needed! Poor kid though, she understands even less about what's going on than Ethan does.

So, spending today at home trying to get Ethan back on track and catch up with the laundry. Oh, and admire all the piles of random things that my mother-in-law folded while she was here. She's not one to sit still or rest, so between chasing Vivian around and entertain her, she tidies up, and since my home is already pretty tidy, she's reduced to folding anything that isn't folded. It's both useful and entertaining, all at once.

Monday at Children's Hospital

2011-10-10T13:14:00.000-07:00

Today was Ethan's surgery day, so early this morning we dragged Ethan out of bed, said goodbye to Vivian and Grandma and headed to the hospital. Things went quickly from there, with Ethan soon in surgery and after a couple of hours, we were all reunited in his hospital room. The procedure went well, but he's pretty upset about the IV and the tube in his stomach. He also seems to be in pain, which is hard to watch.

I know we had to do this and that it will be the right choice long-term, but it's awfully painful to sit here and stare at my child, knowing that I carried him into the operating room and then when he woke up, everything had changed and was painful.

This is one of those times when parenthood seems very real.

Trying to focus

2011-10-08T22:59:00.000-07:00

My therapist once asked me a question- along the lines of "what is the worst part of your appointments to discuss Ethan's growth?" And without a doubt, the answer was "telling the grandparents." Okay, so here's the truth. Sometimes I've joked about the value of going straight from no kids to being a grandparent. My mom's best friend married late in life and did just that. But the problem of being a grandparent, as I see it, is that you have all of the love (and possibly even a bit more) than a parent has, and almost none of the say in decisions.

My parents and Daniel's parents have been completely supportive about us going forward with the surgery for Ethan's feeding tube. So much so that Daniel's mom has insisted on coming down and staying with us Sunday-Tuesday so that she can watch Vivian and come visit Ethan, even though she herself is now having cataract surgery on Thursday (they're Canadian, and appointments kind of choose you, not the other way around). My parents, who have been totally and 1000000% behind the decision, were all of a sudden sounding freaked out on Skype today when we chatted.

The truth is, I know, beyond the faintest shadow of a doubt, that my 28 pound 4-year-old is never going to gain weight on his own. He eats approximately one meal per day, which is great, but that's not even enough to maintain weight, much less gain the weight he needs. It's just really hard being in a position where I have to be strong for Ethan and for my parents and Daniel's parents, and for Daniel, while I'm at it. And it hurts to be away from Vivian this weekend (she went with Daniel to Canada today to pick up his mom) and know that I'm mostly going to be away from her on Monday and Tuesday as well. Sometimes I just want to be 6 years old again and stamp my feet and scream "BUT I DON'T WANT TO BE A GROWN-UP!!!!"

Fortunately, I have a lot of peace and prayers going out with us and the memory of my dear friend putting her hand on Ethan on Friday and saying "God Bless You and Keep You" as she left. That small act of kindness and shared faith broke me down into a small fit of (good) crying on Friday. It's nice to have reminders that I am not alone, and that God loves and is taking care of my little boy. There's a lot of peace in that.

On a related note, I have consumed approximately 2000 calories of chocolate today, and I'm pretty sure once I'm relegated to sleeping in the kids' room tomorrow night (since my mother-in-law will be sleeping in our room) I will consume at least 1000 calories more. Seriously, there should be some rule that calories consumed within a week of a child's visit to Children's Hospital don't count. Let's get on that people, okay :)

The October doldrums

2011-10-05T11:16:00.000-07:00

It's definitely October here in Seattle. Right now it's something like 53 degrees and drizzling. And the oppressive gray skies that drive us to drink lots of coffee have returned. I'm thrilled that it's cooled off outside and inside, but I'm definitely experiencing a lack of light slump. We've pretty much spent the whole week holed up inside, looking out at the drizzle and sighing. Eventually I will have to get over this and start venturing out of the house again, because if I wait for sunshine and blue skies, I will be stuck at home until sometime in August of 2012.

Not only have we been home all week, but I have accomplished nothing. On my to-do list: make sure everything is ready for Ethan's surgery and hospital stay, get Vivian and Daniel packed for their quick trip to Canada this weekend, clean the house before Daniel's mom arrives, work on my anti human trafficking volunteer work, send long overdue emails to some friends, plan our meal schedule for this week and next week. What I have actually done: laundry, spent hours searching the house for chocolate, drank lots of coffee, played on Facebook. Yeah, I'm super productive and energetic.

Part of the problem is that I haven't got anything fun to look forward to. Next week isn't exactly going to be lots of fun, and although the feeding tube should really help Ethan, it is going to be an ongoing maintenance issue for me. And I tried to plan a couple of playdates for this week and next, only to discover that everyone is on different preschool schedules and there seems to be no overlap in free time. Thankfully I think I have plans with one friend later this week- hurray for that!

Send sunshine. And chocolate :)

Friday! Hurray!

2011-09-30T09:44:00.000-07:00

Hurray! It's Friday! And we're off to Target soon. And it's 65 degrees and sunny here, again. Perfection!

Glad to be done with this week. Can't really remember what went on, but it was not impressive, for sure. Ethan was off school on Wednesday for inservice, and might I say- the second week of school? TOO SOON for the kids to be home for a day.

Yesterday I had dental surgery and it was done under sedation, so I couldn't eat or drink for 8 hours before. Honestly, the food I could live without, but getting through the morning with the kids sans coffee was very difficult. I felt like I was half sedated already by the time my appointment rolled around. Fortunately the morning without coffee was the worst of the whole thing. After that, I showed up at the oral surgeon, they gave me an IV, I went to sleep, woke up a bit to go home with Daniel, then napped the rest of the day. And I think that any mom could tell you that a day off is a good thing, however it comes about. I have no idea what Daniel and the kids did- when I was semi-awake, there seemed to be a lot of watching of Wonder Pets, but whatever.

Speaking of Wonder Pets, my kids seem to have a true gift for becoming obsessed with the worst kids' shows. Our Netflix queue has so many cute options, but they pick the most annoying. Which is why Barney is not allowed to be played in our home under any circumstances. I suffered through that back when I was a teenager and was babysitting. It will never be allowed in my home.

Okay, being dragged off the computer to play hockey with the kids. Hope everyone has a good weekend!

Bravery

2011-09-27T14:04:00.000-07:00

Ethan's first surgery is finally scheduled- the first feeding tube will be placed on October 10th. Then he'll have a follow-up surgery in three months to replace it with another type of tube. Not looking forward to dealing with the pump all night again, but glad that there's a solution to his weight loss coming soon.

It's a glorious, quiet afternoon here in my condo. All the bus drama of last week is finally dealt with and Ethan was whisked off to school on time this afternoon. Vivian has happily started napping again now that there's nothing more exciting going on, so that's pretty terrific. I'm cleaning and trying to catch up on blog posts, as I'm having dental surgery on Thursday and will be out of commission for that day.

I've also been thinking a lot today, after some interesting conversations with my therapist this morning. Having thoughts about courage and bravery. That's a topic that's been on my mind a lot lately, thanks to a couple of books that I read. Thinking about the person I used to be- the EMT who worked on an ambulance, the 23-year-old who moved to Ukraine for a year, not knowing a soul there. I've never been a live-on-the edge type, but I lived a pretty big life. I've been feeling lately like I sort of lost that bravery and sense of wondering what's out there to experience. I'm controlled by silly things, like my phobia of making phone calls. And I avoid books or movies or TV shows that aren't almost entirely positive and happy and fluffy.

I want my old courage back- I want to start experiencing new things again, and I want Ethan and Vivian to grow up thinking of life as a great adventure.

Just not sure how to go about it yet.

Carrie and the no-good day

2011-09-20T19:10:00.000-07:00

Today was a Children's Hospital day. I've yet to experience one of those that didn't leave me feeling emotionally drained and exhausted. Today the emotional tiredness started as soon as I woke up. I was confused, but then remembered what was on our morning schedule.

Don't get me wrong, I love Children's Hospital and the amazing staff there. Everyone we've ever interacted with has been friendly and welcoming and supportive. But it's hard to go there with a sick kid. And it's even harder to see how many other families are there and see kids that are obviously not doing well. Every parent in the building has the same look- hopeful about a solution, but also a look of tiredness.

Finally, after months and months and years of Ethan not eating and trying every therapy available and attempts at high-calorie foods and supplement drinks and even months of Vivian sitting next to him and showing him how a "normal" kid eats, Ethan has actually lost weight since his 4 year well-child appointment. My 4 year old weighs in at 27 pounds. So today we made the decision to go ahead and have a gastric tube placed. This is going to mean surgery in the next few weeks, then another in three months. I'm overwhelmed and sad, but also know that we have done EVERYTHING in our human power and we've all prayed our hearts out, but the solution was not what we hoped. I'm so grateful to have a solution at all though, that I'm okay with this.

After Ethan's appointment, we came home to wait for his school bus. Yesterday it was about 30 minutes late, but it was the first day and the driver assured me that it was a fluke. Today the bus was 90 minutes late. It finally showed up 10 minutes after we'd given up and gone in (since Vivian was having a total nap-needing toddler melt-down outside). 25 minutes after the actual start of school. I momentarily thought about running Ethan back downstairs, but two hours on the bus for 90 minutes of school just didn't work for me. So I unexpectedly had a preschooler home all day, and a very disappointed one at that.

I reassured him that tonight would be fun, that we were going to enjoy a gorgeous Seattle night and have dinner on the beach with our church friends. Our gathering with them started an hour ago. I'm sitting in my pjs on the couch, and the kids are in bed. Daniel's still at work, so that outing got canceled at the last minute too.

I think the kids are dealing with all of today's stresses and disappointments better than I am. However, Glee is on tonight, and that almost never disappoints :) Bring on the wine and the great television!

Taking a deep breath

2011-09-17T10:04:00.000-07:00

My parents left yesterday morning. Then we had our usual crazy Friday before meeting up with my brother and his wife for dinner. They flew out early this morning. And at 7:30 this morning, Daniel headed to the mountains for our church's mens' retreat. The kids and I are sitting around the house in our pjs, confused by the concept of free time and also by the fact that there are no other adults around. I'm really hoping that I remember how to actually take care of my kids by myself :)

Ethan starts school on Monday, so we're trying to have a quiet weekend between the insanity of the past two weeks and the upcoming crowded calendar. This year he's in afternoon preschool, which makes me beyond happy. Last year he got home at the same time that Vivian sometimes naps, so she didn't nap for most of the school year. This year he'll be leaving at the same time that she goes down, so there's hope for quiet and free time for me. I'm also happy because I'm great at entertaining the kids in the morning, but not in the afternoon, so this solves a big part of that problem.

I do worry about his teachers though, because the PM preschool class is currently made up of 10 boys. No girls. And remember that these are all special needs kids. Those are going to be some tired teachers by 3:30 every day.

In other good news, it's cooled off here in Seattle, and the coolness has finally found its way into my home. We're down to 75 in the living room, so I've been able to put away the fans and what not. And I can dry my hair and put on my makeup without sweating. Score!

Yesterday, I ran a 10K. And did not come in last.

2011-09-12T22:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning, entirely too early, my sister-in-law and I laced up our shoes and headed to join the 3000+ other women lined up to run at the Iron Girl race going on at Green Lake. My poor sister-in-law got dragged into the race by virtue of planning a visit on the weekend when I was going to be running. And I'm so glad she was here- she ran with me, no matter how slow I went, also hated all the crazy fast people who were finishing the 10K at the same time we passed the 5K/halfway point, was willing to walk with me when I needed a break, and actually tried to finish behind me when we crossed the finish line. In the end, we crossed at the same time, and she is now alphabetically ahead of me, so she placed first. I'm so grateful for her support that I don't even mind.

Us, pre-race. My family was forbidden from taking photos during or post-race. I love them so much for complying. :)

It's still a little mind-boggling that I actually ran and completed a 6.2 mile race. Me, the person who never ran a step until last spring.

Now I'm going to rest up my achy legs and try to decide what to shoot for next. I don't think I have the attention span for a longer distance, which means I probably need to work on refining my running and maybe actually doing it in a way that I don't injure myself and end up fatter than I was before I started running. Just a thought.

Still, I'm awfully happy and proud of the 6.2 miles that I logged in public this weekend. Especially given that only 525 of the 3000+ people participating even attempted the 10K distance. It's nice to know that I am capable of something physical like this. I'm terribly uncoordinated and am chubby, but I can accomplish things that I set my mind to. It's good to know.

In which I confess to not really missing my children

2011-09-08T09:38:00.000-07:00

I admit it, I haven't really missed the kids these past two days. Don't get me wrong, I'm going to be absolutely thrilled to see them and hear about their trip and get hugs and snuggles and kisses tonight. But I've REALLY enjoyed my three days of freedom. I expected to miss the kids more- especially Vivian, since I normally spend almost 24 hours a day with her. She sleeps next to us, wants to be held all the time and is rarely more than a few feet away from me. So I thought I would feel her absence especially strongly.

But I haven't.

I was talking about this last night with Daniel (since I feel a little guilty about it), and noted that I think it's because they've just been SO MUCH lately. They're always around, always talking, always bickering. I'm constantly stressed about Ethan's food and supplement intake and weight and worried about his upcoming appointment. It's just all-consuming sometimes.

And it's been pretty terrific to be able to clean the house and have it stay cleaned. And to be able to get some things checked off my long-term to-do list. I'm definitely more efficient without little ones underfoot. And today I'm going off alone downtown to a blogger luncheon and to do some shopping and to the library, and I'm entirely too excited about it :)

But it will be good to have them home tonight. Daniel's just not as snuggly as the kids. :)

Absent

2011-09-06T15:54:00.000-07:00

Thinking about absences today. Probably because there are some noticeable absences in my life right now.

1) The kids! They went to Portland this morning with my parents to visit my grandmother. They're not coming home until Thursday afternoon/evening. Fortunately they were in rare form this morning, so I was not too sad to send them off. Am already missing them a bit though.

2) All kid furniture in the living room. That's right, we've completely gotten anything kid-related out of our living room and safely tucked into their bedroom. That's thanks to the absence of another thing...

3) Vivian's toddler bed/crib. We've had the big crib in the kids' room since Ethan was a baby, and had converted it to a toddler bed last year for Vivian. Ethan had a smaller toddler bed on his side of the room. But look what we got this weekend!

Ethan doesn't do change very well, so thoroughly rejected the idea of a new bed last time we were at IKEA. This Saturday we went and expected the same result when we casually suggested the bed to Ethan, only to be met with acceptance from him. Because he's recently started climbing everything and was thrilled by the idea of a ladder.

We actually bought the bed on Sunday, and Daniel and I put it together that afternoon/evening, with help from his brother and his dad, and thanks to the fact that all four grandparents and an uncle and aunt were around to distract the kids. Yes, eight adults is the right number for keeping two small kids entertained and under control.

The new bed necessitated some redecoration, since it went up on Vivian's side of the room, but I dusted off my crafting skills and made this for Ethan.

So simple and cheap!

We also moved over his rocket decal, although he was insistent that we leave the yellow flowers.

Vivian's got her little space too, with her dollhouse tucked in a corner. We're calling her space the Panda Cave, since she's currently in a panda phase. And the other side of the room is great for all their toys.

The best news though, is that we can now use our Murphy bed again (it's behind the table and easel there). Since Ethan's bed has been in front of it, we haven't been able to use that since Vivian was born. We rarely have overnight guests, but it's nice to have somewhere to stay if we do need to have someone sleep over in our room, rather than us sleeping in the living room.

Other absences
4) Mess in the house
5) Noise in the house
6) Snuggles and hugs :(

So far I've spent my day of freedom doing laundry, going to the dentist and walking to the post office. I told my dentist this and he gave me a look of total disapproval. The hygienist suggested that I should take a nap and seemed very disappointed in me when I said that I don't nap. I did assure them that Daniel and I were going out for dinner tonight and he's taking tomorrow off work, so my patheticness wouldn't last long. The people at the grocery store also had suggestions for my free time and I walked away from the checkout line to the sounds of the checker and bagger saying "have a great time while they're gone!" I love my neighborhood- everyone knows us and cares. It's a good feeling.

The last day of summer vacation

2011-09-02T15:09:00.000-07:00

Summer vacation sort of ends for us today. This is the last of the long, relatively unstructured days for the kids and I. Tomorrow night my parents arrive. Then Daniel's parents and his brother and sister-in-law are coming down for the day on Sunday. And my brother and sister-in-law arrive next week. And the kids are going to Portland with my parents to see my grandmother. Do you have any idea how horribly spoiled these kids are going to be by the time my parents go home in two weeks? They're the only grandkids on both sides. So they are adored and spoiled by everyone, and they're seeing pretty much everyone in the next week or so.

I told Daniel that he should go to our church's men's retreat the weekend between my family leaving and schools starting, because I was just going to need to spend the weekend reprogramming the kids anyway.

We're all excited, because we love seeing my parents and Daniel's parents and everyone. And I always like having extra adults around. And don't even get me started on the fact that my parents are taking the kids away for two days. Alone time in my own house! That never happens. I have big plans to rent a carpet cleaner and clean the carpets. Yes, I am wild and crazy. Daniel is going to take one day off work, and we're going to try to remember what life was like pre-kids. I'm pretty sure that we'll just talk about the kids non-stop and I'll whine about missing them :)

And then everyone will be gone again and Ethan will be off to preschool and we'll have to learn a new routine. I can't believe September is here and school is on its way back. Hopefully it'll be a good year for all of us!

Bandaids

2011-08-29T14:00:00.000-07:00

First off, I'd like to admit to how utterly pathetic we are on Mondays. Every week, when Daniel leaves for work, we all just sort of look at each other and begin randomly wandering around the condo looking for things to do. It's like all of our usual structure and ability to entertain ourselves gets lost somewhere in the weekend rush. Thankfully we have plans for most of the rest of the week, so I'm hopeful.

Ethan lately has been obsessed with car crashes and things falling over and such. I know he's only 4 and there's only so much he can understand, but I've been trying to introduce him to the idea that sometimes people get hurt in these situations and they aren't something we should laugh at. My cause is not helped by his obsession with the show Wipeout, in which people fall and run into things and get hit and are seemingly undamaged. But I digress. Whenever I tell him that people can get hurt, he generally responds with "I'll give them a bandaid". Because that's the extent of his understanding of being hurt. Since he's uber-cautious, he's only even had a handful of scrapes and bumps.

Then on Saturday we went to a screening of Lion King 3D. And when we got to the scene of the wildebeest stampede where the Daddy lion gets killed, I looked over to see Ethan wiping his eyes and sniffing and saying "I'm not crying, Mommy", even though he clearly was. And a bit of my heart broke as I realized that he understood a bit more than before. I know kids grow up and eventually they understand hard and sad things, but it's still tough to see them lose that innocence and start to realize that in their world, bandaids and hugs from Mommies can't actually fix everything.

"Need to hurry!"

2011-08-23T18:44:00.000-07:00

I only move at two speeds- reallyreallyreallyfast and not at all. Most of the time I'm moving at reallyreallyreallyfast speed with either my mind or body. It's really hard for me to slow down- relaxing stresses me out, I've probably only taken a handful of naps this decade, and sleeping at night is always challenging.

This need to move move move fast fast fast has helped me throughout life- I was known at my job for my efficiency and speed in getting work done. But now I'm not spending my day writing technical papers, I'm spending my day with a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old. And they do not move fast. Particularly when we're out and about. Until recently, I managed this slowness by taking the kids out in the double stroller whenever we went out. And then I started training for the 10K (coming up way too soon) and have been fighting with nasty shin splints and pushing around 75 pounds of kids and stroller is just no longer an option.

So now when we go places, we go at Ethan speed (Vivian still prefers the stroller most of the time). And when I stop and listen to myself, I'm appalled at just how often I hear myself telling Ethan to speed up or hurry up or keep moving. He's 4, he's discovering the world and I am NOT helping. And the thing is- most of the time there is no good reason for me to be telling the kids to hurry. We generally have nothing on the schedule for the day and there's no reason to make our walk home from the museum take only 15 minutes instead of 30. There is usually nothing at home except laundry.

This tendency of mine has been really made real to me lately by the fact that both kids will randomly say "Mama, we need to hurry!". It kind of hurts to hear that- I've turned my kids into worriers who feel the need (randomly, never when I want them to hurry) to move fast.

I'm trying to work on this- today when I was walking Ethan over to his day camp at the Children's Museum, I was careful about my words and let him go as slowly as he wanted. And it hurt me a little. But I don't want my kids to grow up with the internal and external frenzy that has consumed my life. I need to learn from them and move at preschooler speed once in a while.

On a totally different note, about 3 weeks ago Vivian got up one night from our bed, walked into her room and got in her bed and has been sleeping there through the night ever since. This, my friends, is why I'm not potty training the child. When she doesn't want to do something, no power on earth can move her. And when she makes up her mind, there's no effort at all.

The problem with my new t-shirt

2011-08-16T14:25:00.000-07:00

Last week I ventured over to Etsy to look at running stuff, and ended up buying a t-shirt with the phrase "running sucks" across the front. Which, if you run and are not completely weird, you will realize is true. Running is hard and it hurts and (worst of all, in my opinion), you get all sweaty and yucky. I really enjoy running only when I've just finished a run and I'm all busy being proud of myself and happy that I don't have to run anymore that day.

Suckiness aside, I still do it and I know it's good for me.

So, this morning, I set out around the lake, wearing my pretty new purple shirt, with the bright lettering that read "running sucks" on it. And about 10 feet into my run, I realized that there is a serious problem with wearing a shirt that makes a statement like that. In order for me to be making a funny jokey statement with the shirt, I actually had to be running. All the time. Or at least whenever anyone would run past, which is pretty much all of the time. No more lazy fat girl breaks. If I'm wearing a shirt that says "running sucks" out at a busy running area and NOT running, then I'm just pathetic and maybe even a little judgmental.

On a good note, I ran the 6K this morning several minutes faster than on any other run in the recent past. So perhaps it was a good motivation. :)

Lather, rinse, repeat

2011-08-15T13:45:00.000-07:00

Before I get into the main point of this post, I'd like to record for posterity the details of the cartoon that my kids are watching right now. It's their newest obsession and it's called Fishtronaut. The main characters are a girl, a talking monkey, and a fish who flies around in a space suit. And the three of them help solve environmental problems. WHO THINKS UP THESE SHOWS?

Anyway. We're just back from Ethan's 4-year well child appointment and post-appointment trip to the Science Museum. Not a good combo for promotion of maternal mental stability. Ethan's healthy as always, tolerated his multitude of shots well and everything looks good. Except his weight. I feel like we're in this endless loop. Every well child appointment comes around, we're all concerned about his weight, we go to Children's and they run tests or have a suggestion, we try it, it fails, we're back at his regular doctor for another appointment, we're all concerned, she refers us to Children's....

After the NG tube and the beginning of therapy and school, we were all really hopeful and he did seem to make a bit of progress. But not enough. Our primary care doctor got detailed info from several people at Children's so that we know when to be a lot concerned versus in a "wait and see" level of concerned. In Ethan's particular case, the recommendation was that he gain a certain amount of weight every month, in order to start catching up on the curve and maintain what he needs for proper physical and mental development. Instead of gaining this amount of weight EACH month, he gained that amount of weight total.

I was so hopeful that we'd be able to get some weight on him this summer while he's home four extra hours per day. I thought that with those extra four hours I could stuff him full of ice cream and nutritional supplement. But it didn't happen.

Back last December when we were trying to make a decision about the NG tube, Ethan once asked me to sing "Jesus Loves Me" to him. Ever since then, I've had the line in the song "little ones to Him belong- they are weak, but He is strong." stuck in my head. I KNOW that's true. And it helps immensely. I'm a big believer in prayer and healing and guidance. But it's still hard being the one who's on the front lines with this and who has to make the big decisions that are going to affect my son forever.

In other, much fluffier news, I went to a fancy haircut place this weekend with one of those deal of the day coupons and got a great cut and color. And I finally got some backup on the evils of my hair- after cutting it, the stylish said "yeah, you have some really interesting growth patterns going on here." She also affirmed me in my resolution to never, ever, ever again get bangs. She said that she's recommended bangs for every client who has ever asked for them, but that my hair's growth pattern is going to make sure that it's always a wrong choice for me. I love fancy hair stylists!

Four

2011-08-10T10:15:00.000-07:00

Somehow, without me really noticing, four years have passed. And in the blink of an eye, we've gone from this:

To this:

Four is a little hard for me to wrap my brain around, but I'm not too freaked out by it. I think I did all my "he's growing up so fast!" freaking out back in February when I put him on a school bus and sent him off to school. But now his crazy grownupness seems normal. Or at least normalish :)

We celebrated last night since today's a busy day and we'll be out tonight at Bible study. I made Ethan a yellow dinosaur cake for his birthday, at his request. It was insanely easy, thanks to some great Betty Crocker instructions online. I didn't spend a whole lot of time on it, since we were celebrating at home with just the four of us, but I was happy with the results and Ethan was thrilled.

It'll be interesting to see how four goes for us. Because of his sensory/development issues, Ethan hasn't really gone through the terrible twos or threes. We had a tough time with him back around 14 months, but since then he's been pretty low key. He is a pleaser and likes following the rules (most of the time), so we've not gone through the rebelliousness and pushing the limits too much. Before you get annoyed by how easy we've had it, let me assure you that Vivian is making sure to make up for it :)

So- Ethan at four. He's still tiny, but is speaking well now and is learning to jump and run. He is obsessed with all things sports- curling, hockey, football, soccer, lacrosse, baseball, basketball... you name it, he loves to watch it and pretend to play it. He's definitely still a ladies' man- if there's a woman in the room, chances are pretty good that he'll be trying to sit on her lap or hug her or hold her hand. Ethan's favorite color is yellow, his favorite book is his Children's Bible, and he's inseparable from his stuffed Monkey and Froggie. He just discovered Star Wars, and loves that. And he thinks he's Harry Potter :)

I said on Facebook this morning that four years ago was one of the most stressful and crazy days of my life, but with the biggest reward. We are truly blessed to have Ethan in our lives, he's an amazing and fun and loving little boy. Happy birthday, Ethan!

Tuesday, part 2

2011-08-02T18:52:00.000-07:00

One of my bloggy friends left a comment on my last post about being ready to run away from home and wanting to come here. No, you may not come here, because I'm ready to run as well.

Two years and two months. That's how long this non-eating, weight-worry has been going on with Ethan. He made it up to the 5th percentile at one point in time, and we rejoiced. I think I can count on one hand how many days out of the 2 years and 2 months he's eaten more than a couple hundred calories worth of solid food.

And now he's sick again. Which I feel badly about on so many levels, because he was sick Saturday morning once and Sunday morning, once, but seemed fine on Monday, so we went to a friend's house. And then he got sick Monday night on our way to the baseball game, but we figured he was just overexcited, so we went anyway... and then he spent the entire day today on the couch or in bed (of his own volition), then he got up tonight, asked for a snack and promptly threw up all over the table and floor.

I. Am. Tired. I am tired of keeping track of his intake and pushing the supplement and worrying. I'm tired of this horrible stress when he does get sick and loses a few pounds, because those pounds are SO hard fought. I hate the fact that he turns 4 next week and is in 18-24 month clothes. I am tired of worrying about the double standard for food that we have in our house for him and for his sister. And I'm sad that so much of my mental energy is tied up in Ethan's stuff that some days I don't even think to check in with my husband, who has a serious degenerative autoimmune disease of his own, but doesn't complain, so his problems take second place because I just don't have the mental energy left.

My therapist keeps getting annoyed with me because whenever this stuff comes up in our meetings, I brush it off. Because I am insanely blessed to have good doctors and therapist and the finances to pay for them and the ability to stay home and make sure Ethan's eating and drinking and whatnot. But it's true. This is hard. And it's wearing me out.

Tuesday

2011-08-02T14:24:00.000-07:00

It's Tuesday here, and so far my kids have gotten out of bed only to then immediately lie on the floor or the couch. Ethan's back in bed again now. Not sleeping, just hanging out. I think a weekend of being sick, followed by a super-fun, but very busy day yesterday did them in. So now here we are. Hanging out in the house, while I wonder how on earth it's messy again, when I spent pretty much all of my time Thursday-Sunday here at home, cleaning. Seriously, I don't think I can handle ever living anywhere that's bigger than 900 square feet, since I can barely keep up with this.

Although, my husband is looking at slightly bigger condos in the city, and if we want to stay in an urban environment, this is the time to move. After we change the carpet here and repaint and empty our closets into a storage unit and wait for winter so that it isn't always 80 degrees in here. Other than all that stuff. Which I have told Daniel I will support him with and help out with, but if he's serious about moving, he has to get the ball rolling. So we'll see if that ever happens.

On an unrelated note- my baby is going to be FOUR next week! How did that happen? He has new glasses now and looks all grown up with his wire frames. And he's gotten a bit taller, so he's looking so totally un-baby and un-preschooler these days. And Vivian's certainly no longer a baby, as she will inform you if you ask. I don't even really like babies or enjoy that stage, but the further I get away from it, the weirder it gets. I keep having these weird spells where I'll just start crying to Daniel about the kids growing up and being teenagers and hating us. Then Daniel tries to be all logical and rational and also tries to pretend that he's not totally concerned for my sanity.

And on another unrelated note, we're at 5 weeks and 5 days until my 10K. And my shin splints SUCK, but I am going to run it even if I can't walk without pain for the next few months. After September it gets hard to run much anyway, since it starts getting light later, and I have to run early in the morning before Daniel goes to work. So I just need to be able to keep going until mid-September and then slowly not die while I run two laps around Green Lake. I can do this. I NEED to do this, for my own sanity.

Germs are stupid

2011-07-30T13:03:00.000-07:00

So, Vivian got sick on Thursday right as we were heading out the door to a friend's house. Leading to sadness from the kids and me and the friend we were going to visit. But we recovered and Vivian rested up. Still, yesterday I made a bunch of phone calls and rearranged plans and delivered all the baby shower stuff to the husband of the friend whose house the shower was to be at. Even though Vivian was seeming better, I didn't want to take a chance and have her around my pregnant friend or the other kids at the shower. And I didn't want Daniel and Ethan to have to miss the baseball game that Ethan's been talking about constantly for weeks.

By last night Vivian was running around and jumping and being crazy, so I though maybe everyone would be fine by today. And then 2 AM came and Ethan started throwing up. Of course. So now, instead of being at the baby shower with Vivian, or home with her, I'm home with Ethan, and Vivian is off at the baseball game with Daniel. All of the changing and rearranging of plans has left my brain in a knot.

Fortunately, we're going to another Mariners' game on Monday night, so Ethan is dealing okay with the disappointment.

I'm just praying to stay healthy, because I am going to a party tonight, hosted by my friend whose parties are legendary and I WILL NOT MISS IT! The germs need to know better than to mess with me. I've been home for three straight days with sick kids and I need a fun evening out with the girls!

Okay- need to pack up Mr. Germy and take him out for a walk. It's a beautiful day here!

I really hate germs

2011-07-28T09:45:00.000-07:00

I hate germs. A lot. We've had a really quiet week this week- just hanging out at home or at the museum. The weather hasn't been great, and we've not had much to do. But we had plans for today- lots of them. Plans to visit a good friend and her kids. Plans to get a huge list of things done that I needed the car for.

Yesterday Vivian seemed a little bit "off". And this morning she wouldn't eat breakfast. But I didn't think much of it. And at 9 AM, we all had our shoes on and were walking to the front door of our condo to go out.

Which is when Vivian started throwing up. Big time. I'm very grateful that she did it at home and not when we were halfway to taking Daniel to work, but still. Ethan cried when I told him our visit to friends was off. So did I, actually.

I know it's silly, but sometimes the only thing that gets me through a long day with the kids is looking forward to plans later in the week or on the weekend. And it's hard to watch my kids be disappointed about an event being canceled. And the weather is actually gorgeous here today- so it's hard to not be able to go really enjoy it. Thankfully we have the back courtyard, so we can go play bubbles later today.

Whatever happens, Vivian must get better immediately and the rest of us have to stay healthy! I have two parties on Saturday, one of which I am hosting! And Daniel and Ethan have expensive baseball tickets for Saturday afternoon. These germs need to remove themselves from our household immediately!

In other news, did you know that they make saltine Goldfish? Brilliant! Vivian's not a big fan of regular saltines, but she'll eat the saltine Goldfish. Win!

Things that have been making me smile lately

2011-07-26T19:02:00.000-07:00

1) We finally bought a Blu-Ray player. This makes me happy, not because I'm such a big technology person, but because we've been using our tiny little portable DVD player to play DVDs and it doesn't have a remote. And I had to hook/unhook it all the time in order to plug in other things, so I'm thrilled to have a dedicated media player.

2) It's 7 PM and I just looked over to see Vivian sleeping on the couch. I tried to wear out both kids today, and I think I succeeded! Hopefully I can get them both in bed soon. They haven't been sleeping until 10 or 10:30 lately and it's gotten old. Early bedtime tonight!

3) I bought tickets today for a Mariners' game. Not any Mariners' game, but one against the Yankees. Now, like all good Seattle fans, am anti-Yankees, but they happen to be my dad's favorite team, and today I discovered that they are going to be playing here while my parents visit. So he'll be able to see his favorite team with most of his favorite people and work on his "indoctrinating the kids to love the Yankees" life goal. It always makes me happy to do things that make someone else smile.

4) Vanilla cupcake flavored goldfish. Have you all tried these? They are SO yummy! I have had to start hiding them from the kids, since I don't want to share.

5) The book My Year With Eleanor. This wasn't one I reviewed, but was one I got from the library and I loved it so much. It's a memoir about a 29-year-old, unemployed writer who decides to take a Eleanor Roosevelt quote "do one thing every day that scares you" and make it her goal for a year. I think I got as much motivation from the book as I did from therapy. I highly recommend it if you're feeling a little blah in your life and are looking for some motivation.

So those are my thoughts on this Tuesday night- anyone else feeling particularly in love with anything?

My vacation week

2011-07-22T19:53:00.000-07:00

I was telling Daniel tonight at dinner that this week was even better for me than our actual vacation week. Although I missed Ethan and it was great to see him every evening, having him fed and entertained by someone else all week was such a great break. Just not having to stress all day and negotiate over food and getting a break from "stop hitting her-stop taking the toys from him" nonsense that goes on here all the time was fabulous.

Although I couldn't have afforded to have Ethan gone for much longer- Vivian and I shopped all week! We had the car on Monday and Tuesday and visited several nearby shopping areas. Only having one kid to buckle and unbuckle made me willing to make multiple stops and visit extra stores. Then yesterday and today we picked up Ethan via monorail- which meant downtown shopping! I'm pretty sure there isn't a Starbucks or store that we missed this week.

So now Ethan's week of camp is done, and we immediately enrolled him in part-day camp for a few days per week over at the Children's Museum. Daniel and I decided that he really needs the socializing with other kids- three months is a long time to be off school at his age. At least that's my excuse :)

Oh, and summer finally showed up here! And it's nice summer! 75 and sunny! Feeling a little guilty about that, given how horribly hot it is elsewhere. Everyone! Come to Seattle!

Being grateful for reminders of grace

2011-07-20T09:33:00.000-07:00

My therapist and I were talking yesterday about a bunch of things, but mainly about how I (like a lot of people) let the negative messages in my brain overwhelm the positive. One of the ways that she wants me to work on this is by blogging about things that I am grateful for. I was thinking about that last night and this morning, and the first thing that came to mind was just this whole depression/life reassessment thing. I'm still not crazy about being clinically depressed (obviously), and I wish I was doing a lot better with things related to that. But one thing I am grateful for is the forced time to stop and take a look at my life and who I have been and think about who I want to be and how I want to live my life in the future.

The major issue underlying everything is that I am a performer by nature. Several people commented that I seemed really comfortable speaking in front of our church on Sunday, and they were surprised, because they know that I'm not terribly social. But that's kind of what being a performer is about, for me at least. Give me a microphone and stick me in front of a crowd, and I'm great. Leave me to talk one on one with someone, or (even worse) make me speak to someone on the phone, and I am a wreck and can barely complete sentences.

This has been true in other areas of my life too, as I've always been able to hide behind performing in smaller ways as well. Performing at work, performing as a student or at church as the pastor's kid. But this part of my life doesn't have any masks to hide behind or stages to keep me safe from the fear of interacting and failing. It's a down and dirty stage of life.

And I'm kind of glad to be here, to be forced to be honest with myself and get to know who I really am. And I'm SO glad for the many reminders that have been placed in my life lately of grace and love. That God loves me for who He created me to be, not because of what I do. That my husband and my kids love me whether or not the laundry is all done and the house is spotless. Truthfully though, I can't quite understand and accept that yet, so I'm grateful that the message keeps coming at me from lots of different places.

In totally unrelated news, today is July 20th and I am wearing a sweater. I am INCREDIBLY grateful that it's not hot here. If it was even 75 or 80, I would probably be whining about that. But still, we're going to need some sunshine around here soon, or else we're going to be a bunch of depressed, vitamin D-deprived zombies running around come November. We cannot endure 9 months of winter gloom unless we at least get a few weeks of summer first. Even Vivian's hitting the coffee cup. She plays pretend coffee drinking a lot, but yesterday she needed the real coffee maker on in order to pretend. She made about 20 pretend cups of coffee before I kicked her out of the kitchen.

Feeling a little "mother henish" this morning

2011-07-18T13:30:00.000-07:00

Ethan's at 'camp' this week. Not real camp, since he's not even 4 yet, but a glorified daycare program that he's attending for one week. It's something that he's getting because of a blog post I wrote. Today is day 1 of the five day program. Even though he went to day care as a child and even though he goes to public school preschool during the school year (and rides a school bus, no less!), it's still weird to leave him. I was trying to explain it to Daniel this morning. It's the same thing I feel during the school year. Even though I know it's great for him to socialize and even though I love the freedom of just having one kid around, I just don't relax fully when one of my kids is out of arms' reach. During the school year, I literally would breathe a sigh of relief every day when I got him off the school bus and he was back home. Everyone was back in my little nest of a condo, and it felt right.

Today Daniel informed me that I can't pick Ethan up until 3 or 3:30. Which seemed reasonable at 10 AM, but the day is taking longer than I thought it would. I know that I'm going to be ready to send him back to daycare by about 4:15 this afternoon though, so I'm trying to appreciate the silence. YES, I HAVE SILENCE! I have only one kid at home and she was so worn out by our fun girls-morning-out of shopping and lunch, that she's out cold in the other room.

In other news, we got to go on the Day Out With Thomas event this past weekend (again, a thing for the review blog), which was fun and tiring. The kids are still insisting on wearing the t-shirts that we bought them and their temporary tattoos haven't worn off, so we definitely are looking like we drank the Thomas kool-aid here in our household :) Daniel and I gave a testimony at church yesterday, and I was kicking myself for not getting a temporary tattoo on Saturday so that I could have shown it off to the whole congregation yesterday. Oh well.

And in other, other news, summer showed up again today in Seattle, after a weekend of rain. Yesterday was particularly awful, with lots of rain and cold weather outside. I'd still rather have that then the 100+ degrees going on elsewhere. Hope those of you affected by the hot weather are staying cool! Today's nice though, and it's good to have some sunlight to look at through my (dirty) living room windows.

Happy Monday, everyone!

In which I realize how much I adore my husband

2011-07-11T23:46:00.000-07:00

Today was rough. With a capital R. It was Rough. For me at home with the constantly fighting kids and also for Daniel at work. By 5 PM he and I were both exhausted and chatting on Skype. At 5:30 I broke under the stress of home and begged for sushi for dinner. Putting the defrosted salmon in the oven and cutting up the broccoli (our planned dinner for Monday) just seemed to be too much (Note: It was 82 degrees in my kitchen at 5:30, and I couldn't handle the idea of turning on the oven again).

My beloved agreed to sushi for dinner with enthusiasm. This is one reason why I love him. Then, after dinner, I looked at the time and realized that I could actually make it up to the library to pick up my books on hold. Which is when Daniel said the most magical words ever "why don't you just take your time and hang out at the library for a while." I think I turned into a blur at that point, running away from the bedtime insanity and towards solitude. I didn't end up staying at the library for long, but rather headed from the library to a little bistro where I sat with my books and ate a cookie and drank a glass of wine and started to feel like a human being again. I was gone from home for less than an hour, but it recharged me immensely.

I am insanely blessed in so many areas of life, but one of the biggest blessings is my husband. I remember so many lonely nights in my 20s, when everyone else around me seemed to be finding the spouse they were looking for. I looked for my soulmate on two different continents and dated great men, but things didn't work. Then one day I replied to a message on match.com and we set up a date and my life has never been the same since. I am so grateful to have this amazing soulmate and partner in my life.

Now if I could just convince him to take the kids to work with him every day, he'd be the best husband ever :)

Yes, this does constitute a crisis in my sad little world

2011-07-11T12:12:00.000-07:00

It's Monday. It's pajama day in my house (for the kids, I don't like to wear my pjs during the day). And I just discovered that I am out of Diet Coke. The kids refuse to give up on pj day so that we can go to the store to get diet coke, and without drinking the diet coke, I don't have the energy to make them get dressed. It's a sad, sad problem :)

In case you were wondering, we did make it to marriage class last Wednesday and I was in a snit most of the way there and through the socializing time, so I volunteered myself to watch the kids as they played on the playarea and Daniel socialized. The class itself was fabulous- our pastor really had a strong message for the husbands. This week the message will be more geared to the wives, and all us women at church are a little nervous. I've been joking that we should only attend on the husband-oriented weeks. Daniel's not buying that.

In other, less self-centered news, I've got a new Facebook page that I want to share with you guys. Not my personal page, but it's one that I've been working on as part of the group that I'm now volunteering with. The page is for a group called Women of Purpose, and the group works with World Concern to help with human trafficking prevention projects. As I've gotten to know more about human trafficking over the past couple of months, I've been shocked by the enormity of the issue. It might not seem like much, but we can help out, one child at a time, and that's what Women of Purpose does. If you're on Facebook and would like to get some more information about human trafficking or Women of Purpose, drop by and visit the page. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Women-of-Purpose-World-Concern/165327743534780

I wonder if I can convince Daniel to come home at lunchtime and bring me a diet coke....

Overtired and overwarm

2011-07-06T17:38:00.000-07:00

Daniel and I just had a stupid fight on the phone about his busy work schedule lately and whether or not him not leaving work on time tonight meant we couldn't still make it to the marriage class up at our church. I think fighting about whether or not to go to marriage class only has one clear right answer. Sadly, in my overheated/feeling martyrish/wanting to pick a fight attitude, I picked the wrong side in this battle and now have no choice but to apologize and stop sulking. Drat.

We've been Busy here lately. Definitely with a capital B. I'm still adjusting to Ethan being home all day, and in an attempt to not break out the wine at 9 AM because of all the whining and fighting, we've been on the go a lot. So much so that by yesterday afternoon, after a fifth or sixth straight day of "Let's go have fun and Do stuff!" I had two insanely cranky and tired kids on my hand. The kind of tired that involves breaking out into hysterical crying over the smallest issue. A friend of mine said her daughter did that this weekend as well, so perhaps the sunshine is making all our kids a little crazy?

Yeah, summer finally got here. It's been in the mid-70s/low 80s this week. Which is glorious out in the sunshine, but means I sweat while pushing the 90+ pounds of kids/stroller whenever we walk anywhere, and it also means that my kitchen reaches the high 80s by evening time. That is definitely another point in favor of going to marriage class tonight. Air conditioning.

Oh my goodness, my kids are hysterical. We made a (failed) attempt at potty-training Vivian last week, and now she's all in the potty motivation mode. She just followed Ethan to the bathroom, clapped when he peed and is now standing around and making sure he washes his hands.

T-20 minutes until the marriage class starts. Husband still not home. We live about 40 minutes from church when it's rush hour... we'll see how this drama ends...

Happy Canada Day!

2011-07-01T14:06:00.000-07:00

It's my kids' least favorite three-day period of the year- the one in which I dress them up in all their Canadian gear on July 1 and in their American gear on July 4. The photo session this morning did not go particularly well (these are the GOOD photos from the bunch). Maybe they'll be happier about being American....

Happy Canada Day- and safe travels to everyone who is traveling for the Canadian or American holiday. Hope your long weekend is a great one, whichever day you're celebrating!

Commencing Operation Pottytraining

2011-06-29T12:06:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling motivated this week to do all sorts of random things. I've organized closets and cupboards. I've registered for my first 10K in September. I've worked on brainstorming for a new project that I'm going to be involved with. And I decided to give pottytraining Vivian a shot.

Honestly, I don't know if she's ready. Vivian is a very hard child to read on things like this. I know she's capable of going on the potty, but she's very strong willed, so it's a matter of making HER want it. And I'm trying to figure out that. I'm a big fan of the cold turkey method of potty training, so right now she's running around in a diaper and having accidents on the carpet (and now no one who lives in Seattle will ever want to visit me again...). I have found a method that works for getting her to sit on the potty, which is progress.

I was about 2 hours into potty training this morning before I remembered that potty training Ethan involved a bottle of tequila for Mommy. As we are currently tequila-less, I'm not sure how well things are going to go.

The best part about potty training so far (all 4 hours of it) was watching Daniel this morning when Vivian had her first accident of the day. He wasn't around for the early stages of potty training Ethan, and Ethan never had accidents after the early days, so he kind ]of freaked out a little and ran around saying "oh my goodness. She peed on the chair! Need a towel!" (And I've just REALLY ruined my chances of local visitors with that comment...) It was especially funny because Daniel is a very calm person and rarely gets flustered about much of anything.

We'll see how it goes this week. If Vivian hates it, I'll try again in a few months. That's nice thing about the second kid- I know she'll get it eventually and I'm not going to freak out about it. Even though my mother-in-law is visiting this weekend and she's been asking for months about why Vivian isn't potty trained yet. I always offer to let her do the potty training, but she's yet to take me up on the offer :)

I've actually spoken to actual adults multiple times in the past week!

2011-06-28T18:10:00.000-07:00

I was driving Daniel to work this morning and we were chatting about our upcoming weekend and what we wanted to do with the three days. And we got to chatting about social events and and what was on the immediate schedule, and I made the comment that, for once, I wasn't desperate to talk to people this week. Then I got to thinking and realized that I met up with friends on Thursday for a zoo outing. And had lunch with my best friend on Friday. And went to our friends' house on Saturday for lunch. And on Sunday I had an actual girls-night-out with three of my favorite local bloggers. That's right, Miss Anti-Social had four honest-to-goodness social events in just four days.

I think I may have used up my full allotment of words for the rest of the month with all that socializing :)

We're still trying to adjust to our summer schedule here. Or lack of schedule, I should say. I'm loving the lack of rush and stress in the morning. It's great to have kids who are actually getting to sleep as much as they need and not have to drag tired little ones out of bed at 7 AM (my kids intensely dislike mornings). But I am missing the quiet mornings with Vivian. Ethan makes things more fun, but SO loud. And there are SO many arguments!

On a related note, did you all see the study that says that whining may be the most annoying sound in the world? I laughed when I first heard this- any mom could have told you that!

And once again, it's dinner time and the reality of dinner has failed to cross my mind all day (seriously, I am in such deep denial about cooking...) so I should probably be a good wife and go try to figure out something before Daniel gets home. Happy Tuesday!

Happy summer!

2011-06-21T13:32:00.000-07:00

Ethan's last day of school was today and the sun is shining and it's apparently officially summer by all accounts. We're celebrating by watching Pocoyo and not going outside :) Actually, that's not true. We will be driven outdoors soon when the sun starts shining in our windows and maing it hotter inside than out. This is actually one of my favorite times of year, because it's usually around 85 degrees in our living room/kitchen by the time dinner rolls around, and I can pretty easily convince Daniel that it's too hot to have the stove or oven on. And then we get sushi instead and all is well with the world.

This morning we went to school with Ethan to celebrate his last day of preschool. A number of his friends are moving on to kindergarten, so there were lots of tears from those parents and the teachers about that. We have two years left, so on our part it was just lots of being thankful for all they've done at school to help Ethan. Some amazing teachers and therapists and aides there, for sure.

On a related note, I don't think that I ever mentioned the biggest miracle of the year- Ethan has started eating! He's actually eating about as much as Vivian is, which is great. He's so far putting it all into energy and not into pounds (he's still stuck at 28 pounds. 1.6th percentile! Possibly not my kid after all?), but my goal for the summer is to get some weight on him. Since he is eating now, the topic of a semi-permanent feeding tube has been shelved again, at least for now. Which is nice- I was not excited about that thought of that. Force-feeding ice cream and chocolate is much preferable to serious interventions.

Anyway- it's summer! And I have to try to remember how to entertain two kids all day! Much brainstorming must be done! Happy summer, everyone!

Girls versus boys. A random observation

2011-06-15T14:32:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to blog about this for a couple of weeks now, but I keep forgetting. Until now! I finally remembered! There is hope for my brain after all!

Anyway, I had a funny experience a few weeks ago- one that once again demonstrated for me just how different little boys and little girls can be. One morning while Ethan was at school, Vivian and I had a friend over for a few hours. Vivian's friend is fairly close to Vivian's age (about 10 months older), so the girls were having a great time playing with all the toys in the house and snacking and doing whatever 2-year-old girls do.

It was a nice morning, but at one point in time, they did something that absolutely blew my mind. The girls walked over to the table of blocks and sat down. And then they chatted about the blocks for a while, and then they decided to build a tower. So they did. They built a tower about 10 blocks high- and then they WALKED AWAY WITHOUT KNOCKING IT DOWN!!! The tower stood on the table, undisturbed for the next two hours. Seriously, this has never happened in our house. I thought it was just my son who was incapable of seeing anything stacked up without knocking it over, but when I told this story to another friend of mine who has two boys, she stared at me with such a look of disbelief and shock.

I think it was especially funny and unexpected to me because usually Vivian is around her brother and when we see this little friend, Ethan's generally around then too. So he takes care of all the loud noises and knocking things over and I never noticed that the girls might have different ideas.

And yes, when Ethan got home from school and saw the tower, he immediately walked over and knocked it down.

Two

2011-06-15T09:48:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it's mid-June now- and Ethan's last day of school is next Tuesday! We're all going with him on Tuesday for a party in his class, so that means were down to only two more mornings of getting up insanely early and waiting for the bus. The bus didn't show up at all on Monday morning and when Daniel took Ethan to school, he found out that the bus driver had been in an accident that morning. We found out more details later- the driver was about 5 minutes from here and someone hit the side of the bus, full-on. Fortunately there were no kids on the bus yet and the driver was fine. I'm at a loss as to how someone could manage to not notice a big yellow bus in an intersection.

I'm also at a loss as to what I'm going to do with the kids all summer. We need to start planning activities. Right now I'm more focused on the freedom from the crazy early morning rush. No one in our family copes well with mornings, so they're generally full of whining and complaining and not getting along. It'll be nice to have three months free of that!

Despite the early mornings, Ethan's preschool has been such a blessing to our family. He's grown by leaps and bounds, thanks to the therapy and the teaching that he's been receiving there. And he's loved the socializing and being a big boy and going to school. He's got two more years of this preschool before he heads on to kindergarten, and I know it's going to be a great thing for him in the years to come as well. It's really nice to have people coming alongside us to help him catch up and learn the things he needs to know.

On a completely different note- I got an email the other day from someone who reads my blog- letting me know that she saw me at the zoo in San Diego (Hi N!). How crazy and fun is that? My first reaction was to hope that it wasn't in a moment when the kids were scaring the animals with their behavior- and my second reaction was to wish she'd said hi then. It's really a small world, isn't it!

Home again, home again

2011-06-13T14:13:00.000-07:00

We're back from our first real family vacation, and it was a success! It was an interesting trip- other than Ethan being sick repeatedly on the flight down, it was pretty uneventful and things went smoothly. We were really happy with our choice to not rent a car, and were also really happy with our choice of hotel as well. Riding the bus/trolley and staying out of the main hotel area definitely gave us a glimpse of the non-tourist side of San Diego, but that was interesting too.

It was definitely different from our pre-kid vacations, for sure. Daniel and I kept joking that we barely interacted the entire trip. We each seemed to be chasing a kid or pushing a kid in the stroller or sleeping with a kid in our separate beds. We intended for the kids to share a queen bed and for us to share one, but that didn't happen. Still, it was relaxing and fun and we liked everything that we saw.

The San Diego Zoo lived up to all of its hype- what a great place! The kids especially liked the Children's area of the zoo and we spent a long time there. I did finally get photographic evidence that my children are occasionally more poorly behaved than wild animals. Evidence below (note the monkeys in the corner of the picture who were clinging to each other and looking scared):

More zoo/post-zoo pics:

On Saturday we toured the Maritime Museum, which was fabulous, and then took the ferry to Coronado Island and walked across the island to the famous Hotel Del Coronado. It was the perfect way to wrap up our trip- enjoying some sunshine and sand in a beautiful little town.

We were home by mid-morning yesterday and were unpacked soon after that. It's a good thing that Daniel and I share the need to clean/unpack/deal with everything right away. I think we'd stress anyone out who didn't share this particular obsession with order.

I'm happy that our first attempt at a family vacation went well- it makes me willing to consider the idea again for next summer!

Searching for sunshine

2011-06-10T08:20:00.000-07:00

We're in San Diego and the sun is not (so far at least). I keep thinking that I should be upset about this, then I remember (or Daniel reminds me) that I don't actually like the sun and when I get hot I complain too much. Then I smile at the grey sky and go on for a while longer, before again thinking that the sun really should be shining in San Diego.

Our vacation started super early yesterday. By 4 AM we were loaded up in the car and on our way to the airport. We actually got complimented by the security people at the airport for how organized we were with all of our stuff, which was entertaining and nice. Everything was uneventful until we boarded our plane, when Ethan started throwing up before we even took off. I had another (weird) proud mom moment as I held a bag up for Ethan to vomit in, while balancing a sleeping Vivian on my lap. Daniel was in his seat across the aisle, but the seatbelt sign was on and the plane was starting to taxi, so he was limited to handing me wipes and giving moral support.

Ethan was pretty much fine by the time we arrived here, so we're thinking that it was just tiredness/nerves. We were in our hotel room by 10 AM, which was great, and off on the bus to the beach before noon! The kids were in heaven at the beach- their eyes were huge as they tried to take in the enormous expanse of sand- all waiting for them to dig! And throw! And build sandcastles!

We dragged the kids away from the beach after about an hour and a half, since it was pretty chilly, and time to get some food. Thankfully we didn't stay longer, since I had had a stupid moment earlier when I put on my SPF 85 and THEN changed to shorts, completely forgetting to then apply sunscreen to my legs. So I have nice dark red legs today. Rookie mistake!

So it's been a little crazy so far, but it's still nice to be away from home and cleaning and cooking and the daily routine. My break from laundry only lasted until yesterday afternoon, when a load of clothes had to be done, but I'm hoping that's it until we get home. Probably for the best- going cold turkey from laundry could cause some sort of mental damage. :)

We're off to the zoo today! Hurray!

36 hours until vacation

2011-06-07T21:24:00.000-07:00

My husband actually made this comment to me today: "Yes, I'm stressed about getting up at 3 AM to leave for the airport. That's definitely the most stressful part of the trip for me." Okay, so I get that that's true for him, but his timing and audience for the comment were questionable. I've been making lists and piles and mentally going over our daily routine for three weeks and hoping I don't forget anyone's medications or glasses or anything else that we can't buy in California, and he's worried about getting up early. I shouldn't complain- the man is 99% perfect, so it's nice to see a fault now and again.

Tonight I went to a Social Media gathering where I was 1) a foot and a half shorter than everyone else 2) 4-6 sizes larger than most people there and 3) not representing a brand or agency. The networking/chatting part of the evening was so awful that I wanted to vomit, but I ate cookies instead and tried to use my shortness to my advantage and blend in with the rows of chairs. I did talk to a few people, and I was proud of myself for that. Still, I was thrilled when I got home and the kids were in bed and Daniel decided to go work out, because that much socializing with strangers left me really drained. I'm insanely out of practice at talking to people.

Overall the conference was interesting and made me think a lot about the whole point of my review blog. I've been around a lot of BIG bloggers lately whose blogs are a business. Mine is just a time-consuming hobby, and I think I like it that way. I need to think about whether or not I want a 5-year plan and strategic goals or whether I want to just continue replying to emails with comments like "why yes, you may send me candy! here is my address!" and not having a purpose beyond that.

On a completely different topic, I did part of a Pilates workout yesterday after running, because I have messed up my legs again (damn shin splints) and I'm hoping stretching helps to get me through until the 10K in September. I did the flexibility section and about 5 minutes of the ab workout and can barely move today. Methinks this show needs to be played on my Netflix queue again soon.

Vacation! In 36 hours! Whoo hoo!!!

Relaxing

2011-06-06T15:10:00.000-07:00

We did something really unusual this weekend... we relaxed. Poor Daniel would love to relax most weekends, but I have an unfortunate ingrained need to make plans and "do things" even on the weekend. Actually, especially on the weekend, since that's when I get to leave the house and do something outside of my usual 2 mile radius where I spend all week.

This weekend Daniel had church men's group on Saturday at 8 and I had the Susan G. Komen 5K on Sunday at 8, but our days were otherwise free. And we managed to keep them that way We fit in the absolute necessities, including my annual "oh crap, it's over 70 degrees and I have no decent pants/capris to wear" shopping trip. Other than that we kept the kids alive and mostly out of trouble and just loafed around the house. I even managed to sit in my quiet bedroom and read two books over the course of the weekend (I'm a speedreader, so that's not as time-consuming as it sounds).

I really couldn't tell you when was the last time we just relaxed. Pre-kids, probably. I so rarely am able to put aside my mental to-do list and just "be". And I really don't have the personality for relaxing- usually it actually ends up making me more stressed, because I feel like I'm not using my time wisely. But this weekend we managed and it was divine.

And now we're less than three days away from flying off to California and I'm utterly unprepared and tomorrow night I have to go to a scary blogger/marketing conference and possibly talk to strangers! (insert horror movie music here), and I'm way behind on the to-do lists.... but it was worth it! I may have to schedule this "relaxing" thing in again for another weekend, sometime this decade :)

Rockstars!

2011-06-03T08:35:00.000-07:00

I love Friday mornings- no school for Ethan, which means no early morning wake up for us and no schedule to stick to. We eventually have therapy to get to, but that's still a while off, so there's time to just hang out. I, of course, should be doing laundry, but what else is new.

The kids are being particularly cute this morning. They discovered some sunglasses in their room, and are running around wearing them and yelling "rockstars!" It's pretty darned adorable :)

Thursday night

2011-06-02T22:15:00.000-07:00

It's almost dark here in Seattle (at just before 10 PM), the kids are asleep (hurray!), Daniel's asleep (thanks to the Tylenol PM that he took for his headache), and once again I'm relishing the solitude too much to sleep. Even though I'm tired and today started before 6 and was very busy... alone time is worth so much more than sleep sometimes.

And I'm drinking some seriously yummy peach juice from the Russian food section of the Asian grocery store that we FINALLY dropped in to on Sunday and are now madly in love with. It's huge, with everything Asian that you could imagine and Russian foods and Mexican foods and Turkish foods and lots of our regular American food too. And not insanely crowded, unlike the other Asian grocery stores that we have visited. I love finding places that combine all of our food needs like this. Daniel spent a long time looking at the shelves of Asian snacks while I perused the Russian food section and reminisced about picking up the same products from a babushka at a food stall in the open air market in Ukraine (I was in Ukraine pre-grocery store arrival).

I need peach juice and solitude tonight- it was a long day. After a bad morning and not-great day yesterday, I decided last night that running this morning was preferable to dealing with the pre-school routine, so I headed out for a run. And I got caught in a fairly massive rain, which only lasted for the first 5K loop. So on the second 5K loop, I would pass a bunch of people who were totally dry, then the occasional person who was as drenched as I was, and we would smile in sympathy with each other's sloshing shoes. I also managed to hit "end workout" twice, while trying to change the song on my iPod, so when I got home, the program helpfully announced the results of my last run to my Facebook friends (Carrie ran 0.9 km!) and I looked like an idiot. In reality I ran 10K again. All in the hopes that I'll start thinking of 5K as a short distance and will no longer want to die for the majority of the races I run.

On that note, we were in downtown today and I saw how much of the city streets they are going to block off for the Susan G. Komen For the Cure run that I'm doing on Sunday, and I realized that it's going to be a run right down the middle of the city. With a massive hill at the end. Fun!

Sorry, I realize that this blog post is completely random and not even vaguely interesting. Only one week until I'm in San Diego though- with sunshine and interesting blog topics! We're almost ready for the trip, other than the whole packing thing and still trying to decide about using public transport versus renting a car. And semi-annoyingly, Seattle has decided to drop this 50 degrees and rainy stuff and have sunshine next week, which makes escaping to San Diego slightly less exciting. :) Just slightly though- our first family vacation couldn't possibly be unexciting!

And on a Vivian note, her 2 year appointment went well today. She, as usual, is very healthy and doing great on developmental milestones, and it was the fastest well child appointment ever. It still cracks me up though that we think of Vivian as such a little chubby baby, when she's just at about the 10th percentile. When you have a kid who's in the 2nd or 3rd percentile and only has body fat in his toes (seriously, I need to post a picture of Ethan's toes), even a little bit of chub is so exciting!

Happy birthday, Vivian!

2011-06-01T09:42:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here at the computer, watching Vivian play with her new dollhouse and trying to believe what I know to be true- my baby is two years old today! Two! How did that happen? My baby is a little girl now- a little girl full of plans and opinions and conversation. And still as cute as the day we first met her two years ago :)

Today's going to be a pretty low-key birthday for Vivian. Even though Ethan tried to convince me that he needed to stay home from school since it was Baby's birthday, he went anyway, and Vivian and I are just hanging out and watching the rain this morning. (On a side note- June? Really?) We'll have cake tonight- left over from the early celebration that we had with Daniel's parents on Saturday. And there's one more small present in Vivian's future tonight. Mostly though it's just a day of snuggles and taking pictures and feeling grateful for how blessed we are, with two great kids.

Shopping for Father's Day gifts

2011-05-31T16:52:00.000-07:00

I may have mentioned this here before, if so, I apologize. 4 1/2 years of blogging and I'm probably starting to repeat myself a lot. The 4 1/2 years have not been kind to my brain cells.

Anyway, it's almost Father's Day, so I was temporarily worried about finding a great gift for Daniel. I'm getting one good item as part of a review on the other blog, but I still wanted to get him something out of my (very shallow) pockets. Except Daniel is about as easy to shop for as a rock. He doesn't really have any sports teams that he cares about, he doesn't grill often, he doesn't play golf or fish or do other guy things. He doesn't do home improvement projects unless absolutely necessary. And he doesn't read (Side note- I am still staggered by this fact- I read 4-5 books per week, and have pretty much every single week of my life. He reads ZERO. Per year. He also doesn't read magazines. This still blows my mind...) He doesn't wear out his clothes or get too excited about new ones. Oh, and he doesn't care for food or drink much. He's totally fine with anything and overly enthusiastic about nothing.

So every gift giving occasion finds me in this quandary, with no idea what to buy. And usually I end up getting him nothing. And then one day I realized that he had not been planning our vacation online or shopping for real estate or working (things I usually find him doing). Nope, he'd been shopping on Craigslist for a new iPod. Honestly, I'm surprised it took him this long.

Last year he got me our first iPod Touch and I used it and loved it and thought it was great. And then for my birthday this year he got me the newest version of the iPod and we suddenly realized how pathetic the old iPod was. It rarely connected to the internet and was limited on stuff it could do. So we'd be out and about and I'd be checking in to places on Facebook and catching up with Twitter and getting my email and he'd be sadly pulling out the old iPod, realizing it had no signal, and putting it away.

Finally he found a good used new version iPod at a good price and not too far away, so he got it and we have equivalent technology again and all is well with the world. And since he bought it within 3 weeks of Father's Day, me giving him permission to buy it totally counts as his gift. WIN for everyone :)

I really should look at my calendar every once in a while

2011-05-27T09:16:00.000-07:00

I've been having a serious of calendar-related realizations this week. The first one has happened several times, because I keep forgetting. That realization is that Monday is Memorial Day, and therefore the family will all be home! No work! No school! Vivian and I will not be abandoned on Monday morning!

Memorial Day also means that our neighborhood is about to become very interesting, since this weekend is Folklife Festival over at Seattle Center. We always attend for the food (the strawberry shortcake, in particular) and the people-watching. Folklife brings out some interesting crowds. It also means that traffic around here will be insane, but we can deal with that for a few days. Especially if there's strawberry shortcake with which to console ourselves.

Then I realized that my in-laws are coming to visit tomorrow! I need to prepare. And only then did it occur to me that the reason my in-laws are coming is because we're going to be celebrating Vivian's birthday tomorrow! OH MY GOODNESS, I forgot my daughter's 2nd birthday!

I should clarify. I remembered her birthday weeks ago, so her gifts from us and from her grandparents have been purchased. We just buy her gifts and Daniel's parents give us money. It works better that way (okay, it works because I am a control freak about everything). But after the presents were procured, I forgot again about the birthday. The condo is a mess, no cake is in the works, and I don't even have a birthday card for her. Her real birthday isn't until June 1, so I'm using that as my excuse.

I'm also blaming the weather for my forgetfulness. It's really hard to believe that it's Memorial Day weekend or my baby's June birthday when it's 55 degrees and pouring down rain and windy. That's November weather, not end of May. Today's sunny though, so maybe my brain will be able to hold onto the information that Memorial Day and birthday are upon us!

The technology generation

2011-05-26T10:51:00.000-07:00

We got our first home computer when I was eight, so I don't really remember much about life before computers. I do remember how different they were to use back then (we're talking early 80s here). Programs to run and commands to know and cartridges and disks to keep track of and use. I remember trying to hide some of our game cartridges, particularly the educational ones that my dad insisted we use and practice all the time. The typing program was one I really disliked and hid on more than one occasion. Thankfully, I was not good at hiding it, since typing well is a life skill that I'm pretty glad to have now.

And I remember the early days of the internet. When I was a teenager, my mom went to grad school and got her masters in library science, so she was using early versions of the internet quite a bit. I remember a school project for 11th grade English that involved needing to know exact song lyrics for some old songs, and how amazed we were that Mom could use these databases to find the information that we needed. I remember going to college and having my first email and being able to send messages to my friends! The magic of it all!

Now, just 16 years after I got my first email (this is still before internet was everything), my kids are living in an entirely different world. Vivian isn't quite two yet and she can work my iPod. Ethan is severely motor delayed and still can't do many basic things, but he can use the Wii remote to work Netflix. They don't know a world in which we talk to grandparents only on the phone (and only at off-peak hours... the expense!), because they see their grandparents online every week. And when we're out and about, we press a few buttons on Mommy's ipod and we video chat with Daddy, no matter where we are.

Earlier this week I bought the Kindle version of my kids' Bible, so that we'd have an easy way of taking it to California with us. And I showed it to Ethan that night, to get him used to the idea. He hates change, but about 1.2 seconds after he saw his Bible! on Mommy's iPod!, he was hooked. And now the actual print version of the Bible is beloved no more. Yesterday my iPod needed recharging by bedtime, so I told him that Mommy's iPod was broken for a little bit and that we needed to read from the actual Bible. He picked up his Bible, threw it behind the couch and said "my Bible broken. Need iPod."

It's a whole different world, for sure.

And on another note, look at this cuteness. I love it when she agrees to pigtails!

Because my last post was entirely too depressing :)

2011-05-25T16:51:00.000-07:00

It's rainy and gloomy again here today- so I was very glad this morning to meet up with a some local bloggers to chat about blogging and reviewing/representing companies and stuff like that. And I was super glad that we were meeting up at a coffee shop, because today could not have been endured without coffee.

And my friends, I found the mother of all coffee cups at this local coffee shop! This cup of coffee wasn't a cup, it was a soup bowl. It was so big that it required TWO handles to lift it. I'm pretty sure it was larger than Vivian's head. I should have taken a comparison photo.

It's sitting on a small end table. And it covers MOST of the table. I've lived in Seattle for 10 years and have never seen anything like this.

Possibly that's why this afternoon has been so lethargic and depressing here- I was on a MAJOR caffeine high around noon, and there's no way one can come down from drinking that much coffee without some side effects :)

Seriously, local people. We must meet up at this coffee shop. This coffee must be seen to be believed!

Rephrasing my earlier post

2011-05-25T16:02:00.000-07:00

My last post didn't come across right. In case you read it, I'm sorry. It's gone now. I think it read like I was looking for a purpose beyond being a mom and a wife and not feeling that that was enough. Which isn't what I was trying to say at all, it's kind of the opposite. I want to stop feeling like I'm missing something and that this is just a stopping point. I want to be able to embrace this and be the best mom and wife that I can be. But, sadly, that's not what I'm doing right now. A lot of the time I have a bad attitude or act like I'm missing something and don't appreciate this part of my life for the blessing that it is.

Part of the issue is that I have never once sat down and thought about what God has given me in the way of talents and dreams and how I can use my skills and abilities. Including within motherhood. Which is why I struggle so much with it, because I have this mental tape recorder playing that says "you're not maternal, you don't even really like kids." And I never shut that off and think about the skills that I do have and how I am a good mom. In every area of my life, I default to negative.

I think what it comes down to is the fact that I look at my life and see myself as a giant, unlovable failure. I do not think of myself as loved by God, I feel that I have let Him down by not enjoying being a mom more. I view my depression as a failure. And I can't get out of this mental loop until I sit down and really spend time seeing myself through God's eyes and viewing myself as someone who has a purpose for living, not just taking up space. Which is all I see right now. I have a husband who is 100% capable of doing everything I do at home, and most of it he can do better, and while that's a fantastic problem to have, even that's hard for me, since being a mom/taking care of the house isn't even something that I can particularly take pride in.

Ugh. I know this is all coming across wrong, and I don't mean anything I say here (ever) as a comment on anyone else's choices or lifestyles. I just am trying to figure out who I am, now that I'm done with the "expected" checklist and I'm not in the type of goal-oriented life anymore that I was so used to- and that, honestly, I thrived in. I need to figure out how to thrive in this life, not because of what I do, but because of who I am, a beloved daughter of God. I don't want to keep doing things just for the sake of doing them or try to find my happiness in checking things off a list or being busy, which would be the easiest fix for what I'm going through. I want to use this time to try to see who I am and who God has made me to be and understand that that is worth loving, even when I'm just folding the day's 1,785th load of laundry.

That all being said, when I do "do" things, I don't want them to just be things that I am expected to do or feel obligated to do, I want to do what God is leading me to do, within the picture of who He has made me to be. I want to live a full life, one that uses my life as a mom and wife and my personal passions (whatever they are) to be the person that I'm called to be. Right now I have no hobbies, no goals, and no dreams. When I look out beyond the evening of the current day that I'm in, I just see a grey horizon stretching on forever. And that is no way to live.

I don't want to wimp out on this part of my life, as I tend to do. There are definitely ways out that are easier than others, but I think those are just going to put me back on the "now what" track further down the road. I hope I can keep feeling the nudges to listen and explore and that I can stop listening to the negative voices and hear the voice of the One who loves me.

More Confessions

2011-05-24T16:53:00.000-07:00

1) I live in a city condo. We have no balcony, and although we have a communal courtyard in the back, there's no place to plant or grow things on our own. And, even if I had a spot to garden, I wouldn't. Because I am a dirtophobe (I'm sure there's a technical term for that) and have no interest in growing plants. That being said, when I'm in the car and the local gardening show comes on NPR, I listen to it. And I look forward to the day of the week when I usually get to hear it. I find it oddly soothing somehow, all the calm voices discussing technical names of plants and planting times and shade versus sun. On a related note, I also dislike cooking and listen to cooking shows on NPR. Very odd.

2) Ethan smashed his finger in the closet today and sort of relocated the top layer of skin on his thumb and I thought I was going to pass out or throw up. Which is really weird for a couple of reasons. Reason A- I was a licensed EMT and worked on the ambulance in college and have seen much worse. I do not have a phobia of blood or guts or gore. I donate blood every 8 weeks on the dot and have no problem watching the needle stick or the blood going into the bag. When it splattered last week, I laughed. Reason B- Ethan's been through tons of blood tests and medical procedures and surgery, and that hasn't particularly bothered me either.

Today though, I was having a tough time with his injury. I thought about it more, and I think it's a combination of it being unexpected and for no purpose (unlike the medical stuff) and me being on the front lines of my uber-sensitive child being injured. Thankfully I was able to calm him down and even talked him into putting a bandaid on it (he's hugely anti-bandaid. Yes, we have weird phobias here) and he's fine now and I held it together and was able to do the correct Mommy things. Still, I'm hoping he returns to his no injury way of life immediately.

3) I don't really like ice cream very much. I could happily live without it 99.9% of the time. But today the kids wanted ice cream at the store, and since Ethan gets any food item that he wants, I agreed. We ended up with Ben & Jerry's Creme Brulee and oh my goodness is it good! I must get it out of my house soon!

4) Running is the first thing in my life (other than marriage) that I've ever not been good at, but still stuck with. I'm one who either gets something easily and does it, or gives up. Always. So marriage has been interesting at times :) Running I honestly suck at. My times are slow and aren't really getting faster. I keep injuring myself and I get lapped by senior citizens when I'm out. But I keep going, for some bizarre reason that I generally don't understand.

Sometimes I do know exactly why I go running. Like this morning- I was feeling totally unmotivated, until I realized that if I didn't go out, I'd have to do the morning breakfast/bus routine. Which is possibly the one thing that I want to do less at 7 AM than running. Neither my kids nor I are morning people, so it's invariably an unpleasant situation until I've had lots of coffee and the kids have de-grouchied a bit. Makes dragging myself around the lake in the wake of elderly people seem a lot more appealing :)

Free concert at Folklife Festival

2011-05-23T16:50:00.000-07:00

If any Seattle-area people are planning to attend the Folklife Festival this weekend, there's a great kids' concert going on on Monday. Everything is free, and this concert has pretty much every great kids' band from the area performing. Details over on my review blog. We're going- hope to see you there!

Thank goodness for my iPod and podcasts

2011-05-22T15:25:00.000-07:00

My children are lovely little people, and overall they're both at a pretty good developmental stage. I enjoy being around them and find them funny and entertaining. Except for one thing... THE WHINING! OH MY GOODNESS, THE WHINING!! I've started to forget what either of them sound like normally, because they only speak in that awful toddler/preschooler whiny voice. I take that back, they also yell and scream at each other. So there's that.

I know it's a stage and they're both limited with vocabulary and ability to express themselves, but still. I am so thankful for my iPod and the ability to pop in my sparkly earbuds and drown the whole mess out for a while with a history podcast or Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. Seriously, my podcasts get me through the day.

In addition to the podcasts, I have another thing keeping me going during this weekend of busyness and laundry and to-do lists- we're going on vacation in a couple of weeks! There was a great fare sale today for flights to California, so we snapped up four cheap tickets and we'll be off to San Diego soon! Other than one overnight trip to Victoria, for the past four years we've not gone anywhere except to visit our parents or my grandmother. And after last fall and winter, we really need a short change of scenery. It's already cheering us up, as we're talking about plane flights and researching hotels and talking about the big zoo. Ethan wants to go on the airplane today, and is not entirely happy at the idea of waiting several weeks. But it'll be here soon!

On a related note, I was reading a health magazine yesterday that talked about sun allergies, and it was totally my symptoms! So apparently I'm not crazy, there really is such a thing and I seem to have it. Thank goodness I live in Seattle! Much sunblock and a few antihistamines will be in my life for our days in Southern California, but it's totally worth it for some days of sunshine and pretty water!

Seriously, I think the thought of vacation is as much fun as the actual thing. We're so excited!

Things that make me feel like a "real" mom

2011-05-20T17:13:00.000-07:00

Ethan's almost 4 years old, so I've been doing this mom thing for a little while now. And, honestly, I still wait for the real parents of these loud little children to come home every evening. Which, of course, they do not. I still feel strange saying things like "you do not speak to me that way, I'm your mother", or answering a request that's been proceeded by the phrase "Mommy!" And I absolutely cannot wrap my brain around the fact that to the outside world, I'm a 30-something woman who is totally believable as a parent. The self inside my brain is only about 14 and is in no way qualified to be raising two little people. Thank goodness Daniel is a real adult. :)

But there are some things that make me feel like a "real" mom. Here are a few that I've noticed this week.

1) Translating my kids' requests for other people. Bonus points if they're asking for something from Daddy and I can both a) figure out what they want and b) locate it within 10 seconds or less, while Daddy has no clue what's going on. He's a fabulous dad, but translating and locating are definitely Mommy skills, at least in our home.

2) Receiving piles of art projects from school that have lovingly been made for me, because I am the Mommy. I loved the pot of flowers that he made me at school for Mother's Day, but weeks later it's still really strange to me to be on the receiving end of such things. I'm pretty sure it was about 5 minutes ago that I was making school projects for my mom.

3) Eating a lunch at the zoo that I had packed from home. Mealtime preparation is not my strong point, thanks to Ethan's non-eating, and my denial of the fact that mealtimes are in fact my responsibility every single day. Lately I'm starting to accept that though and actually prepare before we leave the house. Sitting at the zoo yesterday eating our sandwich that I'd made at home and drinking the juice boxes that I'd packed from our cupboard and munching on the apple slices that I'd cut up... THAT made me feel like a "real" mom.

4) And my proudest "real" mom experience, and the one that most made me feel like a mom came last week. We were meeting Daniel at McDonalds for a snack before heading out on another activity (because I had not remembered to pack a snack, of course). When we showed up at McDonalds, Ethan had to go to the bathroom, but Vivian was sound asleep. I was alone in the bathroom, there was nowhere to put Vivian down, and she had been so cranky pre-nap that there was no way I was willingly going to wake her up. So, with one arm I held on to the toddler who was sleeping across my shoulder, while simultaneously lifting Ethan up with the other arm, so that he could reach the potty and do his business. No mess and no waking up Vivian.

Seriously, I thought I deserved a parade or something after that display of maternal skill. I shared my great accomplishment with Daniel, who stared at me blankly and totally did not get it. I was still proud :)

Any other moms out there have random things that make them feel like a mom?

Apparently we are now genetically incapable of tolerating sun

2011-05-18T15:59:00.000-07:00

It rained here this winter and spring. A lot. We had more grey/rainy days this year than in any year for the past 60 years. But we did not have record-breaking snow or tornadoes or floods or anything that the rest of you poor people have been dealing with, so I've tried to not whine too much about it. Still, it's been pretty gloomy.

Then this week unexpectedly turned out to be one of THOSE weeks here in Seattle. The ones that make it all worthwhile. Mid-60s and sunny. Blue sky. 70 degrees on the forecast. And we don't have humidity here, so it's pretty much as glorious as you can imagine.

Yesterday the kids and I were out, soaking up some sunshine (while slathered with sunscreen, of course. I'm pale, what can I say.). Our outing looked like this for about 5 minutes:

Then Ethan decided that it was cold (it was nowhere near cold) and that he and Vivian should be wearing their hats:

Finally he complained that it was too bright and the kids decided we should go into the Children's Museum. Where they found the darkest, least-sunlight-reaching corners of the museum and played there happily. We were virtually alone in the museum.

Today we ventured out again, but the kids spent most of their time trying to get the cover on their stroller as far down over them as possible.

For my part, I sweat like crazy when it's up to these "warm" temperatures. Of course, I'm pushing around almost 60 pounds of kids and 30 pounds of stroller, so that contributes to my warmness. And this year, I've started breaking out in hives in the evening of days that we've been out in the sun. Even when wearing sunscreen. It's crazy- at the end of the day, the part of my arms where I've pushed up my sleeves is itchy and blotchy.

Seriously, we've apparently lost our ability to cope with sunshine. I blame genetics. My great-great-grandmother moved to Seattle in the early 1890s and since then every generation has been born in the Pacific Northwest, in either Washington (everyone but me) or Oregon (me). 120 years of living where the sun rarely shines has apparently done weird things to us. Daniel's tropical-dwelling genetic background stood no chance against my pale skin genes :)

Despite all my non-sun loving ways though, I do want summer to be here. Because, in addition to these cute sandals that I wrote about last week:

I picked up these today at Nordstrom Rack. For just under $5!!!!

Yep, this nice weather needs to stick around. I have cute shoes to show off!

Proximity

2011-05-14T18:54:00.000-07:00

People often comment about how many cultural events we attend and how many museums we seem to visit and that it's impressive that we're exposing the kids to so much. Truthfully, although we do want to expose our kids to cultural things, it's not really about that. The reason we do so many thing is because they are close by. And usually cheap. Daniel and I are both extremely motivated by guilt and cheapness. and that gets us out of the house and to whatever is going on nearby.

This is a good thing for us, I think. I know that once we have to decamp to the suburbs (not that that is going to happen anytime soon, thanks to the lack of sales of similar properties around here), we wont be coming to the city too much. Traffic and parking prices are powerful deterrents. I know we won't spend as much time taking the kids to art galleries or festivals or whatever, although I'm sure we still will now and then. With the distance increased, our guilt and cheapness motivation will decrease and we'll spend our weekends shopping or something (yes, my husband loves shopping).

But right now we're here and we do things, and I'm glad. Today we had the opportunity to attend the Sichuan Opera Company's last performance at the International Children's Festival here in Seattle. And I'm glad we went. It's a really cool group and it's not something we get to see every day here in Seattle. And the kids actually enjoyed it, which was cool.

And due to proximity again, I've signed up to run the Susan G. Komen for the Cure 5K in June. Again, it was too close to say no to, and for such a good cause. When there's a great race going on so close that I only have to walk a few blocks to it, excuses are few and far between. But I'm actually looking forward to it- apparently there were over 12,000 participants last year. I've never been a part of anything even close to that huge, so it should be quite an experience!

In other running news, I think I've convinced my sister-in-law (the skinny one who runs all the time) to run the 10K with me in September. I think it'll be good to have some motivation on hand to keep me going that far! Maybe I can convince her to run backwards or something so that she doesn't finish in half my time :)

Seriously, it blows my mind that a year ago I had never run a step in my life, and now I sign up for and run 5Ks like they're no big deal. And 10Ks are in the future! Crazy!

Out and about

2011-05-11T09:41:00.000-07:00

We don't go out often. Most days are spent pretty close to home, with a walk to the grocery store or over to Seattle Center being the extent of our excitement. But yesterday we were Out and About. If you're my Facebook friend, you know I was going a little crazy with all the checking-in :) I'm still a little in love with the novelty of that feature on my new iPod. We were anywhere and everywhere yesterday, and it was fabulous. We shopped and toured a new Disney Store and took in opening night at the International Children's Festival going on here in Seattle.

And then we had to wake up the kids this morning after two nights of a very late bedtime, and there was much grouchiness. Daniel usually handles most of the morning breakfast/school bus drop-off routine, and every time I have to deal with it, I am endlessly grateful for his willingness to take it on. Mommy doesn't function well without coffee and the kids are not morning people, so them at me at 7:30 AM is a bad combo. But we survived and everyone got where they needed to be.

Days like yesterday remind me of how much I need to figure out plans and events and shake up our routine a bit. I do so much better when we're interacting with people on occasion and seeing something slightly different from what we see every day. I say this every time we have a busy day out, but one of these days I'm actually going to do something about it!

In completely random news, summer needs to GET HERE already because these came yesterday and I love them with a blazing love. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE.

And the no-gifts season begins...

2011-05-09T09:29:00.000-07:00

I love presents. REALLY love presents. Not big presents, that doesn't really matter to me. We generally have a $10 limit for most gift-giving occasions, but as long as the item is wrapped up and I get to open it, I'm a happy camper.

So the time from Christmas to Mother's Day is a very happy time for me. Christmas, followed by Valentine's Day, followed closely by our wedding anniversary, followed by my birthday, then Mother's Day= lots of presents for Carrie. And then the day after Mother's Day arrives and I get a little mopey. :) But I did see a cute little bunny rabbit munching on grass today when I was out running, so that helped.

We're off to the doctor shortly, where the doctor will again say something about me taking my happy pills for at least 6-8 more months and I will sit quietly and nod and think "you are not taking these away from me in 6-8 months, no way, no how." Maybe I'll be better by then though and won't still feel this way. My therapist is lovely, but I haven't made enough progress on that front to be willing to brave it without some chemical help for my brain.

Switching topics a bit... we had a lovely weekend! My 5K race went well and I was even faster than usual. So much so that Daniel and the kids were off drinking hot chocolate and not at the finish line when I arrived, so once again I avoided photos of me at the end of the race. I NEVER want to see a photo of myself post-run. The thought horrifies me. I lived in the South for 10 years and I still believe that proper ladies do not sweat. I do have to turn off that part of my brain when I exercise, but I can manage that. I cannot deal with photographic evidence.

Pre-race!

And Daniel graciously took the kids out alone for a few hours on both Saturday and Sunday and I got a break and got the house cleaned and the laundry done and even made some progress on my photo scrapbooks and it was fabulous. Exactly what I wanted for Mother's Day. I really, really like getting things checked off my to-do list without a certain pair of little people immediately undoing my chores again.


This is actually a nice sibling hug. Even though it doesn't look like it in the photo :)

I hope you all had a marvelous weekend as well. Belated Happy Mother's Day!

Mother's Day is coming!

2011-05-05T12:45:00.000-07:00

Mother's Day is coming! We're going to be busy on Saturday with the 5K and then I've requested pizza for dinner that night (as if I run fast enough or burn enough calories to justify pizza consumption...). But other than that, I'm not sure what's going on. We're doing the 3-year-old Sunday School class this month, so I'll get to spend Mother's Day morning with other people's small people! (Yes, I need an attitude adjustment about that).

I told Daniel what I wanted for Mother's Day, and I could tell that he was trying hard not to judge me. Because what I really really want is for the three of them to just GO AWAY for a couple of hours. Don't get me wrong, I adore my family. Truly. But we do everything together. Every weekend we run errands together. We go to the park together. We go out to eat together. And when we're home, we're in our three room house, so we're always together here too.

And every single day, I'm dealing with Miss Clingy Pants. Ethan never had a clingy phase or a bit of separation anxiety. So we're still confused by Vivian. She wants to be with us, usually touching me, 24/7. Yes, she still sleeps with us. And I'm with her all day. Nap time and when I go running are my only breaks from her. This is another case of "thank goodness she's so darned cute!"

So I really think everyone could do with a few hours break. I need the chance to miss my family a little bit. I totally cracked up last night when we were watching "The Middle" and the mom got a Sunday alone as her Mother's Day gift. She spent the whole time fixing things and cleaning and not relaxing. SO true. I actually wouldn't mind that- it would be nice to clean without my helpers following behind and messing things up again :)

I know that 15 years from now I'm probably going to be sitting around being sad that the kids are too busy to spend Mother's Day with me. I do try to appreciate these days, really. But I think this year I could appreciate them a bit more if I get a moment or two of distance.

I did get a wonderful early Mother's Day gift today- Ethan came home from school with this pretty pot that he'd painted and planted with yellow flowers (his favorite color). Seriously- I still can't believe I have a kid old enough to bring home school projects!!

I love this picture- Vivian was standing in front of the camera, so her tummy is prominent in the photo :)

A must-read devotion for moms

2011-05-04T08:57:00.000-07:00

I so, so needed to read this devotion from Proverbs 31 Woman today. I felt like the author was inside my brain, and was really encouraged by her words. If you're feeling challenged by motherhood this week, definitely check it out!

Thinking happy wedding thoughts

2011-04-29T18:59:00.000-07:00

I'm in a wedding mood today- thanks in part to the beautiful royal wedding today, and also thanks to the fact that my best friend got engaged last week, and she's coming over tomorrow, so I get to see her ring and make happy squeally noises of excitement about the upcoming wedding. I'm kind of funny about weddings- I never cared even a bit before my own. I was actually a difficult bride because I cared so little. No opinions on much of anything. But now I like weddings and bridal magazines and all the stuff. Being happily married does that to a person, I suppose.

Yesterday I prepared to watch the royal wedding by buying a fancy little cake and mimosa makings. And by doing this photo shoot with the kids:

Ethan was happy with the tiara until about 1 second before the auto-timer counted down

A big tiara fan

I used to inform people that I was the empress of the universe. I'm not sure how that got started, but it continued for a lot of college and all of grad school. What can I say, I'm a little quirky sometimes. So one of my friends gave me this pink tiara and I break it out every now and again. Yesterday seemed a good occasion.

Anyway, I went to bed early last night, but 2:30 is still very early, so when I woke up I wasn't even vaguely interested in my snacks or mimosa. Still, it was great fun to watch the arrivals (the hats! Oh my goodness!) and tweet my opinions and see what everyone else had to say. I thought the wedding was beautiful and romantic and sweet and it was totally worth getting up for.

Now I have a busy Saturday to get ready for- we're having friends from my former church and our current church over for tapas (and cupcakes, in case the tapas are a disaster) in the afternoon. And Ethan has his first school-friend party in the morning. It's a wild and crazy Saturday!!!

What I did after watching the last major royal wedding

2011-04-28T16:32:00.000-07:00

I made my mom find this picture and email it to me- it's from 1981, after the Diana and Charles wedding. According to my parents, I spent a lot of time running around with a blanket on my head, pretending to be a bride. Not sure what my brother's role was, but I'm sure that I had given him strict instructions (for some reason) to follow me around while waving the toy broom :)

Daniel's decided that I need to try to recreate this picture with Vivian and Ethan. They are almost the same age that my brother and I were back then. We'll see how creative I get tomorrow while also insanely sleep-deprived from voluntarily waking up at 2:30 AM. :)

Confessions

2011-04-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

1. My son has been eating Easter candy for lunch for the past week. Specifically miniature Reese's Cups. I generally wait to give him these until Vivian has gone down for her nap, since I don't feel eating candy is a suitable lunch for her. But for Mr. Anything Goes As Long As It's High Calorie- candy is just fine.

2. I'm planning to go to bed at 7 PM tomorrow night so that I can get up at 3 AM and watch the royal wedding. Yes, I'm that insane. I was glad to see Mona's post on the same topic today- good to know I'm not alone in my insanely early rising plans. Not sure I'm going to join in the champagne drinking plans that many others have, but I do plan to watch live. Apparently I watched Diana and Charles' wedding when I was little (I have no memory of this) and played "bride" for about a year after that. I was all of four years old, so I don't remember, but I'm sure I was cute.

Thankfully we don't have too much going on Friday that I have to be awake for. Other than Ethan's therapy appointment. Much caffeine will be consumed before that!

3. I can barely identify my own husband's handwriting. After almost seven years together. Seriously, I was just going through an old box of mementos and when I pulled out a card with my name written on the front, I had to open it up and see who signed it, before if I could tell if it was from Daniel or from one of my ex-boyfriends. We communicate by phone or in person or on Skype, so there's virtually no reason for me to ever see his handwriting. Still, it's strange that I don't recognize it.

4. On that note, I was a little disappointed today to discover that I seem to have gotten rid of all of my love letters from ex-boyfriends. I really thought I'd saved a few from each of them, just for memory's sake, but apparently not. It's not like I'm pining for those guys or would want to be married to anyone else, but it's part of my distant past, so I'd like to have something to look at and remember and smile. Oh well.

5. When my doctor told me this week that I'd need to be on my antidepressant medication for at least eight months, my first thought was one of enormous relief. I'm going to therapy and doing the work to try to get better and not have to be on medication forever, but right now it's having such an enormous beneficial effect that I have no desire to mess with what's working.

6. And on that note, I am so sad that it took me so long to talk to my doctor. I'm feeling hopeful and positive and for the first time in a long time I'm excited about the future. Finally able to look at where I'm at in life as a great open opportunity for me to find out what's next, rather than feeling like I've done everything I planned to do and I have nothing left to hope for (which is what my brain was convinced of until recently). I can't wait to see what God has in store for me for the next section of my life. :)

Speaking out

2011-04-27T15:56:00.000-07:00

Max Lucado wrote something in his book Outlive Your Life that has really stuck with me since I read it. Here's what he had to say:

"A few years back, three questions rocked my world. They came from different people in the span of a month. Question 1: Had you been a German Christian during World War II, would you have taken a stand against Hitler? Question 2: Had you lived in the South during the civil rights conflict, would you have taken a stand against racism? Question 3: When your grandchildren discover you lived during a day in which 1.75 billion people were poor and 1 billion were hungry, how will they judge your response?

I don't mind the first two questions. They were hypothetical. I'd like to think I would have taken a stand against Hitler and fought against racism. But those days are gone and those choices were not mine. But the third question has kept me awake at night. I do live today; so do you. We are given a choice... an opportunity to make a big difference during a difficult time. What if we did?" Max Lucado- Outlive Your Life

The other thing that's really been motivating me lately is a song by Josh Wilson called "I Refuse". I love all of the lyrics, but one part particularly speaks to me right now:

Oh, I refuse

To sit around and wait for someone else
To do what God has called me to do myself
Oh, I could choose
Not to move but I refuse

I can hear the least of these
Crying out so desperately
And I know we are the hands and feet
Of You, oh God

I'm not at a place in life where I can hop on a plane and go off to the mission field or do any of the other "big things" that need to be done to help fight poverty and injustice. But what I'm trying to remind myself is that I CAN do something. Even if it's small. I can support and pray for my sponsored children. I can give as God leads me. And I can speak up for causes like the fight against human trafficking. This is such an enormous problem all around the world, including here in the United States. But it's not one that is spoken of enough. Slavery is going on around us today, and it is wrong. Here's some information from the World Concern website:

The reality is sobering. Impoverished parents who struggle to feed their children, or who are compelled to instead feed an addiction, sell their kids to traffickers--sometimes for as little as $50! Often it comes after believing lies about job opportunities in other countries.Other children find themselves meeting the wrong person, or being orphaned, with no good way to provide for themselves. When it's too late, they find themselves having to repay a debt to the person who bought them. Sometimes it's thousands of dollars, and it takes years to accomplish.
It doesn't have to be this way.
Once you know the facts about human trafficking, you have to act.
Learn more and do something about it.
Here's more about how World Concern prevents trafficking.
From the blogs: A first-hand look at how we protect children in Cambodia.

I'm going to lace up my shoes on May 7th and run 5K (while playing "I Refuse" a lot on my iPod!), thinking every step about families and children who are facing situations that are awful beyond my comprehension. If you'd like to help fight this problem, I'd love prayer support (especially since my shin splints are acting up again), and if you'd like to donate, you can find more information here.

Easter weekend

2011-04-25T16:08:00.000-07:00

It's Monday afternoon, my house is a mess, I have nothing planned for dinner, and my home fellowship group is coming over in three hours. So it's clearly time to blog :) Oh, and my kids are running around the house with their bears and clean diapers, telling me that their bears did "big poopoos" and need a change. They've been on this kick for the past week or so. I'm pretty sure Vivian could actually change her own diaper at this point, she's pretty good at putting a diaper on her bear. She also has been accessorizing her outfits by wearing her (unused) underwear on her wrist as a bracelet. She's fascinated with the underwear and is desperate to wear it, but is firmly anti-potty, so apparently a bracelet is a good option for now. I'm pretty sure this would have seemed weird to me at one point in time, but not so much anymore :)

Anyway... we made it through the weekend and had a pretty nice time up in Canada. As nice as a trip involving a funeral can be, I suppose. Daniel's parents are definitely taking the loss very hard. They were in a good, energetic mood on Thursday evening and Friday, but after the funeral they just looked like someone had drained everything out of them. During the funeral itself, I sat with the kids in the enclosed balcony (and all the people who were late got to sit up there with my energetic kids!), so I had a birds eye view of the family. Watching Daniel's other aunt (we'll call her younger aunt) and his parents and cousins and all cry about broke my heart. The worst part though was when the family was walking past the casket, when younger aunt totally lost it. Hearing those cries pretty completely reduced all the rest of us to tears as well. Younger aunt lost her mom six years ago and her husband (in a freak "car versus pedestrian" accident) two years ago and now her older sister, so it's been a particularly rough time for her.

The graveside service and lunch afterwards were a bit less heart-wrenching, and it was nice for the family to spend time together. They also had a family dinner late on Saturday evening, but the kids and I bowed out of that one, since it didn't even start until about an hour past kid bedtime.

As expected, attending Easter service on Sunday in the same church where we'd mourned on Saturday was totally strange, but it really made the "resurrection and hope in Christ" message particularly poignant for us.

The kids were overall not into the Easter morning photo shoot, but we did manage to get a few cute pictures here and there.

The best of MANY shots :)

This photo is so representative of the kids personality- Ethan was being silly and Vivian was just protesting the picture

Getting good pictures of two kids is nearly impossible. I am SO impressed by my friends with more kids who manage!

Happily dancing around in her Easter dress and shoes

Both happy, playing with toy cars at church

Tulip Festival!

2011-04-21T18:58:00.000-07:00

I know I promised to leave you all alone this weekend. Then we decided to bring our computer and even found free wifi here at the in-laws. So your break from me has ended prematurely :) Anyway we're here and the funeral activities all begin tomorrow. As it turns out, most of the activities involve dinners at 8 PM, so I'm going to be spending most of my time here with the kids while Daniel goes places with his family. We'll be at the actual funeral and graveside service, but other than that, hanging out. Which, honestly, is fine with me, as it means I get to eat non-Chinese food (I know, I'm the only person on the planet married into a Chinese family who doesn't really like Chinese food) and hang out in my pjs with the kids and watch cable TV (we don't have cable at home). And Daniel will get uninterrupted Chinese language conversation with relatives with no wife to translate for and no kids to round up.

Oh, and did I mention that I already stocked up on Canadian candy? You can get some fabulous candy here- especially near the holidays.

Anyway, today on our way here we stopped at the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival to check out the flowers. The rain held off during our visit (hurray!) so we got some pretty good ones!

Packing (while thinking deepish thoughts)

2011-04-20T07:55:00.000-07:00

We're headed north for the funeral tomorrow. Dropping by the local tulip festival briefly on the way to get (hopefully) some cute photos of the kids frolicking in the tulip fields. That'll probably last about 1.4 seconds before they start attempting to pull up all the tulips in sight and we'll have to move on. :)

I've been working with Ethan for the past few days, trying to prepare him for what's to come on this trip. With all his speech delays, it's still really hard to know what he understands and what he doesn't. But he seems to get that Papa is sad and that he needs to be sure to give Papa lots of extra hugs and kisses.

For my part, today is going to be a quiet day at home to clean and organize and pack up pretty much everything we own. Packing for Saturday and Sunday has been bringing a lot of thoughts to my mind, and has been making me think a lot about the message of Easter Sunday. It's like a real-life example of this line from my favorite Caedmon's Call song:

And it's like that long Saturday your death and the rising day
When no one wrote a word, wondered is this the end

There was a devotion or book or something on this topic, which I no longer can locate, that talked about this same idea. How the Saturday between the cross and the resurrection was such a day of darkness and confusion. Even though the disciples had been told what would happen, they didn't quite grasp it, so that Saturday they were lost and confused and hopeless. Then the resurrection came on Sunday and there was so much joy and celebrating.

I feel like we're getting a first-hand tiny glimpse of that this weekend. Even with the things I'm packing, I'm reminded of that. Subdued, somber clothes for the funeral, then fancy, bright clothes for Easter. Saturday we'll be celebrating, for sure, because we know Aunt is with her Savior now. But it's still a sad day as we adjust to her not being here and feel her absence and as the family faces the reality of days and years without her around.

And then on Sunday, we're going to be at church (the same church, no less) singing songs of hallelujah and rejoicing, sitting in the same pews where we mourned on Saturday. Being brought face to face with the bigger message, the joyful message that the funeral is not the end, that Jesus' death and resurrection adds another chapter to Aunt's story and our stories as well.

I don't know if that makes any sense or not, but that's the sort of stuff that's running through my mind today. Those thoughts and the thought of "what on earth are my little kids going to wear to a funeral?" Daniel said "not bright and flashy", which rules out oh, ALL of Vivian's wardrobe. Ethan will be fine, because his clothes are boring anyway, but Vivian's are all covered in flowers and sparkles and such. And let's not even get into the fact that I have to be brave and try on all my dresses today in the hope that two actually will fit me.

Anyway- I'm going to be offline for a while, so Happy Easter to everyone! "He is Risen!"

In which I apologize for being insensitive

2011-04-20T07:20:00.000-07:00

I realized something today, through a comment that a friend innocently made, that some of the things I post here about cross-cultural marriage may not always come across as I intended, and often they're not as sensitive as they should be. Although much about my husband's culture baffles me, and I may discuss it here as such, it's incredibly, incredibly important to me to still embrace it as much as possible. Reality is, my kids belong to that culture as much as mine. And it's such a rich world with a history that I want to know more about, and that I want the kids to be able to explore and take in as part of who they are.

That all being said, I know that in my mind at least, I often think "oh, I'm married into this culture, so I can joke about it here or roll my eyes at things." Even though I'll probably continue to do that (let's be honest, that's pretty much one of the top reasons why I blog), I'm glad that this is something that I had to stop and think about today. Because I know that my ways of interacting with Daniel's culture and family are going to affect how my kids perceive it. They're getting to be old enough that I need to be very deliberate about what I do and say, because little ears are listening.

People, this parenting thing is complicated! :)

The weekend of FUN!

2011-04-18T14:40:00.000-07:00

This weekend was insane. In a good way though. We crammed more activities and excitement into two days than any of us could really handle :) Saturday morning we attended a screening of African Cats, then headed off to our favorite museum, the Museum of Flight for free attendance day. My family has a long history of flying planes, and Daniel just loves planes, so this is a must-attend place for us pretty much every opportunity we get. Yesterday we had church, where Ethan's class supposedly sang a song for the whole church (in reality they stood there and looked confused and poked each other with palm branches, but what do you expect from three year olds?). And then home to open Easter baskets a week early, since I have to pack pretty much everything we own for our trip to Canada and am not packing random toys and candy as well. Oh, and they also got haircuts.

By yesterday evening, we were all in an exhausted stupor from all the excitement (and from the post-Easter candy sugar crash). Fortunately we had plans with friends this morning and a little bit of sunshine to keep us going today. Thankfully the sunshine was over on top of Seattle, because 10 miles away where Daniel works it was actually snowing. Random.

All this to say, I had a good weekend. And, as I was telling my friend this morning, it's definitely a change from how I've been feeling for the last way-too-long. I normally get antsy when we're out and am always wanting to go do "something else" and am constantly trying to find something that makes my brain happy for a while. But now, I'm happier to just be in the place and moment. Yes, I'm still totally hyper and am constantly running through the to-do list in my brain, but it's much improved. Much. There is not a day when I don't thank God for good doctors and medications.

Now I've got to get myself in gear and start working on the part of getting undepressed that I have some control over- the things that my therapist and I discuss and the books and workbooks she suggests. Since I am an avid "avoider of unpleasantness" and don't really want to think about depression (I find it depressing to think about depression), this is not as easy as popping some pills. But it's what I need to do for the long-term solution. I just need to get my lazy butt in gear and do it! In all my spare time...

Sadness and peace

2011-04-12T12:20:00.000-07:00

It's such a bittersweet thing, the death of a wonderful Christian man or woman. Daniel's aunt passed away last night, after a short but intense battle with cancer. She's been declining rapidly and in pain for the past month, so we're glad she's at peace, and we know she's rejoicing with her Savior today. But it's still sad to have to say goodbye. To watch her kids and grandkids mourn. To see her husband, who will not have her around to celebrate their 54th wedding anniversary next month. To look at Daniel's dad, who now only has one living (full) sister left (I'm a little vague on the half siblings, as there were two simultaneous wives in the family and the family tree makes my head hurt).

The funeral is delayed until mid- to late- next week, so that people can come in from Hong Kong. So I'm not sure exactly when we're heading up to Canada, but we should know soon. Oddly enough, this is only about the third funeral I've attended since I was old enough to remember. I'm sure I'll spend most of the time in the hallway with the kids, but hopefully just having the kids around will be comforting to Daniel's parents.

In totally unrelated news, Ethan came home today with a birthday invite to a school friend's party. Our first invite to a party where we know no one! I'm planning on making Daniel go, as it's the same day as I'm throwing a party here in the evening, and I have stuff to do. At least that's my excuse, since attending a party with a room full of strangers strikes terror into my heart. Daniel isn't scared of people, so he'll be fine :)

Rescuing Mommy

2011-04-11T15:52:00.000-07:00

My kids have a new favorite game- "rescuing" Mommy! They're especially fond of playing when I actually do something crazy, like sit down and try to have a quiet moment on the couch :) I couldn't get Baby to cooperate for this video, but Ethan (and Monkey) were happy to demonstrate.