Sweet Chaos

The last two weeks of July have me out of town for union contract negotiations.  Last week I was scheduled to be home on Friday, but ended up not getting home until Saturday evening.  When I arrived home, my welcoming committee was waiting in the front yard and Maria ran to my van to welcome me home.  After being gone for four nights, she had certainly grown.  Grant and Maria’s best friends who live three doors down were over and soon everyone piled into the house.  Everyone was buzzing with excitement.

 

Soon dinner was fixed and the neighbor’s headed home so we could have some family time.  Grant and Maria happily told me about their week and declared on more than one occasion that they missed me.  I missed them, too.  We did baths and bedtime and more than once, they had me cracking up.  It was good to be home.

 

On Sunday morning, we went outside to fix my tomato plants that had been blown over in storms from Saturday night.  We ended up having to cut off some broken limbs which meant sacrificing some baby tomatoes.  Before I knew it, the kids and I were hurling tomatoes at the squirrels.  We laughed and laughed as Grant declared “tomato fight!!!!!!”

 

I was so happy to be home.  It’s easy to get bogged down in the day to day chaos and forget to enjoy it.  Sometimes a little time away is in order.  Week two away and I’m definitely looking forward to returning home to our loud and sometimes chaotic home.

 

Regression

 

Regression.  The act of stepping backwards.  Pretending to not be able to do something that you had previously mastered.  Example: Bedwetting, peeing on floors, peeing in your clothes even though you have been potty trained for years.

We are experiencing this phenomenon in our house now.  Graem has arrived, which means that Brae and Sienna have each forgotten how to use the toilet.

Makes complete sense…. right?

How the arrival of a new baby correlates to a preschooler’s and pre-kindergartener’s bladder is beyond me, but I know it’s common.

In any case, it’s our life right now.  Brae seems to have improved, but Sienna is still peeing on her floor at night.  She’s using the toilet everywhere else – at other people’s houses, at school – just not at home.

I know it’s a phase, and we’ll get through it.  Just not sure our carpets will.

Gardening Lessons

In May we started a very Charlie Brown garden.  It is my first ever vegetable garden and I really had no idea what I was doing when I started.  Apparently, I didn’t need to know a whole lot.  Hand till the ground, organic fertilizer, weed and water.  Grant and Maria gladly helped with picking out the plants and had fun helping to till the ground.   Now our garden is no longer qualified as a Charlie Brown garden.  It has already required expansion and is full of lush green plants.  It has yielded numerous zucchini’s, green peppers, and hot peppers.  We have no less than 30 tomatoes growing and in most recent developments, we have watermelon and cantaloupe that have finally started growing.

Gardening has been a great learning experience for the kids.  They are learning that bees are not bad, that good food comes from the earth and that patience and care will bear fruit, Much like the kids, the garden grows overnight.  They love watering the plants, checking on growth daily, and making things like salsa and zucchini muffins from things freshly picked from the garden.

We have expansion plans for next year.  Grant and Maria have requested berries and broccoli and I’d like to find some non-GMO corn to plant.  I’m enjoying the process more than I thought and glad we put in the initial work.  There is something very satisfying about growing your own food and I know that Grant and Maria are learning valuable lessons to take with them in life.

Post-baby blues

 

 

Someone in our house is struggling with the post-baby blues.  For once, I wish it were me.

It is Sienna.

She has taken baby Graem coming home harder than anyone else.  She is just all out of sorts.

Temper tantrums.  Whining.  You name it.  She has brought the full force of her 3-year-old self to bear on our family.

I know this transition is hard for her, which thankfully, I’m able to remember when I otherwise could lose myself to impatience.  She is struggling, and I empathize.

God knew what He was doing when bringing Graem into our family. For so many reasons, it is good he is a boy vs. a girl.  The main reason I appreciate now is because I don’t think Little Miss could handle the direct competition of another girl in the family.  The fact that he is a boy suits her better for her motherly role, and she does dote on him.

She loves him; she’s mad at me.

Each night, I tell her how special she is to me.  How she’s my only girl.  My princess.  I tell her I understand how hard this change must be, and it’s ok to be upset.

She just nods, smiles, and tells me she wants strawberries.

Yesterday, we went to the library and got her some “big sister” books.

I don’t know how much she is able to comprehend of what I tell her, or what we’re reading in the books.  She isn’t able to communicate fully how she’s feeling with the transition.  My heart just goes out to her.

I know this is just a season, and we’ll get through this transitory phase soon.  Hopefully, relatively unscathed.

Britney

INSENSITIVE COMMENTS

If you really don’t want to know how a pregnant women is feeling-don’t ask!

Recently, a dear friend asked “How are you feeling?”  To which I replied I was feeling good, but I’ll feel better after my next ultrasound.  I told her I wasn’t having as many symptoms as in the beginning.  I still felt pregnant and was starting to show, but was worried I might have lost one of the babies.

It is a common fear of early twin pregnancies, especially since Vanishing Twin Syndrome occurs in 21-30% of multifetal pregnancies in the first trimester (according to the American Pregnancy Association).

Her response was, “That shows you have too much time on your hands if you are worried about that.”  This reaction bothered me on several levels.

First, I detest when people dismiss your worry as something insignificant.  Things that bother some of my friends or family does not worry me.  I don’t discount it as irrelevant when they express their concerns to me.

Second, she’s never gone through infertility and has no concept of how hard it was to be able to say, “We’re carrying twins!”  In my 11th week of shots (with a sore bum), I can truly say, she has no idea what we have gone through.  She jokes she can get pregnant on birth control.  Love you girl, but good for you!  My babies didn’t come so easy, and I won’t dismiss losing one so easy either.

Third, because I fear miscarrying a twin means in her words, “ I must have too much time on my hands,” infuriates me.  My well intended friend is always making comments about how much “free time” Stay-At-Home moms have.  I don’t want to debate the challenges of Working-Moms vs Stay-At-Home Moms, but there are few myths out there about Stay-At-Home moms.  It’s not a competition- both face advantages and disadvantages.

NO one wins in this argument.  Both make tremendous sacrifices.  When working moms go to work, they take their child to a caretaker.  I am the caretaker.  That is my job!  I take on hours of volunteer work outside the home that often feels like work, I just don’t get paid for it.  We do without so I can stay home.  I respect and admire the challenges working moms face in trying to juggle it all.  I hope they do the same for moms that work inside the home.

Another CPA friend who is on maternity leave with her third child said to me, “This Stay-At-Home mom stuff is not all it’s cracked up to be.”  She was considering staying home full-time to care for her three children.  She recently mentioned she wants to go back to work and give it some more thought.

I feel blessed to be a stay-at-home mom.  I also realize many moms simply don’t have a choice whether to work or stay home.  We sacrificed for years so that I could stay home.  This is a privilege, but it didn’t come at a small price.  We waited to start our family until we were financially able to raise a family on one income.  Unknowingly- while focusing on our careers- we waited until I was no longer able to have biological children.

We all make sacrifices for our family.  I have the highest respect for moms who have to work everyday to better the lives of their children.  My family has to make sacrifices for me to be able to stay-at-home.  Maybe we should be more sensitive to the struggles each other face in trying to balance it all.

 

A Biased Rant

I’m going on a rant.  There are two articles in circulation on Facebook that portray very negative attitudes toward embryo adoption.  One quotes a teenager who was donor conceived stating she wishes she hadn’t been born; the other says that embryo adoption exists solely to meet the needs to adults who believe life begins at conception and those who want children.  The author states that embryo adoption creeps them out.  The premise is that being raised by genetic strangers is isolating and potentially damaging.  One person commented that we are “frankenparents.”

Obviously, I’m biased.  I also have a Christian world view and believe that life does begin at conception.  I’ve commented on several postings. I know that there will questions that I cannot answer for Grant and Maria.  I’m not naive in thinking they won’t have questions.  I’m not naive to think that they won’t wonder about their genetic family.  I wonder about them.  But, it doesn’t change that Jeremy and I are their parents and we love Grant and Maria unconditionally.  Would they have been better off frozen indefinitely due to lack of genetic connections?

One person commented that genetic roots are important and not having the mother-child bond in utero is detrimental.  Guess what?  We had that bond.  I can still feel Grant’s head pushing into my rib cage when he stretched and Maria dancing on my liver.  Does lack of DNA mean we can’t bond?  And what about traditional adoption, are those children scarred because they aren’t with the mother who carried them?  Would they have been better off in an unsafe situation or orphanage?

For us, we chose embryo adoption because I wanted to experience pregnancy, but didn’t feel right going through IVF knowing embryos existed in a big frozen nursery.  Yes, IVF created some ethical dilemmas.  But, embryo adoption is a life honoring answer to the dilemma of what to do when a woman can not carry another child or chooses not to carry another child.  Thankfully, we don’t see the large numbers of embryos that were created in the earlier days of IVF, but we have an ethical and moral obligation to deal with those who were created and wait in limbo.

Embryo adoption, like any adoption, will have unknowns.  But not knowing doesn’t make any child, whether frozen or already born, any less worthy of having a loving home.  I know some pretty crappy genetic families.  And I know some pretty awesome adoptive families.  Shared DNA isn’t required to make a good family or a good life.  A life is a life no matter how small.

10 Years and Counting

July 3rd marks our 10 year wedding anniversary.

I asked Jeremy what he has learned in 10 years….He threw out these lovely nuggets:

Two most important words aren’t “I’m sorry” but “Yes, Dear.”

Love is hearts and flowers….true love is popping a zit on your spouse’s back.

No matter what, your wife will win….so just give in.

We did come up with an agreement early in our marriage…everything is his fault, but he’s always right.  It has worked well for us.

We have had a good 10 years.  Like all couples we’ve had our ups and downs, but thankfully the ups have far outweighed the downs.

Having started our relationship when we were 20, we have spent the majority of our adult life together.  We’ve grown up together and I can honestly say that no one knows me better than Jeremy or can make me laugh like he does.  I’m thankful for a husband who is fiercely loyal to our wedding vows and for a man who has sacrificed much to take care of his family.  He spends countless hours on the mundane things like laundry, cooking, and cleaning to maintain our house.  In the morning, it’s not uncommon to find a sweet or funny note for me, or a picture colored for Maria or the train set reconfigured as a surprise for the kids when they wake up.  We can drive each other crazy, but in the end we fit well together.

I found this quote and think this sums it up for me:

“To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow – this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert

 

I’m thankful for God’s blessings on our marriage and ask for continued protection, guidance and blessing for the rest of our years.