A dusting of snow!
Little pink houses almost done:
Earmuffs:
Trying on her Christmas dress:
Much to B’s horror, he is Mr. February in the 2012 work calendar:
I sent this to my niece and she screamed like it was real:
I got sick and gave up on the tree:
And I’ve been here since:
Making village houses, getting a couple rows of the blanket done, the good book I never have time to read, the coffee creamer I’m obsessed with and a little fire time with the kids. Not too shabby!
Every Monday Fiona and I pack our bags and head out to the farm for a couple of days. If B works over the weekend, we leave on Sunday. We stay until Wednesday morning, and we leave early enough that we can spend the early afternoon with B before he heads to work.
This has been such a blessing and such a pain in the ass. Fiona is so close to her Grandma & Grampy and her aunt and cousins. She gets so excited when hit the gravel road and she knows we are almost there. She gets to play hard for two days, and it’s loud and chaotic and we make big dinners and I get to read Harry Potter to the boys at night, it’s been magical in those ways. The other night when I was putting the boys to bed and said goodnight Noah said, “Say it right!” and I was confused for a second and then realized what he wanted and I said, “Goodnight, Sweet Princes” and he said, “Goodnight Lindsey!” (Only he pronounces my name LANSEE, which is just . . . perfect)
The other thing that has been a blessing is having this time to spend with my sister. She is going through that ugly divorce, and she has needed someone to just be there. Most evenings after the kids are in bed I am too tired to be good company, but I am there, and when you are going through that kind of thing that is enough.
But . . .
It’s hard for B not to see Nonie for a couple of days, but at the same time I think he likes having a bit of quiet time to himself when he is working so much. It is definitely part of the reason I can’t seem to get a grip on my own house schedule. I just start to get in the groove of being home and then we leave again. I feel like a great mom but only a so-so wife, and I don’t like that feeling.
Our goal has been to build a house on the back field of the farm. This coming year I really want to push that goal as much as possible. There are so many obstacles that I have no control over, like the housing market. Our cute little house that we love so much, there is no way we could get what we paid for it at this point. Should we rent it? Should we sell it for what we can and live in a temporary (and very small) structure in the field?
It’s so funny to me, my whole life I have been a city girl at heart, just waiting until I can move back to the city. Now I am considering living in a tiny little barn just to be able to start building a house in the country. But if you saw my girl out there, in her rain boots and coat, watching Grandma feed the chickens and checking the garden and running in puddles, you would feel the same surge to the heart that I do. The same little voice that says, let’s give this to her.
Standing where our house will be:
Andrew and I before school:
Hanging with Grampy:
Hanging with Grandma:
Walking to get Andrew from the bus after school:
Just being silly:
Getting love from her cousins:
Seriously, this having a baby thing just packs the pounds on, even if you didn’t give birth. It’s a combination of sleep-deprivation and B’s new schedule (2 to 11pm) (UGH) that has just made our eating habits all out of whack. B said the other day, “I am such a fat bastard!” and I was like, “Me too!” and then we promptly did nothing about it.
Le sigh.
I’ve been missing blogging lately, feeling a bit isolated with the stay-at-home thing. Can I tell you a non-secret? I suck so hard at being a stay-at-home mom. I guess I used to think the formula was No Job + Baby = SAHM. I was so wrong, and I don’t even quite know how to articulate why it’s difficult for me. It requires quite a bit of structure, which I’ve never been good at. It’s as if when there is a vast sea of time in front of you things seem like they can wait, and very quickly the house is a mess and the laundry is falling out of baskets and there are diapers everywhere and the dogs toenails look like some sort of vampiric horror show. THEN, by that point it all seems too much, and you are too morally depleted from the fact that you haven’t worn anything with a waistband in over six months and your hair is just a mess, and so you just call friends and talk about how hard it is to . . . well . . . do stuff.
First world problems, yo.
The flip side of all the whine is that I love to be with her. I do, I love being home with her and the thought of working makes my stomach turn. I think the solution is that I have to learn how to be a better SAHM. I goggled it the other day, and man was that a joke. I know I can’t be the only one that is so clueless about these things, yet the results page was either, “Make organic play-doh and count to 10 in Mandarin” or “Don’t stay at home it ruins your life”. Sweet options, internet. Can I stay at home and not ruin my life and not be a douche, all at the same time? I guess we will see.
In the meantime, HI! I love your faces. Here is a picture of Team Swan, being all festive and getting our “sleigh ride” on, which was really just a hay ride with “hay” crossed out.
B’s mom used her bonus to rent this amazing beach house for the whole family to stay in for a long weekend. It ended up being a mixed bag. The night before Fiona had been up from 11:30 to 2:30 for no apparent reason, so I was exhausted and so was she. So the first night it was just me, Fiona, B’s mom, B’s sister and her son. We unpacked, had dinner, got in comfy clothes and were discussing which movie to watch when Fiona’s head spun around five times and she re-emerged as Satan. I did everything, you guys. EVERY. THING. By midnight I had let her come in bed with me, which would normally work but she was not having any of it. I was so, so, so tired, and I knew her screaming was keeping everyone up so that added another layer of stress. I took her out into the living room at about 1:30 and set her on the floor with her toys and sat down on the couch and went right into the ugly cry. HARD. And I’m on Prozac, so the ugly cry does not happen very often. B’s mom walks in, looks at me and then Fiona and says, “You need to go to bed right now!” and I didn’t even argue, just shuffled/sobbed my sad ass to bed, where I didn’t sleep anyway because I could hear her crying. It’s awful, I am just so glad it doesn’t happen often. Anyway, I called B the next morning and told him to put a hurry on it because I was done. He wanted to know what was wrong with her and I have no idea, you know? Teething? Sick? Mad that Casey was voted off American Idol? It turns out she was sick and so was I, and then B, but what is funny is that I was downloading pictures of this weekend and came across this gem:
I mean, she so obviously has a cold in this picture. Poor birdie.
Other than that insanity, it was a gorgeous weekend at the beach.
Those windows look out to the ocean.
Backyard
Sis-in-law
Me!
Mom-in-law making one of several meals following this rule: Carbs + Fat = Good
I only post this because OMG the hoodie. So cute.
Cousins in jams!
It wasn't all screaming, thank God.
Anyway, that was sort of non-update update, but I wanted to jump right in.
I turned thirty-six last month. I don’t know what to write about anymore. I am still infertile, but I have a baby. I want to say so much about her but don’t know how. It’s hard to be consistent when you are tired. I miss music. I started knitting again. I did my taxes. I got a new bra. I learned how not to shop with a baby. I smell like a tropical island. I am blonde again. I need to earn money. I want to stay home. I want another baby. I want to go to work. I want to write. I don’t know how anymore. I stare at Fiona in amazement, still. I love her in a crushing, sweeping way. I am more sensitive to the news since she has been born. I am less worried than I have ever been. I am so tired. I am so happy. I am so restless. I turned thirty-six and I still have no idea what I want to be, other than Fiona’s mom. I love being Fiona’s mom.
Whew! Are you like, wiping sweat from your brow right now?
I finally got a nice shiny new computer, which means that I can type without things jamming up and I can upload pictures and videos and other things of goodness and joy.
In fact, I’m going to stick a picture in right now, because I can:
Quick updates:
1. SHINY. NEW. COMPUTER.
2. Fiona turned 8 months old yesterday. I’m having trouble even comprehending how the pregnancy seemed like years, and then as soon as she made her debut life started zooming by.
3. I am still at home, which may change in the next couple of months. I’m trying to enjoy it but I’m going stir crazy in this house. Obviously the only solution is to tear everything apart and paint it and put it back together again.
4. I’m 36. Whaaaaat, dude?
5. I missed it here.
That is my new way of expressing frustration, and I could not recommend it more. When all other words fail you, nothing feels quite like dropping “motherfucking” twice.
So, you know: UNCLE. Fiona is sick with her first real cold, and it’s dreadful. We took her to the ER on Friday night because her breathing was choppy and labored, and by the time we rolled in she was all coo’s and giggles, so much so that we felt like total Munchhausen by proxy parents even checking her in. The attending doctor kept saying, “Well, she looks fine, but if she has another “episode” bring her in!” Episode? Could there be a more condescending way of saying something?
If only we knew on Friday how much worse it was going to get, I would have saved my ER visit. It turns out that we are woefully unprepared for a sick baby. We are bumbling fools, everything we say has a hint of panic and a question mark on the end.
“Maybe . . . water?”
“Steam?”
“That noise does not sound right. Right?”
“You hold her, and I will shove this . . . up her nose?”
It’s bad, internet. I mean, I don’t want to over-exaggerate, but I think I’ve got a raging case of PTSD from the crying. I can hear a crying baby twenty miles away now, and it fills me with a sick dread. Last night we passed out in a snotty heap in front of the television and I woke up saying, “She’s started again!” and it was a stupid movie with a baby crying.
The thing is, we are still swaddling, and concurrent with the Ebola virus is her sudden readiness to not be swaddled. Which is fine, really, except she doesn’t sleep unless she is swaddled. So it goes: three hours of crying, lay her down, three hours of crying, lay her down, one hour of crying (by all of us) put her in the swing and curl up at the base sucking our thumbs. And let’s be real here, “crying” is a piss poor way to describe what a sick baby does. It’s more of a screech / arch / kick / gag / fart / vomit / screech / claw / inhale / silence for five seconds where you think it might be over but really they are just gathering apocalyptic strength / repeat.
Three days in to this and B and I (who never fight) are blaming each other for everything that has happened since Nam. I was rocking her and he comes charging in and says, “SHE DOESN’T LIKE THE FUCKING SWADDLE!” Like I invented the swaddle, then sewed the swaddle, then swaddled her in the swaddle, and then told everyone she could never get out of the swaddle. Motherfucking snakes on the motherfucking plane!
Last night we finally just put her in the car seat and stormed outside slamming doors and drove around until she was asleep. In retrospect it’s funny that we both went, like it was a normal family affair. We rode in complete silence for thirty minutes, seething at each other for indiscretions such as a stomach growl that woke her up once she was finally asleep.
Sidebar: when my nephew was little and he got mad he would make horns at you, and it became a family thing. I just searched for pictures and found at least one of everyone in the family doing it, and I would upload them all if I could but my computer is LAME, so here is one as an example:
Anyway, this is how B and I say “be quiet” when Fiona is sleeping, and last night B did it to the dogs. Just horned the shit right out of them when they had the audacity to walk up the stairs. Then I started laughing, and he horned me, so I had to do the silent laugh. What I am saying is, things have become crazy over here.
I want my sweet baby back! The smiler, the girl who slept all night and cuddled and didn’t leak fluids from several orifices at once. You know, the one I was going to talk about in a sweet little entry before that got derailed and bastardized into this entry. Motherfucking snakes on the motherfucking plane!
