Jumping In

When I called my best friend today and told her I was in the rhombus of doom, I couldn’t really explain why.  I still can’t, but I know this much: if I don’t write, I’ll just wither up.  So I will try to silence the voices in my head that I hear every time I open WordPress, wondering if I should start a new blog, talk about where I’ve been, where I’m going, or what I had for lunch.  I have opened WordPress, I have selected the option to add a new post, and I am typing.

I’m on a super long weekend.  I left the daycare Tuesday before the last mom was out of the driveway, and I don’t go back until next Tuesday.  When I left my mom said, “I hope we heal before we see each other again!” and man, I hope we do.  Monday and Tuesday were BRUTAL.  It was pouring, the kids were vile, manipulative creatures and I was tired.  (I know, right? You wonder, do we have openings? I’ve always wanted a daycare provider that calls my child a vile, manipulative creature! To which I say, if you don’t agree with me, you haven’t spent two rainy days with nine children.) (And no, we don’t have any openings!) Anyway, it sucked the life out of me, and I am just now looking around my own house and noticing that it in total disarray and taking taking stock of the things we need at the store.

Back to the long weekend! So I scored this play structure for FREE:

It’s so big.  B is spending the day today taking apart and then this weekend we will try to find some poor sucka to help us reassemble.   Some rich dude wants to put in a basketball court and doesn’t want to spend the time taking this down, so he was offering it for free if someone would do it for him.  I’ve been looking for one, and even used this would be about $800.  OK, rich dude, I’ll do the dirty work! Or B will, whichever.  I’m really excited.

Oh, and since I’m all freeballing it with no thematic structure at all, let me switch right over to infertility.  We were trying again with the same surrogate but now we aren’t.  How is that for news?  It’s kind of a long story, but the bottom line is that it just wasn’t right this time, and we were all okay with that.  I want another baby, I want Fiona to have a sibling, I want, I want, I want.  If it isn’t meant to be and if the worst thing about Fiona’s life is that she is an only child I will feel like I did a pretty awesome job.  More on that later, try not to pee your pants.

Let’s see . . . what else? We are going to Cody, Wyoming for a family reunion in July.  We are DRIVING.  Two cars, five adults, two kids, one toddler.  Hold me.  We are taking two days to get there, visiting the upper part of Yellowstone on the way there and then staying for five days at a ranch house with twenty-three other people, and then taking two days to drive home, visiting the lower part of Yellowstone on the way back.  It is a huge undertaking.  Remember the days of just jumping in the car and going?  Yeah, me either.

So that’s what I have for now.  I’m not editing it, I’m just pushing the “Publish Immediately” button which gives me hives a bit but man, I’ve missed it here.

xoxo

One day

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:

Since I’ve been gone

Beach House

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’m back! I’m back! I’m back!

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.

Motherfucking snakes on the motherfucking plane!

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!

Love

I have a core group of friends, four of us total. There used to be a few more, but they have moved away or been psycho, or whatever, they fell away. As if I am not blessed enough to have three amazing friends, my sister is one of them. The four of us go away to the beach each year, plan each others showers, be bridesmaids in each others weddings . . . that kind of friendship.

This week, when it became clear that my sister and her husband were not going to be able to work out their problems, I sent out the call for reinforcement and our friend in Seattle got herself on a train, and we got yarn and crafts and wine and food and converged.

I love these women. I am home, and tired, but renewed. Good friends make hard times easier. Write that down.

Follow up

After we had been home from the hospital for about three days, I told B that I couldn’t move forward unless I knew Babymama was okay. I sent her an email that basically said, how are you, how should I act, do you want to be left alone, do you want pictures . . . tell me what to do. The email she sent back was so amazing it was like she had given me another gift.

I will paraphrase here because it seems wrong to share her words directly. What she told me was that she didn’t know why, but she had always wanted to help me and B. She saw us struggling and had a nagging feeling that she could do something, but didn’t know what, and we weren’t close enough at the time to just ask. When she was told that we were thinking of surrogates she knew right away that she would do it, and she would have done it for free. She said she felt that God had this planned for us, and that she knew as soon as she handed the baby back to me that she had done the right thing and was not sad anymore. She thanked us (!!!) for making it such a positive experience for her.

I felt free when I read it, like I could exhale, celebrate, love this little girl. I don’t know what we did to deserve Babymama, but the things that she has taught me about grace I will always carry. I hope that when Fiona is older she will read this story and she will feel the awe that I feel.

Thank you to everyone who sent an email or left a comment. Some of you have been here the whole time, sending this hope and love to us that we have actually felt and has actually buoyed us during uncertain times. I wanted you all to know that Babymama is happy and sees Fiona regularly and that we are intent on making this very different family work.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Perfect

I wanted to push the pause button on this day. Everything was perfect, the entire day was one of those fleeting moments of grace that usually only last minute or two.

I made pumpkin butter, granola, and tomato sauce. There was a fire raging all day. The sun was that perfect sun that only happens in fall where it is honest to God golden, and everything it touches is suddenly a masterpiece of a picture.

And Fiona. Fiona, Fiona, Fiona. Such a miracle. So many things had to happen for her to be cooing in my living room.

It was a perfect day.

Friday, I’m in love

I was at my sisters house today, so yay for someone with a computer that can handle pictures! Here are few pictures of our Fall:

Walking to the yarn store:

The loot:

She loves the fire:

I love a girl in a pink hat:

Hanging with her BFF:

Just being gorgeous:

Aaaand then Chuck Norris shows up:

But seriously, this belly is divine:

Finally, getting to share some pictures with you guys!