Winterizing

October is the month of awe in New England. The brilliance of the foliage demands you take notice; that you stop for a moment in reverence for all the Earth provides. Trees on fire in hues of red, orange and yellow seem to ignite an urgency to be outdoors and basking in the last remnants of consistent sunlight. Then comes the blandness of November and you remember that it is time to turn indoors and tend to the hearth.

So we are tending and winterizing our chilly, drafty rental house. Our landlords are really great and we try to be the independent renters who only bother them for plumbing or electrical emergencies. There honestly isn’t much they can do about the drafts short of installing new windows and doors or fixing the duct systems, so I pull out the step stool and tape and get started on all the windows. The girls’ room is first because the humongous vent on the floor is a weak heat source, so they also get a mini-heater. Bit actually sleeps in our room so Bug gets the snuggliest footie jammies Mommy can find (even with socks underneath) and extra ladybug blankets. As she gets bigger and grows out of the “t” sizes these are getting more and more difficult to find. I swear every toddler girl in Southern New Hampshire is her size because these jammies sell out fast.

The front door is the next project for winterizing that always baffles me. Personally, I would prefer to seal it off completely and hang a blanket over it, but Muffin isn’t too keen on spending the next six months with no front door access and a giant elephant-sized blanket on his wall. The door wasn’t cut completely straight so there are gaps and weather stripping has to be cut and customized to fit in correctly.

The most daunting task on the winterizing list is the raking. The never-ending raking. While we only have two trees in our yard the neighboring trees are close to fence line so we have a mountain of leaves each year. This is Bug’s second favorite outdoor chore (gardening is the first) and she runs and runs with excitement as she jumps in all my piles and throws leaves in the air. The fact that she is so cute makes it worth the extra time recreating my piles. And she loves to be the leaf stomper. She stomps and spins and makes up songs like she is Lucy stomping grapes, only not as messy.

These are the household chores I don’t actually mind. The raking I enjoy because I am outdoors and because there is an eventual end. It’s not quite like laundry where I take a deep breath of accomplish only to turn and find that Bit has spit up all over her clothes and Muffin has unloaded a suitcase without me knowing it. No, there are only so many leaves that can fall in my yard and while it is a lot, they can all be tamed. When it is finished I can actually look back at my work and see that I did something measurable that day. And the winterizing makes an impact on my heating bills and how many chills I feel a day so that, my friends is money in the bank. Any activity that gives me a measured sense of accomplishment helps me feel like I am standing strong on one leg with only a breeze to ruffle my pink feathers.

The Playground Star

Before Lil Bit was born, we bumped into a Mom’s group at gymnastics. I swear it was kismet; besides a working mom's group I joined before the lay-off, they were the first group of incredibly friendly moms I have met in New England. They just opened up and talked as if we had known one another in years. The most friendly mother, Momma E, had actually recently moved from Colorado Springs (coincidentally??) and I knew I had to get over my own Jennifer shyness and let JD get into the fray with these women. We had a play date in June, went on vacation, and then the baby came. These ladies have been on my mind since then, but we only just today finally got back together with them.

I hate that it has taken me so long. In my recent awaking from the baby fog I knew I had to touch base with them again. They are brilliantly lovely women with parenting styles similar to my own. It is hard to feel lonely when you are around people as open as the Midwestern sky! I find it funny that while we were at the playground casually chatting and playing with the kids, we engulfed another mom and her girls into the group; another woman who had recently moved and was feeling shy and desperate to know more about the area. Momma E instantly welcomed her and chatted her up along with another local mom whose adorable children were playing with ours. Since Bit was asleep in her stroller and Momma E was keeping an eye on the “stuff,” I hopped in on the kid games.

Bug wanted me to be a troll under the bridge, so I started trying to grab their feet while they pounced on the bouncy bridge apparatus to the slide. It started with two girls, then the third wanted to climb the “tower” to get away from me. So I became the tickle troll who would tickle them down the slide. Incorporating the slide drew a fourth kid, then a fifth and before I knew it, there were seven four to two year olds chasing me around the park begging for tickles. Bug then incorporated a game I started when I was pregnant and couldn’t rough house any more. Basically, we snuggle and take pretend bites out of one another and decide what flavor we taste like. She grabbed my neck and captured the tickle troll, took a “bite” and declared I tasted like strawberries. The other kids quickly caught on and would take their turns deciding what I tasted like. Apparently, pizza is a popular troll delight.

When I got her dressed this morning, I was just hoping she wouldn’t be too shy around all the other kids I knew we would meet up with. I put her hair in cute pigtails and said a little prayer for her to be the outgoing star I know she can be. But instead, I ended up being the star of the playground. And, honestly, isn’t that how it should be? There I was running around and around with seven kids trailing me, eager for either tickles or to tackle me and take a bite. Who isn’t more fun to defeat, chase, or have the attention from on the playground when you are a small child than an adult? With the freedom of knowing Bit was being watched, I was able to be the star in Bug’s show for her friends and she felt so confident. I could see her beaming with pride that her Mommy was the one everyone wanted to be around. And the other Moms were able to chat seeing there was someone making sure they were taking turns, keeping their hands to themselves, or climbing safely. 

Sure, I gave up a little time chatting with the moms, but honestly I feel so FULL after getting in kid time. Playing gives me back all the vigor I lost being 30, paying bills, and counting calories. Instead of an espresso, take a shot of playtime and you will feel energized again. Next time we go to the park, I will be happy to give Momma E a turn being the star since she is a very hands-on mother as well. Then her little girl will be the one with the “cool” mom.

There were plenty of parents actively playing with their kids at the park today and that also makes me a happy camper. Sure, sometimes you just want to read a book in peace while your kids run and I understand that. But if you’ve never given it a try, I encourage you to be the star of the playground. I promise your day will suddenly seem a lot funner, I mean, more fun.

The Collection

Every day I get up and fight a genetically-bred natural instinct to hoard. It’s a dominant quality passed down from my mother’s side. I can remember my grandparents house having two or three rooms dedicated to floor-to-ceiling stacks of boxes and random things that their seven children passed off to them for storage. And I want to personally thank TLC and A&E for their reality docu-shows on hoarders. I think after seeing two episodes my mom went through and finally donated her stacks of unworn clothing gathering dust in her bedroom. She painstakingly washes and saves plastic food containers with lids. From butter to yogurt, she washes them and adds them to her Tupperware. That is a cabinet I dread opening in her house, so I am more than happy to recycle mine.

As a modern day nomad, one would think that I don’t have the stability to hoard things. I admit we do have boxes of things that we have just never gone through and that make move after move. I’m more of a passive hoarder in that way. But there are two items that I consciously and fastidiously cannot get rid of. The first are boxes. Hey, I move… a lot. I need those things. Appliance boxes are my favorite because the packing materials make it go back so nicely and safely. I literally have a 20-foot wall in my basement four rows high with nothing but boxes.

The most important collection is the breast milk. Lil Bit joined us in July of 2010 after her healthy, text-book pregnancy quickly turned dangerous. She was six weeks premature and the ordeal left both of us hospitalized. She was transferred to the NICU in a hospital about a mile away and I stayed in my recovery room. I could hear the babies crying in the rooms next to me, the family members coming in to visit with joy and hope in their voices. My room was quiet with the exception of IV beeps and the whir of the pump.

There I would sit, staring at her pictures on my cell phone, willing out any drop of liquid gold. When I was released I could still only visit her in her hospital, returning home to snuggle my toddler, build my own strength and try to sleep. Oh how a mother’s heart aches without her baby. To have a person grow there inside you under your heart and then be forced away from them, albeit for their own health and safety, is such a helpless feeling. All I could do to help her was build my own stamina and pump.

It was a week before she learned to breathe well enough to try suckling. It was another two weeks before she could eat without feeding tube supplements. I spent six hours a day with her at the hospital. I would go in, change her, weigh her, attempt to nurse her, weigh her again only to realize she had only taken in a small fraction of a meal, hold her during her tube feeding, sing her to sleep, lie her down, and then pump. The mmmm-chhhh, mmmm-chhhh, mmmm-chhhh of the pump became my battle cry to get her home. And within ten days, I was easily pumping 50 ounces a day. Months later, I’m down to just once or twice a day as her tummy and my supply catch up to one another. Sometimes, I still go out to the garage freezer and “manage” the collection, making sure the bags are sorted properly. I catalog in my mind just how long she will be able to have milk if something were to happen to me. Sure, it’s a morbid thought, but we went through a lot.

Today, Bit is four months old. She is healthier than I am, gaining weight and size so fast she is no longer measured by her gestational age but by her birthday. Developmental milestones do seem to be following by her due date though and hopefully she will catch up to the other babies soon enough. She is working on reaching, grasping and some days I think she will roll over at any moment. She is a very happy baby and only gets upset when she is hungry, wet, tired or has to spit up, which happens A LOT.

It may seem in my writings that she is an after thought rather than a role player but that is not the case. She just sleeps all the time so it is hard for her to inspire plot development. But she is stirring a completeness in me that I didn’t expect. And her health saga is inspiring a lot of writing I am compiling together for a series of posts on HELLP Syndrome. After I was hospitalized I couldn’t find many personal testimonies and if Balanced Rock serves no other purpose, I would like to help other families who go through the same thing understand what they may be able to expect and feel some comfort in knowing that they too will be okay.

We rarely need to use the collection these days, but when I do need to defrost a bag my mind goes back to August 5^th at 11am and see the proof of my devotion to this little baby girl. This collection does not hide under the stairs in the dark. It is one I feel proud to share with the neighbors, to say, “Hey, look what I made!”

Journey to Rattlesnake Rock

All this writing is certainly inspiring an attitude adjustment. The decrease of random thoughts in my head and emotional evaluation means there is more room for happiness at the surface and I have come to two important revelations. The first is a reconnection with Rand. A recent online conversation about Anthem has me tingling with desires of exceptionalism once again. What have I done today, what have I given, what have I produced that is truly exceptional? What have I done that no other person in this world could? My blood has been flowing a little quicker. I still wake up feeling like tar, but after a warm cup of chai my mind goes to work plotting the possibilities of the day.

The second revelation is the most important. For months, maybe even a year, I let idleness convince me that the life of a stay-at-home mom isn’t as fulfilling for me as working motherhood would be. My own laziness and lack of discipline let the dark voices sink in and I began to “what if” about a life not my own. But my writing has helped me take inventory of the blessings I have only because I am here with my children.

Yesterday we went on a dinosaur hunt in our backyard. Bug relishes any opportunity she gets to boss me around and be in complete control of our games. She decided that we would follow a Dora-style mapped out adventure to return a lost Jack-o-saur (the dog) to his mommy. First we had to go through the tunnel so we marched our knees high to the sun between the shed and the retaining wall. Then we mounted our horses Pencil and Lasso to gallop over Rattlesnake Rock. The adventure finally took us to the playground (our swing set) where the Jack-o-saur Mommy was waiting. As with any Bug adventure, we had to take frequent trips through Rattlesnake Rock before she had her fill.

Shame on me for taking the opportunity to fully engage in the game of my child for granted! I know I will say this a number of times, but there is no dignity in parenting a young person. Being down on the ground, making funny faces, giving low fives too slow, these are the building blocks of trust. But more than that, they are the pieces of me. I felt better truly playing her game yesterday than I have been in weeks. Any insecurities about a clean house, my clothes, my body, saying the right thing, all of those worries were gone and I was happiness personified. What have I done today, what have I given, what have produced that is truly exceptional? I did NOT half-ass my way through playtime. I drank up every ounce of joy and spunk she had to offer.

Later that night she crawled out of bed at midnight and interrupted my movie. I still had Bit in my right arm letting her settle into her deep sleep, so I asked Bug to curl up on my left side. She talked through the end of my movie and wiggled so much Bit couldn’t get comfortable, so we headed off to my bed and we lied there whispering nose-to-nose our favorite things about the day and one another. I told her how much fun I had playing with her, I thanked her for making me laugh. I asked her who loved her the most in this whole world and she said, “you and my Daddy of course. Momma, don’t talk. You stinky now and you wake up my sister.” After a quick thought about changing toothpaste brands, I drifted off to sleep snuggling my exceptional child.

The Potty Chronicals - Volume 1

JD used to entertain the notion that she would forever be the star of her life, the leading lady in the days of our lives. As often happens in Hollywood, in my saga the supporting actress is actually the top billed star. I have always wanted to be a mother; I actually majored in child psychology so that I could prepare myself for the task. I would close my eyes and try to imagine my children, what mischief they would cause, the sweetness in their hugs, the activities we would do together. None of those imaginings comes close to the bright light that is my real life Bug.

Our oldest daughter is truly forged from the fire and steal of Muffin and myself. Type A personality, smart, athletic, ambitious, a mini-chief marching steadily in her princess tutu and baseball bat ready to soak up each new day. She came into the world to give us hope and healing after the most traumatic experience we have ever been through and, my, she does deliver. Our three-year old dynamo has a kind heart in a precocious package and a desperate need to control her world.

Control is a dominant theme for three-year olds. As they enter early childhood they experiment with the limits of where they begin and their parents end. They begin this phase at about 18-months but after their third birthday I believe there is a resurgence of independence. By then, Mom and Dad have, hopefully, firmly established their limits with what is allowed so the little person decides who they want to be within those limits. Do I want to be a farmer or a chef? Do I want to wear high heels like Mommy or a hat like Daddy? I have read over and over that in this phase the child will demand control of their own exploration and it seems easy when reading that this is a time to step back and be a facilitory observer rather than a lecturer.

That is easier said then done when changing the dirty butt of a 38-inch small person. I want her, need her, have to have her potty trained. Every ounce of me wants to be finished with diapers/pull-ups. And every ounce of her seems completely satisfied sitting in her own goo. Even when I can smell that she has had an “accident” she refuses to let me change it. This fact alone would suggest that she just isn’t ready so I should let it go. But when she is naked (her birthday suit is her favorite outfit) she is 100% perfect using the bathroom. This single fact has made potty training the biggest bane of my mothering existence. Why will she not do it if she has clothes on? And as the chill of fall sets in, naked time is getting limited again.

We started the process the spring before her second birthday. With the warmth of a new season being naked was a cute option when we were at home so started the praising potty dance. We went to Grandma S’s house and candy rewards were entered into the fray. My niece M, who is six months younger than Bug, was also experimenting with potty training and we were all sure the peer pressure would make our strides permanent. When winter rolled around again and she wasn’t fully trained I didn’t mind too much because she was young. Then came the pregnancy and the thought of having two in diapers was not appealing. We went to see Grandma C in Colorado, then came the premature delivery, then came Grandma S, then came the hospital stays, then Grandma left, then the other Grandma came, then it was her birthday, and with all the change in her life Bug refused to give up the control of going poo in her pants.

This saga will likely be a major story line in my life for months to come. She is begging for more social interactions and wants to go to school, but can’t until she uses the potty. This fact is not enough for her to change. We have tried treats, praise, stickers, big rewards like swimming lessons or school. We have tried everything except giving up and that is where we are now. After a particularly long day in big girl panties, Muffin and I told her we wouldn’t talk about it again. We put the panties ceremoniously away and bought her a box of diapers. When she saw them at the store she told a random passerby, “Hey, look, it’s MY diapers! Oh, yeah, these are for me and not my sister!” I think this will take awhile. 

The Life Nomadic

Back in the age of JD there was no such thing as moving for a guy. I spent three years of college in an on-again-off-again relationship with a guy convinced he would be moving from Denver to a bigger city that offered a bigger city sort of life. San Diego. Las Vegas. And that was fine with me, I just wasn’t going to go with him.  I was confident in the possibility of a functional long distance relationship and comfortable in the concept of things happening for a reason. I wasn’t scared of moving; as an Army brat I had been everywhere and anywhere and had to pick up and start over smack in the middle of high school. Basically, I wanted to pursue my own future in my own way and not make compromises for a guy.

One fiery first kiss later, Jennifer boxed up her diploma, meager collection of life tangibles, six-month old pup and hit the road for Northwest Kansas. It would be my third address in fifteen months, having graduated in Colorado and then moved to Mom and Dad’s in North Carolina licking wounds from the previously mentioned fellow. I happily chased the sun across the country from civilization to the middle of nowhere for THE guy. Over eight years our game of chase has taken us from the Great Plains back to Colorado and now to New England where Live Free or Die is the motto for the present.

My Muffin loves three things in this world: his family, America, and baseball and not always in that order. Serving those passions has taken him around the world and provided me the comfort necessary to stay home with our brood of bubbly, blond-haired girls and aging four-pawed fur-sons. He is ridiculously fun, smart, intense, and the only guy I have ever trusted explicitly. So I pack up our things every few years and start new with a clean slate. But children need routine and function to thrive, so with Daddy traveling so much to provide, my blood now runs granite. No matter where we end up I become the rock everyone comes home to.

The nomadic lifestyle means no Grandma to take the kids for the night or Grandpa to steal them away for ice cream. When it comes to playing pretend and teaching ABC’s I am a gold star over-achiever. But I take little satisfaction in the drudgery of dishes and laundry and cleaning. Domestic life creates a Groundhog Day suck spiral and there are many days when I am toppled. We have been here for over two years now and have finally built a stable network of reliable friends and planned outings help to break up the days, but the loneliness still sets in. There are times when my mind begs for something else to do, to have someone else to talk to but a three-year old and gummy-grinned baby.

Perhaps it is no wonder that I am so thankful for the nights. With my girls tucked sweetly in their beds I can put the tantrums aside and reflect poetically on the giggles. I can finish a chore and feel some accomplishment when it stays done for more than five minutes. But what fills my cup is that when I finally lay down in bed, my Muffin is there, wanting to give up his precious limited hours of sleep to whisper sweet nothings and random thoughts. Most mornings when it starts again and I have tired eyes, it’s because of the pillow talk. How thankful I am that he still wants to talk to me after eight years. He may actually miss JD more than I do so perhaps this blog is his blog too.

A Balanced Rock

Cut from centuries of wind, blizzard, and raging summer storms, Balanced Rock stands in a naturally occurring red rock park called the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The enigma is tucked in the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains in the shadow of Pikes Peak. I imagine it as a tall Native American woman standing with her proud face to the wind, hair and regalia whipping behind her, steady against the tribulations of an unforgiving world. She has poise and grace yet she is hard and unbending against the squall.

In reality, the Balanced Rock is a geologic feature made red, blue, purple, and white sandstone, conglomerates, and limestone sedimentary beds deposited back when Colorado was under an ancient ocean and then built up horizontally, and tilted vertically and faulted by the uplift of the Pikes Peak massif and forged by weather erosion. (Wikipedia Nov 2010) I like my version better, but regardless of what the rock formation is, it is really quite remarkable. This structural marvel begs the questions: why doesn’t it topple over? How can tons and tons of rock rest topsy-turvy on such a small base?

Balanced Rock is a keystone for me, and the symbolic reference for the woman I want to be. Since becoming a wife and a mother, balance has eluded me. It wasn’t so bad after getting married, but motherhood has taken sacrifice. First it was the body, then sleep and now day-to-day is a spinning carousel of caring for everyone else. It is easy to forget where I begin and end, what I did before Signing Time, pumping, washing diapers, tea parties, making dinner, quickies, vacuuming, kissing boo-boos, Little Bear, laundry… I think I vaguely remember that I used to shave…

I used to be JD. In about second grade, Jennifer gave way socially and academically to JD because my initials sounded better together than the other Jennifer’s. Jennifer even gave in to JD in college where there were so many people it shouldn’t have mattered. Even my professors used my initials. JD became my Superman, and Jennifer the Clark Kent. JD was a fiercely independent, outgoing, athletic, honor student who majored in extracurricular activities, leadership positions and sorority parties. Jennifer was the responsible one who did her chores, babysat little sisters, cried on Mom’s shoulder, and took groundings when JD missed curfew. It was sort of nice to have two identities and to leave the pressures of one or the other at will. Then I met my Muffin, who refused to call me JD, and the two were forcibly fused together. Jennifer could no longer use JD to protect her vulnerable side and JD was forced into retirement until weekend nights.

Then came the shooting. Then came Bug. Then came the move. Then came the lay-off. And somewhere in and out of the years of depression and happiness I lost the greatest friend I ever had: myself.

This blog is my honest struggle to balance the loving, nurturing, silly, playful, stable, vulnerable and tired Mommy/wife I am today with the JD I used to be. I’m hoping that by reflecting on who I used to be and who I hope to be, I can find the middle ground between what it takes to keep this family strong and Jennifer sane. And maybe, even if it is in writing, I can be the star of my own show, standing through the daily storms with my hair whipping behind me, facing the wind head-on, feeling the warm sun on my back, brilliant as a Balanced Rock.