Cloud Baby

Conversation I'm overhearing right now between Jamie, Charlie and Jim.

 "William's all mine."
"No, he's all mine!"
 "Well he's my brother"
 "He's my brother too!"
 "Well he's my son, so both of you stop it."
"But I want to hold him."
"I asked first!"
"But I'm the oldest." 
Ensuing sounds of smackdown. 
"I'm the dad and neither of you can hold him while you're wrestling."
"What?"
"I said STOP FIGHTING, you just hit William in the stomach" 

~ ~ ~

Oh William.  You have no idea what you've been born into.   I feel like I need to bequeath you a special sword or magic trumpet or something.  I hope you survive. 

I've always enjoyed doing my own newborn photoshoots, but this is the first time I've been physically unable to do it very easily.   I thought it was going to be completely impossible, but my mom and I did it together in a sort of two pronged approach where she was my hands and feet. 

I need to do another one with the boys, but this way if I never get to it, I've at least captured the magical newborn stage that disappears so fast.

 He's a very awake baby...not unhappy like I first thought he'd be, just way too awake for a kid on vicodin.  So this sleepy picture was a hard shot to get.

 This is normal Will. 

 Jim calls this "the cloud picture" but I'm very proud of this blanket.  I saw something similar at Anthropologie for $350, then I saw another one on Pinterest, and like the girl I am...I had to have it.  Except I bought the raw yarn off of Etsy, dyed it and knit it myself.   The dyeing part was the most fun, the knitting part was horrendous.  I daydream too much to knit anything.  I think I took this blanket apart at least five times and started over because I lost track of where I was. ho hum

  

 You have to admit, William looks very much like a little monkey. 

 Pointy butt.

We call this his sleepy puppy face.  It's funny how newborns can look totally different one second to the other.

My mom and Julia are here from Guatemala...which I didn't originally think I would need.  Ha.  It apparently takes two adults and a teenager to take care of three kids, a wounded mother and a very awake infant.   It doesn't help that it's hotter than Mars in San Diego right now.   I cannot wait for Fall weather.  I don't think I've ever spent a more miserable Summer in my life.   Thankfully, some friends had pity and loaned us a small window air conditioner that we installed in our room.   So now there's a little slice of coolness in our tiny apartment.  Our bedroom now doubles as my throne room, school room, slumber party room and the room of requirement.   I'm a bit like Rapunzel though, in that I'm stuck up here in my tower, so if you want to say hi...please feel free to come over!

 

Hello Grandma  

Big Expectations

It's funny... Usually, the more you anticipate something, the more you set yourself up for disappointment.   If you have a particularly above average imagination, then letting it run away with visions of your wildest dreams usually means you suffer a lot of crushingly dramatic disappointments.   I'm sure there are exceptions, maybe some people always get their deepest hearts desires, I don't know.   Mine recently, have revolved around fantasizing about air conditioning this Summer.  I'm pretty sure I can't remember the last time it was legitimately chilly enough to drink the now disparaged Pumpkin Spice Latte, but it certainly wasn't last Winter. 

But there is one huge glaring exception to the whole "don't get your hopes up" rule.  Having a baby.   Jim and I have been wondering for months what William would be like... what color his hair would be...his eyes (which is completely meaningless considering our babies hair and eyes rarely settled on a color very long).   We've spent months taking care of someone we desperately love but hadn't met.   It would seem to me a recipe of disaster... counting on someone being so amazing when people are so often disappointing.  But then we laid eyes on our little Will.   We held his tiny little bones in our arms and thought he was even more amazing than we were hoping for. 

 

And it's a good thing, because while we're all gushing over his soft elbow dimples and fighting over who gets to hold him next, I've got a troupe of evil phantom elves trying to saw off my left leg with a red hot iron poker.   I'm not sure what went wrong during the surgery.   There was apparently a lot of scar tissue and a super thin uterine scar that was about to burst?  But we both came out of recovery fine, and it wasn't until a day or so afterwards that I got up and about fell over from a weird shooting pain in my left leg.   It's gotten worse since then, and nobody can figure it out.  My nurses weren't familiar with "help my leg is burning" complication from a c-section.   The surgeons say it's got to be anesthesiology's fault, and anesthesiology says it's got to be something the surgeons did.   They kept me another day scratching their heads over it before sending me home with vicodin and a walker.  (the PT guy they sent down with the walker looked a little lost to find himself in Labor&Delivery lol).   The c-section part of my recovery looks and feels great.   I'd never guess I'd just had my abdomen sliced open and sewed shut.  What I would guess is that I got shot in the leg and there's a bullet left in there somewhere.  The pain is excruciating...topping any of the other traumatic incidents in my life.  Up until now I would have said the broken foot or the tonsillectomy was the most painful thing I've ever gone through, but they've been knocked off their pedestal by these evil phantom elves and their chainsaws (...or was it red hot pokers?). 

Hopefully it's all just temporary nerve damage caused by all the tissue trauma to that general area.  Because I'm not sure how much longer my family is going to last with me in bed coming unglued every time someone barely touches my left leg. 

Praying next week brings healing and answers... 

Four Years Past The Seven Year Itch

Happy 11th anniversary to us!  We've officially been married so long Jim and I were having trouble remembering what we've done for our anniversary each year.  Ahem.  Luckily (but probably inconsequentially) for us, I recorded everything on here which means if I ever want to tell my great grandchildren about being married for 11 years, I have to eek out some sort of cave scratching regarding yesterday.  

This is the first anniversary I've been pregnant, and whoosh am I pregnant.   So pregnant Jim promptly ordered me fried pickles as soon as we sat down at the little pier cafe in Seaport Village while I chewed on ice and fanned myself like I was in the Sahara instead of a breezy cool balcony on the bay. 

Our ten year anniversary last year seemed so...anticlimactic and twilight zone-ish.   We spent year zero to ten saying silly things like "We'll renew our vows for our tenth!", "We'll take a cruise...go to Europe...do something extra special".  Instead we spent it frantically trying to move our family from the only home they'd ever known,  and we wouldn't have celebrated it at all if generous friends hadn't of sent us out for a fancy dinner.  This year though I just feel incredibly lucky.    According to Facebook we should have never "courted", we should never have gotten married so young.   We should have kissed before we got married, we should have grown up and matured a little more...seen the world...experienced life.   I'm not so arrogant or naive to presume anything we did or didn't do was the "secret" as to why we're still happily married...I'm just grateful.   Grateful I still have a husband I respect, am attracted to, and who I think is amazing.   Grateful he feels the same way about me.   Grateful I've never had cause to second guess or regret my wedding vows.   Desperately hopeful that the future holds more of the same.  I hope eleven years only represents a small fraction of our marriage...that Jim doesn't kill himself on his motorcycle and I don't have a heart attack from trying to homeschool and keep four boys alive.

Meanwhile, I enjoyed reclining lazily on the grass while listening to the San Diego symphony.  The cruise ships leaving the bay didn't strike so much as a small chord of jealousy in me...although that may have been because I was too busy moaning about my aching back and swollen feet.   

At least I can look forward to chasing an almost one year old around for our 12th anniversary?

Classical Conversations Cycle 3 - Wooden History Figures

Since I have two very active, hands on, visual learners, Classical Conversations is sometimes a bit hard for us because it involves so. many. songs.    I'm always trying to implement creative ways to teach the memory work at home, and I also love handmade, naturally sourced toys.   So when I finally buckled down to go over my school planning for the upcoming year I found myself browsing Etsy for things like "wooden George Washington" and "Christopher Columbus" etc etc.  It got harder when I tried to find a toy Vanderbilt or Carnegie. Ahem.     My mom is an amazing artist, and my dad loves to work with wood, so I grew up with things like a "to scale" Noah's Ark and a wooden Nativity Scene that folded in on itself was easy for little hands to play with.

Now my parents and their awesome abilities are thousands of miles away from me.  They're missionaries to the Deaf in Guatemala and while I occasionally scrounge their U.S. attic for leftover wooden toys from my childhood, it didn't exactly help with my very detailed list of historical figures listed in the Cycle 3 history songs.    Like Etsy, my parent's attic didn't have little Vanderbilts or Teddy Roosevelts lying around among the rafters.    So I asked my mom (begged? pleaded?) how hard it would be for her to design new figurines for me that would fit with this upcoming Classical Conversations cycle, and how difficult it would be to make them.

I don't know what I was expecting, but I was totally blown away when I got a box in the mail with these in it.




This is my set, hand painted with love by my mother.  They include all of the major figures listed in the history sentences.

And the best part is they made quite a few sets, so they're available for sale if anyone else is like me and interested in creative supplements to the CC curriculum. 


They were designed by my parents but are made by deaf students (usually young adults) learning to work with tools in a workshop.   All profits go to the actual individuals who made them (finding a job is difficult in Guatemala if you're deaf).   


Most of them are currently unpainted, and would come with a PDF of rough directions and pictures.  (everything can be painted with a sponge, q-tip and toothpick... no fancy artistry or brushes required. My mom likes to keep it simple so kids can do it). 


I have a few painted sets available, but they will likely be a little different than mine due to the variety of "artists in training" working on them.


You can download an order form here. And email it to estheramsey@yahoo.com
Or send your address and what you want to estheramsey@yahoo.com 

Feel free to pass this on.  There are approx 30 sets available, and I would love for none of their hard work to go to waste. 

Items included in set:  

Christopher Columbus                                       Pilgrims (man and woman)

Native Americans (man and woman)                 Lewis and Clark

George Washington                                           Henry Clay

Davy Crockett                                                   Abraham Lincoln

President Polk                                                  General Ulysses S. Grant

General Robert E. Lee                                     Civil War Soldiers (Union and Confederate)

Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Swift         Teddy Roosevelt

President Wilson                                             Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin

Out of the woods is worse...

I probably will piss off the fates and regret saying this, but I almost prefer the projectile expulsion of fluids during the stomach flu versus the post illness recovery phase.    When kids are sick you can't help but feel sorry for them, they're all cuddly and hot and for the first time in months you get to see them sit still for more than ten seconds at a time.    Plus, you spend so much time doing laundry, mopping the floor, scrubbing the toilet and disinfecting every surface in sight, you don't have time to get frustrated.    (Side note, how is it that my house is simultaneously the nastiest and cleanest it's ever been?  I swear dwarves could mine diamonds off the sides of my toilet, it sparkles so brilliantly.  Never has it been this determinedly scrubbed ten times a day).    I know it's all hard work, and nobody wants the stomach flu to hit their house, but ohmyword it's the aftershocks that threaten to overwhelm me and send me over the edge.  

Like the moment you kick everyone off of the piles of towels in your room, and send them back to sleep in their own room.  Oh the horrors.   I'd say it was a tear-inducing festival of hysteria, but seriously everything causes drama right now.   It's nonstop, "What do you mean I can't eat jello for every meal now?"   "Why can't I watch TV endlessly anymore?"  "He touched me" "Well he looked at me funny."  "I'm tired."  "I'm hungry...no I'm not hungry...yes I am hungry."     

It goes on and on and on, and quite frankly I'm done.  Peace out, this is where I get off.    

Someone please tell me everything will go back to normal eventually, because right now I feel like someone has switched out my normally good natured, sushi consuming, high energy children with limp impersonations who won't eat anything but plain pasta and complain that swimming is boring.   Bah.

Badge of Shame and Mommy Brain.

I don't know if it's the bone sucking anemia or what, but if there were some sort of parachute device for life (that deployed when it sensed impending epic mama failures), I'd be a prime candidate for one.   I can't seem to get a grip on this pregnancy.  It is like a roller coaster I wasn't expecting to start...or rather, I wasn't expecting to be dropped into it while simultaneously on other lively roller coasters, and I'm still trying to dig myself out of whatever non functioning fun zone I'm vacationing in.

 Costco has been on my black list for awhile, and shall henceforth be referred to me as the black hole of insanity.    I used to have to drive thirty minutes to get to Costco, now I live smack dab within mere miles of not one, but TWO Costcos.   Oh the sweet commercialism.   It was something I was looking forward to, but no... the Costcos black holes of insanity here are a teeming mass of depraved humanity.  It's all blood, sweat and cars that no sane person should ever attempt (don't even think of trying to turn into the parking lot on a weekend).    I'm also adding Trader Joe's in Mission Valley to that list, because it took me twenty minutes to park (I'm thinking maybe lunch time was the wrong time to go?  It looked like every executive within miles, was having a business lunch at one of the surrounding restaurants).    The kids were crying for food and bathrooms, and I finally decided to give up and go home...but I couldn't do that either, because typically impatient Californians will wait with the serenity of Job if it means snagging the parking spot of someone who maybe/might/potentially be leaving (blissfully peaceful despite the long line of cars trapped behind their blinkered behinds). 

But really, all of that was just me being tired and cranky and still recovering from LOSING ROBBIE.  As in, totally lost.  As in, call security, file a missing person's report, all employees on deck looking for your child kind of lost.   I hadn't planned on going to Ikea, but it's temptingly located next to Costco the black hole of insanity, and thus its evilness extended today to Ikea, where I naively thought I could run in and grab a $14.99 highchair for Robbie   Then Jamie and Charlie proceeded to talk me into the childcare playzone, and since I felt guilty about their apartment life (see previous post) I decided a good romp in the urine balls would be good penance for myself.   (like any self respecting hippie, I sprayed them down with essential oil afterwards).    I hadn't however, realized how much I rely on Jamie to be my non stop twitter feed for his baby brother.  "Mom, he's getting into the fridge #fatbaby" "Mom, he's opening the bathroom door. #terribletwos " "Mom, he's hanging off the side of my bunkbed. #codered".   It used to be annoying, but in Jamie's absence I must have totally dropped the supervision ball, because I had Robbie by hand one second, and the next second he was gone.  Totally and utterly gone.    I'm not the type to instantly freak out, so I calmly checked the nearby aisles, including any toddler worthy hiding spots, but nothing (all while going defcon 10 internally).  I alerted a store employee who helped me. Still no sign of Robbie.    He alerted his manager, who got on the loud speaker and the full scale search commenced. 

Still nothing!  I know everyone always says that it feels like their child is missing for hours, when it's really only a couple of minutes...and I didn't start a stop watch or anything, but Jamie and Charlie were clocked in for 37 minutes at childwatch, and except for the very beginning and end, searching for my 22 month old took up most of that time. 

I kept thinking why would anyone want to kidnap Robbie?  I'd happily give him away (jusssst kidding...I think).  Or maybe he'd been abducted by aliens, it all happened so fast.  But they finally found him in the Cafe, which... I shoulda guessed he'd head straight for food.   Some mom had taken him from there to the mattress showroom where she had a puppet and was saying in a fun silly voice "your mommy will be here aaaany minute"  (To my child who didn't look like he was missing his mother at all).   I flung my now beyond hysterical self into the scene and snatched my errant child up like the typical, embarrassed blubbering mess most parents are by that point (right?), while I sobbed and thanked everyone within earshot for saving my child (whether they had anything to do with his rescue or not).     I was shaking so bad,  I was getting those spots around the edges of your vision that let you know you need to sit down or risk going out the hard way.    After calming down in the restroom (Robbie of course was stoically happy and chipper than a beaver...if beaver's can be described as chipper), I betook my shameful self home. 

I know I signed up for this, it's part of my job description.  I'm happy to do it.  I like my kids and usually I respond with my own chipper response to all the people who say "THREE boys?".   But today I accept my mommy-fail badge and hope no one recognizes me next time I'm back near Costco the black hole of insanity.

And I didn't even get the highchair.  They were out of stock.  Robbie ate his usual dinner as the family centerpiece.

Rule Number Fivethousandfourhundredand...

Since I'm of course a sociologist and hold a PhD in children's health, I've solved the childhood obesity problem.  It's called "city life".   It's no big secret that humankind is en masse trading amber waves of grain for concrete jungles, but what I didn't realize (until I joined said masses) was that unless you're wealthy enough to own this amazing luxury called a backyard, you might as well preemptively order your diabetic equipment. 

We've evolved so amazingly far we replaced man-eating, saber toothed tigers with this: 

 No climbing on trees.  No climbing on fences.  Definitely no playing baseball in the empty field next door.  No riding bikes in the complex.  No riding bikes outside the complex because it's not safe. No scooters at the playground, no climbing on the outside of the playground equipment...in fact, better be safe and just take a parent with you ON the playground equipment because she needs to repeat everything you two are doing so you (my dear diabetic bound child) are on equal footing vocabulary wise with the rest of the kids whose moms are following them around going "Tree! A tree has roots. Roots!".   

Don't be so silly as to think that just because you can't play outside, you will be allowed to play inside.  No jumping, no wrestling, no pretending your bunkbed is a pirate ship.   The grownups living downstairs don't pay thousands of dollars a month to hear thumping and rolling above their heads.  No trumpeting like an elephant, but you are allowed to watch a show on Netflix called Babar...at least it's about an Elephant.  But no acting out Babar after the episode is over, it's too noisy.  Here, have a capri sun instead.   No splashing in the bathtub.  No galloping up and down the stairs on all fours like you're a gorilla.  The stairs have germs, and you're disturbing the grownups who are trying to smoke goshdarnit.   

Grown ups are also the reason you can't ride your bike through the complex, because they don't want to have to turn their music down, or their cell phone off and watch where they're driving.  It's just not safe. 

Since I'm apparently a country mom, (something I didn't quite realize until I moved) I missed the memo on The-Book-Of-Rules that runs city life.  My kids scaled cliffs, skidded down boulders, climbed trees, and did all manner of hooligan-ish things before I realized they were "un-safe".   I get talked to, yelled at or cited by someone at least once a day for something we're doing that's rude or unsafe.   ...sometimes my kids are particularly bouncy and they get in trouble more often than that.    I was raised to follow the rules, and be polite, so you know...I'm only freaking out just slightly.   But I'm so confused.  What am I supposed to do with three little boys? 

 In an attempt to find the answer, I started asking other moms around me what they do with their kids.   Turns out that's a really stupid question.  Like so stupid, they don't really have an answer.  "um...homework?  TV?".     My kids have a different answer, "Mommmm, you have to buy us an xbox, pleeeeeeeease".   Sigh.   I take my kids outside to play, and within five minutes they're glued to the open front door of a friend, trying to watch them play Call Of Duty. 

I think I need to just leave more often.  At least I have the luxury of using a large, fossil-fuel consuming beast to transport me somewhere children are allowed to do this little thing called exercise.   It's one of the thousand times a day I wish I wasn't pregnant.   I'm trying adjust, I'm trying to be that peppy mom who has no problem driving all over the city to organized activities...not that my kids think I'm succeeding, but I'm growing another one of those outlandish humans that annoy the crap out of adults, and quite frankly that takes energy...and iron, something I'm a little short on at the moment.


I'm sure part of it is a bit of homesickness mixed with a dollop of culture shock.   There are millions of people who adore living in the city.  And I do love how fast I can clean my apartment, it's so small and not surrounded by a mountain of dirt.

And at least we don't get in trouble for using the pool....too often. ;-)