Strawberries, Old Times, and New Challenges

A good friend and I took the boyos strawberry picking today while brown baby hung out with her daddy. (I use the term 'hung out' loosely because the report is she cried a lot while we were gone.) Baby Diva strikes again!

It did me good to get out with just my boys. I haven't been able to do something with just them since before she was born, and lately I've felt like I can't really given enough of myself to anyone. Maybe that's not accurate. I have to give so much of myself to brown baby that I feel like there is nothing left to give to others. And after having nine years with the boys to myself, it feels off to have spent so little time with them other than doing homework, which is more akin to torture in my book. And probably theirs too.

It was nice to enjoy the boys through the lens of fun. Rather than constantly shushing them (because let's face it, they don't know how to be quiet), we spoke freely and laughed loudly. We pointed out mutant strawberries and oohed and aahed over the perfectly shaped ones. I had time to focus on just them instead of dealing with the noise they make or listening to their endless retellings of the latest cartoon they watched.

I realized that I have to make time like this with them even though it is hard right now. Because I know they are growing fast, and for a moment, they seemed a little smaller in the vast expanse of red berries. They forgot to fight with each other and forgot how to exercise their obnoxious elementary school senses of humor. I miss moments like these.

The challenges that come with a new baby are something you can anticipate, but never fully understand until immersed in dirty diapers and sleep deprivation. And despite having done this twice before, I still wasn't ready for how it would change this time. Being stretched very thin with brown baby is a normal thing. Feeling overwhelmed with the lack of structure is definitely taking its toll, but spending time and checking in with my boys and enjoying them, just them, is crucial to my happiness.

Falling Down

Pacey crashed on his bike for the first time today--

A rite of passage we all experience.

I helped him hobble home, doctored his scrapes, and gave him love.

Gage, the ever-thoughtful observer (and hesitant bike-rider), looked at me and said,

"Mommy, I knew two wheels were a bad idea."

The Newest Rock House Member

I've been meaning to get to this post for oh let's see... 9 weeks?  It's amazing how time flies when you are not sleeping, have a baby attached to your boob, and love every second of it!

Here's Rowan Ella-Grey!  Aka Rowboat.  Aka Babas.  Aka the newest love of my life.

To say that it's been an adjustment going from two relatively low-maintenance boys (forget about the constant refereeing for a minute) to a completely helpless newborn is a slight understatement.  It's been more like culture shock-- an expected culture shock, but still.  Still.  Oh, how I'd grown to love my sleep in the years since the boys were babies.  Those precious 9 hours a night of uninterrupted sleep.  Now?  I'm glad for 3 at a time.  In fact, I celebrate it.

Big changes have been going on here at the Rock House.  Some we knew to expect.  Some we have had to adjust to as they come along.  But what we know for sure is that we wouldn't change a thing.  This little brown baby of ours has brought so much love and so much joy to the Rock House!  Okay, and maybe a little screaming, too.  She has earned the reputation of being a baby diva after all.

I'm going to be more faithful to my blog (yes, I know you've heard that before, but I mean it this time!) and continue to chronical our life at the Rock House.  Because when you have a 17, 9, and 7 year old and 9 week old, there will always be something to write about!

Growing Up

Recent milestones:


1. Gage called me “mom” instead of “mommy” for the first time.

2. Pacey learned to make armpit farts.

Both make me want to cry.

Inside the Third Grade Lunch Table

I’ve been lamenting (whining?) for the past year or so over the changes I’ve noticed in Pacey. He’s suddenly gone from this cute little preschool/kindergarten boy to an elementary school boy. I’m not so sure what I think of elementary school boys yet. And lately, he has been driving me insane every time we are in the car, flexing his sense of humor and trying to get his brother to be the butt of all of his jokes. Where on earth is all of this coming from, I’ve wondered? I have suspected that school is the answer, and yesterday, my suspicions were confirmed. The downfall of our cute preschool/kindergarten students is directly related to the lunch table. Oh yes, it’s a very serious situation, and I was lucky (or unlucky) enough to witness it firsthand.

I was given a very secret invitation by Pacey to be a part of his lunch time yesterday, and while I was there, here is a slightly abridged transcript of the brief 25 minutes…

1. Pacey tapped me and said, “You’ve got the cheese touch.” Luckily a nice little girl told me to pass it to her (such a martyr), and she passed the dreaded cheese touch down the table.

2. But then this nice little girl reached over and tapped Pacey and said, “You’ve got the girl touch. Now you’re a girl permanently because you didn’t pass it on in ten seconds.”

3. Pacey holds up Spock’s live long and prosper hand sign and says, “Uh-uh, I have the ultimate protection.”

4. Pacey then says, “Spell the word ‘ip,’ Mommy.”

5. I sighed and told him I wasn’t going to fall for that one. To which he replied, “Okay, spell Mississippi.”

6. Then his friend says, “You are smart. Spell it.” Pacey had obviously heard this one before because he quickly spelled the word ‘it’ (I would have failed because in my head I was already spelling out y-o-u…) and moved on to attempting to get people to stare at a spot for more than 5 seconds. Any spot. And if you stare at it for more than 5 seconds, you lose.

I lost.

I couldn’t hang with the third grade lunch table.

Dreams

You know you are pregnant when you spent all of last night dreaming about diapers. I’m obviously preoccupied with the idea of cloth diapering. Even though I’ve read tons of blogs, watched tons of You Tube videos, and researched lots and lots of options… I am still slightly stressed about how it will work in reality. I keep telling myself if my mom did this with folded cloths and diaper pins, I can certainly do it with the way things are now:

Despite the dreams from last night where we were doing cloth diapering all wrong, I am excited that we decided to give it a try. Not only is it better for the environment, it is so much less expensive. And could these things be any cuter? I am really happy about the brand and kind of cloth diapers we chose. (I say “we,” but really, I made all of these decisions. Luckily, Husband has been very agreeable and willing to give this a try.) I decided to go with Best Bottom Diapers. They are known as “all-in-two” diapers, which means that there is an outer shell and an insert. With each change, you replace the insert, but not necessarily the shell, which has leg gussets to keep the baby dry and clean.

I mean, really, how hard can it be? Other than washing every two days, it sounds fairly similar to disposable diapers. They even make this awesome adapter you attach to the plumbing parts of your toilet, so you can easily rinse the yucky inserts out right into the toilet. And supposedly, you don’t need a plumber to attach it!

I will keep updating about our cloth diapering journey after baby girl gets here. It should definitely be interesting

Conflicting

In one of my favorite movies, Look Who’s Talking (don’t judge), the main character makes this remark: “You don’t know how confusing it is when someone you love so much looks like someone you hate.” I remember thinking how hard that must be. But Gage is his father’s clone, and that doesn’t bother me too much because it’s just Gage and how he looks. What has been really, really hard to take, especially recently, is that both boys have been acting and sounding exactly like their dad in ways that drive me mad. In ways that drove me mad throughout our entire 8 year relationship and 6 year marriage. How on earth do you deal with that? When the sounds of the voices, the kinds of things they say were the same kinds of things and sounds of things that literally made me want to scream throughout my entire 20s. I don’t want to squelch their personalities, and I know they will embody their dad in different ways throughout their lives, but at the same time it makes my skin crawl, and I have to bite my tongue to keep myself from saying something scathingly harsh.

I’ve always tried to have no regrets. To be okay with the past and the paths I have taken. It has all led me to where I am. But sometimes the reality of it can be overwhelming, conflicting. The reality that they will always say things like their dad. They will always sound like him. He is part of them, and I know there is good that comes from that. Despite the parts that make me want to run screaming. I know this when I can see past the fog of anger that sometimes still descends. I know this when I drop them off, and they run across the lawn yelling his name, lunging for a hug. I know this when he carefully carries them out to the car still half asleep.

Remembering this in the moments they become him, those moments that are too familiar, will always be the challenge.