The best laid plans…

As I watch my children play and wonder if life is going to change even more dramatically than it already has, I can’t help but wish for what should be happening.

I should be baking, spring cleaning, sewing, teaching my kids, planning my garden and planning for a fall baby. Life hasn’t completely come to a halt but I watch my kids and worry that my kidneys won’t heal and my health problems will continue to grow worse. Things like kidney failure, dialysis, transplant and even death loom for now. And every moment is precious.

I sit here still healing from surgery for en ectopic pregnancy instead of planning for a baby. At the same time I’m putting a little girl’s hair up in a pony tail and listening to the kids giggle and chase each other. I sit here with four days left on my antibiotics and worry that there is still so much pain and think over the term the dr. used; glomerulonephritis. I have an appointment on the first of April with a nephrologist and I need to get some blood tests done ahead of time. I’m scared that all the news will be bad because all of the news so far has been bad.

I just want some good news for a change… I’m tired of Doctors and I’m tired of crying.

The scar

I have cried some but I’ve been avoiding it because it causes physical pain so I’ve been trying to focus on my body healing. I took a shower before I left the hospital but i was putting it off here at home because we have a tub not a shower. Well I felt strong enough today to get in and out of the tub and Peter said he wanted to check out the sutures while I was bathing ( watching out for infection). He said there wasn’t much to see because it’s all glued together but did I want to look? No I don’t want to look! I wanted that baby and I don’t want any reminders that I won’t get to hold a baby come September.

Right before we were getting ready to leave for home I went to use the bathroom and there was a huge blood clot in my pad. Peter didn’t see it but I told him to get the nurse. Well she’s a brand new nurse so she got the nurse she was working with who was so kind and reassuring. But it was like a trigger for me and I couldn’t stop crying so I had her get Peter for me.

I’ve been in so much physical pain that I’ve been sleeping on our couch because I couldn’t get out of bed. We haven’t really had the chance to talk since I got home. I mean he was there with me, holding my hand through everything. He was there when we were told it was etopic and then the chime played announcing the birth of a new baby in the nearby maternity wing. I’m not sure I can ever hear Braum’s lullaby again without hating it. But since we got home there hasn’t really been a chance to just be close and talk so I don’t really feel like I’ve been able to process anything. I have to remember that some of the plans I was making like skinnier car seats etc are no longer needed.

I feel like I’ve been putting off grieving and now it’s just trickling out here and there. I feel kind of numb.

Not all small packages are a good surprise.

Peter called me into the bathroom the other night where he was taking a bath to tell me he heard little claws on the tile floor so the hunt is on. Our first place to tackle is our girls bedroom because they have a bad habit of leaving food in there. We have it mostly cleaned out and I don’t think the issue is in there so next we move on to our son’s room. I suppose all of this extra work is a good thing because while the downstairs is looking much better, the upstairs was pretty messy. Nothing motivates you to clean like the possibility of pests. I’ve never heard one before or seen signs of any and I don’t have food out everywhere (minus what the kids do) but something is apparently attracting them. Part of it could just be the cold weather driving them in, I guess we will find out.

We have another small package on it’s a way but it’s going to remain a surprise for now. We are very excited.

The kids are doing great. I’ve decided that for now we will be focusing on introducing a few new site words and a new phonics rule each week for my son since reading has been such a struggle for him. I can see it’s been an issue and I think it is having an effect on how he feels about himself since most kids his age read fluently by now. Now that Emma is seven she will be joining us part of the time. I believe in delayed and relaxed academics but not no academics at all. We follow a little bit of everything including short lessons ah la Charolotte Mason. Both of them love math and love being read to but are not so fond of learning to read. Jacob seems to enjoy it about half the time and I try not to push to much but at the same time I feel reading is the most important basic skill they can learn. So while it won’t be high pressure, I am not going to worry about other subject right now unless they want to do them.

I am trying to add more structure to our days because as much as my kids love their freedom they do seem to do so much better when they have an idea of what is going on each day. So some things like breakfast, chores, school, and bedtimes are regular parts of their lives as well as things like going to the library, scouts etc. I must admit I like it too.

And now the littlest is begging at my elbow for another banana so I need to go find her a snack.

The day day I became a mom.

Today my oldest turned nine and what a crazy, wonderful, aggravating, fantastic nine years it’s been. It was cold like it is today but with a light dusting of snow on the ground instead of rain. I have his birth story written out in a scrapbook. It wasn’t a long birth and it was pretty typical but who could predict how it would totally change my life.

Here was this amazing baby with the mischievous eyes and thick dark hair that was very calm and grew into this funny toddler. He was pretty easy going till about the time her turned four. Ever since then he has been a mixture of amazement, great frustration, intelligence, physical ability, empathy. He is by far my most challenging child yet he still amazes me. My life wouldn’t be the same without him and I wouldn’t want it to be.

Becoming a mother has changed me so much. It’s made me braver and increased my thirst for knowledge. It’s softened my heart and made me slow down. It is a life changing event that I’ve been blessed to experience four times but there is nothing like the first.

In which my temper gets the best of me.

I had a maddening “discussion” with a family member last night. She was one of two family members we sent RIC information to before the birth of their baby boys. Both chose to do it anyways but until now we had not talked about it in person since their babies were born. She brought it up and went on about how it is better for babies and old intact men get gross an infected. I so eloquently said “No, thats a load of crap!” and when she kept insisting I refused to talk about it with her anymore. I was so angry I couldn’t think straight and had to leave. I needed some serious stress relief by the time I got home. Unfortunately we see this person on a regular basis so I’m going to have to try very hard to be civil. I was quite ok with never discussing the subject but she just had to bring it up…

Mother Wheel

http://motherwheel.blogspot.com/

This is a blog some women I know started recently and one I may eventually start writing for.

Once upon a time…

I could keep up at an online journal and I did for years. I have tried on several occasions to start again but have never been successful. I go for days without writing then I procrastinate some more because I dislike playing catch up on what I wanted to write. Then I give up all together because I couldn’t do it perfectly. My need for perfectionism often bites me in the butt.

The past four months I’ve been in this funk about getting anything done. Part of it has been money and stress related and the rest I really don’t know. I’ve been doing the bare minimum at keeping up with my home and to a lesser extent my children. I was still doing school with them but that was about it. The dishes and laundry piled up, the piles in various corners of the house grew. The kitchen simply was unfit in my opinion, well part of it was anyways.

Then before I knew it Christmas was coming and I was spending my spare time making presents for my family with the limited funds we had and I realized my house was a disaster. For some reason having a clean house at Christmas really matters to me and it was the jump start I needed. I did a lot of cleaning and then I did some more for my daughter’s birthday which falls on December 29th. The more I cleaned the more I saw things I had let go for far to long.

So yesterday I sat down and wrote out my goals for the house and for my children’s education; I still need to write out my personal goals. I got a good start on it and combined with what I did in the past few weeks the house is looking very livable as long as you don’t go upstairs and look in my bedroom.

I do a modified version of Flylady and I do not dress to my shoes. I have a love/hate affair with shoes as I injured one foot when my oldest daughter was a baby and most shoes cause me pain.

I’m considering resurrecting this blog to a picture blog with the occasional written update because I think that would be a bit more doable for me. Perhaps I can keep it it up if I’m only writing a few times a month. Only time will tell.

Too quiet

It’s not often quiet around here with four little ones on the move but it’s to quiet for me. I miss the sound of my husband’s voice. I miss having him home at night. I miss sleeping next to him. I miss having his help at dinner time. I find dinner without him to be stressful most of the time. I miss his help and companionship. As much as I adore my children it’s lonely here without him. We’ve been doing this for a couple months now and a lot has happened but for some reason tonight I feel truly lonely for the first time. I was canning without him and we’ve spent many a late night, talking, laughing and canning together. I’m missing him a lot tonight.

It’s been a good week

We took a trip down to Utah last weekend for my GMIL’s 90th birthday party. The party was great and fun but the traveling was not so great. Wren cried a lot because she had to be in her seat so much and she wasn’t getting good naps. We pulled over as much as we could and brought along distractions for her but it was still rough. We stayed with my sister in Spanish Fork and got a free babysitter and night out with other adults (and Wren of course).

There was one glitch in our week when Peter’s car wouldn’t start monday morning. We think it might be the fuel pump. We are working around that for now. Other then that the kids have been pretty happy and the house is looking nice. We started two notebooks for Jacob, one for math and one for copy work/writing. He had this idea that involved me making words with bits of string while he wrote them down and evolved into me writing sentences of his choice in a notebook for him to copy. Then he wanted to play school so I suggested a few subjects and he picked math. I wrote problems down in another notebook and gave him pennies to work with, he had fun with that. Today Peter is helping his brother move for a few hours then he’s going to apply for a few other jobs. All three are electrical and local so they would pay a lot more and he would get to come home each night. We would really love to have him home.

I’ll leave off with this excellent piece “Mindful Parenting”; don’t forget to listen to the file at the end.

A little at a time

Slowly but surely the house is looking nicer but I know from experience it’s hard to keep it that way. In fact I find keeping more than a few rooms clean at one time to be rather difficult. I cleaned the downstairs bath last night and did some cleaning in the upstairs bath today. I went in search of my razor which seems to disappear a lot and came to realize it’s been a long time since I cleaned under my tub (clawfoot). It’s a jungle under there! A jungle that will not be cleaned for a little while yet as I want to finish my laundry declutter first and get some control back in my kitchen.

Tomorrow I have to clean out and vacuum our van and pack up a few things for the weekend trip. This way all we need to do to get ready to go is buy groceries and wash Peters clothing from this past week. I also hope to leave the kitchen mostly clean and the downstairs picked up and vacuumed. I would like to come home to a mostly clean house on Sunday.

We got ready this afternoon to walk to the library to meet up with some friends. As we got to the alley Emma got very upset and instantly melted down saying she was to tired to walk. We live three blocks from the library and money is really tight so we only drive if the weather is bad. It was nice at the point, mid eighties so I told her we wouldn’t be able to go. I sent her up to lay down for a bit and rest. Jacob was very upset about not going so I suggested he talk with Emma. I don’ know what he said to her but about 20 minutes later she cheerfully put her shoes back on and we left. I’d like to say I handled it all very gently and all but I didn’t, I was feeling kind of grouchy. Later I wished we had taken the van.

Our friends didn’t show but we had a nice time anyways, we spent two hours there and picked up two new chapter books ( The Mousehunter and The Underneath ) to read. Wren took a nap on me in the big comfy chair they bought a few weeks back and I got to read part of last months Smithsonian magazine. The munchkins played on the computers and chatted with their aunt while she worked. At three thirty we headed home only to get to our door and find I had no keys. By this time the temp was in the 90’s. We hurried back to the library thinking Kara had taken my keys out. After searching and not finding I realized I hadn’t put them back in my bag when Emma decided not to walk earlier. So we got our spare from my SIl and walked home again. It felt like a very long walk. Wren was tired, hot and didn’t want to be in the sling. The girls were flushed and going really slow. We all wanted to be home but no one had much energy. We got home as quickly as we could, had some water and split some ice cream bars to cool off. If we’d driven none of that last bit would have happened. Next time I think I’ll listen to Emma.