Gah.

I am so bad at this blog thing. I didn’t even come close to blogging every day in June, which frankly I don’t have time to care too much about. And here I am in July stalled. I have lots I could say, but it’s not even easy to finish a sentence these days in real time and it’s not often that I have two hands free to type.

And then there’s Blogher. Every year the blog world stops while all the reports on Blogher come out and it just makes me realize what a misfit I am in the blogworld. First of all, I can’t seem to post on a regular basis. When it’s not school, it’s family. Second, I’m not ambitious enough about blogging. I’m sort of a blogger slacker. I’m not looking for a book contract. I could care less about my stats anymore, or blogging popularity. And it’s not a goal of mine to make money from this blog.

But I’m still sort of here and I’m not sure why. I want to create and blogging gives me an outlet for that. When we write we produce something that can be permanent, and generally that’s a good thing. That and the friendships, I think, keep me coming back. However, somewhere along the way, I became self-conscious. I started the blog as a place to capture my children, because I have a bad memory; I forget and I wanted not to forget. That first year that I started blogging I had all this time. Hannah was napping twice a day. Rachel had pre-school in the mornings and then went down for her afternoon nap when Hannah did. So, I had tons of time and the naps and the preschool schedule had put an end to the happy days of daily playdates and endless outings to pumpkin farms and hikes with friends. I was feeling socially isolated. I wrote my heart out and I made friends online. It was like being at an endless pajama party…or hanging out in the hallway in a college dorm late at night - sharing everything — except for the fact that I was sitting in a house with two kids. Yeah, that last part was different.

But then I started graduate school and it became harder to blog. At about the same time, I started to feel self-conscious. The blogworld seemed to be changing, or maybe I was. No matter how hard I tried to present the whole me here, I often felt a bit one-dimensional here - like the “inspirational mom,” which was boring even me. And then there was my social life. Blogging had satisfied me too much. I was getting bad at answering phone calls. It was all becoming a little weird.

So, I pulled back and focused on friends and community and school and family, but like a flake, I’m still hovering here, and it’s pathetic really.

There’s more I could so on this. I could go on and on about why I have an identity crisis as a blogger, but even if all of it was resolved (and by now I’ve concluded that it simply can’t be resolved) I have so little time to blog well.

I’ve thought about starting a passworded blog where I could post more photos and be less self-and security-conscious, but there must be something about the public aspect of blogging that makes a difference because when I think about it, it doesn’t feel the same to write and hide it all away. Putting your writing out there, makes it final, I think. Complete. It’s not just a draft anymore. It’s out there. You’ve produced something and you can move on. It’s cleansing in a way that private blogging just wouldn’t be.

If I had time, I think I’d like to be like Jo(e), who blogs daily, is fun, posts a photo daily but never posts photos of faces, is a clever and artistic writer (heck, the woman is a writing professor), and is anonymous on her blog. In fact, she makes an art out of her anonymity. But it’s hard to do what Jo(e) is doing without being Jo(e). Anyone who reads her will know exactly what I mean. I think I want to be Jo(e) when I grow up.

I could quit again, but I won’t because that’s even more pathetic than hovering. No. Actually that’s not true. I simply don’t want to quit.

And there’s you, my friends, who I can’t possibly give up. And there’s the urge that got me here in the first place. The urge to write it all down - capture something that I know I’ll forget.

So I keep sputtering and trying and hovering.

And that’s the story.

*************

We are having a very loooooooong summer. I have a few weeks coming up where the girls will be attending camp for a few hours a day, but other than that it’s the four musketeers every weekday, all day. It hasn’t been easy. When I’m nursing the baby, I sometimes feel a sense of helplessness, like when the girls are fighting or when I can’t hear them and don’t know where they are. We are limited in what we can do, because the baby can’t wear sunscreen yet or go in chlorinated water. It makes me feel stuck.

I have a handful of friends who also have three kids (all with relatively new babies) and we’ve been starting to send out emails to each other, trying to make plans to get together, and making cryptic remarks about the long days of summer while knowing exactly what the other is talking about. This week I’m going to try a long early morning hike to the beach with a friend and our six kids. If it goes well we’ll try to make it a regular thing. Care to place bets?

Despite everything, I’m not wishing the girls back to school yet. Instead I’m wishing for less fighting and more patience and more sleep. And the funny thing is that they’re not wishing for school either, like they did last summer when I had my act together. What is, just is, and it’s not bad, just hard. Maybe it’s not hard for them, just me. Funny how that works.

Last week, my husband stopped by the house at about 11:00 while doing an errand for work and found me nursing the babe in a chair downstairs in a kind of daze while the girls buzzed around me and in and out of the house. I managed to come out of my daze long enough to pick a little fight with him. He had to go back to work. I sat in the chair and suddenly realized I was really hungry — like deep down in my bones hungry. I looked at the mess around me and mentally looked through what was in the fridge. I shed a few tears. Then typed this email to my husband with one hand.

Subject: lunch

starving…no food in the house.

Within minutes he was on his way to pick up lunch and bring it to us. I’ve come to the conclusion that a Knight in Shining Armor is a person who brings food to the dazed and hungry.

Just writing this blog post, or getting through a pile of laundry, is a huge effort and is set with interruptions, like my yoga session was a few weeks ago. I get the girls to help with things like laundry by providing incentives, like letting them watch a movie while they sort laundry. Rachel now loves doing laundry.

I try to count small victories like this rather than the hours of sleep I get in the night. A small victory is that I’ve started remembering to catch the girls in acts of doing good, rather than simply the opposite. A small victory is that I’m losing my cool less than I did last summer. A small victory is finishing a project, picking up a book and reading for a while, or remembering to leave the kitchen dirty once in a while and just not care. A small victory is getting to bed early. A small victory is really not small at all.

And then there are the thrills. The thrill of sitting and playing piano with my two-and-a-half nephew yesterday while the baby slept and watching his incredible concentration and exuberance while I taught him Twinkle Twinkle “hickle” Star. The thrill of watching his parents parenting. They do it so beautifully. The thrill of watching my seven-year-old sit forward in her seat in the movie theater and gasp in wonder and excitement when Kit Kettridge gets her article published in the Cincinnati paper. The thrill of watching Hannah settle in to her role as big sister and genuinely enjoy her brother’s more frequent smiles. The incredibly charged tingle that runs through my body when I’m rocking the baby and he lightly grasps on to my hair as if to hold me closer and not let me go. It runs through me like a jolt, shocking even me.

Hi. It’s been an interesting day.

First of all, let me update you on Hannah and nuns. I asked her today who told her that nuns kill their children. She said that nobody had. I think she assumed that because they don’t have kids they must kill their children. It is a freaky assumption. *shudder* So I did my part to honor my Catholic heritage and all the cool nuns of my childhood and explain why nuns don’t have kids. I also explained that it is possible for a nun to have children. For example, a widow with kids might join a nunnery. Their grandmother, in fact, was unsuccessfully recruited after my Dad died. This somehow led Hannah to ask if there are fancy nuns. I told her that I wasn’t sure and tried to explain the vow of poverty. I did google “fancy nuns” anyway, which brought up some interesting images, but mostly nun costumes. Hannah decided that she wants to be a fancy nun for Halloween. Her vision includes make-up, jewelry, a fancy dress and a habit. I kind of hope she doesn’t change her mind.

So, my morning was somewhat frustrating. The baby slept well, from 8:00 to 4:30 AM. The problem was that by 4:30 my breasts were completely full and I couldn’t sleep well. Even after I nursed him at 4:30, I was still full and sore and couldn’t get back to sleep. I’m experimenting with a 7:30 rule for the summer. The girls aren’t supposed to come into my room until their Dad leaves at 7:30. So far, they’ve been good about it, but usually I’m up by 7:00 anyway. I’ve been using the extra time to get dressed and ready for the day in peace. That’s worth gold and something I usually don’t get.

Anyway, after cleaning up after breakfast and feeding Pumpkin, I told the girls I was going to do my yoga. Now, when the girls were younger they would climb all over me during yoga sessions. Yesterday, they actually gave me my space and did it along with me for about 20 minutes. Then they kind of drove me crazy, but I did a pretty good job staying in the zone. This morning they were playing, so I thought they’d ignore me, since they don’t like me to watch them play anyway. I was wrong. First Rachel came in asking to do yoga with me. Then Hannah. Then they started fighting. When I threatened to kick them out Hannah quietly ran and got a toy and started playing on her yoga mat. Then the girls started playing together. Then they started arguing. The garbage truck woke Hannah up this morning at 5:45 AM so she was a bit of a whiney mess all day. I separated the girls. Then the baby woke up. But I was determined, I tell you. It took me over two hours, but I finished the damn yoga session and even did my first full wheel in ten months.

In the afternoon, a babysitter came for two hours so I could take the girls swimming. She comes two or three times a week. I can’t tell you how happy I was when I found out their our dear Ethiopian babysitter had open sitting hours this summer. She is so wonderful and the baby is too young to take to the pool. Those four to six hours a week kind of make it summer for us.

Anyway, I left the house all flustered from a hectic morning. When we got to the pool I realized we had no sunscreen because my hubs had cleaned my car for me….to the bone. I mean, cleared it of everything. As awful as this will make me sound, I called him in the middle of his work day to voice my irritation that he did not respect that some of the “mess” in my trunk is essential to maintaining life toting three kids around. That pile of extra clothes and junk are my mainstay in emergency situations.

To his credit he did not hang up on me. He understood and even sent a nice apologetic email. Now THAT is a good man. (Thank you, Honey.)

We only had two hours for our swim, so I went to the nearest grocery and spent $12 (????) on a bottle of sunscreen. As I was finishing spraying the girls, the damn bottle broke. It would not spray. After some thought, I decided to risk it. We went swimming anyway and had fun.

On the way home, I couldn’t help peeking in the rear view mirror to assess the damage to my 40 year old skin with that swim. I’ve been taking stock, you see. More on that later.

But tchuß for now.

After dinner tonight, my husband took Rachel to her fiddling lesson, which left Hannah, Little Brother and I with some time alone. Hannah suggested that I give LB a bath at the same time as her, and I did. Then I got them both in their pajamas and we sat and read books together. I had been organizing my office, so I showed her a book I had found. It was a Dr. Suess “Me, Myself, and I” book that I had filled out when I was eight. On the page listing what I wanted to be when I grew up I had written: “Artist/cook/nurse/sailor/farmer/dog trainer/teacher/carpenter/mother/nun/artist/dancer.” It’s a bit weird that I put artist and dancer in there and left out singing since I can’t dance or draw, but I can put a few good notes together. And I’m not sure where sailor came from. Nun I can totally understand, since I wanted to be Julie Andrews. But get this. When I read the list to Hannah she got all flustered and “No, not a nun. They kill their children.”

Holy Moly. Who has she been talking to?; and I guess when I promised the priest who married us in an interfaith ceremony that I would raise Catholic children I lied. Big time. I’m raising an anti-nunlite.

In other news, I’ve got these big plans to write a three part series chronicling my pregnancy, labor, and post-partum period. I see though that it’s late June already and you are yawning out there thinking about it. Yes, you. But I will persist (yes, I will) with this plan, because I am weirdly ambitious about tedious things. Or maybe that’s just called compulsive. And I want to write about fluids. Yes, fluids. I don’t know how I can write about these things without including fluids.

The girls and their Dad just returned from a father-daughter camping trip with their Dad. This means that I had three days at home alone with the baby. I haven’t had this much time alone in this house - ever. Except that I wasn’t really alone. But it somehow felt like I was alone. This pretty much defines having three kids, I think. Time alone isn’t really time alone anymore. It means having one child with you instead of three. And that’s okay. Anyway, in between feedings and bonding time, I went on a huge compulsive kick. I was on an organizing frenzy. I mean, I was on fire. It was like I was possessed. I’d rock the baby and then get up and clean the garage. I’d play with the baby and then get up and clean a closet. On and on. But it was great. I soaked up baby, too. And through it all I watched movie after movie. I’ve pretty much exhausted all the good movies On Demand has to offer. I could talk movies with you for hours. (If you haven’t seen the Great Debater, see that; but don’t see Fool’s Gold, that was horrible; and the movie Fame is actually worth re-watching if you have time.)

Anyway, I was working hard until the last two hours before the fam came home. They arrived late on Saturday night and we tucked them in bed. It was great to have them home, but sort of jarring, too, after three days of not talking much. Now we have the whole summer ahead of us. I will have all three kids at home and the learning curve really gets big. It seems having three kids has made me suddenly awesome at efficiency and compulsiveness, but I feel like I have to learn how to be a good parent all over again. The only way I can describe it is that I need to learn how to juggle with the attention I give my kids. Another way to describe it is that I am a small party person (which is true) that needs to learn how to mingle at a big party. It’s quite fun, really, just a stretch, and I want to get better at it.

Because I don’t want to become a nun and kill my children or anything. (WTF?!!!)

My hands are full. This is all I can manage to give you today.

As I reflected last week on my first forty years, despite the fact that I don’t have my cute twenty year old figure back yet (I still have the dream), I felt proud and happily satisfied as I looked back on my life. I’ve tried to live my first forty years as an adventure and by following my heart and passions. I’d like to do the same for the rest of the years I have left. One thing that stood out as I had all these thoughts was that the most important ingredient in my adult life has been my partnership with my husband, who not only is a great father to my kids, but has been my partner in a life of adventure, and who has weathered adversity with me, has made me laugh, and has laughed at my jokes when no-one else has. We’ve had fun even when times were challenging. We’ve taken many leaps of faith. These include years of living in Europe on a shoestring, going to graduate school…on a shoestring, taking a sudden change of course when we moved to California, starting a family, and having the latest addition to our family.

So I wish a big Happy Father’s Day to the man who does everything from helping make my life a life to be proud of to painting his daughters nails when the occassion demands fancy nails. (Like for a wedding las weekend).

I firmly believe that I am a better mother and a happier, more balanced human being because of his support and his understanding that life should be an adventure.

To all you good Father’s out there (yes, you!), Happy Father’s Day. La Chaim!!

This morning we had a nice Father’s Day breakfast at home.

Hannah made a homemade picture frame with a drawing of her and her Dad inside and the caption, “I like to draw pictures with Daddy.” Rachel made her Dad a beautiful bookmark.

I’ll end with Rachel’s card to her Dad:

“My Dad’s is the best. I like to go bike riding with him. He helps me tie my shoes. He’s smart at math and reading. He reads stories to me. I get to sit on his lap. He’s the best Dad ever!
Love, Rachel”

Who’s there?

Forty.

Forty?

Yes, I’m forty now. My birthday came and went without a whole lot of fanfare. Rather than have a big party, I was planning to take a trip to visit dear friends in Europe this summer to celebrate turning forty. The year my husband turned forty, we took the family to Paris for Christmas and celebrated with the same friends. We were planning to do something similar this summer, and then I got pregnant. So, we’ll wait a year or two and try again.

I had many eloquent thoughts on turning forty this week, and others that were not so eloquent, that involve the image of me aging at fast-forward speed. But instead of writing about that right now, I want to tell you a knock-knock joke that Hannah told us over dinner last Valentine’s Day. I wasn’t blogging then and it was too long to tweet.

Hannah: Knock-knock

Me: Who’s there.

Hannah: Orange.

Me: Orange who?

Hannah: Knock-knock.

Me: Who’s there.

Hannah: Orange

Me: Orange who?

Hannah: Knock-knock

Me: Who’s there?

Hannah: Cow

Me: Cow who?

Hannah: Aren’t you glad I didn’t say horse?

Maybe you had to be there, but when she told this joke I laughed so hard there were tears coming out of my eyes.

Every time Hannah says good-bye or good-night to my husband or me, the rest of my life flashes before my night. Cheerfully, she says something like this:

“Good-night. You’re the best mom/dad I ever had- I won’t forget you, even when you die-I will come and visit you when I am in college - I will live next door and I will never forget you- You’re the best mom/dad I ever had.”

+++++++

Tonight Rachel and Hannah were arguing about whether I had three or four kids. One of them (I don’t remember which) was counting Charlie, our dog. The other said, “Charlie doesn’t count, she’s a grandma.”

+++++++

I read books to all three kids tonight for the first time. Rachel held Little Brother, who was all bathed and in his pajamas. We read a book Hannah chose. Then we read a few baby books to Noah. By then, he was sleeping in Rachel’s arms, but we did it anyway.

I gained about 35-40 pounds this pregnancy, like I have during every pregnancy. For some strange reason, I lost all of it within two weeks after I had the baby. It just fell off. Weird, but a nice surprise. I think a lot of the weight gain must have been blood and fluids.

I still have 25 pounds to lose if I want to get to where I was before I became a mom. I would like to do that before Christmas.

I turn forty on Wednesday.

I’d like to lose this weight while I’m forty. I also want to get back into my old swimming/yoga/hiking routine.

If I do, what should I treat myself to? I need some ideas. A yoga spa retreat? A short trip somewhere?

If you have a goal that you want to set for this year let me know. You can try to reach it while I’m forty, too. It’ll be fun. What will you treat yourself to?

I’m sure no one has notices or cares, but I’ve missed a few days and am failing my “post every day of June” goal. It seems I have to choose between writing a post, doing housework, and getting sleep. I don’t mind getting behind on housework, but sleep has GOT to win. The baby has long stretches of sleep beginning at 7 or 8 at night. If I don’t get to bed by 9:30 or 10:00 and catch the first wave, I’m kind of screwed. After 3 am, it gets sketchy. But hey, he slept from 8:30 PM to 3:30 PM straight last night….AND I got to bed at 9:30. Sweet.

You know who else is sweet? Ms. Mary, aka Miz SShe sent Rachel and Hannah the sweetest letter accompanied by two great book and an awesome CD of children’s music. Thank you, Mary. I have an impulse to call you like I sometimes do (calling Mary seems to be the trend) but then I remembered that I’m a dork on the phone and I got shy. The girls have been carrying around the books all weekend. We were at a wedding yesterday, and had a loooooooooong dinner with no where for kids to run around, and are kids were amazingly well behaved, partly because Rachel was busy reading one of the books Mary gave her. Hannah sat for the first 20 minutes pretending to read the other book. She want to read so badly. She’s starting to be able to read words slowly, but is not a real reader. When she overheard us telling the other people at the table that she wasn’t actually reading the chapter book, she blushed behind the book and muttered, “I’m reading it in my head,” which meant, I think, that she was imagining what the words were saying. I think she’ll be reading “Dick and Jane” by the end of the summer, she wants to so badly. When Rachel was on the verge of reading, I got fed up with the “Easy Reader” books that you find in the bookstores because they are so poorly thought out, that I ordered a bunch of Dick and Jane books because they use easy words, have very few words per page, and repeat them over and over. They worked really well.

Anyway, where was i? Yes, making choices and my new commitment to sleep.

On that note, I must be off. However, I will leave you with some of my random thoughts/happenings.

- How come whenever I try to burp the baby, I burp?

- Don’t see Kung Fu Panda. Just don’t.

- Do go see a “mommy” movie with your newborn while the girls are in school. I haven’t been able to do that since Rachel was a baby and it is a real luxury. It’s also a bonus for the baby, lots of eating and snuggling and no distractions and reasons for mom to put him down.

- If you happen to see Sex and the City and your daughter asks you what you saw, lie. Tell her you saw “Clothes in the City” or something like that, unless you want to have to give an impromptu explanation of the word sex.

- Rachel did ask me how babies were made a couple of months back. I was driving with Hannah in the car. I told her I’d tell her later. That night I ordered some children’s books about the subject, for various ages. I keep wanting to sit her down and answer her question, but she hasn’t asked again. I really should make time. I’m pretty sure I learned about sex from other kids my age at a pretty early age. When I was in 5th or 6th grade, my Dad asked if I was taking sex ed in school, seemed satisfied that I was and that was pretty much the extent of what I learned from my parents. This explains my awkardness now. That and the fact that I don’t really want her to grow up THAT much…..ever….. Well, that last sentence was a bit of a lie but you hear me, don’t you?

- Why did CNN spend two hours with a camera on Hillary Clinton’s garage on Saturday morning without once giving the news, and then when i got back a half hour later, after her speech was done did not replay the speech?

- Why do people who find out I had two girls and then a boy assume we were trying for a boy?

- Boys like babies. You wouldn’t believe how many boys have asked to see the baby and then look at him in awe.

That’s all I’ve got. I’m starting to yawn and baby is sleeping on my lap. I’m calling it a night.

Night.

If someone asks me if going from two to three is as hard as going from one to two, I won’t quite no how to answer. For one, I’m very good at self-denial. I’ve got this weird survival mechanism within me that doesn’t realize something is as hard as it is until after the fact. For instance, I remember loving my time when Hannah, my second, was a baby. At the same time, I also remember that with a toddler and a newborn the sleep deprivation was off the charts. I started seeing yellow spots one day when I was driving, so some days I wouldn’t let myself drive. Weekends were the worst because there was the expectation that SOMEBODY would get to sleep in and when neither of us could, a big grump fest would begin.

With that in mind, going from two to three somehow doesn’t seem as hard. As with Hannah’s birth, I am thrilled by the shape my family has taken. I’m really enjoying it. And I am not feeling hugely hit by sleep deprivation. Yet. (Knocking on wood here.) I don’t know if I’m getting more sleep, or if I’m mentally stronger. I know that this kid will be sleeping through the night one day. At the same time, the mental game seems harder. When my girls are gone I spend my alone time strategizing on how to make things go more smoothly for the girls, especially Hannah. My mind is constantly whirring, trying to figure out the puzzle of our new normal. Where and how will we settle on a that new normal. How will I carve out alone time with each of them and for me.

And then I have to remember that this is most likely my last chance to spend a day staring at the face of my own newborn. I stop the mental whirring and take it all in, trying to put it all in my memory, knowing that I will actually remember so little–which is why I write–and keep one of those first year baby calendars.

What I am concluding is that there is only so much I can do to change our daily reality. As much as I want to carve out for Hannah what I once was, I can only do so much. I have stepped it up and started driving her to school and activities. That has helped tremendously. I try to grab her and hold her tight whenever I can, but often when she comes to me my hands are full. Therefore, my conclusion is that part of making this work is accepting what we have become. I will not have as much time alone to myself, or with them individually. Rather than simply trying to find alone time with Hannah, I need to make it more fun for her to hang out with the baby. I need to help her bond with him. Pull her of the sidelines.

It’s as if Hannah is in a No Man’s Land. I felt that way during my last two weeks of pregnancy. The present was not working. The baby was so big that I was extremely uncomfortable. Going backwards was impossible. But to get forward, I had to get through labor. I’m on the other side, and it feels great. But Hannah now has to go through a labor of her own - finding her way to her brother.

Today I put the baby down after he fell asleep. I decided to leave the mess in our kitchen and do something I hadn’t done in ages: play with the girls. I had set up a tent for Hannah earlier that day made out of sheets and chairs. We pretended the tent was my hospital room. Hannah was the nurse. She handed me a baby doll. Then she handed me a larger doll. I decided the larger would be the older sister. I put my head back in the hospital bed and tried to sneak a little shut eye. When I looked up the big sister doll was hitting the baby doll.

Later the real baby woke up and I brought him into the room. We pretended he was the big brother and was sad that his new baby brother spit up all the time. Hannah nodded a little bit, appearing to feel his pain.

Two nights ago, the girls and I were giving the baby a bath. Hannah was sitting on a stool and slipped off, stepping for a second into the little bathtub. It scared all of us because she almost stepped on the baby hard. The baby started crying. I wasn’t sure if the baby had been stepped on, so I grabbed and started examining him, probably looking scared. Then Hannah started crying, feeling awful. I had to decide whether to put down the crying baby or comfort Hannah. For about five seconds I didn’t know what to do. Then I put the crying baby back into the bath and held Hannah. I told her she had saved her brother because she tried really hard not to step on him. I asked her if she wanted to hold him and comfort him. She did. So I diapered him up, wrapped him in a towel and put him on her lap. They spent ten minutes like that. (This is where I really am grateful for the pacifier). “I feel really bad,” she kept saying, clearly wounded inside, and looking at him and healing a little bit as she was allowed to take on the big sister roll full-on. She mentioned the fall and her feeling again tonight and asked to hold him again like that after the bath. “I felt bad,” she said again. “It made me feel bad about myself.”

Hannah deserves to feel good about herself as a big sister. I have concluded that in addition to us piling on the praise and squeezing in some time just with me, the adjustment will have to come through bonding with her brother. It’s her journey and I’m going to try to document it for her, because as bad as she feels about herself at times these days, it really is a love story in the making. She has a heart of gold and is going to make an incredible sister with just a little more confidence.