Mendolonium

I had a lot of possible titles for this post…”Out of gas”, “Hitting the brick wall”, “Not having fun”.  It hit me at the end of last week:  that this is it.  Mondays with Anna and Theo.  Tuesdays with all three little ones.  Wednesdays with Anna.  Wednesday nights with all the little ones while Jeff teaches a late class.  Thursdays with all the little ones again.  Fridays with Anna.  Weekends, our “all-together” days, a chaotic melee of children, laundry, and an attempt by the adults to catch a nap or two.  This is the new normal.  But it doesn’t feel normal yet, it feels cluttered and overwhelming and just plain hard. I know that I have it very good and very easy compared to most mothers in the world.  I know that I am very fortunate to be able to have a couple of days a week alone with my baby without my older children (although I worked hard and saved to make that financially possible).  And I am sure that someone looking from the outside in would say that I’ve been doing well on my own with the kid(s).  But despite my best efforts I often don’t feel like I am doing a good job.  It feels like at least one someone is always crying or whining, always hungry, always bored, and/or always, needing to go to sleep.  And some of that time, that someone is me.  The constant needs of everyone, including myself are wearing me down.  It all seemed doable for a few weeks; you can do anything for a short amount of time, but when it hit me that my “break” from this new normal wasn’t going to come until I go back to work, in June, I felt like I hit a wall.  I am not particularly sad.  I am certainly not depressed.  I am just acknowleging that parenting three children ages five and under is really hard.  I also want to enjoy the time with my children – I like my children – not just count the hours until Jeff comes home and congratulate myself that we all survived the day.

But here is where this post turns from complaining to action.  Two years ago I would have simply thought to myself “Of course, this is hard, you have a two month old, stop whining and it will get better in a few months on its own.”  I would have heard everyone saying “You’re doing great!” and interpreted that to mean “I think you are doing great, so there must be something wrong with you if you are feeling overwhelmed”.  As soon as I started feeling the force of that brick wall bearing down on me I told Jeff about it.  I then told my sister and  couple of friends and they listened.  We’re making lots of changes.  Some of the changes are small – like me making sure that I get an afternoon snack.  (I have a tendency to turn into a three year old when I am hungry and it isn’t pretty.)  We’re giving Theo a bottle of milk in the morning when he starts to melt down – the kid has basically had a moaning, sobbing meltdown at about 10:30 am ever since he gave up his morning nap a year and a half ago!  Despite a morning snack, cuddling, and reading stories, the meltdowns were just getting worse so we tried giving him some of his beloved “milky” and lo and behold a beautiful calm has descended upon the house during the mid-morning. And I really don’t care if he takes a bottle until he goes to kindergarten.  And speaking of kindergarten, the biggest change of all is that we decided to take a mid-year opening for Thomas such that he will start kindergarten in three weeks.   And just making a few changes and knowing that all I really have to do is acknowledge my difficulties and we will work together as a family is already making life easier.  It only took me three kids to figure it out.

This is my first week where I have days alone with three small human beings to care for.  It went better than expected; partly because I live my life by the mantra of “Keep your expectations low and you won’t be disappointed.”  There was a day where everyone under the age of six decided to poo in their pants (and at this point Anna’s the one for whom that is acceptable).  The cat, not to be upstaged by mere humans, also decided to poo on the living room floor.  But this week also saw Thomas be phenomenally helpful, Theodore give me a spontaneous “I love you” nearly every day, and Anna actually go to bed two nights in a row without crying.

Thomas knows that I keep a journal for each child that I write in periodically.  He also knows that I “do some writing on the computer”.  (Something tells me that he will be a blogger one day; if we aren’t all socially networked to each other by chips in our brains by the time he is a teenager.)  Tonight as I was putting the boys to bed Thomas asked me to write about him (and then added that I should write about Theo too) so I thought I would oblige.

Thomas…

Thomas has consistently been winning the on-going contest of “most challenging child in the family” for the past several weeks.  This week’s bad behavior highlight:  telling me to “shut my mouth” when I told him to put on his shoes for a walk (oh the cruelty of forcing my child to walk three blocks with me to the mailbox in 80 degree weather!).  In return for his disrespect he had all sweets taken away for one week.  And he was treated to learning a new word “grounded”.  As in if he ever says that to me again he will not go anywhere but school for one week and when he’s at home he will not get any TV and will have to go to bed directly after dinner.  I am 100% supportive of him expressing his feelings, but he will do so in a respectful manner – or else.  In another transgression Thomas lost the use of his Legos for a week.  Perhaps remembering the consequences of bad behavior, the rest of this week has been pretty darn great.  He has been incredibly helpful with Theodore – for the most part, playing nicely with him while I comforted the ever-fussy Anna.  At lunchtime yesterday Theo finished eating his beloved Snappea crisps before Thomas (a rare and favorite item in our house) and threw himself a tantrum when I denied him more.  I told Theo that I had given him and Thomas the exact same amount (I counted) but he was not to be consoled.  Thomas sighed and very generously handed Theo his last two Snappea crisps.  Thomas is now reading to Theodore which is utterly adorable.  And during a rare and beautiful half hour where both Anna and Theodore were asleep at the same time I sat down and taught him multiplication which he picked up quickly.

Theodore…

Theodore, my amazing, perfect, sent-from-heaven, sleeper has been waking up the middle of the night yelling about needing help with his blanket.  Because although he is quite capable of climbing into my bed and pulling my covers over his head to play hide and seek he is, apparently, incapable of pulling his own blanket over himself in the middle of the night.  Under the category of awesome Theo has developed a passion for “bake with Mama?”.  I am not sure if it is the one-on-one time together or the opportunity to lick the beater that has suddenly ignited his culinary fires, but I am having a lot of fun with my new baking buddy.  Theodore has also, for a couple of months now, been complaining that he misses me while at school.  So in what might prove to be insanity I decided to pull Theodore out of school one day a week so that he is now home with me three days a week.  (Thomas will still go to school three days a week.)  The truth is I miss him too.  I also know that as my middle child Theodore gets the short end of the stick when it comes to one-on-one time with me.  He is more talkative and creative when he is the only child around and I want to enjoy that side of him.

Anna…

In addition to “Sunshine” Anna’s other nickname is “Fussypants”.  We joke constantly about her fussypants as if they were an actual, pair (or pairs) of attire.  Mocking our baby’s fussiness with rather juvenile humor helps keep us sane when we’re swaddling and walking her to sleep for the tenth time in a day.  I particularly enjoyed this exchange:

Jeff:  How was she today?

Me:  Well this morning was great; she was smiling and talkative for about 20 minutes; her fussypants were in the laundry.  But then they came out of the dryer and she put them on.  Apparently they had shrunk so she was extra fussy the rest of the day.

Jeff:  Nothing’s worse than a tight pair of fussypants.  Why are you letting a newborn choose their own pants anyway…why don’t you just put a pair of happypants on her?

Me:  We didn’t get any.  And they don’t sell them at Target.

We also call Anna “the baby stick” because when she’s all swaddled up tight (which given her fussiness is most of the time) she seems to me like a little stick with a cute baby head attached to the top.  Despite her general crankiness I am actually finding her quite awesome.  When she’s awake and happy she is very chatty and gives me that adoring smile that babies often seem to reserve for their mothers – the one where they look up at you and grin at you like you are a god.   Finding out what my kids are thinking is absolutely one the highlights of parenting older children.  I’m excited at the idea that it won’t be too long before Anna tells me, vociferously I am sure, what her thoughts on life are.

Me…

I love being on maternity leave.  My days with Anna alone are actually very relaxing.  I suspect that Anna might be a night-owl like her Mama and her biggest brother.  Most days after we finally get her to sleep; she sleeps and nurses all night long without much complaint, finally waking at the deliciously late hour of 9:30 am or so.  As long as I stay in bed with her and nurse her on demand she stays happy and content and I am getting eight hours of (interrupted, but hey I have a newborn – I’m not complaining!) sleep every night.  It has also been surprisingly helpful to my sanity that Jeff bought me a one pound box of See’s chocolates for Christmas.  I hid said box in my nightstand and whenever I start fantasizing about running away to a land without children I sneak into the bedroom and eat a chocolate.  And you know what, that helps quite a lot.  Do you have any secret coping mechanisms when life gets rough?  I promise I won’t tell.

As I was recovering from childbirth, nursing a baby a dozen times a day, potty training a two and half year old, and trying to figure out where to send a five year old to school I thought:  my life is simply not complicated enough, what I need is an unprecedented natural disaster to add a little excitement to my day.  Well, Mother Nature obliged and this happened:

That would be most of our 72 year old redwood tree lying directly over our bedroom; you know, the room we sleep in with our newborn nestled between us.  Wednesday night saw what I have seen the local newspapers call simply, “Wind 2011″.  A few days of strong winter winds (Santa Anas) are typical here in Southern California.  In fact, 10 years ago, one such set of winds capsized the boat that Jeff was in thirteen miles offshore, resulting in him and his research colleagues narrowly escaping death in the frigid waters before being rescued by the coast guard.  The winds this past Wednesday night started innocently enough.  As the winds picked up throughout the evening Jeff made multiple trips outside; first to put away a few of the boys’ toys, then to turn over our patio furniture and secure it against the house, then to turn over the garbage cans so that they wouldn’t take off.  By the time Jeff came inside the final time, I didn’t think it was safe for him to be outside.  The winds were coming in fiercely from the north, the side of the house with our bedroom and living room with a large bay window of untempered glass.  We nervously hung out on the south side of the house making occasional forays to look out the windows and see trees convulsing violently in the wind.  And then there was a boom and the house shook.  Jeff jumped up and through the haze of blowing branches saw a huge trunk of our redwood tree lying on our house.  This was a new problem for us and we weren’t initially sure what to do.  We then heard the wind rolling the tree trunk around the roof of our house; a very disturbing sound.  I started by calling the police non-emergency line which was busy.  Then I moved on to 911 which transferred me to the fire department.  The dispatcher asked me if we were all ok and whether or not we could leave the house.  I told him that we could leave, but that it certainly didn’t seem safe to go outside!  He told us that as long as the tree wasn’t actually in the house or the house was on fire, then we should stay in and they would get to us as soon as they could.  Minutes went by, then an hour, and through the power of our neighborhood facebook page, I realized that the fire department would probably not be coming as people began posting pictures of trees that had actually come through their roof!  The police department sent out emails and text messages asking residents to stay home and off the streets.  Most of the streets in Pasadena were now blocked by downed trees and power lines, while transformers were sparking all around us.  We could hear sirens and realized as bad as a tree on our house was, others had it worse and we didn’t have a choice but to wait and hope that our roof would hold.  Much of Pasadena and all of the neighboring cities of Altadena and Sierra Madre were without power.  We called our insurance company and started a claim; they had already declared Los Angeles Country a “catastrophe” area after receiving more than 1000 claim calls in an hour.  Given that we still, for the moment, had a roof we were told that it would be days before our damage could be assessed, to take care of what needed to be fixed, and save our receipts.  There wasn’t anything more we could do at 1:00 am, but there was no way I was going to sleep with a tree poised over my head so Jeff moved our mattress into our windowless dining room and we hunkered down with Baby Girl.  I think I literally hovered over her tiny body all night trying to shield her from anything that might invade our house.  In the wee hours of the morning the wind died down and we finally slept marveling as we awoke at how quiet the world could be without the fury of the wind.  Seeing the devastation in the morning light was surreal; our lawn was green, not with grass, but with redwood needles.  In a stroke of amazing luck I called a tree service company  just as they opened and they said they would come by with a crane.  They warned that they wouldn’t have time to do much else, but would remove the tree from our house.  The schools were all closed and normally we would have stayed home given such a disaster, but in case of very bad timing we had a long arranged court date at 8:30 am sharp to finalize Theodore’s name change.  It was comical, getting three kids up and dressed properly for court, traipsing out to our car via our side door (the front door was blocked with debris), me in high heels stepping around huge branches.  The drive to the courthouse, only two miles away, was slow going.  The major streets in many spots had only one lane open with cars in each direction taking turns around huge downed trees.  Streetlights and traffic signals lay broken.  There were pieces of roof everywhere.  In the end, we made it to court and Henry William officially became Theodore Gregory.   When we arrived home, the redwood on our roof was gone and our front walk was even cleared and swept clean.

Besides the wind apocalypse it hasn’t been an easy week.  While not truly colicky, Baby Girl is going through some significant newborn fussiness.  Theodore is sick with some evil daycare germ and actually threw up on his baby sister (and me) today.  And Thomas is just plain moody and difficult.  But one of the most wonderful things about being a 33 year old mother of three children, rather than a 28 year old first time parent, is that nothing much phases us anymore.  As long as our family is safe and healthy, everything really is ok.  I was a little shaky the night after the wind storm, vividly envisioning what could have happened if that tree had crashed through our bedroom with us in it.  But the fact is, that it didn’t.  Our 72 year old house is, apparently, made of pretty strong stuff; as is my love for our perfect Baby Girl.

*The title to this post is in reference to the “Holy shit bees!” in last week’s post.  And yes, the tree service company,  told us that the Holy shit bees were, amazingly, still in the tree (surviving 100 mile per hour winds and a fall!) section that fell on our roof.

I thought that the postpartum period with the third baby would be even easier than that with the other two kids – I had a pretty easy recovery and start to nursing with Thomas and recovery and nursing with Theo was a breeze.  I thought that baby number three might be even easier.

Not so much.

At eight days old today I think that we have turned the corner and a are now on a positive slope, rather than a negative one but oh it has been a long week.  Some highlights:

• Eating homemade cinnamon rolls and scrambled eggs with cheese a couple of hours after Baby Girl’s birth.  I had the thought several weeks ago that cinnamon rolls would be the perfect after labor food and so I made up two batches and froze them.  When I went into what I was fairly sure was active labor I took out one batch to defrost and about an hour after Baby was born we popped them into the oven.  Jeff then made us all scrambled eggs with cheese to go with them and I think that was one of the most satisfying meals of my life.
• Thomas’ reaction upon meeting his baby sister, “Where is her neck?”
• Theo’s favorite thing to say (loudly) and with a grin all week, “Mama say ‘Nooooo!’  Mama say ‘Owwwww!’” – I woke them up at about 4:00 am yelling through labor which they were, apparently, quite amused by.
• Baby Girl did not scream, and in fact fell asleep, on the one short car ride she has been on.  Although I have no desire to get in the car sometimes you just have to and I dearly hope that this means she does not take after her brothers who despised the car for months.
• It hit me on Friday morning at about 5:30 am that all the pain I was in from nursing was definitely not right – the absolute low point of this week.  After over five years of easily and successfully nursing babies/toddlers, I had to call in a lactation consultant and I am so glad I did.  Nursing has definitely improved and I am now confident we will make it through to a long nursing relationship.
• Yesterday was Thomas’ 5th birthday party.  We had originally scheduled the party for November 6th, thinking that would give us plenty of time before Baby Sister’s estimated arrival, but latent contractions set in for me on October 29th and I simply wasn’t feeling up to much of anything after that.  We then rescheduled his party for yesterday, November 27th, what I hoped would be long enough after Baby Sister’s birth.  It turned out beautifully and between buying half the food and having others make and bring the rest; it turned out to be the most relaxing party I’ve ever thrown – even with a one week old.
• About 20 minutes before the party was scheduled to start I looked out our front window and saw our yard blanketed with, no exaggeration, probably 10,000 bees in a diffuse cloud.  I called Jeff over who exclaimed “Holy shit!” I got out our beekeeping book (we don’t have bees yet, but are planning on them) which told us that the bees were likely swarming, did not have a home and thus were not particularly territorial/aggressive, and that within minutes would form a ball of bees somewhere and hang out.  It was surreal to watch; over the course of five minutes the bees all coalesced into a compact ball hanging about 25 feet up in our redwood tree.  It was one of the most amazing natural sights I have ever seen.  And it was quite amusing to hear Thomas exclaim, with perfect inflection, for the next few minutes, “Bees!  Holy shit bees!”
• We ended the week last night with Baby Girl’s first real extended period of fussiness.  She was generally awake and unhappy; alternating between nursing, lying on my chest with me patting her butt, and being held by Jeff while he bounced and swayed with her.  After battling the newborn demons for about an hour and a half she fell into an exhausted sleep on Jeff’s (also sleeping) chest.  And what did I do?  I put my head up next to her and just stared until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore.  I love sleep, but I love her even more.