MommyBlog

We left the Outer Banks yesterday morning, and planned a long, scenic drive back.   We had rented our house out to other vacationers (hey – we live on the water, so why not, right?) and their “check out” wasn’t until 11 AM today, while our vacation check out was at 11 AM on Saturday.   Highlights from the 24 hours we  took to get home:

– I actually nursed Cooper while he was strapped in the car seat.   No, the car wasn’t moving; Casey was loading up the last of our stuff, and we strapped the kids in the car for the last 15 minutes of loading so that we could race in and out with bags.   He was loosing it – way late for a morning nap and already  hungry for lunch.   I leaned over his seat (a little bit of an acrobatic feat) and lifted my shirt.   Bliss for him, peace and quiet and a three our nap to celebrate for us!

– We decided to stop at Chincoteague Island – home of the feral ponies – for the afternoon.   After visiting a brand-spankin’-new playground at the water’s edge, we hit a rural arcade and Casey and Kenny rode Go Karts and Bumper Boats while Cooper and I sat in the car and … yep – nursed right there in the front seat, this time with him in my lap.   I tried to look cool and non-chalant as preteens and vacationing families walked past, as if breast feeding in the front seat of a car in a busy parking lot is just par for the putt-putt course…

– After a stroll through another park, for Dudley’s  sake, and a  leisurely local seafood dinner, we got back into the car to head to my parent’s house for the night.     We hadn’t gotten 45 minutes down the road when the Bottomless Pit (who’d already eaten more than Kenny at dinnertime) decided that he needed  a nightcap.   We needed gas anyway, so we pulled into a small town Texacoand there I sat, half-topless again, under the glow of the neon star.     I don’t know if it was all the Dr. Pepper I’d had that afternoon or what, but this time there was no soporific effect, and my little bull screamed for another 30 minutes down the road.   Waaaaa…

(By the way, Cooper has nearly given up nursing.   Maybe it was the sudden inferred inaccessibility of my breasts that put him into a binge, but he nursed more yesterday than he has in one day since he was 6 months old.)

We arrived at my folk’s around 9:30 and though Cooper and Kenny had been snoring in the backseat, they were instantly awake.   Kenny was soothed back into dreamland soon enough, but Cooper turned into a Cowboy and hammed it up for the next hour and a half.   I tried nursing (again) and then a bottle, but he was rarin’ to go – ready to par-tay.   Yeee haw.   He wiggled, giggle and crawled like a boy on fire.   It was hysterically funny, but we were all getting kind of tired and were really ready for him to hit the hay.   Casey finally held him immobile in a dark room and he fitfully dozed off, only to be wide awake again at 4:30 in the morning, ready to start all over again.   Go figure.

But we had a great morning at my parent’s house, eating pancakes on the screened porch and letting the boys play in the dirt.    We finally packed it up again and headed to our own house, arriving right at 11, having missed our renters by minutes, it seems.   They left the house spotless.   Pristine.   And they washed, dried and folded all the linens.     I actually got a lump in my throat as I went from room to room and saw what a perfect job they did of caring for our house.   They even left us flowers.  

I think the best part of it all is that we still have one more day off tomorrow… we don’t have any plans other than fishing and setting the crab traps and playing in the back yard.   Now that’s a vacation!

I can hardly believe it’s our last night of vacation.   Casey is even beginning to pack  up the car, as I sit here at  the laptop in denial that we  will head out tomorrow.   Our first four days here the weather did not cooperate with our beach-going plans, and it  feels like we’ve barely been here, now that the  air has  warmed and the rain  has left.

We’ve had a wonderful time reconnecting as a family.   Kenny and Cooper are certifiable beach boys, and are happy to spend hours on end playing in the sand and being doused by waves.   We’ve  walked miles each day and Dudley has had more than his fair share of wave surfing and beach running.   I read a novel all the way through (actually, I did that in 24 hours – I even stayed up most of one night to finish it) and Kenny and Cooper have had bedtime rituals that extend for hours in the sleepy sunsets.   we celebrated our last night tonight with a pizza and wine on the beach, Kenny dancing in the sand and Cooper eating everyone’s crusts with gusto.

We’ve eaten more ice cream sandwiches in the last five days than in the whole last year.    I even invented a game where I hid them in the cooler, and whenever a helicopter flew overhead, I threw one in the air in Kenny’s direction and yelled, “Kenny!   It’s the ice cream helicopter!”   He would give me the fish eye and say, “Was that really you, Mama?”   I would shrug and say, “I don’t know, it just fell out of the sky…”   At one point today when Kenny sassed at me, I responded, “You’d better listen to me now, or there’s gonna be no more ice cream sandwiches falling from the sky.”   Casey snorted and Kenny looked chagrined.   Ah yes, all vacations must come to an end.

Ok, ok… it’s been nearly four weeks since I posted on my blog.   No only that, it’s been four weeks since I typed my own blog’s name into the web browser.   Of anyone else’s blog’s name for that matter.   I’ve barely checked email and only gotten on the computer here and there to read the headlines on CNN.

I’m sure all of you had at least one relationship in college that you disappeared on.   Mine was a semi-casual boyfriend that one day I just up and decided that, not only did I not want to go out with him any more, but that everything about him – even the way he breathed for goodness sakes – drove me insane and I couldn’t stand one more  minute in his presence.   There was nothing wrong with him, mind you.   I just couldn’t be in the same airspace as him or I felt the urge to poke him under the ribs.   Not rational.   Not fair.   He, fortunately, was a real stellar guy and played along, ignoring me in return, except for a wink here and there, as if to say, “Hey, girl, I know this game.   You’re gonna miss me someday.”

Well, I never really did miss him (though a semester later we laughed over it and became friends), but neither did I ever really have an explanation for my radical distain.   I guess you could say that’s kind of what happened to me and poor old MommyBlog this past month.

It all started when Casey and I began to talk about expanding this blog – I’ve written about that before – and I decided to do some due diligence and really see who out there had great mommy blogs, who was doing well and why they were so popular.   I spent a week reading, watching and checking it into the Who’s Who of the blogosphere.   And you know what?   I was buried.   Suddenly, I panicked.     Twitter?   Oh my goodness, what on earth?   Now all the really cool mommy bloggers were tweeting all over the place and I didn’t even know a tweet from a twit.   Forget Facebook.    I joined that a year ago and I think I’ve been on it four times.   That sent me into reliving the clammy palms of high school: everyone seeing how  many friends I had and how cool (or not) I was.   I can barely keep up with daily email chatter,   much less pings and pongs and real time updates.   Hell, I can barely keep my dishwasher unloaded.

Then there were the playlists, so that your readers could bop along to your own selected  while keeping up with your kids’ antics.   Blogrolls a hundred sites  long.     Rolling headline pictures, newsfeeds and buttons galore.     And the wackiest of all: half the mommy blogs I read didn’t even have anything to do with the author’s kids!   I suddenly felt like Laura Ingalls walking into a swinger’s bar.   Old fashioned, un-hip and so not with it.

Honestly, I had to take a break.   I needed to just hang with my kids, clean my house, and get this family ready for vacation (which I’m on now!).   Writer’s blog slayed me and just thinking about blogging was like fingernails on the chalkboard. But the salty air of the Outer Banks has cleared my head a little and with no housework and only time to laugh and play and eat pint-loads of ice cream, I think that I may be ready to hit the keypad again.

Why do I write? To  chronicle my kids’ lives.   To create something that Kenny and Cooper can look back on one day and read and say, “Hey – we really put Mom through the ringer!   Let’s send her on a first class trip to Paris next Mother’s Day…”   But really: to someday share a piece of their lives with them, and to share with them a glimpse into the woman I once was, back before they can remember.

When we lived in Arizona, Casey walked out one night onto the golf course we lived on to hit a few balls in the sunset while I put baby Kenny to bed.   He hit a hole in one, and looked around triumphantly.   Not a single soul saw it happen.   Dejected, he walked into the house and said, “Now I know what lonely is.”   And that sums up why we blog.   Our exploits and triumphs aren’t complete until we retell them to someone else.

And that is why I will continue to write.

I can’t believe I haven’t been to my own blog in over a week.   What on earth have I been doing with myself?   And of course now, with time to sit at the computer, all I can do is surf stories about the Swine Flu.   We just found out that there is a “probable” case at the elementary school where all our friend’s school-age kids go, so we are on lock-down, to say the least.   Casey has a half-day business trip to NYC tomorrow, and is out buying hand sanitizer for the Amtrak trip… I want to know if I can petition a Lysol bomb over the train car, just as a precautionary measure…

Tonight, I decided to produce a quick Cliff Notes version of the last week for tonight’s post, so that I can get back to my Swine Flu research:

Cooper’s two top teeth STILL haven’t come through.   It’s been two weeks now of seeing them just under the skin – they did actually pop through once and the skin grew back!   I ache for him.   And we’re out of Motrin.   Again.

The weather here has been close to that in WHOville… we had 90+ degree weather Saturday through Monday, then high 80’s on Tuesday and today was 58 and drizzly.   Go figure.  

On Sunday we went to our first Oriole’s game of the season, and Cooper’s first game ever!   It was 96 at game time, making it most likely the hottest game we will ever attend.   Today we went to a noon game, and it was struggling to stay in the 50’s, making it most likely the coldest game we will attend.   How ’bout that?

Cooper is still saying, “BALL!” all day long, and chasing them non-stop, but it now also saying “Baba” for “bottle” and said, “Bock!” several times today, pointing at the blocks in the floor.   He is also starting to imitate general sounds better.   I was feeding him some pasta tonight, and said, “That’s good, huh?”   and he said, “ah duud!” and clapped.   Genius, I tell you.   Genius.

Dudley finally succeeded, after three years, of ridding our yard from his nemesis – a grossly obese ground hog who has been living under our back deck since Kenny was a baby.   He chased that thing nearly every day, sometimes even crawling on his belly under the deck (and getting stuck a few times) to try and catch him.   But yesterday, the unfortunate mammal ventured onto our dock, and Dudley spied him from the other side of the yard.   He tore down there and the poor waddler jumped off in terror, trying to swim to shore.     Kenny and I watched from the yard, not sure if we should root for him or not, as we were certain that if he climbed ashore, Dudley would finally catch him.   The brave little soul made a go for it, but gave up as Dudley kept him from climbing up the bulk head.   Kenny got big eyes and said, “Mama?   Why’d he stop swimming?”   “He died, honey.”   “Oh.”   Our next door neighbor, who was also a witness piped in, “I’m sure he’s in Heaven, Kenny!” leaving Kenny with another 800 questions about life, death, dead bodies, animals and the like.   Rest in peace, Mr. Groundhog.

Cooper was up again nearly all night, even loaded up with Motrin and Orajel, and I finally left him to cry it out at 5 am so I could at least get an hour or two of sleep.   The first time I got up with him, as soon as I walked into the room, his shrieks subsided and he started talking to me, “Daba daba DA!” and on and on, as if to say, “Oh Most Glorious Mama, I am so sorry to get you out of bed, but my teeth hurt!   Warm milk, please.”   I cuddled him and nursed him back to sleep.   The second time, two hours later, I gave him more motrin and walked him a little, all the while he kept on a steady chatter of his woes: “DA da da da da BADA!”   The third time, again two hours later, I was a little less charmed and patted him on the head (after checking his diaper, just to make sure) and left the room ,closed the door and turned off the baby monitor.   Fortunately for Kenny, he was already sleeping in my bed, since Casey was out of town, and at least he was spared the audio carnage.

When I was finally dragged out of bed a few hours later by a wide awake Kenny, I realized that every muscle in my body ached.   It wasn’t until I had the first cup of coffee in me that I realized that it wasn’t just the sleepless night.

(Wait.   If you are a male colleague or friend of my husband’s checking in, the next paragraph is about my “girls” – and not the happy Hooters kind, but the painful nursing kind.   Skip to the paragraph that starts off, “It got rougher…”

Yep, it was mastitis – my first bout since having Cooper, but I had it often enough nursing Kenny that I know it.   Ouch.   Waaaaaah.   No tylenol for me, though, I decided to tough through the pain.   I’m not so smart sometimes.   Ok, so let’s just say that the day started rough.

It got rougher when I made breakfast, and Kenny decided that mine looked better than his and he ate it.   This after trying for ten minutes to talk him into letting me make him  a sunny side up egg like I was having, and him refusing and begging for scrambled instead.   Told you so.

Then he did just about everything he could think of to get on my nerves – climbing over the back of the couch, walking around with his sippy cup held between his front teeth – all things that I’ve harped over and forbidden.   Finally I spanked him (something I’ve done so infrequently he was more surprised than pained) and thought that the day could only go uphill.

Wrong.   The forecast was gloomy – 48 and raining – and this after several warm sunny days, making it impossible to get outside.   That is, until I remembered that I had to go feed my friend’s cat.   Soaked, we returned 45 minutes later and I was determined to get it right the rest of the day.   Lunch:   Good.   Nap for Cooper:   Didn’t happen.   Quiet time for Kenny: Yeah, right.

The sun broke out and 3 and I hustled everyone into warm clothes and hats and we set out to take the dogs for a walk.   We were exactly one mile from our house when the thunder boomed and the rain started to pour.   I started running, Kenny and Cooper started laughing and crying at the same time and we made it to our door ten minutes later, soaked and miffed.   And then the sun came out again.   Thanks.   Yeah.   Nice.

But then the rain started again a minute later, so I was somewhat vindicated.   Anyway, the antsy-ness increased 100 fold, Cooper still wouldn’t nap and Kenny became Dennis the Menace.     Then Dudley chewed up a gift that my grandma had made for him, a little wooden toy, and he lost it completely.   So did Cooper, though I don’t think he knew why he was crying at that point.    

We somehow made it through dinner and books and then it was there – the Holy Grail of a really bad day: Bed Time.   Finally.    They both fell  asleep so fast I barely had time to say, “Good night; I love you…”

Now I sit exhausted and still in pain.   I was ready to write through it all and find some humor in it, but that was before I decided to catch up on the day at  CNN.com.   I read an article about how moms of young children are at high risk for serious internet addiction, referencing “Mommy Blogs” in particular as a “drug” of sorts to escape from the reality of life.    Never mind.   I needed to go to bed anyway.

Can you just take a moment and melt?

After a few sleepless nights, the little guy and his big brother fell asleep nine minutes before their official bedtime tonight to the sounds of a thunderstorm outside and the harmonious snoring of two large dogs on the big bed with us.   Amen, and amen again.

Speaking of dogs, we are watching a friend’s chocolate lab for the week.

..   She is so sweet, even humble, if that is possible with a dog.   She is, in many ways, the opposite of Dudley.   And her unique nature has caused an unexpected change in Dudley.   He is suddenly more than willing to share his bed (or the couch), and even “taught” her how to use the dog door.   He has been much calmer than normal and had gotten into less messes than usual.   I wonder if we can keep her??   (Jody, are you reading this?)

My grandparents are in town for the week as well, and headed over to my  house with my parents this afternoon to play with the kid, or rather,  watch them enact various gymnastic shenanigans for their attention.   Kenny managed a few back flips off the couch and Cooper actually got himself wedged under the piano when he crawled under after his ball and tried to stand up.   He literally got stuck with his head pressed against the underside of the piano and his feet firmly planted on the floor.   My mom had to kind of pry him sideways to get him out.    

We did have fun with “Gigi and Papa Bob” though, and both boys were extra loving and affectionate.   And darnit if I didn’t completely forget to take a single picture the whole time.

I have an odd confession to make: I’ve got a parallel life.   Not a real one, one entirely in my head, but real enough that it is sometimes all the encouragement I need to get me through the day.   It is nerdy, so stay with me here…

Ever since Kenny was born, whenever I’m having a rough day (or a rough ten minutes), I imagine how I would get through it if I were in Little House on the Prairie.   Not the TV show – that was fun to watch as a kid, but it veered off too much from the books for me.   I have had a minor obsession with the Laura Ingalls Wilder books since I was a preteen.   I have read most of them 20 or more times, and even re-read the series when I first had Kenny in those lonely midnight nursing hours.   I might seem weird, but it’s really facinating to think about.

Let’s say I’m having trouble thinking of something to make for dinner.   Well, poor Ma was stuck with potatoes and salt pork all winter, waiting for spring when the garden started to grow and Pa started hunting again.   And then it wasn’t like she could log into Safeway.com (what would I do without you, Safeway??) and order some chicken breasts and ground round… no, she had to butcher whatever Pa came home with and make it last.  

Kids driving you nuts?     There were no DVD players on the prarie.   Kids won’t pick up their toys?   At least they have them!   Ma had to entertain preschoolers with wooden spoons and metal pots all day.   But of course, there was always, “Who wants a turn milking the cow?” and “How many eggs did the hen lay today??”     And what did she do with a three-year-old with a bottomless stomach?   I tell Kenny to go make himself an Eggo, or grab a yogurt out of the fridge.   Did they even have snacks?

And Ma didn’t have a sleek double jogging stroller to pop the kids in when she needed to get out of the house.   She was stuck until they could all walk on their own.   And what did she do to free her brain at the end of a trying day?   Here I am complaining about a slow internet connection, and Ma was sitting there by the light of a candle darning socks and underwear.

Days when I’m on my fourth load of laundry, I envy Ma for the fact that they only had a few dresses each, and they could get away with wearing them for days at a stretch.   Then again, when the kids had a growth spurt, she couldn’t head out to Old Navy or cash in her Gymbucks – she had to send Pa to The Store for fabric and make the new clothes by hand.   Of course, Ma only had a one (and later two) room house to clean, so she had a lot more time on her hands.

The weather finally broke today, and after three miserable days of wind and freezing rain, the sun burst forth and the air was anything but cold.   Kenny and Cooper and I spent the afternoon outside, walking Dudley, swinging on the swingset, and running around the yard.

I could even feel a vestige of my missing joie de vivre seep back in, in spite of a near sleepless night with Cooper.   He was up until after midnight, for no reason that we could discern, other than the fact that he just learned to say, “ball!” and wanted to be walked around the house so that he could point to the (ridiculously large) assortment of balls scattered nearly everywhere.

Just before going in to make dinner, I plopped Cooper into the playpen on the deck so that I could pitch to Kenny.   That future MVP hit three balls from our deck to just nearly into the water, about 70 feet away!    Who new a three-year-old could make a wiffle ball fly like that?   Several hits also nearly beaned Cooper, but fortunately missed.  

I told Kenny that I needed to run in and use the bathroom, and emphatically instructed that he stay right here on the deck for the 90 seconds that I would be gone.   He obeyed, but apparently felt compelled to answer the call of nature right here as well:

Yes, I grabbed the camera before telling him to stop that right now!

At least none of the neighbors are close enough to see…

Every Wednesday, I meet with three friends (and our collective 6 preschoolers) to have coffee and work through a Bible study together.   This week’s lesson focused on Joy.   Actually, it was last week’s lesson, but none of us could get into the “joy thing” last week, so we agreed to revisit it this week.

Let me start by saying that we are all very blessed in many ways: though none of us are rich, none of us are really struggling financially; we all have healthy children and handsome and kind husbands; we all have nice houses and cars; we are all good looking.   Ok, that last one was a joke, but you get the picture.   Bottom line – we all have great lives, and certainly nothing to complain about (other than one woman who’s primary marital issue is that her husband won’t put his own socks away).  

But when tasked with studying and discussing   Joy, we were kind of stumped.   Yeah, we’re happy.   Yes, we have joyful times and great lives and lots of fun and funny friends.   But all four of us are stuck in a place called The Everyday.   Everyday as in, “Didn’t I clean this mess up yesterday?”   “Is there really still more laundry to fold?”   “How many times can I read this book before my eyes pop out in self defense??”

I even hesitate to write this, for fear of sounding like a spoiled brat.   I love staying home with my kids.   In fact, the very thought of “going back to work” sends  chills down my spine.   I couldn’t do anything but what I’m doing now, and I savor the priviledge it is to raise my kids and run my household.   But what is it about getting buried in the mundane of the everyday that seems to  leak the joy out of life sometimes?   Maybe it’s the very act of living for your kids (and husband, though let’s face it – he does get the smalled piece of the Mama pie, right?) that sucks the individualism out of your own life.

Some days I feel zest and zeal for what I do, and others I wonder how in the world I’m going to make it to dinner time.   Sometimes I revel in the opportunity to witness daily triumphs like first steps and learning to read, and other days I wallow in the boredom of  folding socks  and washing dishes.   Is that ok to admit as a Mommy?

Tell me your thoughts!

Yahoo!   It looks as if I’m back in the saddle again.   But for now, just a test post, to make sure that I’m not going to spend the next hour writing, only to have it disappear in a whirl of modem smoke…

Here is Cooper, aloft:

 Here is Kenny, five nano-seconds after he realized I had a camera pointed at his little brother:

As I clicked, Kenny actually said, “See Mama!   I can stand up, too!”   What do you say to that?   “Yeah, sweets, you’ve been doing it now for three years.”   Or the slightly less sarcastic, “Wow, Kenny.   I can’t believe I’ve never noticed!”

Actually, what I like best about this shot is that only Kenny is wearing a camo shirt.   Cooper’s looks like camouflage, but it’s really only the stratigic smears of pureed sweet potato.   And as to why  neither is wearing pants,  don’t ask.   Who needs pants, anyway?