Monthly Archives: September 2009

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Overwhelmed by Love

Of all the ways I feel overwhelmed these days, there is one way that is quickly winning out as the most overwhelming by far.  We are loved!  We have a circle of family and friends who make a point to take care of us by offering love and more and more, I am noticing that circle widen.  People are sending kind notes or emails or messages to us (especially to me) and offering help and hugs and prayer and friendship.  In person, friends smile at me when they see me and it isn’t a pity smile of “Ugh, you are so needy, I’ll just try to get through this encounter.”  It’s a real smile of “Hi, how are you?  It’s okay if you want to be honest.”  There are people who are loving us now that didn’t even know us back when I was pregnant with Zach and Rissa or during the Renovations of 2006 or any number of other times in our marriage when we have needed extra love!

I am constantly reminded of this lyric so perfectly penned by the Counting Crows:  “I keep thinking tomorrow is coming today, so I am endlessly waiting.”  That describes me so well these days.  Waiting for the house to sell, waiting to feel better, waiting for this really BIG thing that we are working on as a Social Action committee at church to move from the good idea stage to the fruition stage.  You can miss a lot of good details when you are waiting because you are so single-mindedly focused on what ISN’T happening rather than what is.  And so, because I won’t avert my gaze (I am a STUBBORN person), God has brought love in so close that I can’t help but see it and feel it through people who are dear to us and also through Himself.

Thanks for the love.  Thanks so very much.  I hope you consider yourselves fully responsible for the fact that we are going to get through this… it wouldn’t be possible without you.

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The Return of Disaster Mommy

You are NEVER going to try and sell your house while parenting 2 year old twins and also pregnant with another one on the way.  I feel quite certain that you won’t.  Partially, because the vast majority of you are not in our family situation and mostly, because after you read this, even if you do get pregnant while you are parenting 2 year old twins, you won’t ever allow this to happen to you.

So, my realtor calls me this morning and says, “Someone wants to see your house at 3:15pm.  I know that’s in your off-limits range due to the kids’ naptime.  Do we have options?”  I told her that if they could come later, that would be WAY better, but if we make this look like too much of a hassle, they may not want to work with us at all and I WANT TO SELL THIS HOUSE, so I would consider waking my kids up early from their nap if that was the only time that worked for them.

Sidenote:  trying to sell your house makes you crazy.  I literally did not do ANYTHING to jeopardize naptime for at least the entire first year of my children’s lives.  Probably longer.  If it was during naptime, it was not possible and we did not go.  The end.  No discussion.  You don’t mess with sleeping babies and my babies loved to snuggle together in their crib so that was where they slept.  My kids sleep really, REALLY well and I have no intention of jerking them around in this area.  And yet, here I am, saying, “Well, we can make it work if they have to do it then.”  I don’t know where my rational self was… there was no inner monologue voice screaming inside my head, “What??  No, you need a contract that they swear they will BUY this house before you mess with naps.  Come after 4pm or don’t come at all, suckers!”  Like I said, I’m now crazy.  It’s the house process — it forces relaxation upon even the most controlling mommies on their most controlling issues.

Sidenote to the sidenote:  You can all laugh uproariously when Nugget spends the vast majority of his/her time being worn by me in a sling as I chase around Zach and Rissa.  You’ll giggle and say, “remember when you were so adamant that your babies sleep in their own crib?  And now look at you.”  And then I’ll likely punch you if I have a hand free, which I won’t, so you’ll be safe.

So I spent 12:30pm until 3pm waiting for my children to fall asleep and bemoaning the fact that I would have to wake them up early.  I pleaded with them in my thoughts, “Go to sleep, babies!  You have to get sleep whenever you can get it… I’m coming to get you up at 3pm!”   They did not fall asleep.  At all.  This is literally devastating to me.  If I don’t have napping kids, I don’t have Jaime time.  If I don’t have Jaime time, this lapse into crazy that the house process has evoked within me will never go away.  I’ll be stuck at crazy.  If I give birth to a third baby and my older 2 are no longer taking naps, I will literally die.  (Okay, I might not.  But I firmly believe that I will).

I clean my house.  I relax, as much as I can relax when my children are squealing with giggles and conversating with one another and generally NOT SLEEPING.  I am stressed and irritable and inwardly frustrated with this person who wants to see my house because now I don’t get a nap either!  The worst thing is young children who don’t get sleep.  The second worst thing is pregnant, irritable mommies who don’t get sleep.  I race around doing last minute fixes to make our house IDEAL.  Hoochie pees on the floor in the playroom and I realize that I don’t have time to kill him now, so that will have to wait and I just clean it up and cover the wet spot with a well-positioned toy so it doesn’t look like we have a wet spot in the middle of the room, even though we do.

At 3:05pm, I go up and get Zach and Rissa.  It smells awful in their room… like a really yucky poopy diaper.  Oh crap.  We have to leave the house now, as in right now.  The people are literally going to walk through the door any second.  I have no time for diaper changing… I already waited as long as possible to come up and get them!  It’s too late to burn a candle so I whisk out some Febreze and spray it around the room amidst choruses of “What’s that?  Mommy, what’s that?”  My children do not realize that we are not currently on speaking terms due to their refusal to nap and my desperate need for a nap!  I grunt, “It’s Febreze.”  “Fuh-beez, Fuh-beez!  Fuh-beez, Mommy!”

I haul Zach out to the van.  He’s not stinky… it must be Rissa.  I come back upstairs and haul Rissa out to the van.  Whew-eee!  Stinky girl!  I have approximately 2 minutes before this possible buyer is going to arrive… we’ll have to do diaper changes wherever we end up going… which I have not yet determined because I am cranky and stressed about the no nap issue.  I run back in to grab the diaper bag, taking care to check that I have wipes and diapers and antibacterial wipes for my own hands after the diaper change and shoes for little feet.  The realtor pulls up in my driveway.  I ask him to move his vehicle so that I can pull the van out.  He says that we don’t need to leave.  I inwardly think, “Augh!  I wish I had known that” and outwardly smile and say, “Oh that’s okay, we’re going to the park.”  Apparently, we are going to the park.

We go get gasoline because the tank is on empty.  We go to McDonald’s to obtain the sippy cups I forgot to bring with us.  “A large sprite for me and can I have a medium water please?  You know what, I’ll take an ice cream cone too.”  The ice cream cone is for me.  More choruses of “What’s that, Mommy?” when the ice cream cone is passed through the drive-thru window into my hand.  “This is an ice cream cone and I will share it with you when we get to the park.”

We drive to the park.  As I drive, I try not to lick the ice cream cone because it will just entice my children to chant that they want some and I can’t get it to them yet.  It starts dripping on me, so I lick it.  They start chanting.  We get to the park.  I turn around in my seat and ask Zach if he wants to lick it and demonstrate by sticking my tongue out.  He sticks his nose into the cone and smiles the most delicious smile ever, as if he has been waiting his whole life for an ice cream cone.  (They have only ever had ice cream bites from a spoon).  I offer a lick to Rissa.  She pulls away and closes her lips, so I smear a bit on her lips, like ice cream chapstick.  “Icky!  No!” she says as she smiles at me.  Two year olds say “no!” for every single thing ever, so I ignore the words and focus on her smile.  Zach takes another face plant.  Rissa turns away again.

It is at this exact moment that Disaster Mommy reared her ugly head.  I looked at Rissa’s hands.  (Remember, she still has a poopy diaper and it still smells horrible but we are dealing with the melty ice cream cone first because it is a mess I am already holding rather than a mess I am about to open up).  One of her hands was… well, it was poopy.  And then I remembered that she hates being in a poopy diaper and likely tried to change her own diaper by taking it off all by herself, because that’s what she does when she is poopy.  We have run 2 errands (gasoline, McDonald’s) and arrived at the park and I just now notice this.  Ew ew ew!  Ew for her!  Ew for me!

So I did what I had to do.  I freed up my hands by handing the entire ice cream cone (which I bought for ME!) to Zach who slurped away happily while I changed Rissa’s diaper in the front seat of the van.  Thank God for antibacterial wipes for her hands and mine.  We probably went through half of the new container I just bought.  It took some effort, but I got her cleaned up.  And then I got cleaned up because poopsplosions are always a disaster for everyone involved.  And Zach just sat in his carseat, slurping that ice cream cone!  I’m so glad I had it on hand to give to him!

We went to the park.  I strongly considered just driving back home because the people were likely done seeing my house at this point, but I had said we would go to the park and we were sitting there in the parking lot and it’s not nice to lie to your children.  So we went.  I wrestled the remains of the ice cream cone away from Zach so I could get in at least one more lick and he was furious with me.  I made him take the cup of water from McDonald’s to get a drink and gave Rissa a turn at the ice cream cone.  She demanded the “sippy” and he demanded the “ice tweam” so I helped them trade back.  He polished it off, the dripping, globby mess, and then was sad that it was gone and sad that his hands were covered with goop. More wipes to the rescue.

We finally made it to the swings, whereupon I plopped Rissa in, handed Zach the sippy since he didn’t want to swing, and called Matt to leave a voicemail for him at work detailing exactly what a disaster this entire event had been.  I have come to the conclusion that you can successfully either a) have 2 year old twins, b) be pregnant, or c) sell your house.  But not all three at once, as I have proven over and over these past FOUR weeks of trying to sell our house and FOURTEEN weeks of being pregnant.  I told him to get himself home ASAP after work to rescue me because it was THAT kind of a day and that we would be doing baths when he arrived.  Little did he know…

That is my son, having a full McDonald's first experience by polishing off MY ice cream cone, and sipping he and his sister's water. This picture is so cute... I feel like it belongs on a nice day... a good day... a day that didn't nearly kill me. That is my daughter, the self-diapering baby. She LOVES the swings and begs to go "too high!" So I hold her way up and say "ready?" and she yells "Rerry!" and then I death-drop her into a swinging arc and she makes her facial expression that is a combination of sheer terror and pure delight. And then she says, "too high!" and we do it again. This is how Matt found us. I didn't originally intend to get in with them, but... they wanted to splash me and I said they could only splash inside the tub. And so they asked me to get inside the tub too. I checked to be sure that was in fact what they were saying and they were rather adamant that I should come in the tub, "bath with Mommy!" And so I did. And I stayed clothed because that seemed far more appropriate than the other option. It was awesome. They used my legs as a slide and showed me how to play with all the best toys and we squirted each other and did lots of splashing. And I didn't even actually bathe them... Matt had to do that once he walked in and found us. I'm guessing that this scenario was far better than the one he likely expected to find... me crying in a locked room and them elsewhere wreaking havoc without any supervision. I have to say, they are super fun to take a bath with!

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Puppies!

Zach and Rissa had their 2 year well-baby checkups this morning.  This coincided nicely with our house being shown because we needed to be out of the house anyway!  They did a great job!  Both kids have amazing memory capacities… they store information away like giant sponges and can output vast quantities of what they have tucked away in their brains!  Zach’s recall is especially geared toward experiential memories.  Aside from the normal shot experiences that kids face at the doctor’s office, we had an extra traumatic incident in a clinic a few months ago.  Zach saw Rissa throw up all over herself and Daddy and her blankie and he just cracked.  It was horrifying for him… he just knew that this was awful and didn’t know how to help.  I had to take him out into the hallway and walk him around to soothe him.  He only felt better after we prayed together for “seester” and he came back and saw that she was “otay.”  Now, whenever we walk into a clinic room, Rissa points to the table and says, “mommy lay down!” because that’s where I sit during my doctor visits and Zach is overcome by bad memories of other visits and clings to me for snuggles.  Today went just like that.

Thankfully, our pediatrician is extremely fabulous.  We LOVE him.  He lets Zach and Rissa touch all his equipment and try it out first to make sure they think it’s okay.  My favorite is when they check their own leg for a heartbeat with the stethoscope.  They touch the bright light at the tip of the otoscope and peer through the lens back at him while our pediatrician says, “Yep, just like a telescope!”  They are very familiar with taking turns, so they are willing to let him use the equipment when it is his turn after he lets them use it first.  It works so well!  And then he does all his exam work and they do a great job.  Zach is always worried that things could immediately fall apart into a disaster like that one time when Rissa was sick, but he calms down immensely throughout the process.  Both Zach and Rissa monitor the doctor’s every move, especially while he is examining their twin.  They are extremely protective of one another.

Unfortunately, they were each receiving one shot today.  I like honesty best, so I told them, “Guys, I need to talk to you.  Miss _____ (the nurse) is going to come in and give you a shot.  I know you remember what a shot is.  It will be very hard and you already know that.  But you always do a great job of being brave and Mommy and Daddy are always proud of you!  So the shot is #1.  But then, #2 is going to look at the fishies in the aquarium!  Okay?  #1 is the shot and #2 is fishies.”  Rissa squealed, “fishies!” and opened the doorknob and darted out of the examination room to go find these fishies.  I hauled her back in and reminded them that fishies is #2 and only if they do #1 first.  Zach opened the door too to go find these fishies and thankfully, our nurse came in right that moment to prevent his escape.  They handled the shots really well and then we headed out to the lobby for some fishie watching!

Our house was still being seen when our appointment was over so I asked them if they wanted to go look at more fishies at Meiijer or if they wanted to go to the puppy store in the mall and hold a puppy.  It was a hard choice!  They wanted fishies too but finally settled on puppies.  We headed over and waited expectantly outside the puppy store until they opened at 10am.  It is a new store in the same location as the old puppy store.  The old one is gone, which I think is good because I totally suspected them of being a puppy mill dog dispenser.  We only ever went in there to love up the dogs — I would NEVER buy a pet from a place like that!  The new store is completely different and has little cribs for all the puppies instead of metal cages.  Zach and Rissa were so excited that the puppies were going nigh-night in their beds!  Rissa kept wanting to climb in and go nigh-night with them.  And the puppies were SO excited that someone came to visit them!  The twins talked to them and sweetly announced, “Babies!  Puppies!  The babies.  Tyute (cute) babies!”  We watched 3-4 puppies go pee-pee and poopy in their crib and we talked about how all babies need to go potty and it’s okay.  We laughed when one of the puppies peed on his toy by accident and was so devastated when the staff took it out to get him a clean one.

We waited for the 2.5 month old mini schnauzer to become available for holding (she was busy going potty and getting her morning bath when we arrived).  And then she came out!  My goodness, she was tiny.  Zach and Rissa called her “baby Hoochie.”  The store had lots of cute options, but I’m not allergic to mini schnauzers and I am allergic to all the other breeds they had, so Baby Hoochie was the right choice for us.  We went into the little playroom in the back and the staff gave Zach and Rissa toys for Baby Hoochie.  Baby Hoochie sniffed each of our toes and ran around squeaking her toy and received many, MANY kisses from the twins.  They were very careful with her and got so excited when she kissed them back!

Matt and I make a specific point to teach our kids skills with animals.  My mom trained my siblings and I carefully on how to take care of animals and we would visit the rescue shelter on Saturdays to love up the puppies and give them baths and teach the timid or abused ones that there are “kind hands” out there (that’s what Mom called it).  It was always so gratifying to clean up a grubby puppy and work with them on how to sit at the front of the cage and not be afraid and show some personality, and then to see a family walk in and adopt that one that we just worked with!  We want to teach Zach and Rissa and Nugget those same skills.  We always point out animals on walks around our neighborhood and we use a special “Awww, look at the cute baby!” tone of voice to let them know that animals are friends.  (I think kids quickly pick up on nervousness around animals in adults and can acquire nervousness and fear without realizing what they afraid of).  We almost never go up and touch other dogs (the rare exception is when we know the dog, like Gus, our next door neighbor golden retriever who adores our kids and they adore him).  And we talk about how to make doggies feel safe and secure by holding out your hand to be sniffed and asking first before reaching for them.  No touching heads and faces, just backs and legs and always with gentle hands.  You know, Being Kind To Pets 101 sort of info.  Zach and Rissa are really little, but they totally understand and do a great job!  We try to cultivate love and compassion in them rather than fear, and we talk through scary stuff and about making good choices so that they know how to be safe and so that the animal feels safe too.  I hope to continue with this model in teaching them how to interact with people!

It just randomly occurred to me that holding a puppy might be an awesome reward for doing a good job at their checkup… mostly, I needed somewhere for us to go until people were done viewing our house this morning.  I had NO idea how well it would go!  But they were SO excited about that puppy.  It was a huge highlight for me too!  We took pictures so we could show Daddy how much we loved Baby Hoochie.

While I checked us in and paid our copay, Zach and Rissa ran over to the chairs, sat down, each grabbed a magazine, and announced to me that they were "wats-ing tv!" Such big kids! Rissa was so careful with Baby Hoochie. She sat very still and put her hands right where I showed her to hold the baby and help her feel safe and snuggled. She loved when Baby Hoochie sniffed her toes and "ticko" her! Zach collected every toy that they gave us for his turn holding Baby Hoochie. I think he wanted to be sure that the baby would have plenty to do! He wasn't sure what to put down, but thankfully, Baby Hoochie stayed put snuggling his lap without support. He did a great job.

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Is there an award for worst house showing ever?

So!  Our house didn’t show all last week — no one came to see it.  Our realtor gives us a day’s notice, so the pristine condition slowly degraded throughout that week to lived in and comfy.  We are now advertising it at a new price and with our pre-sale inspection results, so we hoped to get some new action this week.  And we did!  I knew we had a showing tomorrow morning at 9:30am so I thought we had until then to get things back into spotless shape.  And frankly, Matt and I meant to spend yesterday cleaning but instead, we spent family painting time and did this.  I think we made the right choice.

Zach painting his masterpiece. Rissa painting her masterpiece and her face.

Rissa and Daddy's work is set aside to dry. They had the smallest brushes. Zach and Mommy's work is set aside to dry. They had the chunky brushes.

This morning, we ran errands and I baked bread (I can’t bake without trashing my kitchen.  I literally can’t do it.  If I pre-measured everything like they do on cooking shows and had an army of assistants in the dungeon under the counter, I figure I could throw everything down there to them and let them handle it, keeping my workspace in perfect order.  But I don’t.  In fact, I should work on acquiring that!).  We got home late and the twins went down for their nap late and I fell asleep too.

House (especially the kitchen):  total disaster.  Answering machine messages from my realtor announcing showing: two.  Number of messages I heard:  zero.

I peeled myself out of bed at 5:12pm.  The twins were awake but quiet and I get extremely disoriented after naps, needing extra time to recompose myself and turn my brain back on.  I went to check the answering machine since I thought the phone ringing had woken me up.  It had and there was a message:  “Jaime, I haven’t been able to get ahold of you all day.  I’m glad you aren’t home now because that means you got my message about the 5:15pm showing tonight…”  I stopped listening and went into panic mode.  WHAT????  It’s 5:17pm right now!  My kitchen is covered with bread-baking paraphernalia!  My clean laundry is scattered carelessly on the guest bed!  I wasn’t going to clean until tonight!  I peer out my window and this car pulls up into my driveway.  Eeeeeeeek!  I call my realtor hastily and shout morse code phrases such as, “Sorry!  Did not know!  They are here!  Um?  I better go talk to them… BYE!”

I run out my front door and put on my nicest smile and calmest voice!  “Hi there!  Are you here for the house showing?  Great!  My kids just woke up… is it okay if I take 10 minutes to go get them ready and then we’ll go ahead and leave and you can look around?  Wow, that’s very kind of you, thank you.  They are 2.  Yes, both of them, they are twins.  Yeah, it is great, thanks!  Of course you can see them when I bring them down.  Great.  See you in 10 minutes.”

I re-enter my home and continue panic mode.  Clean laundry crammed back in the dryer!  Shoes thrown across the room into the shoe pile!  Lunch and breakfast crumbs from Cheerios and peanut butter sandwiches?  Ehh, oh well.  Everyone has seen peanut butter sandwiches before.  Hopefully they will notice our drying art from yesterday scattered across the table and think, “They painted together!  That’s so cute!” and not notice the rest of it.

Matt snuck in the backdoor right at this moment and I believe I gasped, “Oh thank God!  Showing, now, driveway, waiting.  So sorry, didn’t know.  Kitchen?  Dishes?  Cram in dishwasher?” and ran off upstairs again to get our kids up.

We were unprepared.  Our house has spent weeks being perfectly clean and we finally get a showing after a week of nothing, and of course, it was a bit of a disaster.  Not a nasty disaster, but not remotely ready for a house showing!  I smiled at the possible buyer on the way out (who had already been kind enough to say, “Oh don’t worry about cleaning for me!”) and I said, “Here are the twins!  They are still a bit sleepy.  So, our house isn’t perfectly clean but this is what it looks like lived in.  Thanks for waiting!”  And we went on a family walk with Hoochie barking at that poor woman and begging for attention.  It just so happens that 5:30pm is currently the time that the gnats come out in swarms of millions and splatter themselves across you, even if you aren’t moving!  We spent 15 minutes fending them off and wiping them out of our facial orifices and then came back home.

I will laugh so hard if she buys our house after all of this.  It is HIGHLY unlikely, but wow, how hilarious would that be?  At least she got to meet us and see that we have twoddler twins and a loud and attention-demanding mini schnauzer and that we are likely barely pulling anything off!  I hope those things factored into her decisions about what our house might look like when the dining room table isn’t covered with paintings and cheerio crumbs, for example.  Our OB-GYN said that the person who finally bought her house did it even though she hadn’t cleaned it that day and had just painted her front porch and it wasn’t dry yet and the buyer stepped in the paint and smeared it.  And he still bought it!  (Maybe because he felt badly about messing up her paint?)  We’ll be ready for the one tomorrow.  But this one was ridiculous.  I thought it might make you laugh.

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Recent Cute

I won’t lie to you.  Things are hard, hard, hard around here.  We’re all struggling a lot.  Matt and I struggle with slaving over this house and it NOT selling yet.  I struggle with being sick and nonfunctional.  Actually, everyone struggles with me being sick and nonfunctional.  Zach and Rissa are having a hard time not having “normal mommy” who has energy to take them places and to spend time playing.  And Matt worries about me and and works hard to cover for what I can’t do and we’re all a bit of a mess.  Like I said, I won’t lie.

What we do have in large quantities is cute.  We are rolling in cute over here.  The cuteness around here brings smiles to our faces every day and we giggle and laugh and say, “That’s so cute!”  Because it is.  I’ll give you some of the cute.

This is the early morning cartoons crowd. By early, I mean 8:30am and by cartoons, I mean Thomas the Train and Friends. I love this picture. I love the together time that R and Z have with Daddy, wherever they can squeeze it in. It's a really beautiful thing. Jaime, 12 weeks pregnant. Last week of the first trimester, obvious belly action going on. Jaime, 13 weeks pregnant. First week of the second trimester and WHOA! The 3 B's of pregnancy have certainly showed up. I'll start the B-list with belly and leave the rest unsaid.

And now, for some singing twoddler cuteness.  We love it when our twoddlers sing.  They have such sweet voices and they burst into song randomly throughout the day, every single day.  Sometimes they make up their own.  Sometimes they sing one that we should be able to identify but have a hard time figuring out.  And sometimes, it is just obvious.  Like these renditions of the Itsy Bitsy Spider and Jesus Loves Me.  I’ll transcript them for you in case it is hard to follow along.

Zach:  “…sider up the water spout.  Down the rain and wash the sider out.  Out came sun and bye-bye rain.  And itsy bitsy sider up the water spout.  Down the rain and wash the sider out.”

Rissa:  “Jesus loves me this I know.  For the Bible tells me so…  Him belong, this is weak and this is strong, bam bam bam!  …  Loves me!”