logically

As a freshman at Eastern College (now University but I still call it EC) I was paired with a roommate.  We talked to each other once or twice preceding meeting each other, as an introduction and to chat up what we were bringing.  It took us a few weeks to warm up to each other but then we were very close and remained roommates all four years.  We were maids (I was matron and very pregnant with Tate) of honor for each other's weddings, and she was my best friend for many years.  

However, time, distance and those things that can happen, caused some separation in our friendship.  But our love remained, and she will always be my roomie, even if only in name.  As of late, our relationship has become more comfortable and familiar again, and I am thankful for that.  Recently, we got together with her sweet little one, and she asked me how I was doing (knowing that I would know  she was meaning about the baby loss).  I teared up immediately, because that is me, and I started explaining how I know logically that we just shouldn't have another baby...my children both have special needs so we're sitting at a gambling table, we don't have room in our house, we don't have enough money to send 3 kids to college (or 2 for that matter but they're already here), our girls would be so much older than their sibling, what would it do to my marriage, I get very sick when I was pregnant with the girls...etc etc ETC.  She listened (she's a great listener) and then said, "So you do want another, because you said 'logically.'

Oh my she was right.  I forgot - but she remembered - that in college she clued me in one time that she can always tell what I really want, because I begin the conversation with, "Logically...." 

She was really right.  I really do want another.  But that just may not be the wisest decision.  All three of my pregnancies have just happened.  Yes, I know about the birds and the bees but really, 2 out of the 3 we really were trying not to and God chose to bless anyway.  My first pregnancy, no we weren't trying, but it was a method of birth control that my cousin once dubbed the, "you-can-run-but-you-can't-hide" method.  

Part of me wonders if we actually tried, perhaps we wouldn't be able to conceive.  A bigger part of me wonders if we did conceive, what if what I went through another miscarriage - and I just don't know that it would be wise for me to possibly put my family - especially my tender hearted girls - through that again.  

Part of me wants to throw caution to the wind and ask God to bless us.  A bigger part of me is too scared.

I don't know yet how this story will end.  We're not pregnant, and not trying to become pregnant.  But I'm only 33, so I feel like I have a bit of time to think and pray on it some more...my prayer is that I am wise not to the world's standards, but to God's.  I pray His will for my life, that I will be made aware of it by conviction, and have the strength to follow through.  I pray He blesses my family, however He sees fit.

Logically, I should get up right now and get chores done before work.  (so that means really I want to continue to sit here and sip coffee).

95/5

Yesterday was a great day.  Church in the morning and it was so good because Bailey remembered her lines and did a super job in a little skit she was in for both services - and I laughed really hard (mostly on the inside but a bit spilled out) when Taylor saw it and then said, "Oh, ok" and laughed her raspy, throaty laugh...just something about that made me laugh.  A few minutes prior she had spilled her hot chocolate (this was her first time drinking hot chocolate at church and I knew she'd spill, and she did) and I didn't care, it just was.

Lunch with family, then home where I made the choice to snuggle with the girls and watch Pinocchio - I made it through 3/4's of the movie before I couldn't take that terrible movie anymore and got up.  Decorated for Halloween and kids went to the playground with Kevin and friends.  Then I took them to the pool where we had a great time except B. had to be disciplined for a few minutes (sitting out of the pool when your sister's still swimming is big time punishment) for throwing her sister's Hello Kitty ring.    After the pool I got the girls small McDonald's fries bc they've been asking for them for a while and it seemed like a good time to say yes.

I was feeling pretty good, it was shaping out to be a banner day.

We came home, and Bailey got in the shower first while I started their dinner and threw the wet towels and suits into the wash.  I even thought to myself, "let little girlfriend take a nice long shower like she loves, don't be so rushy-mommy all the time."  But after a decent while, I knew I'd have to say something or she'd never exit.   I go in the bathroom and there's water all over the floor.

Let me back up to say I have water issues.  We had the "great flood of 2011" where our tub got a hole in it and flooded into our bedroom and down the wall into the garage.  Then a month ago I notice our fridge starts randomly leaking water all over the kitchen floor, warping brand new hardwood flooring the few times I didn't see it in time and the water sat.  Last week during the bad wind storm/torrential rain I noticed in our unfinished laundry room that water was seeping into a few of the cement wall blocks - it wasn't wet to the touch, but you could tell that water is permeating the blocks.

I love the water.  I love swimming, I love the ocean, I love watching and listening to the rain, I love lakes, I love ponds for crying out loud.   But I have water issues, and water fears.

So upon walking into the bathroom and seeing all that water, I freaked.  "Bailey, what on earth!  What is all this water!  Bailey!  The plastic curtain has to be INSIDE the tub, for real?!  You are almost 9!!  Come on!  Alright, get out, that's it.  Put the barbies down.  ALL OF THEM!  Get out!"

And right then, my banner day came to a close.  It didn't take me but a minute to wipe up all the water.  Why did I freak out like that?

I fed the girls dinner and let them watch a show. All the while I was cleaning and cooking, preparing things for the week.  I went downstairs to switch the laundry and feed the cats, and I hear them start to horse around, things are getting knocked over.  I yell up, "clear your places and just finish the show, you're going to bed in 10 minutes, come on just chill out" and they don't listen.  Yes, they heard me.  They just didn't care.

I didn't want to yell again, but I could feel my blood boiling.  I haven't sat in hours, haven't showered from the pool and reek of chlorine, I'm hungry, tired, and still have a list of things to do.  I felt so disrespected and uncared for - they couldn't at the least, listen and obey?  No.  So I calmly - through gritted teeth - told them they were to clean up the table, brush their teeth, Bailey needed her meds and they were off to bed with no tuck in.

Only a few times, if that, have the girls gone to bed without a tuck in.  I can really remember only one other time.  I love giving tuck ins, it's the favorite moment of my day with them.  Singing and back scratching, praying, talking.  But I didn't have it.  I told them why they weren't getting a tuck in, and they begged for a second chance.  Bailey started promising chores she would do this week, Taylor just was crying and saying, "I owe you apologies Mommy, please!  Please forgive me!"

Heartbreaking yes, but I just didn't have it.  That and I did want them to know they disappointed me.  I kissed them and said I love you, and GO TO BED NOW.

Kevin came home to Tate still crying her eyes out and before the key was even out of the lock I growled, "Don't you dare go back there and be Fun Nice Daddy" and he didn't.  But he did talk to her and she calmed and fell asleep.  We had dinner and watched comedy shows and I was recharged.  Before bed I crawled in with each of them and woke the poor babies to tell them I loved them more than anything and sang a short lully in their ears.

WHY is it that even when 95% of the day is banner, we obsess over the 5%?  I went to bed last night not thinking about all of the great things we did together yesterday, but about yelling at poor Bailey about the water, and sending them to bed without tuck ins.  I wondered if they'd remember any of the good, or only the bad?

Meanwhile, as he does every night of his life, Kevin put his head to the pillow and was asleep.

Every day I try not to yell.  I hate yelling.   Today is a new day and I will try again.

11 years

A few weeks ago Kevin and I celebrated our 11th anniversary.  When August 11 comes around every year, I think back to what I was doing back on Aug 11, 2001.  Getting my hair and makeup done, hanging out with my bridesmaids watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off in the hotel room, getting dressed at the church and peeking through the curtain to see Kevin and his family taking pictures.  Walking down the aisle to the song my dad composed for me, with my sweet Uncle Rich holding on to my arm, and smiling at my future husband.  Saying our vows, not really minding the words bc I thought, "we got this." What can I say, I was 21 and an idiot.  Our first kiss as a married couple, and I was filled with excitement and joy.  We had a wonderful ceremony, and the reception was a blast.

Our honeymoon in Riviera Maya was all that a honeymoon should be.  We couldn't get enough of each other, and we totally relaxed and enjoyed the amazing location.  And we ate.  Both of our shorts were tight on the plane ride home.

That's back when I wore shorts.  Now I stick to capris.

So we got home, and life got real, real quick.  No air conditioning in our tiny dated apartment (but it was in Haddonfield and so charming!  My inlaws did gift us a room air conditioner shortly after), and squirrels had chewed through the phone wires.  This is back when people still had "landlines."  Kevin was working, but I had yet to get a job for a few weeks.  One morning I took my big cell phone and stepped outside to our back steps to call my mom...I was missing her, and feeling a little like the honeymoon was over.  I did not realize that the door automatically locked.

I was wearing a piece from my honeymoon lingerie set.  Victoria's Secret sky blue little boxer shorts and a cami-type of top.  Not see through...but suddenly, trapped outside of my apartment, I felt stripped naked.

I freaked, needless to say.  My mom had a spare key, but was an hour and a half away.  My father in law had a key, but a.  I didn't want my husband's father to see me in my nightie and b.  there is no other reason, that's it.

So I called the super.  We had met him a few times - when we moved in, when we accidentally put a huge hole in the wall trying to hang something and bc of the squirrel issue.  He was very, very nice.  I explained that I needed to get back into my apartment and to please hurry.

He didn't hurry, or maybe he did all I remember is sitting on my back step as other tenants took out their trash or left for work and I tried to cover my whole self with my arms and look like I meant to be sitting there in practically nothing.

Anyway, I quickly learned that married life wasn't exactly as I pictured it.  Sometimes it was...but sometimes it was learning how to fight in an apartment where you couldn't get away unless you locked yourself in the bathroom and sat in the tub, and sometimes it was running out to my car yelling, "I'm going to my mom's!" with my new husband following in his car, flashing his lights and beeping the horn.  I pulled over only because I thought he'd get a ticket acting like a maniac, and we couldn't afford it.

We thought we'd go to Italy for our 5 year anniversary, before trying for a baby.  We'd both have Master's degrees by then, and I'd stay at home - which was large and had a dining room, not a dining nook - and experiment with recipes at night, because surely I'd have a lot of extra time then.  I'd make beautiful scrapbooks of our life together, I'd lose the baby weight and look even better than before ever being pregnant.

We had Bailey 2 months after our 2nd anniversary, both of us without Master's degrees.  We had moved to a condo, and it had a dining nook.  I patted myself on the back if I threw a chicken into the oven, nevermind looking at recipes.  Bailey's first 2 years of life pics are in a big box, I chose some to make a small scrapbook purely out of guilt that she would think that not scrapbooking meant not caring.  I traded my honeymoon set of nighties for gowns that were constructed during the pre-war era when homes evidently had no heat.

The years went on and not a lot went according to plan.  But one thing did, and I thank God often - we do still love each other.  We love our family, and our life together.

August 11 was a good day, and it still is.

back up but maybe not running

"Back up and running."  So that means, not just functioning but full steam ahead, I guess.  So I will say I am back up, but not running.  But then, I've never been a runner.

I've decided that 2012 just won't be a banner year, but that doesn't mean it lacks for joy.  We are going to Disney in several weeks, and I can't wait to be there again with my princesses.  We are going to be celebrating their 9th and 7th birthdays and I think it will be a trip to remember for sure.  Fortunately, we're going before I would have been due with the baby, so I feel thankful that I won't be looking at our pictures thinking there should have been one more child there with us.

I apologize to anyone who reads my blog with any regularity, for the lack of posts.  Summer has been busy, in a mostly good way.  Lots of time at the beach, pools, friends houses, playgrounds...when it wasn't deathly hot...and working here and there.  Several times I wanted to write, but to be honest, I didn't even want to see my page pop up with my last depressing entry.  To me just this blog alone was a reminder of my awful late spring loss.

I'm not over the loss, but I want to move on I guess.  I've been trying so hard to focus on what I do have - which is an overflowing cup of blessings.  My cup runneth over with friends, family, a cozy home full of items that bring me joy, good health.  Lots of love and warmth.  Laughter and hugs.  I am so, so blessed.

I just took a minute from writing about my blessings to loudly tell Bailey to get back outside with her sand toys that were full of dirt.  (not yelling...I'm trying to save my yelling for when school starts back up and they have to FOR CRYING OUT LOUD JUST PUT YOUR SHOES ON!  YOUR FEET!!  SHOES ON YOUR FEET!!

Anyway, welcome back.  Today is a Monday, what better day to get back into the swing.  I have some funny stories for you all...so bear with me and I'll devote more time to this blog.  Can't promise how much, but I will.  Because I realized today that I have been "doing" life for my kids, trying to give them a summer full of fun and love.  Their joy blessed me.  But I want to do life for me again, too.  I want to find my own joy, separate from seeing Bailey boogie board in the ocean or snuggling with Taylor.  I want to be happy just because I am happy.  It dawned on me there is a difference.

My life isn't void of challenge and sadness.  In my marriage, in my home, in my memories.  But I believe that when we cling to the peace of Jesus, we can face challenges without our hearts being broken.  I can't explain it well I guess, but I feel it.  I am so thankful for that, and ready to move on.  I won't forget, but I can't live in a what-if, or what-would-have-been.  My here and now needs me, and I need to be happy.

Thanks for being here for me, friends.  I love you.

fighting him off

So this past weekend I had a rough time of it.  The past few months have been rough I guess, on and off - understandably, right?  But I was in the muck this weekend.  My last post I didn't share on fb, I didn't want people really to see it, and yet I wanted to get it out.  Writing always help me feel better I think.

Come to find out I was PMSing.  Well.  That didn't help.  My cycle is not regular since the miscarriage.  Which I don't appreciate.

In addition, I have been thinking a bit about the possibility - probability - of Satan's demons messing with me.  I am losing a reader or two here, whatever.  I only have five anyway.

A few days ago, Bailey was feeling really ill.  It was a rough night - I prayed over her and layed with her for quite awhile, then went to bed myself.  I woke constantly, and every time I did I would just say, "please, God..." and be thankful she was still sleeping, which meant she was comfortable.  In the morning she was bright eyed and bushy tailed and said she felt great.

God did not have to answer my prayers for me to believe He exists, it wasn't something like that.  But I think I must have been kind of holding my breath or something - I can't explain it.  All I know is that if she awoke to the pain - or hadn't even have slept - that she experience the evening before, I would have been so discouraged.  But all of her ailments were gone.  AND, this week she found another 4 leaf clover.  She barely looks for them and finds them all the time.  Maybe fifteen she's found, and a few 5 leaf clovers.  I'm not kidding!  I take them to be a gift from God, because every time she finds one I feel like He's saying "I have her."  I don't know why, I just do.

So anyway, later that day, as I was thanking Him again that she was well and healthy, I just was overcome with this feeling that I have been fighting the wrong one.  I was praying saying I was so thankful, but still so hurt, so confused.  And something in me - the Spirit I take it - just came over me and I started yelling - in my car - GET AWAY FROM ME YOU DEMONS!!!  SATAN!  In the name of Jesus, Holy Jesus, GET AWAY FROM ME!!!!!!!!!!!!

I started crying, and I told God I just want Him back, I want to trust Him, and believe in His goodness. I felt so much better.

Anyway, if you did read that last post, I'm in a better place.

just being honest

Kevin's out.  Girls are asleep.  Ice cream has been eaten and I look at this computer screen through a fog of tears.  Feeling very alone.

I don't for a second think "Why me?" about losing my baby.  So many women go through that, and much, much worse.  So much worse that I can't even wrap my brain around it, let alone my heart.

But this loss has awakened in me a lot of questions, and I don't like it.  I loved having a faith that just was.  I didn't know the answers and I didn't have to.  Questions like, why do millions of children go hungry in this world when there is food to eat?  It must be awful to be a child and literally starve to death.  Whereas before I would think, people are not acting, it's not God it's people -- now I think, ok, I still think that, but how does God hear the cries of starving children and not answer?  And yet a further argument ensues in my head - how would He answer, just throw a loaf of bread down to the child?  But here's another one - how did God pick and choose who fell to their death on 9/11, and who was miraculously spared from getting on that ill-fated plane?  Can you imagine being a family member of a victim they never even found, so there was only your imagination to wonder what happened to your precious loved one, and hearing someone be interviewed and say, "God had plans for me, He saved my life!"  How does God decide which child he will spare and which He will bring home?  Is it favor?  Some people have an "in" with God and some don't?  Is it past generational sin, and we are just fated to a destiny that was of our ancestors making?  How does free will work, when we still pray to God to intervene?  A drunk man can hit someone, that person dies, and it was free will of the drunk man that led to  death.  But another drunk hits someone, who doesn't die, but is in a coma.  The family prays, begs.  The person lives and God is given the glory.  Miracle.  How does it work?  Is the second family favored?  Did God just relent, and go, "Ok, you prayed well enough.  Here you go, you're welcome." Or....Does the second person have a purpose left for this world but the first had fulfilled his?  Even as I write this, I am thinking, yup that's the answer...but it's still not giving me peace.  Please forgive my irreverence.  I hate that I am asking these questions.  But God knows my heart, so what's the point of hiding it?

Believe me, I am unhappy about this.  I LOVE believing in God.  Believing in His goodness and kindness.  His love that is unworldly.  A love that we can't begin to understand.  And that is what I am hoping will give me peace - that His love is just so amazing we can NOT UNDERSTAND IT.  Any part of it.  But that knowledge is not giving me peace, at least not yet.  I'm in pain.  Not just because of my lost baby, or the questions of the world that I'll never have the answers to.   I miss Him.  I miss feeling protected and wanted.  Loved.  I feel abandoned and lost, and I don't know why.  Maybe this is just something God's letting me go through to make me stronger.  


Such blessings I have in my life.  Everyday.  I am blessed everyday.  Please don't confuse my words.  I know what a wonderful life I have.  But this is my blog, and this is something I am working through, and I am just being honest.

This is what I want to have happen.  God, are you listening?  I want to believe.  I want to believe so deeply that I truly do give praise in the storm.  I am not giving praise in this storm, God, and I want to!! I want to know you have a purpose for me, for my family that is good and not death!  I want to feel you beside me, holding me up, not watching me as I fall.  I just don't understand Lord.  And I know I will never know why you gave to take away...but I want to feel peace in not knowing.  Please help me.

what married people with kids fight about

Most married people with kids, even within wonderful, loving marriages, fight about stuff they never would have dreamed pre-marriage/kids.

We had such a fight last night.

Now, within the confines of this blog - like, maybe Kevin will read it so I shouldn't share everything - some elements of the fight can't be shared.  Because it would make him look bad.  Not me, him.

Last night I got home from work and the kids were bathed and ready for bed.  I went into the bathroom and noticed that there were pieces of wet toilet paper sticking out of the tub drain and there was standing water.  So smart mom that I am realized 2 things - a girl had, for whatever reason, stuffed tp in the tub drain, and now we had a clog.

I tend to panic with home fix-it type of situations.  It doesn't matter if it's a major problem or a minor one, because chances are, my husband and I won't have a clue how to fix it.  We are NOT fix-it people, we are "quick!  Who do we know that knows stuff?!" people.  I panicked when my electric garage door wouldn't operate (I did realize, without hiring someone, that it just needed plugged in - minor).  I panicked when water flooded from the bathroom to our bedroom, dripping through the ceiling to downstairs (over $4000 later we had a redone bath - major).  So basically, in my mind, I immediately go to the what's-the-worst-that-can-happen and in this instance with the tp clogging the drain, I picture my back yard being dug up, trees having to come out and thousands of dollars (that we don't have) later being told, "Charmin's not good for your septic system, ma'am.  And toilet papers not supposed to go in the tub."

So as I start my panic, I realize Kevin's remaining calm and cavalier.  He had said he didn't know why there was tp in the tub but is that true?!  Why is he so calm when we may have to have a plumber rip through our pipes and yard?!   I may have, under my breath but loud enough for him to hear (a common married people with kids way of arguing) stated that I wished I had been home and not working so this wouldn't have happened.  That's when the floodgates opened.   It wasn't pretty.  Neighbors may have heard.

Bailey let me know when there was a break in our yelling that the reason why there was tp in there (previously girls had claimed innocence) was that in the tub she noticed Tate had a "rashy J."  So she gave Taylor toilet paper to wipe the rash off.  In the tub.

I may have muttered again (or yelled, I can't remember) that I wished I had been in the bathroom while they took their bath so I would've seen it, and where was Kevin?  He reminded me, not quietly, that I haven't watched them in the tub for quite awhile either.  Maybe a year or two.  (in my defense before you picture my kids drowning - remember they're 6 and 8, they swim laps underwater and jump off the high-dive, and I know they stay alive while bathing because I hear Ariel singing to Barbie.)

I took a break outside and when I came in, tucked in the girls and apologized for Mom and Dad yelling.  They were fine and Taylor promised she'd wipe out of water from now on.  Kevin tried to remedy the clog over the course of an hour with a bottle of Drano and pots of boiling water.  It was deemed fixed.  We apologized and got over it.

Taking a shower later that night, I deemed the clog not fixed, as water pooled at my feet.  I pictured the plumber again, and the bill I'd have to charge to pay.  I bent over, removed the drain, and pulled up a few gobs of wet tp.  The water magically flowed down the drain!!!!

I tried to not rub it in later when I told Kevin the clog was really fixed.

NOTE - Not my actual tub.  I know this because this tub looks expensive and luxurious.
Mine is a basic Home Depot model.  Also, this room looks spacious, and our one main bath is not.
This pic was taken from the Rural Glamour website, some lucky chic gets her bubbles and magazine time here.  I get mine with 2 little girls sitting on the toilet while I bathe, asking me questions like "Mommy, when you lay back why does your tummy stick out of the bubbles?" "Because, dear one, God made Mommy with a nice size tummy and if I filled the tub with enough water to cover it, the water would go through the over-flow drain.  And Mommy's scared of plumbers so she's careful of the over-flow drain.  Now be a lovey and get a towel for your Barbie that's gotten lodged between my butt cheeks.  Stop staring.  Thanks for taking a dump in here, 2 inches from my face, while I was having my "quiet" time.  And refill my glass with some of Mommy's special juice."  JK on that last part :)  I get my juice myself.