The hazards of multitasking

We did a wedding yesterday, and brought Nicholas with us instead of having the babysitter keep him with the other kids. A few weeks ago I tried this when I did a wedding by myself, and he did beautifully—nursed half an hour beforehand and slept all the way through the wedding.

Yesterday, he wasn’t quite so cooperative—he didn’t want to go to sleep. But he was content to lie on the floor and kick and look up at the lights. The first two preludes went well; then he started whimpering. He was right under the mic’s, so I had to pick him up and hold him while I sang.

In the middle of the first reading, he burped loudly. I know what follows a burp, so I lunged for the nursing cover and put it under his mouth, and just in time, too. Christian and I gave each other a “whew, that was close!” look, and I put Nicholas in the car seat so I could go up to sing the psalm.

I was halfway to the ambo when I felt the wetness on my leg, and horrified, looked down to see—what else? Spitup on my black skirt!

Well, after that I didn’t pay much attention to the wedding. After the Gospel, five bridesmaids sat down and crossed their legs in unison, which struck me as funny. Just as I started singing “One Bread, One Body,” Nicholas decided it was time to fuss. Christian and I traded panicked looks, and he pulled the mic closer so he could take over singing if I had to bail. I finished out the refrain and started to go pick Nicholas up, only to find him conked out.

But perhaps because I had Baby on my mind, things struck me differently yesterday than usual. “I will bless the Lord at all times,” I sang in the psalm. “Praise shall always be on my lips.” Even when my child is in the hospital. Even when my child is throwing tantrums. Even when I’m standing in front of 150 people as a paid singer, and there’s spitup on my skirt.

There’s a line in “How Beautiful” that says, How beautiful when humble hearts give the fruit of pure lives so that others may live. I don’t know the meaning Twila Paris intended, to me, that line seems to speak to parenthood, and in particular, it’s always struck me as an NFP teacher.

When it was all over, people commented on how cute our baby was, with his one sock (Julianna had pulled off the other one and I never had time to replace it), and how good he was (which really, he was), and how beautiful the music was. So it all worked out. And maybe it’s a good witness for a married couple to bring a baby along when they do music for a wedding.

But I can’t help squirming and thinking it’s a little unprofessional to be covered with spitup while I sing a wedding!

Published in: on May 31, 2009 at 5:29 am  Comments (2)  
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All right! I give in!

All right! I capitulate! So they look like each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Alex one month b     Nicholas smile
Alex, May 05 (1 month)………………….Nicholas, May 09 (2 months)
Published in: on May 29, 2009 at 7:36 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time

It was a perfect morning—70 degrees beneath a flawless blue sky, washed clean by four days of rain, and fanned by a gentle breeze. But I woke up unable to move because of a muscle knot in my shoulder, which kept me from doing my Pilates. This made two days without exercise, since I got rained out from running yesterday.

I got up and moving with the help of Tiger Balm, and started thinking, Now how am I going to get some exercise with all three kids? And then it came to me. Alex has been riding his bike a ton every day—back and forth, as far as we’ll let him go in either direction. I have to jog if I want to keep up. Why not pack up his bike and take all three of them out to the Bear Creek Trail? It’s relatively flat, and pushing the stroller behind him would definitely count as exercise!

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

In one hour and fifteen minutes, I learned several important lessons:

  1. Little boys must, must, must go to the bathroom before embarking on any kind of outdoor adventure.
  2. There is no breeze in a creek valley.
  3. 70 degrees around the house equals 85 degrees on a hot, sunny trail.
  4. Riding back and forth for twenty minutes on sidewalks does not prepare a child for any kind of trail riding.
  5. Training wheels are not made to run on gravel. Particularly fresh gravel.
  6. Little girls who fall asleep in the front seat cause poor stroller alignment.
  7. There is no exercise to be had when “following” a child who brakes every three revolutions.
  8. Except the exercise of helping him get started again with one hand while pushing a double stroller on loose gravel with the other.
  9. There are few irritations more acute than trying to bully a 4-year-old who wants to be carried back to the van into walking a bicycle .2 miles back to the parking lot.
  10. Particularly when the sun is hot.
  11. And the baby wants to eat.
  12. And the toddler is asleep.
  13. And there’s no shade.

Now you know why we get up at 5:30 a.m. to exercise!

Published in: on May 29, 2009 at 3:48 pm  Comments (3)  
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A Journal Entry

It’s been six or seven weeks since I last wrote in my Journal. Blogging and scrapbooking really is taking over the handwritten Journal, which now only exists for rants and funnies that just don’t belong online.

But that means that every so often I just have to record things for the benefit of family history. For instance:

Julianna
Julianna has always been fresh and sweet and adorable, a constant surprise. She always makes us laugh. We spent Memorial Day weekend in Southern Illinois at the in-laws’, and on Saturday Christian’s brother and his wife brought their new dog, a little terrier that yaps a lot. Julianna generally thinks dogs are very interesting and funny, so we put her down to meet Cocoa. Only this time, he was straining on his leash and barking a lot, and she got scared. Now, most kids wail and turn to Mommy or Daddy and bury their faces. But that would be far too wimpy for Julianna. No, Julianna believes that when something scares you, the best policy is to get in its face and scream back. So she plopped on her bottom, clenched her fists out to either side, stuck her chin forward, and yelled “EEEEEEAAAAAAAAA!” She had the situation well in hand, but of course we rescued her anyway…though not without laughing.

It was a rainy weekend, so Sunday afternoon we all went to see “Night in a Museum 2.” It was Alex’s first movie in the theater. Christian was concerned that Julianna would get antsy so we got a huge tub of popcorn—the kind you can refill for free—and he refilled it midway through. He had a little triangular cup that he kept filling for Julianna, and every so often she’d say, “EEAH!” and he’d realize she was empty. Finally he got tired of it and just stuck the tub in front of her. She spent the entire movie going through it one piece at a time. She is her mother’s child, and her grandmother’s granddaughter. :)

Since coming home from the hospital, she seems even cuter, even sweeter and more beautiful than before. I wonder if it’s just because, once again, she’s been returned to us from the brink–if it’s all in our perception. Or maybe there’s something about adversity that naturally deepens the most beautiful parts of our spirits, and it simply reflects on the outside. Either way, oh, she is so, so beautiful.

Nicholas

I just need to do this one with a photo.

Life is good!

Life is good!

Magic. Pure and simple.

Published in: on May 29, 2009 at 7:59 am  Comments (2)  
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It’s getting easier

It’s definitely getting easier to get submissions sent out. Now, instead of agonizing for ten days, I agonize for four, and instead of attaching and reattaching four times, I only do it twice.

I’m also learning that it’s not necessary to fiddle with every word choice for too long, since editors are going to take my “perfect” composition and tweak it to fit their needs and tastes. This shaves several hours off the time I spend, since fiddling and tweaking is where I glory (and gripe).

It’s always a good day when I get a submission sent. :)

Published in: on May 28, 2009 at 1:43 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Baby Magic

They say there’s no such thing as magic, but they’re wrong.

There’s microscopic magic, in the way two cells suddenly, miraculously, become one. The way that those cells gobble up invisible energy to specialize and mature and grow, until suddenly, something that began as a single cell, made up of two, has developed doe eyes and Daddy’s ears and Mommy’s nose and Great-great Grandpa’s chin.

There’s pixie magic, the way that a baby can be the spitting image of Grandpa one minute, and of Cousin on the other side of the family the next. There’s buttermilk magic when, after weeks of hearing how your baby looks like his brother, his dad, his cousin—anyone from the opposite side of the family—the nurse at the hospital gasps, “Oh, my goodness, he looks just like you!”

There’s morning rainbow magic, the first smile. The first ten or twelve or eighteen…dozen smiles, as a matter of fact. So unexpected, so fleeting, a flash of sunlight on a cloudy day.

There’s Astrophysical magic. Put a baby on the floor, and he instantaneously consubstantiates into a Baby Black Hole. You can almost hear the “slurp” as every child in the vicinity skitters helplessly toward the event horizon.

There’s sensual magic, the body-wide thrill of brushing a baby’s hip, impossibly soft—softer than velvet, smoother than silk, a conglomeration of clichés that can’t even come close to expressing the sensation. And the sensation of holding a baby against the chest—the way your breath hopscotches in response to the weight of a warm head nuzzling beneath your chin. And as he calms, you calm. Magic. No doubt about it.

There’s visceral magic, the way that clerks at the party store drop what they’re doing and coo and stare with longing at a baby, even as they try to pretend that all they want is to cuddle someone else’s child, and not to have their own. The dread of three a.m. feedings can’t hope to compete with nature, with the built-in longing to hold, nurture, and love.

There’s divine magic, the way a baby transforms a man into a father, and a woman into a mother. The way his mere existence makes them better people.

Holy magic. Baby magic. Powerful. Unstoppable. And in every generation, our hope for the future.

Published in: on May 27, 2009 at 12:27 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Unplugged

Once in a while, it’s nice to go somewhere without internet access for a few days, even though it feels disorienting to be offline. But it’s not a state of being I’d want to spend too much time in.

We spent the long weekend in Southern Illinois. Two weeks ago, a storm came barreling through southern Missouri and Illinois, wreaking havoc. It wasn’t a tornado, but the winds were upwards of 100mph, and it went on and on and on. Three and a half hours the kids spent huddled under their bookbag rack at school. Offline was the least of their problems.

In the wake of the storm, my sister-in-law couldn’t get to the school because of downed trees. There was no power for several days. As many power outages as there have been in the last few years, from New York to Katrina, I hadn’t ever thought through the implications until it touched close to home.

For those with electric stoves, there was no way to cook anything. There was no way to keep food cool, except to run a gas generator, and no way to get gas because gas pumps require electricity too. Cell phones weren’t working, cordless phones weren’t working. Grocery stores and restaurants were closed. No ATM machines, no credit card readers.

By the time we arrived on Thursday night, power was back up and running, but hearing the stories was disturbing enough. It’s times like these when I realize how frighteningly dependent upon technology we have become. It makes life easier, more enjoyable, for sure, but now, what would we do without it? How will we live if something cataclysmic ever happens?

I grew up on a farm, so I know the basics of raising your own food. I know how to kill and prepare a chicken…though I’ve never done it myself, but I think I could do it if I had to. I know something about canning vegetables, and so forth. But I still need a chicken. And a vegetable plot.

Listening to my in-laws talk about the last couple of weeks, I feel a niggling of fear for the unknown cataclysm that could wipe out life as we know it. We can only survive so long on peanut butter and potato chips, and I fear the ugliness that might result when we get desperate.

But maybe I’m focusing on the wrong side effect of being forcibly unplugged.

The storm caused only one fatality in Southern Illinois. For that family, tragedy is still tragedy. But based on the amount of destruction we’ve seen here, the fact that the number is not far higher is cause for thanksgiving. And my sister-in-law told me that people are saying how great a time they had while the power was out. There was nothing else to do, so they played cards by candlelight and board games by flashlight. They got together with neighbors on front porches. They created community in a way that went out of fashion long ago.

So yes, if the unknown disaster ever does strike, life will be harder. But maybe we’ll also discover that we’re stronger—and better off—than we think we are.

Published in: on May 26, 2009 at 6:33 am  Leave a Comment  
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Living In the Moment

It was the end of an afternoon that had been devoured by haste and busy-ness. I had put aside the housecleaning and trash collection to sit down on the floor and nurse Nicholas,who was uncharacteristically insistent. As I sat there staring off into space, Julianna crawled over to  me with a huge grin on her face, as if the sight of me not preoccupied was the best thing that had happened to her all day. She got up on her knees beside me and giggled at her own private joke.

For one moment, time stopped, and my rushed, hazy brain experienced a moment of incredible clarity, in which the wonder of this child very nearly took my breath away. My child. So incredilbly beautiful.

I get so caught up in the business of caring for my children that I take them for granted. I lose sight of how miraculous they really are. All the vast potential of the universe, encapsulated in a single set of 46 (or 47) chromosomes, expanding day by day, drawing from earth and air and water the invisible energy to grow, to learn, to be. What are writing assignments and scrapbooking, beside that?

I am very bad about skimming through life instead of living in the moment. I think we all are. Part of it is the busy-ness of modern life—all the things we think we have to do. Part of it is the nature of adulthood—because some things we do have to do. But it’s more than that. To be quiet is to give up control…because when you turn off your own internal commentary, you never know what you’re going to hear.

Being still is so much more than a negative, than the absence of inner noise. It’s not a passive thing. It’s an active receptivity to the moment—to beauty, to pain, to revelation, to insight. Being receptive means that we’re willing to accept whatever comes to us in the silence—even if what we hear or see or experience requires us to change. Change our minds. Change our behavior. Change our attitude. We instinctively understand that being still is going to move us from the safety of the familiar into the uncomfortable unknown. And so we don’t allow it.

I learned to be still before I was married, when panic and anxiety threatened to overwhelm reason and the gift God was offering to me through Christian. Seeking out silence began as a survival skill, but over time it became the source of my creativity. Paradoxical as it seems, there’s a peace in letting go and drifting on the unknown current, instead of fighting to control a world that is clearly beyond my control.

Parenthood has commandeered much of the time I once used to go into nature and seek out silence. I thought I had adjusted to life without it. But now it is clear to me that I need to find a new way to be still, and to do so regularly. Because I don’t want to blink and discover that I’ve taken my life for granted—my children, my husband, the unprepossessing perfection of a star-speckled night sky. Like Thoreau, I don’t want to wake up one day and discover that the years are gone, and I never really lived them.

Published in: on May 25, 2009 at 6:30 pm  Leave a Comment  

You Are How You Eat?

Last week, I parked myself on the floor with a boppy and started cajoling Nicholas to eat while my mom sat nearby, leaning on her wrist and watching. (Mom was a La Leche League leader when we were little, and I think she really misses nursing.) “Come on, baby,” I said, pulling his mouth open yet again as he stared wide-eyed at the bright red and white juncture where the wall meets the crown molding. “I really need you to eat!”

He obliged, but he still thought the wall was much more interesting. Mind you, he hadn’t eaten in over three hours. I looked up at my mom. “He’s a really lazy nurser,” I said. “I have to do most of the work for him. He’ll eat if the milk goes in his mouth, but he’s just as happy to sit there with his mouth open and not eat anything at all!” I glanced down at his tubby body and said, “Not that it’s hurting him any.”

Mom lowered her chin and raised her eyebrows. “You’d better expect that he’ll be the same way when he gets older.”

It’s an interesting thought—that our children display their budding personalities through their eating habits. :) But it makes sense. Alex was a barracuda nurser. I’m not sure he ever turned down an opportunity to eat, and he kept at it till there was nothing left in the breast, and then some—just to make sure he got it all. These days he makes me scrape the melted ice cream remnants from the bottom of his bowl to be sure he doesn’t miss any. Alex approaches all of life with similar zest. He’s definitely not timid. He’s unabashedly assertive and supremely self-confident about asking for whatever he wants, whenever he wants—so much so that our main focus in molding his character consists of teaching him that his wants and needs are not the center of the universe.

Julianna, on the other hand, ate very little, but not for lack of trying. Before her heart surgery, I was the instigator 95% of the time, and it was my grim determination (and I mean grim, BTW) to get her to eat that made it possible for her to be a total breastfed baby. Yet despite her weak suck, the low muscle tone in her facial muscles, and her difficulty breathing because of her heart, from day one, she clung to me with a firm, if fleeting, grip. No matter how hard it got, she kept trying. At the age of two, she’s still a fighter, tenacious and stubborn. As evidenced by her screaming nonstop for an entire morning behind the bi-pap, to be sure the medical staff (and her mother) were clear about her displeasure.

And then there’s Nicholas. I’m really glad I had the experience of nursing Julianna first, because otherwise I’m afraid I’d find it quite discouraging. His demand is all over the place, up and down, which is murder on the milk supply, and he’s so placid that if he eats half a feeding and something (someone) calls me away for five minutes, it’s like pulling teeth to get him to latch again.

So does this mean that two years from now, I’ll find that Nicholas is lazy and easygoing? How about ten years from now? It gives new meaning to the phrase “You are what you eat.” Maybe we should add, “You are how you eat.”

What do you think, moms? Did your kids display their budding personalities in the way they ate as babies, either bottle or breastfed?

Published in: on May 21, 2009 at 12:48 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Cultivating an Attitude of Gratitude

Crises tend to bring out the best in us. We rise to the occasion; we set our teeth, hunker down and lean into the wind, knowing that complaining won’t help—we just have to get through it. It’s not the big stuff that brings out the pessimist in us. It’s the everyday Murphy.

And so it was that late last week, Christian roundly dressed me down for being negative. It was a painful scolding. I felt that I had every right to be negative, after the unceasing pounding of hassle and headache and illness, combined with lack of rest, the last few, uh, months.

Yet at the same time, I knew I deserved it. It’s one thing to be gripey for a day, when times are tough. By the time it stretches into weeks, no matter how bad, it’s because you’ve gone looking for things to be ticked off about.

God has a habit of smacking me upside the head with the same lesson till I get it. This morning the devotional in Living Faith was about Paul, stuck in prison, beaten and battered, and singing psalms of praise.

Ahem. OK, God, I get it. It’s time to change my attitude.

Julianna screaming, Nicholas choking on his coughs and refusing to nurse…Alex still being slow as molasses in the morning, and me up half the night with Nicholas, so I’m too tired to exercise…And man, we should NOT have rented that movie.

But.

Julianna is home, and well, and slowly recovering her strength. She actually took three independent steps this morning during PT, though Gerti had expected a delay of several weeks as she found her legs again. And she’s used the toilet before nap two days running now. And man, that girl is cuter than ever. And even though the entrance of Nicholas has kicked me back to fourth place in her preferred list of people, she’s infinitely willing to respond and giggle for me, as long as I can make the XYs of the house give us a few minutes to ourselves. :)

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And Alex—well, even if he does take an hour to do something that should take ten minutes, at least he’s doing it; I don’t have to do it for him. And he’s behaving better at church, and he’s fascinated by his Rosary, and wants to go to a quiet church to pray (though I’m quite sure that the Rosary would far outlast his patience! :) ). He’s independent on the computer games, and mostly independent on his bicycle, which he wants to ride every day.

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And Nicholas is sweet as can be, sleeping in the crib now instead of in our room. His fleeting smiles are the best part of every day, and for crying out loud, the kid managed to stay well through the first seven major illnesses he was exposed to, despite sitting every day all day in a hospital for twelve days.

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And then there’s Christian. Christian helps with the housework and makes me laugh, he tries to give me a break from 24/7 kid duty and is usually willing to run an errand for me to make my life easier. He plays with the kids, he plans for our safety and future. He is a model of patience and reason, and when, occasionally, he kicks me in the pants, it’s never unwarranted.

I’m grateful, too, for our home, and for family and friends and community who care about us…who, whenever we get into a bind, shower us with lawn mowing, meals, care packages, house cleaning, respite, child care, prayers, and sheer numbers—I’ve ceased to be amazed at the spike in hits this blog takes when our family has a major event.

So the next time my gripey, self-centered, never-satisfied side rears its ugly head…which, undoubtedly, it will do before sunset today…I will follow every negative thought with two positives. Maybe I can learn to be one of those peaceful, optimistic people I admire.

 Then again, maybe I can’t. But maybe, just maybe, it’s not about success anyway, but simply about running the good race.

Published in: on May 19, 2009 at 1:46 pm  Comments (3)  
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