Crazed Dayz

I was hot in pursuit of a giggling Julianna down the sidewalk between two teeball diamonds when I heard a woman off to one side sigh contentedly as she sank into a lawn chair. “Ah, what a nice, lazy day,” she said.

I nearly choked on a scream. Ninety minutes in the car—two schools in 2 ½ hours, two trips to the eye doctor’s, a dropof at the orthotics office, an in-home Cutco demonstration, impassioned discussions of patriotic music, three phone calls for CCL, four for Julianna’s health, and Julianna’s bus honking outside, because the baby was screaming after hitting his head, and I had lost track of time and wasn’t watching for its arrival.

And that was all before 1p.m. This is supposed to be summer, for crying out loud!

By 3:30, as the phone calls piled up and I penciled the results into the calendar, I gave up all hope of getting any writing done this week, and set out to make the nicest dinner Christian had seen in a while—complete with having it on the table when he got home. And then the phone rang again and he said, sounding harried, “There was an explosion on campus, and I don’t know when I’ll be home.”

Some days, I swear the Devil just points his little pitchfork northward and giggles at us.

***

I caught up to my giggling 3-y-o escapee, got her turned around with sufficient sternness to impart the lesson of obedience, and began walking back to the teeball bleachers, praying for peace of mind, the ability to release my negative energy. Because, after all, I suppose that these weeks days, when the commitments and distractions and annoyances pile upon each other like layers of silt in a flood—these days are gifts to be unwrapped, too.

tuesdays unwrapped at cats

Published in: on June 29, 2010 at 5:36 am  Comments (5)  
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How do you do it all?

It happens to me quite regularly. I’ll be talking to someone and she (it’s almost always a she) shakes her head and says, “I don’t know how you do it all.”

I always shrug, thinking, I don’t think I want to think about it. But as I canvassed the aisles at Aldi this weekend, murmuring options for a line in a song that was causing me trouble, I realized, This is how I do it all.

And so, here is my answer to the question: How does this stay-at-home mom, freelance writer, flute and voice teacher, composer, blogger, choir director, NFP teacher, scrapbooker, sometime-chef and budding disability rights activist do it all?

  1. I get up every day at 5:30. Sometimes 4, if a kidlet wakes me up.
  2. Except for the early months of nursing, I’m a huge believer in schedules and routines. (And even then, the baby is the only one who doesn’t have a schedule.)
  3. I believe that days when nothing is scheduled are ALWAYS the LEAST productive. You see all that white space and think you think you have a little time to relax and do nothing, and then suddenly the day’s gone and you’ve done…you got it—nothing.
  4. I plan the day in chunks: before we do X at 9a.m., I must accomplish Y.
  5. I read fast and type faster. (Though I occasionally hit “post” before I think.)
  6. I pay babysitters so I have time to write.
  7. I’m a compulsive list maker, because my memory isn’t great. Except for song lyrics, of which I know hundreds.
  8. I break everything down into very small tasks, and use them as plot points toward a larger goal.
  9. I am a compulsive multitasker. While web pages upload, I grab food from the refrigerator; then I respond to a comment and run back to get the food in the microwave and come back to read the next email. While I nurse, I do my neck stretches and read. Although I do get distracted by teasing the baby and making him laugh. You can’t just ignore a baby attached to you. It’s contrary to nature. ;)
  10. When I don’t have kids in the car with me, I turn the radio off and think through something: to-do list, story plotting, playing around with opening lines.
  11. When I need to work on the piano, I take the kids downstairs and play for a few minutes, then sit down and compose while they play. The little ones love the music.
  12. I use therapy appointments, when one or two kids are distracted, to clean floors, do dishes, run through email, etc.
  13. I do not watch TV during the day. Ever. At. All. In the One Baby era, I used to watch movies, but that ship has sailed.
  14. I hardly ever sit down for lunch. I make bread, feed the baby and read my Writer’s Digest in between bites.
  15. Whenever there’s a pause in the action, I think, Okay, I have three minutes. What can I accomplish in three minutes?
  16. I DON’T pay babysitters to run errands or go grocery shopping. I take them with me and put up with the whining.
  17. I DON’T play Farmville or Mafia Wars, and I join no snowball or pillow fights. Sorry, folks. Where the bleep bleep bleep do you people find time for that stuff?????
  18. I DON’T participate much in discussions on list serves. Partly because I receive things in digest and everything I want to say has been said by the time I get the initial question.
  19. I can’t underestimate the Kid factor. My kids are naturally good at entertaining themselves, and I have encouraged them in this trait. So that’s a big part of my puzzle.
  20. And finally, I accept that nothing is going to get done perfectly. I’m all about “adequate.” Which drives my husband crazy, as he is all about the details. For me, details are limited to kids and submissions. Everything else can do without.

You might say, “But Kate, what about time to enjoy your kids?” Well, there’s some truth to that, but as busy as I am, I really do enjoy my kids. My life is not a particularly relaxing one, but it’s productive, and that works for me.

What are your tips for getting it all done?

Published in: on January 18, 2010 at 6:14 am  Comments (6)  
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Listening…

Saturday afternoon, we arrived home to a relatively clean house, a stack of mail, and seven voice mails. The very first one was from Sr. Mary Ann, my grandfather’s sister and the woman who taught me to play checkers on that same vacation in 1980 that I shared pictures of a few days ago. She is an avid “reader” of this blog, and her Christmas message was heartfelt, and to the point: Kate, I hope you take time to find the quiet this year.

It got me thinking about my expectations: what I need, and what I only think I need. Last night, for instance, Julianna was sitting beside me at the piano as I talked to a voice student, whining for me to play music; so I began hitting random chords…and discovered something beautiful that I wanted to write down. So do I really need quiet to hear the music–or do I just need to go sit down and start playing?

I’ve all but given up on quiet for the moment. I have hopes for four weeks from now, when Julianna starts school…but they are hopes tempered by reality. It’s reality that there isn’t enough time for everything; every day I have to choose between quiet time and work time; exercise and writing; scrapbooking and house cleaning.  That is the reality of life with three small children, and that is my blessing. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that I begged God every night for three years, in tears and raw suffering, to give us one child.

And therein, I believe, lies my answer. I may want to listen to God in the stillness, in the quiet—but in this season of my life, God speaks to me through my children: through Alex, playing dress-up doll with his sister; through Julianna’s sweet hugs and infectious giggles; through Nicholas’s sparkling eyes and Mamama’s. My task is to learn to listen in a new way.

***

Every Wednesday, we Walk with Him, posting a spiritual practice that draws us nearer to His heart. Join Ann at Holy Experience.

Published in: on January 6, 2010 at 8:22 am  Comments (10)  
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Grandma, you rock!

Every afternoon, while I’m putting the kids in bed, my brain works furiously so that when I get downstairs, I’m ready to dive right into writing. Often, prolactin kicks in while nursing, and I think longingly of the comfy couch. But I always grit my teeth and push through my sleepiness, knowing that nap time is the only writing time I have some days.

But then I’m always exhausted. And Christian and I argued all weekend, a byproduct of my inability to rest. Then, on Sunday evening, I received an email from my grandmother.

I want to introduce Grandma, but there is no way to do her justice without a blog post all her own. Suffice it to say, Grandma raised ten kids, and now she takes care of grown grandchildren and small great-grandchildren when we come to visit. She is an amazing, holy woman and one of the people I aspire to be when I grow up.

Her email said:

Kate I have taken time tonight to read much of your blog. You comment on lacking in rest. Let the Mother of ten give some advice for what it is worth. I think you have comparable activity with all of your extra activities on top of your parenting. My Mother in law gave me this advice which I implemented successfully during my very busy days. She said her doctor told her that if every Mother would take fifteen minutes out of her day, throw herself onto the bed, put everything ( I mean everything) out of her mind, and reap a 5 minute nap, there would be less nervous breakdowns.

I know it took some practice because I would think of all I had to do ( no time for a nap). I would say a Hail Mary telling the Blessed Mother that I just had to have 5 min. sleep. Finally it worked and I would wake up refreshed and raring to go while the babies slept and the older ones sat quietly with their story books. Good luck if you try it.

Remember you need to do it when things are quiet (children either napping or sitting quietly with books) not to bother Mother while she is napping. Mother must learn to put ALL out of her mind for 15 min, with a prayer to let her have at least a 5 min. snooze. Phone calls I can’t advise on. I have never had to contend with many calls. Love, Grandma

Actually, she has offered this advice before, but I never gave it a fair try. I always think I have too much to do. But my brain is muddled and slow when I’m sleepy, and pushing through it is a recipe for frustration. So today, when my brain and prolactin went to war, I decided what I wanted to work on and then quit thinking about it. After putting Nicholas down, I set the timer for fifteen minutes and lay down on the couch.

I woke up two minutes before the timer went off, ready to work. Grandma, you rock!

Published in: on September 2, 2009 at 5:33 am  Comments (2)  
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Poster Child

My whole life, I have been a poster child for Catholicism.

I was a choir baby, which means that on Lenten and Advent Wednesdays, I sat on hard pews and read or did homework while Mom and Dad rehearsed. I started playing flute at church at the tender age of ten or eleven, and by thirteen I was a member of the folk group. At fourteen I participated in discussions about the new document on women in the Church, and I think I was the only one who actually waded through the document, and not just the cliff notes. During college, my “falling away” from the Church consisted of skipping Mass twice. (Maybe just once. I can’t remember.)

My sister used to call me “super-Catholic,” a phrase that implies blind obedience, not mature faith. But I have always sought understanding and wisdom, even if I don’t always achieve it.

These days, the stakes are higher. Christian and I practice Natural Family Planning, which in this day and age is a pretty radically Catholic thing to do. We also teach NFP. As choir leaders, we’re right in the front of the church every week, and everyone knows us. This makes us, as someone joked once, “poster children” for NFP.

For the most part, living life on display doesn’t bother me. But it does lay a certain responsibility on my shoulders.

These days, virtually everywhere I go, people’s eyes widen at the sight of Alex walking alongside the double stroller. “Wow, you have your hands full!” is what I hear most often.

I never know how to respond. I do have my hands full, but it has much more to do with extra curriculars than with my kids. Complete strangers have no idea about lessons, writing, choir etc., so I know they’re talking about the kids. But other people have three kids. Other people have kids two years apart. Does everybody get these kinds of reactions? Or is it because my middle child has Down syndrome, that people seem to think my hands are full enough to warrant comment?

It doesn’t really matter, except that as a known NFP user, I feel compelled to present a certain image to the world. If I walk around looking tired and harried and spastic, then I might as well be a poster child for birth control. That is not a poster I want to claim.

Then again, maybe I’m reading into people’s reactions too much…or at least, overrating my importance in the world. The other day at the grocery store, I got in line behind a man pushing two grocery carts full to the brim. “Your total is $489.17,” said the cashier, and then hesitated. “So…just out of curiosity,” she went on, “How long will this last you?”

“Oh,” he said, and as he drew out that single syllable, I could imagine what he was thinking: he was weighing the merits of a smart reply versus the worn-out explanations required by telling the truth. Truth won out. “A week,” he said. The girl’s eyes popped, and he added, “I have a wife and seven kids at home.”

After that, I thought surely my three kids must have seemed not quite so big a deal. But as he left, she turned and smiled at me. “Boy,” she said, “you sure have your hands full, don’t you?”

I imagine that everyone who chooses to have large(r) families (I just can’t call three children a big family) probably feels the same insecurities. We probably all feel like we’re on display—as if we have to justify our family size by appearing to have it all together in public.

Then again, I suppose it would be better if we did have it all together, and who gives a flying fig how it looks to everyone else?

Published in: on September 1, 2009 at 1:09 pm  Comments (9)  
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A Day Off

Today is my birthday. I am 35. Tomorrow, I’ll have things to say on the subject of birthdays (probably), but I’ve decided that today, I am giving myself a birthday gift: a Day Off.

I haven’t just taken a day off writing in I don’t know how long. I push, push, push and push more, trying to fit in as many things as possible to each day–and I love it. But it is exhausting, and I think it would not be a bad thing to choose to relax for one day, instead of feeling frustrated that I can’t get to items twelve through twenty on the list of Things To Do.

So today, I will ride my new bike with Alex…
I will kick back and read…
    …or scrapbook with my Cricut (which is after all my birthday gift)
I will enjoy a lunch “hour” with my husband, hopefully while kids sleep…
Maybe I’ll even turn the TV on! (Gasp!)

And while I am offline, I will leave you some pictures to enjoy…

The Fabulous Basi Boys

The Fabulous Basi Boys

Laundry for three munchkins (2 days)......laundry for two adults. Hmm.

Laundry for three munchkins (2 days)......laundry for two adults. Hmm.

Bazooka Alex and Water Woman

Bazooka Alex and Water Woman

In between moments of torment, you'd mistake them for friends!

In between moments of torment, you'd mistake them for friends!

Alex can read Batman almost word for word...and Julianna LIKES it!

Alex can read Batman almost word for word...and Julianna LIKES it!

Am I walking or wading?

Am I walking or wading?

A short bike ride with Alex

A short bike ride with Alex

Published in: on August 25, 2009 at 7:01 am  Comments (1)  
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Breastfeeding and cancer

This week, CBS “discovered” that breastfeeding cuts the risk of breast cancer:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/11/earlyshow/health/main5232807.shtml

In all fairness, this is a new study, but still, we’ve been hearing this in NFP circles for years.

The past two weeks have been the busiest of the entire summer–I’ve been running from one appt. to another, culminating in a drive to Jeff City today to play for a Mass with the Bishop this morning (and have lunch with a good friend we hardly ever get to see anymore). So this little video link is all I  have time for today…I have a house that hasn’t been cleaned since before we painted the kitchen…oh yes, I never mentioned that we painted the kitchen last week, did I? :) …and kids that have spent an awful lot of time with a babysitter this week. Time to focus elsewhere for a while.

Published in: on August 13, 2009 at 1:48 pm  Comments (1)  
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Call me Supermom, but don’t look too close

This week, I mowed the lawn with Nicholas in the Snugli. This wasn’t some heroic case of overachieving, or even a desire to get some exercise—though it was definitely great exercise. It’s just that we’re trying to paint the kitchen this weekend (along with several other big projects), and the lawn desperately needed cutting…and Nicholas would not sit in his bouncy seat while I did it.

My neighbor laughed at me. “You’re Supermom!” she said.

This is not the first time I’ve been called that. But I don’t feel like a super mom.

Lately I’ve been pretty dissatisfied with myself. It’s been coming on gradually, its development slowed by the return of music to the creative wellspring. But I’m a mother first, writer second, so I have to choose between music and prose. Where one blossoms, the other atrophies. Even my blogging feels stale and uninspired, which bugs me right down to the heart of things. I feel like the Queen of half-@$$ lately.

I mowed the lawn carrying the baby, but only the front and sides, and Christian had to finish it after work.

I planted strawberries and herbs, but they’re overgrown with thyme and oregano flowers…not to mention crab grass. Reclaiming the garden has been on my to-do list for three weeks.

I keep the laundry clean, but it never gets put away before the next round, so we live with a pile of clean, unfolded clothes at the top of the stairs at all times, and I often change diapers out of the hallway. (We use cloth diapers.)

I sweep the kitchen a couple times a week, but as Julianna throws food on the floor at every meal, this is woefully inadequate.

Christian and I co-direct the parish contemporary group, but I’m always pulling it together on the fly, because I never take time to plan. This summer we’ve had such spotty attendance that I can’t help feeling responsible. Why would people commit to something if the director can’t even make an appropriate commitment?

We bought a Cricut as an early birthday present, but after two weeks, I have yet to break the seal on the box!

But let’s not get carried away by the little stuff.

I’m toilet training Julianna, but it’s such a hassle with two other kids that I usually only get her on one extra time every day, so she has no reason to hold it; she never knows if I’m going to give her an opportunity to go or not.

I take the kids to the woods, set up play dates, keep Julianna’s therapy schedule straight, explore options for schooling for her, set limits on TV, read to them as much as I possibly can, cook with them, and take them on outings to keep the schedule fresh. But I hardly ever play with Julianna; I tell Alex “no” more than I tell him “yes;” and more often than not, I spend nursing times reading or checking email, anything but focusing on my baby.

I try not to compare my kids to others’, but when Alex’s playmate comes when called and obeys his mother quietly without a single sassy word, I just want to throw my hands up in the air. It must be at least partly my fault that my son argues with me over EVERYTHING—that he has to be shouted at five times before he even hears the instruction I’m issuing—that he breaks everything and then tries to blame me for it. He blows my mind with the things he comes up with to do to toys. And siblings. If I say it once a day, I say it ten times: “Why would you even DO that?”

I try to tell myself that young childhood will be gone before I know it—to keep my eyes on the big picture, the reason why we’ve chosen to have children as close together as we have. But even my mother—housewife, farmwife, stay-at-home mom-turned state representative—thinks I’m taking on too much. A few weeks ago I said, “I have some news,” and her reaction was, “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

Christian says that everybody’s attention is splintered too many directions—that no one gets to focus the way they want to. But I can’t help thinking this isn’t the way life was meant to be. I can’t help thinking that there is a solution out there, if I was only good enough to find it.

But then, I suppose, I really would be a Supermom.

Published in: on August 1, 2009 at 5:42 am  Leave a Comment  
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Ah, Nicholas

Since returning from NPM, my baby boy has become a demanding child. By which I mean to say, he wants to be held ALL THE TIME. While we were away, just the two of us, it was a Heaven-sent opportunity to bond. Back in the real world…it’s kind of a pain in the you-know-what. I find myself saying, “Nicholas! You are not the only child that needs Mommy!”

He’s a stubborn little boy, and no matter how tired he is, he will not latch on if he’s not ravenous—a switch that can flip in ten minutes. The last few days, things have been escalating. He doesn’t really eat during the day—just noodles here and there every forty-five minutes.

In fact, lately he does the vast bulk of his eating at night. The last two nights, he’s dragged me out of bed four times a night. Yes, I said—FOUR. Combine that with Julianna waking, with back door partying, and my usual neurosis about sleep, and my night, which may only last from midnight to 5:30a.m., is interrupted four to six times. I long—I positively salivate—for eight uninterrupted hours of sleep. Heck, I’d settle for six and a nap.

I’ve stopped checking the clock, because it just makes me mad, which further robs me of sleep. I gauge the time based upon whether the sky is getting light, but this morning it was still dusky when Christian’s alarm went off at 5:30. We are over the solstice hump and headed for fall. Pathetic, that I knew the days were getting shorter even before David Lile brought it up on the radio this morning.

Last night Nicholas woke the (um, let me count) third time with a stuffy nose. So now I know he has a reason for waking up, which does nothing to help me feel rested, but at least it makes me feel less resentful.

After I put Alex and Julianna down for nap today, I tried to nurse Nicholas to sleep. Naturally, he wanted nothing to do with that. As I stood rocking him beside my bed, the phone rang. I grabbed it and plopped down against the pillows with the baby against my chest. It was Christian. We talked for two minutes and got off the phone. Poor baby, he was so shot that he was already asleep. I almost rolled over and laid him down, making good my escape, but something whispered in my brain: Don’t waste this moment. You’ve done lots of work already today. And so, for a just a few minutes, I drank in the weight of his body on mine, the softness of his hair against my cheek, the quiet rhythm of each breath. It was a fleeting moment, but a moment of beauty nonetheless. Surely someday, Mommy will get some nice long moments of beauty at night, too.

Published in: on July 27, 2009 at 1:27 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Six Months

In six months, Julianna will exit First Steps and enter the public schools.

It sounds like a long time, especially relative to her age: two and a half. But it’s not. The urgency in the way I view her development has really ratcheted up in the last month or two. Even before Julianna got sick, I was starting to get squirmy anxious about it.

This may seem excessive…and it probably is…but it’s not without reason. Seven months ago, Julianna took her first steps. Today, she’s still not walking. (Meaning, she still prefers to crawl. She can walk, she just doesn’t.) Six months doesn’t seem very far away to lose the regular, one-on-one attention that characterizes First Steps, with its home visits and our wonderful, wonderful therapists. She will get services at school, but not as often, and not as focused.

My goal has always been to have Julianna as far along as possible before she graduates First Steps and moves into the school system. But she is a child who takes her time and refuses to be rushed. And with my attention fractured as it always is, I don’t work with her as much as I should.

Yesterday morning, some friends invited Alex to the park. I was teaching lessons when he left, so it wasn’t until an hour later that I realized the magnitude of the change in the household. I came upstairs and sat on the floor with Julianna and Nicholas, and I pulled the ring stacker, which the speech therapist had been using with her, toward me. “Julianna,” I said, dumping the rings on the floor, “can you show me the blue ring?”

She gave me that big squint-eyed, toothy “silly” grin, and bounced a few times as she guffawed. And then she picked up the blue ring and put it on the stacker. I was floored.

I was hyper aware of the development of Alex’s play skills, because I would sit on the floor with him for ten minutes and work with him. Julianna’s never gotten that attention from me. I wrestle with her, do PT with her, work on spoon feeding and toilet training, read books and do signs—but I don’t sit down and play with toys with her. She gets so much focused attention from therapists that I have placed my focus on trying to make sure Alex gets some one-on-one attention to mirror it.

But sitting there on the floor, speaking softly to my little ones, relaxing into the quiet of the house, I realized how demanding Alex really is, how loud, how much of the chaos of our life emanates from him. Can you believe that? We have a daughter with Down Syndrome, who has five to six therapies a week, who has been hospitalized three times for illness, who hollers and shouts to get our attention because she can’t talk. And yet take Alex out of the house for a couple of hours, and suddenly I’m relaxed. I can give Julianna the same ten minutes of focused play time that her brother got when he was a baby and toddler.

I’m starting to wander. The point is: the next six months. It seems absurd, but now, at 2 ½, is when we have to start preparing for kindergarten. This might not be the case for most people with a child with DS, but we would just love for Julianna to be able to attend Catholic school with her brothers—for a whole host of reasons: one schedule, one fundraiser, one dropoff/pickup…but also because I want her to be able to attend Catholic school, and I want her to be in the same place as her brothers so they can protect her. However, our Catholic school is not set up for her right now, so if there is to be any chance, we have to start now.

Step one: find out exactly what kinds of things she might need. This is more difficult than it sounds. Rule number one about a child with a special need is that there is no way to predict how high or low functioning they will be; it simply unfolds as with any other child. So no one wants to answer the questions about what “a day in the life” might look like in elementary school. And they also don’t feel the urgency that I do. They get my phone message and say, crazy woman, her kid is 2 ½, she’s not even in Early Intervention yet. I’m not calling HER back!

Step Two: Find out if it’s possible to transport Julianna back and forth from the Catholic school to the public school for whatever she needs. Possible, and practical.

Step Three: Talk to the Catholic school and try to figure out a plan for what could happen, if.

Step Four: take the plan to the pastor and ask if there’s money for special ed.

Step Five: go to the other local parishes and find out if there are other parents who would send their kids to Catholic school, if the services were there.

Perhaps you’re beginning to understand the urgency now?

Published in: on July 5, 2009 at 6:17 am  Comments (4)  
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