On jumping into the deep end.

Yesterday Finn jumped off of the diving board for the first time.

I use the term jumped very loosely. Maybe, “gently lifted down off of the diving board by the life guard into the waiting arms of his teacher in the pool” is more accurate. You would have thought he won an Olympic medal, that’s how proud he was of his diving board experience. He jumped off of the side of the pool like a pro prior to the diving board, but I know he wanted to try the diving board. I could see it from all the way up in the bleachers how he watched some of the other kids jump into the pool.

I watched him watch them while he decided for himself if he was going to try, too.

He inched his toes across that diving board, he waited for the life guard and his teacher to reassure him that he would be okay; I wanted to yell down that he was doing an awesome job! That I knew he could do it! But the words were caught in my throat. Sink or swim, literally, this was his choice to make. I watched as he made up his mind to jump, gipping his pool noodle with one hand and plugging his nose with the other. He made barely a splash and his teacher swam him safely to the side of the pool, still gripping that pool noodle and his feet fluttering furiously.

After class he told me how scared he’d been; he gripped my hand tight and looked at me for reassurance that it’s okay to be scared when you try new things and I gave him that gift. Yes, I said. I’m often scared when I try new things. Like crafts? he asked. Yes, I said. And other things, too. Sometimes the first time is scary, but each time after it gets less scary. Tomorrow, he said. Tomorrow I’m going to do it without any help. I squeezed his hand tight and told him I believe in him and I believe he can do anything he sets his mind to.

This morning I had to wake Eleanor up from her nap to go to swimming lessons and we were already running late. I sent Finn ahead of me to get changed in the locker room. I told him I’d wave from the bleachers as he scooted across the hot asphalt and I wrestled with Eleanor’s carseat buckle. We walked fast toward the school, waved at Finn as he ran down the hall and I lugged her up to the pool bleachers, where she proceeded to channel her inner monkey by climbing up and down and all around without any fear or regard to her own unbalanced nature. She’s such a complete opposite of my overly wary, very cautious boy. My attention was divided between watching Finn’s lesson and making sure Eleanor didn’t face plant down the stairs or throw her toys (or herself) over the railing and into the pool.

And then Eleanor pooped.

With 10 minutes left in the lesson, I walked Eleanor out into the hall, thinking I’d change her real fast in the van (where I, of course, left the diaper bag) and then we’d be back in to meet Finn by the locker room doors, but I knew, I just knew, that they were going to practice jumping into the deep end and I wanted to see him. I wanted him to see me seeing him, supporting him. So I scooped up stinky El, and we darted back into the pool bleachers just in time to see him strut to the end of the diving board with none of the fear I’d seen yesterday, purple pool noodle still gripped tight, oversized goggles fogging up, nose pinched closed.

I watched as he jumped right into that big pool just like he said he was going to. And I wanted to clap and cheer and yell that I knew he could do it! Instead I just stood there, grinning like a fool, so proud of that brave human with the big goggles swimming like a boss in the deep end.

I hope that he’s always equal parts curious and cautious. I hope that more often than not he weighs the pros and cons of the situation he finds himself in. I hope that he alone decides when he’s ready to do something and not when someone else pressures him or when “society” says it’s time. I hope that he always realizes that he’s far braver than he thinks he is, that he’s got it in him to do the thing that scares him, and that sometimes, when he does the big scary thing, he learns a little bit more about himself.

 

Tuesday

Wednesday

On trying to get healthy.

I am admittedly and on again-off again weight loss/healthy eating proponent. I’ve written about it a couple of times.  Okay, fine…a lot. The balance of weight and food and exercise has been a big part of figuring out who I am and what kind of body I’m comfortable with. And I’m either all in or all out, there really is no in-between for me, which can be a huge blessing and also a huge thorn in my side.

Ate chocolate for breakfast?  GAME OFF FOR THE REST OF THE DAY!

Doctor says you may have gestational diabetes?  NO CARBS EVER AGAIN! Until Doctor says maybe you should eat a few more carbs, because it’s all about balance.  WTF, HOW DO I EVEN DO THAT?

What I have learned over these long decades is that it is a balancing act and I know that I am not the best balancer. It’s taken 36 years, give or take, for me to figure out what works for me. Here’s what I’ve found works best for me: not living in a world where I can’t have something.  Because when I start playing the “off limits” game, I know that all I’m going to think about and want is whatever is on that list. For me, I know that Weight Watchers works.  I’m given a very specific guideline (eat so many points per day) but I can choose how I want to use them.  Chocolate for breakfast?  Sure, down that bowl of cocoa pebbles. Friday night pizza with Finn?  Absolutely.  Go for it.

So I’m back on the WW wagon.  11 months after having my tiniest human (who actually came out weighing the most at over 9 pounds, but who I had the easiest recovery with, go figure) it was time for me to set some guidelines into place. This 11-month postpartum mark is about the time after I had Finn that I started to have weight/health issues.  My back went out in a big way and I had to walk every single morning (which was actually more of a slow shuffle) in order to loosen it up enough to then get through the day.  Uriah literally had to get Finn dressed and strapped into the stroller and then tie my shoes for me because I could not bend over, and I would push his happy baby body all over the trails in Iowa until my back was loosened enough that I could function.  You guys, an old lady in a velour jogging suit would pass me every single day.  This Granny would lap me on the trail. I was not healthy.  And uncomfortable.  And out of breath and sad and all the millions of other depressed feelings I could possibly have with being overweight.

My back and hips started to go a little wonky recently (which I guess is what happens when you co-sleep with a baby and carry 21 pounds of human around on your hip all.day.long). I could tell that the glory days of losing weight and being able to eat lots of calories because I was nursing was wearing off in a big way. The baby has pretty much weaned herself, so I guess that means it’s  time to take care of me.

I’m doing it solo this time around, although not really solo.  I’ve opted to try WW online since the closest meeting place is about half an hour away; not really a good use of my time once a week to cut out around 1.5-2 hours for a WW meeting.  That being said, I loved the meetings – the support, the ideas that come from a group of individuals who get what it means to be frustrated and excited and gain and lose in incremental pounds on a weekly basis is great. I can get behind the “rah! rah! cheerleading!” part of the meetings. I can get behind the motivation. It’s great.  But this season, with a baby and kids in school and a husband whose job is flexible, but not that flexible, I’m sticking with the online version.  And so far it’s been okay. There’s a whole community online and on Instagram. Pinterest is huge in helping me find ideas that are low in points.

The weather is warming up and so El and I have started walking after the kids go to school, up until this week when I put her on a strict nap schedule that is, but I’ll figure out how to get that walk worked back in over the next couple of days. I took a yoga strength class over the winter and I think I’m going to sign up for the next session. I already feel looser and at practice yesterday, I realized that I could do some of the sequences that were hard and awkward for me at the beginning.

I struggled with the scale for a hot minute, obsessively checking my weight to see if after 27 minutes of being “on the program” I’d lost any weight.  It’s tucked away now and I’ll pull it out at the end of the week for my first official weigh in (I started on a Saturday, but changed my weigh in day to Thursday because that works better for me mentally – so my first “week” was only 5 days and while I didn’t lose any weight in that 5 days, I didn’t have a gain, either).  I think that WW is kind of like riding a bike, after a few hard days of getting back into the swing of it, I’ve figured out how to peddle again and it feels pretty damn good.

 

I post food and weight related stuff on Instagram sometimes.

You can follow me on Instagram @heather.eats if you want to be motivated to work out (sometimes I post pictures of my walks – that’s as motivating as I get) or if you just like to see pictures of what I’m eating (spoiler alert: it’s usually pretty food, because I don’t like to eat ugly things) or what I’m making in the kitchen (minus the mess in the background, but sometimes I like to take pictures of my mess. It keeps it real).

Tales from the crib.

We have a baby that doesn’t sleep.  And when she does sleep, it’s usually because she’s in our bed, snuggled up tight, taking up all of the good real estate.

Before I had kids, I was like most: “My baby is NEVER, EVER, EVER going to sleep in my bed.”  Future Wonder Baby will sleep in her own bed, cry politely no earlier than 8:30am that it is breakfast time and perhaps time for a diaper change, and she will sleep through the night after our bedtime routine of a relaxing lavender bath, brain stimulating stories, and a lovely snuggle in the rocking chair, after which she will be put into her own bed to fall asleep on her own because that’s what all the books say you’re supposed to do.

Those books are lies. As in: Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!

Sweet baby El started out on the right path.  I could lay her in her bed and she’d fall asleep.  She wake up for her overnight feedings, fill her little belly and fall right back into her adorable snoring. This went on for a few weeks.  We patted ourselves on the back, deeply in awe of how amazing this little sleeper was.  Not at all like her brother who required hours of tag-team passing his crying/screaming/wailing body back and forth between us every single night before we finally caved, put him in the car and drove back and forth over the train tracks until he was lulled to sleep, at which point we ever so gently transferred the sleeping beast into his bed and tippy-toed silently out of his room, cursing (silently in our heads) anyone who dared to start their car within a 3 block radius of our house because it might wake the baby.

I’m not sure why Eleanor doesn’t sleep.  I’ve tried everything: essential oils – in her bath, on her feet and diffused, rice cereal at bedtime, a soft stuffie to hold, her bedtime blanket, no blankets and warmer pjs, nightlight, no lights, the cry it out method, the rocking her until she’s almost asleep method.  Nothing.  What works one night is sure as shit not going to work the next night.

She spent yesterday with a roller-coaster fever and just when I thought it must be her ears and I was about to call her doctor  for an appointment, two little white bumps appeared on either side of her two top teeth. She slept in her bed for about an hour last night before she was wailing and snuggled up with us.  Nobody slept great.  She was so tired she could hardly keep her head up for morning nap and yet still, eyes wide open and immediate crying when I laid her down in her crib. She slept for 2 hours while I held her, so you can imagine how much I got done today (spoiler alert: nothing.  I got nothing done).

I have read all the stuff.  I have seriously googled: too much sleep, not enough sleep, how much sleep do babies need, how do I get my baby to sleep, why does my baby cry when I put her to sleep, why does my baby fall asleep and then wake up crying, rate baby mattresses, pros and cons of co-sleeping, sleep train your baby, sleep train yourself, sleep train your family.  I have tried all the methods they’ve suggested; hell I’ve even combined methods.  I am resigned to this baby who requires not a lot of sleep and when she does sleep, she needs to be be snuggled and to feel secure (as in: her little body touching my body at all times).

People tell me all the time how much I’ll miss her needing so much of me and it does sound so sweet, to be loved and needed so much by someone so little, until you realize that I have literally not slept all the way through the night for over a year.  I have been seeing a chiropractor because my body contorts into weird angles when she sleeps in our bed. I am tired and crabby and that makes me a pretty mean girl.  I stop caring about things like showers and exercise and portion control when it comes to Girl Scout cookies. I start caring about mole hills that I subsequently turn into the greatest, tallest mountains you have ever seen and news flash: I will die on each and every one of them.

Eleanor is nearly a year old and she has yet to sleep all the way through the night in her own bed. I wish I could clean this little story up with a quick sweep of the: And then like a miracle, I was introduced to a crushed dinosaur egg supplement that I added to her bottle and, ta-da! She slept through the night forever and ever and we all lived happily and well-rested ever after!  Not so much, though, mostly because I can hear her shifting and whimpering in her bed as I type, which means I’d best wrap this up so I can move over and make some space for my tiny roommate.

We’re asking the wrong questions.

At the beginning of the school year when Finn would get off of the bus, I’d ask him about his day. Usually I’d say, “How was your day, buddy?  What did you do fun today?”  And the answer was always the same.  “Fine.” Or “We don’t do fun things.  School is boring.” I chalked it up to the introvert in him coming out and so after awhile, I learned to give him some space after school; to set his backpack aside, feed his hungry belly and let him play quietly – Legos or drawing or whatever.  Usually he was close enough to see me, but mostly he did his own thing and we didn’t really talk. By the time we were getting baths going and dinner on the table and snuggling into bedtime stories, he was ready to tell me about his day, but I really had to work hard for those answers.  I didn’t stop asking, though, even when the answer was still: “School is so borning!”

When Uriah comes home from work, I ask him about his day. It’s usually one of the first things I ask him.  If I forget to ask him, regardless of the reason, his feathers get a little ruffled and his feelings are hurt. Knowing that this is important to him, I make a point to not forget to ask him about his day.  The thing is, his response is similar to Finn’s.  His day runs much the same and I find that I have to dig sometimes for more of an answer than just, “It was fine, how was your day?”  And I have to consciously think about saying more than, “My day was fine, too.” as we move on to the next thing on our evening to-do list, the next thing on our list of topics to discuss.

My day usually is fine.  Everyone gets fed and bathed.  No one has ever met any major catastrophes.  Laundry gets done (or it doesn’t), the floor gets swept (or it doesn’t), beds get made (or they don’t), coffee is consumed (non-negotiable).  Our schedule doesn’t vary much.  There’s an attempt at naps, dinner prep, sometimes a walk to the post office or the library.  We start watching out the window around 3:30 for Finn to come strolling up from the bus stop.  It’s not anything really out of the ordinary and it doesn’t really change much from day to day.  For Uriah, his day revolves around cooking and menu planning, schedule making, conference calls, ordering all the things, budgets and payroll and analyzing a never-ending list of numbers and surveys.  It’s filled with honing his people-management skills and putting out fires (usually just the figurative kind).  It’s nothing really out of the ordinary and it doesn’t really change much from day to day.

Here’s what I’ve learned though: It’s not the fact that our days run in very much the same pattern.  It’s not the fact that, yes, I probably did do many, if not all, of the same things that I did the day before.  What I’ve learned is that the act of asking shows that I’m interested in what Finn or Uriah does with the time they spend away from me.  If I ask a generic question, I’m sure to get a generic response, and so it occurred to me that I need to ask better questions. I need to be more intentional with how I start these conversations.  So, instead of asking a generic question and then spending the next 10 minutes mining for deeper answers, I’ve started asking the big question right out of the gate.

• What was something loud you did today?
• What was something weird you did today?
• What was the quietest thing that happened?
• Who annoyed you the most today?
• Who made you feel happy today?
• What is the strangest thing you learned?

In asking non-generic questions, they’re having to think back on their day and when someone asks you who the funniest person you talked to today was, it requires a pause and a reflection to answer it.  And suddenly, the day doesn’t seem quite so boring after all.  Does Finn still tell me his day is boring?  Absolutely.  But I think sometimes it’s because all he can remember doing is seat work or number work or blending sounds, and that does get boring after awhile.  But when I ask him what he did to be a good friend?  Or when he got to be really fast?  That’s not boring or repetitive, it’s fun and exciting, and by proxy, school is fun and exciting, too .

When I ask Uriah what he cooked or what he wished he could have made (barring lame things like food cost), he has to pause a minute before he answers me.  It usually forks our conversations off into a direction we weren’t anticipating.  Suddenly, for us at least, I find that we laugh a little more, we talk a little longer, we surf Netflix a little less, and our day ends on a happier and more relaxed note because we each took a more intentional role with how we engage the other.

 

5 things I’m worried about

Hi, friends.

I blew the dust off of this old blog of mine and pretended that it hasn’t been almost a year since I logged on. Honestly, I’m lucky I remembered the password. I moseyed around and thought about changing the title, considered buying a domain name, thought about changing the layout, but all of that creative stuff seemed like too much energy, so I stared at a blank page until Uriah got home and asked me what I was doing.  I guess I’m trying to decide if I remember how to write.

The truth is, it’s been a struggle.  I write a bit (not a lot, not even just enough, only scattered fits and starts here and there; thoughts I text to myself or make note of on my phone. Never a full paragraph, sometimes not even a full thought).  The struggle to commit to writing fully comes with the allocation of my time (or lack thereof, as the current case may be).  The baby cries a lot because she’s a baby, and she has a short attentions span because she’s a baby, and she’s mobile, which means the stairs are a death trap and the cement floor is a death trap and all the legos ever invented strewn across my dining room table are a death trap. And Abby has this pseudo-grown-up teenager life that involves afterschool stuff and clubs and dances and work and when she is home she’s burrowed into her homework. And Finn needs entertaining, or he needs help with his science lab to do all the experiments or he needs someone to be the girl voices while he plays legos.  My small humans are at these different stages, each one so completely the opposite of the other that by the end of the day I feel like I’ve spent all of my time and energy trying to keep the action alive in a 3-ring circus, and then it’s bedtime and I have 12 minutes to myself and I just can’t focus.

I got a book from the library about a couple of weeks ago and I had to return it after 2 chapters, even though it started out as a grea; I’ll probably want to read it someday. But I’d lay down in bed after the humans were asleep and the lunches were made and the pacifier popped back in, and my brain stopped connecting letters into words and words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs and chapters and a whole book. I can’t for the life of me remember the title.  I can see the cover – it was yellow – but that’s it.  I’ve lost my ability to turn my brain on for me after I turn it off for them.  And I think it’s bled into my writing.

Are you still reading?  Bless you.

Uriah and I talked about getting back in the saddle and finding my writing voice again and I’m worried that it’s not there anymore, or at least my old writing voice isn’t.  And now I have to find my new writing voice, and it’s still kind of a whisper and I’m not sure I hear it correctly. So, in light of my complete neediness tonight and baring of the soul, I give you the top 5 things I’m most worried about as I try to get back on the horse (fine, unicorn) and write more:

1. I’m worried that my writing voice is so different from what it used to be that it might be unrecognizable.  I’m not entirely sure what it used to be, but I think maybe a little funny and kind of irreverent. Once, a long time ago, I wrote about Abby cutting the neighbor girl’s hair during a sleepover.  They were 10. Once I wrote about Abby wanting to comb her eyebrows, which leads me to:
2. I’m worried about over-sharing our family’s life (hello, 16 year old daughter who I just booked senior pictures for). How do I draw the line at what stories are mine to share and what stories belong to my small humans and there’s probably a Venn diagram somewhere that tells me precisely which bits get to be laughed at by many and which bits get tucked away into the  Hefter Family Archives (for the record, there are no HFA, but if there were such a place, it would be in our basement because our basement is 100 years worth of creepy).
3. I’m worried about cussing too much. And also about not cussing enough. Because this is a fine line that I walk, my friends. I’m not sure if you’re aware that my past life was spent as a sailor on the salty seas. I have the vernacular to match. Uriah can slay me with his quick wit and his sharp tongue and damn, we can get each other laughing so hard that I have to focus on not peeing my pants (two kids, y’all. It happens). And while I’m certainly not proud that Finn told us he was going to go see if his room was, in fact, “a shit show” when I asked him to clean it up, at least he used it correctly and I was able to take a moment to teach him that some words are not for little mouths to say. I’d call that a parenting win, but I’d probably be in the minority on that one.
4. I’m worried that I might write too much about Jesus.  And also that I might not write enough.  Irony coming on the heels of #3? Yes, fine…it is, but I can cuss a little and still love Jesus. This has been a pivotal year for me, a kind of a transition year as far as my spirituality goes and I’d like to write about some of that stuff, but I’m not quite sure how.  Or if I have the words to do it.  I sometimes hide behind my Catholic-ness in that we’re a stoic people and not prone to what can sometimes be referred to as jumping-jacks for Jesus. We attend mass, we sing the old hymns, there’s no modern mass; we say the prayers, we stand and kneel and share in the sacraments and it’s a beautiful thing.  But again, I’m not sure yet how to write about all of that or about where my faith flounders and what I’m trying to do (successfully and sometimes unsuccessfully) to bolster it up.
5. I’m worried that my words will be awkward.  That my voice will come out scratchy as I try to catch my breath and figure out where my writing is going. I think that attempting to write again after all this time is a lot like getting a really short hair cut after you’ve grown it down to your waist.  You know what I’m talking about, how you have to look at yourself in the mirror a few times to remind yourself that it’s still you staring back, even though you look different.

I guess this is me, looking in the mirror a few times until one day I recognize myself in my writing again.

I have but mere minutes…

Eleanor is snoozing upstairs and will be squawking for her breakfast momentarily, but we’ve had a milestone today.  Okay, you’re right…we’ve had a number of milestones lately.  You can’t birth a baby and not call it a milestone, am I right?  But I’ll write about her later.  She’s been relegated to a second class citizen this morning so I can talk about my middle human.

Today is his last day of preschool.  It was a year in the making (obviously).  But truthfully, it was my year in the making.  Finn was excited when preschool started in September. He’s excited that preschool is over and he’s going to be on summer vacation! (Always stated with an exclamation point; I guess he really needs that vacation after 2 days a week of preschool).

It’s taken me the whole year to come to terms with the fact that the teeny tiny human who gifted me the mom title, the one who’s been by my side nearly constantly for almost 5 years, will be spending the majority of his day away from me in the fall.  We’ve been to kindergarten round up (and I didn’t even cry).  We got him registered, visited the kindergarten classrooms, the music room, library, and the gym.  His favorite room was the computer room and he kept asking me how many days his kindergarten class would get to go there.  Earlier this week the preschool kids got to have lunch in the cafeteria just like the big kids and he was so excited.  I’m not sure how much of the pizza he ate but he got to choose white or chocolate milk (chocolate!) and there was pudding involved.

He’s turning into a grown up boy…which I guess, fine, I knew it was bound to happen at some point.  He still needs lots of hugs and kisses when he gets hurt, he holds my hand willingly (even when we’re not crossing the street), and sometimes (most times) he crawls into our bed in the morning to snuggle while he wakes up.  But now he’s mastered independent play, his imagination is amazing, he reads stories to himself, wants to help make dinner, helps with his baby sister, and requests that I play Legos with him no less than 12,000 times a day.  So, yeah…the signs were all there.  Big Boy.

And I think I’m almost ready to send him off into the big world where friends will influence his words and actions; where he’ll have to answer to an adult who is not his mom or dad and eat a lunch away from me the majority of the week.  And I’m okay with that.  I guess letting him go little by little is the best way.  He still needs me more than he needs anyone else, seeks me out and hugs me huge.  Someday he’ll be taller than me and he’ll have facial hair and a car and a steady paycheck (God willing).  But today he’s happy with the prospect of his first summer vacation!

I’m good with that because it means I have a few more months to really wrap my mind around the first day of kindergarten.

And that day? I’ll probably cry.

First & last days of preschool.

I’m sporadic, at best…

Hi, pals.

I’ve been working on Finn’s Year 3 book so I can be caught up when I start on Teeny Tiny Human’s book when she gets here.  That means I’ve been walking through the spider webs of old pictures – cue all the sobbing over my grown-up kids.  Yes, 15 & 4 seems very grown up when I’m looking at pictures of them at 2 and 13. The pictures are all on my external hard drive – organized into dated files so that makes it so much easier to navigate – but I don’t look through them much because it’s kind of a chore to hook everything up.  When I do, however, I spend an inordinate amount of time mooning over how little my people used to be.  And so now I’m feeling the need to document a little bit of life on this crazy quiet blog, too.

We’ve been busy and not busy all at the same time lately.

Busy doing all of the things that need to be done to ready our house for a baby in a few weeks.  I have a list two pages long of things I want to get done before she gets here.  Things like, clean under the refrigerator, vacuum behind the radiators, dust the kitchen ceiling, take down and clean all of the light fixtures in the living room and library.

Really?  Dust the kitchen ceiling?  Even I rolled my eyes when I re-read that one.  Uriah, bless him, just read the list and nodded his head like everything on those two pages wasn’t written by a complete crazy person.  He knows better.  I am a complete crazy person.

Finn & Mama | Mother-Son Adventure Night 2015

We’ve been debating the prospect of kindergarten for Finn next year and, par for the course, I am a hot mess when it comes to sending my best boy out into the great wide world of recess and lunchrooms and navigating sight words and friends and generally being apart from each other for 8 hours a day.  I can fully admit that I am not ready.  He probably is (that remains to be seen because I can be a pretty strong advocate for myself and my own emotional needs, so I’ll need some convincing).  In the meantime, I walk him to and from his 3 hours of preschool and then we generally spend the rest of our day being awesome together. In the back of my mind I’m soaking him up as much as I can before the two big changes happen (you know – another human and kindergarten – monumentally epic changes).

Abby & Uriah | Father-Daughter Ball 2015

Abby is still Abby…if she were to write her memoirs right now, it would be titled: 10th Graders Know Best And Aren’t Afraid to Tell You Why.  She and Uriah had to register her for next years classes, which was fraught with difficulty because the school day isn’t 87,00 hours long so she had to make some hard choices about what classes were really important for her to take.  Which also brought up the question, “How many things can you major in in college?”  Our response… as many as you can pay for.  So, yeah, that many majors.  Let’s worry about narrowing down our Junior class schedule first.

She also had out-patient surgery a couple of weeks ago for her ear that went really well (we think, still have the follow-up with the doctor).  They had to put her under, which was kind of weird for Uriah and me since we’ve never had to do that with either of our humans (knocking really, really hard on wood right now because nobody has needed stitches, broken a bone, or had to stay overnight at the hospital for any reason in all the years we’ve been parenting.  I feel like that’s a total win).  Finn attempted to make the wait less tense/dull by trying to pose for selfies with her.  She was, of course, having none of it.  She forgets sometimes that I am stealth with the camera and I caught a few cute pictures of her and Finn together.  She came through like a champ, though.  Albeit a very weepy and emotional champ.  I guess the anesthesia affects her on a very dramatic level.  Now she’s talking about prom and summer jobs and I guess shortly the end of the school year really will be upon us.

We’ve been not busy because I hit that 3rd Trimester Tired phase a couple of weeks ago and feel as though I have to nap every single afternoon.  Finn has gotten good about reading his books on the couch next to me just until he sees my eyes close, then he gets up and plays Legos for the remainder of rest time.  He does it quietly, though, so I can’t complain.  I’m trying not to wish this time away because I love it when she gets the hiccups or when Finn tries to high-five my belly or when Uriah and I can sit together and watch her whole body move from one side of my stomach to the other, but I’m feeling full as a tick and I’m getting anxious to meet this teeny tiny human who seems to be hooking her toes around my rib cage and hanging out for the long haul.

Beyond that we’ve been walking just about every single day in an effort to walk the baby out (preferably not on the trail. I’m no wilderness girl having babies in the woods).  Both kids have spring break next week and since I’m not going to be travelling far and Uriah is going to be super busy at work, we’ve been coming up with a few things we can do in our area while we wait for the newest member to make her debut.  It might be a long week full of walking, but at least it’ll feel little like spring because we have NO SNOW in our yard and tulip bulbs poking through the dirt in March in Minnesota.  This is a first for us since moving here and we are feeling pretty awesome about this spring.

From our walks in the past couple of weeks:

So, I’m going to tell you a story…

Sometimes I suck at being a mom.

No, seriously…I know what you’re thinking, “Hey, we all have those days,” but I pretty much just hit one of those days out of the park and I’m still a little raw.

Here’s the story, because I know you’re dying to feel a bit better about your parenting choices today.  Allow me to help you out with that; it’ll be a little Christmas gift from me to you.

We’ve been having a rough week.  Maybe two weeks.  Maybe all of December.  All this Christmas hustle and bustle, you know it goes so fast for the grown ups – the baking and the shopping and the wrapping and the moving of the damn elf.  Days are filled to the brim with stuff.  But for small humans…this time goes. so. slow.  All the presents under the tree and the days waiting, waiting, waiting.  Spending time trailing grown-ups from store to store, and not getting to use all of the tape, and having to pick out presents for other people.  It is so hard to be a small human right now.

And so I totally get when the extra long days turn normally sweet, well-mannered little boys into puddles of tired crazy emotion.  And their mamas into stark raving lunatics.  Yesterday Finn lost his skittles over bedtime stories; apparently I chose only the bad Christmas stories and not the good Christmas stories and that was grounds for a complete melt-down before bed.  But I was kind and calm and we brushed teeth and talked about how hard it is to be patient and how much longer it seems to take when we’re waiting for something.  I told Uriah when I picked him up from work that we needed to be a little bit more understanding because being small around Christmas is so hard when the concept of time consists of either “right now” or “a hundred years from now”  and there is no in-between.

I should have practiced what I preached today, but instead I lost my skittles this afternoon before our Christmas program at church because Finn was being whiney and didn’t want to go and was losing his own rainbow of skittles all over the living room.  And so I yelled and he yelled and I told him there wasn’t going to be any Christmas in this house and he cried even harder – which, you know, really defeated the purpose of getting our shoes on and getting out the door.  And it took Uriah stepping in to diffuse the situation for us to get to church only a little bit late.  And then Uriah took both kids fishing this afternoon and left me home by myself for 3 whole hours.

It gets worse.  I know…how can it get worse when I had 3 whole hours all to myself (I binge watched Downton Abbey and wrapped zero presents).  Well, my friends, it can get worse and it does.

I thought I’d just give Finn a little nudge in the right direction and teach him to use his listening ears (something we’ve been struggling with lately). I went to the world wide interwebs and found a website where you can upload your kid’s picture, his name and age, what he’s been doing and what he’s asking Santa for.  And then you can put your small human on the Nice List. Or the Almost Nice List. Or the Naughty List.

Can you see where this is going?  Yeah…nowhere good.

I uploaded Finn’s picture and his age.  I entered that he needs to work on listening to his mommy and that he wants Legos for Christmas this year.  And then I placed him firmly on the Naughty List.  I didn’t even waffle and put him on the Almost Nice List, I went straight for the Naughty.  Because I was still annoyed from the afternoon and all of the afternoons before that and all of the “But, Mamas” I’ve been hearing from his little mouth these days every time I ask him to do something.  I was still stinging that sometimes it takes 3 or 4 or 5 times of asking to get him to do things.  I completely discounted all of the sweet things he does on a daily basis, like sweeping the floor or brushing the toilet, and instead focused on the junk.

Naughty List.

Even as I’m typing this my heart is beating a little faster and my eyes are getting teary again because I pretty much single-handedly achieved the Worst Mom of the Year in that 4 minute video that Santa sent Finn and in the process, I ruined my own Christmas.

Naughty List.

I sat Finn down after dinner and I told him that I received an email that he needed to see from Santa.  And the video starts and there is a picture of Finn.  And Santa is talking and  looking oh, so real, saying Finn’s name, like he’s talking just to Finn and telling him how old he is and that he’s in preschool and wants Legos fro Christmas this year and Finns eyes are so, so huge and he’s waving at the screen and you can just see how magical this all is for him – like it’s really Santa on that screen.  And I’m starting to think that maybe I made a mistake but of course the video is playing now and it’s too late to go back.

Naughty List.

And so the video gets to the point where Santa asks the elves put Finn’s name into the computer and we wait to see if he’s on the Nice List or the Naughty List and Finn’s eyes are still huge and what comes up?

Yep. Naughty List.

And I watched this sweet little 4 year old kind of deflate in his chair and his eyes got a little glassy and he listened to Santa tell him that he had a few days to turn it around; that Santa knew he could get onto the Nice List. And I couldn’t even talk around the lump in my throat.  And Uriah was telling Finn that he knew that he could use his listening ears and he was a good boy and I finally found my voice and told him that Santa said he’d send another email in a day or two to see if Finn had made it to the Nice List before Christmas.

I can’t get that sad little face out of my mind.  And in retrospect, he’s not on the Naughty List, not even close; maybe not all the way on the Nice List, but he’s 4 and he’s excited and that causes a lapse in judgment sometimes.  The anticipation is so overwhelming that it’s kind of hard to be a small human and focus on anything but what it is he’s waiting for.  I know that.

I, on the other hand, am firmly on the Naughty List.  What kind of a parent ruins the magic of Christmas for their small human 4 days before Christmas?  A crazy, hormonal, pregnant one, that’s who.

So…shouldn’t I wrap this up in a pretty red bow?  Well, I don’t have one.  I learned a really hard lesson tonight and that is this: small humans need a little bit of grace around the holidays because damn, waiting is hard.  We can all relate to that, right?  And while I’m sure that Finn will forget about the first Naughty List video and will (please, please, please) focus on the second, Nice List video in a few days, I will always have that sad little face in my mind and maybe, hopefully, it will allow me to pause and think twice before I make rash decisions regarding the emotions of preschoolers.

{on my mind} it’s my semi-irregular update.

Howdy, partners.

It’s time once again for a semi-irregular blog update from yours truly.  Let’s do this my favorite way: list style.

• Winter came.  And it brought about 2 inches of beautiful, glorious snow.
• I can drive in 2 inches of snow.  20 inches…not so much.
• Finn needs a hair cut.
• Boy bands from England are calling and asking him to join them, that’s how perfectly shaggy it is.
• And yet, still, I feel like it should be cut.
• A little like closing the barn door after the cows are out because we’ve already had our family pictures taken.
• By a professional.
• For the first time SINCE OUR WEDDING!
• I can’t wait to see them.
• Also, it snowed the day after we had them done; perfect timing.
• All my people got flu shots.
• You can imagine the parade of Hefters walking into the clinic like they were walking to the gulag.
• I’d bribed Finn for a week with ice cream if he was a brave boy.
• He got ice cream anyway because I almost started crying when he did.
• Preschool and Church School are both practicing for Christmas programs.
• They are both going to be awesome because a bunch of little kids singing Christmas songs at the top of their lungs (or whispering, or staring at their feet, or dancing, or waving at everyone, or crying) is pretty much the best entertainment ever.
• I have Christmas Fever.
• Is it too early to put up the Christmas tree? (Please say no, please say no, please say no).
• We usually wait until after Abby’s birthday to put up our tree; I don’t foresee that happening this year.
• I’d put it up tomorrow if I thought it would last until Christmas; we like to have a real tree and that probably won’t last another month.
• It would look like the Charlie Brown tree way before Christmas if I put it up tomorrow  (side bar: we’ve already watched A Charlie Brown Christmas no less than 5 times. In two days.  I plan to pull out all of our Christmas movies this weekend.)
• Did I ever tell you about the time we were living in Iowa and Uriah almost burned down our house because of our Christmas tree?
• No?
• Remind me to tell you that story someday.  It deserves its own post.
• I have my list made for our Elf on The Shelf this year.
• I had it done in August because I’m a planner.
• And I love Christmas.
• We made quite possibly the best sugar cookies yesterday.
• Turkeys since obviously it is too early for Christmas cookies.
• Much like our tree, Christmas cookies would not last until Christmas.
• As it stands, turkey cookies might not last until Thanksgiving and that’s next week!
• Speaking of sugar, I’ve been watching my carb/sugar intake (doctors orders, not because I think I’m getting fat, although I am, but I think that’s supposed to happen when one is brewing a human. Allegedly).
• It’s kind of a pain, but I feel better than I did when I was pregnant with Finn, so I’ll take it.
• It didn’t stop me from eating birthday cake last weekend.
• And I’m not complaining about the daily salad(s) yet, either.
• Currently I love to add some chopped apples and pecans to some spinach and add a drizzle of champagne vinaigrette.
• I will neither confirm nor deny that I eat this salad twice a day.
• Did you know that roasted vegetables are awesome on a salad the next day?  Neither did I, but I can assure you, I’m getting creative…beets, Brussels sprouts, carrots, red onions. So, so good on a salad.
• Confession: we’ve been listening to Christmas music. A lot.  I love Pandora.
• Finn and I have been having daily dance parties in the kitchen.
• I am teaching him all of my awesome moves.
• You’re welcome, Future Mrs. Finneaus Hefter.  You. Are. Welcome.
• We’re once again hosting mini-Thanksgiving on the Shore.
• Mini as in it will involve less than a third of the people we had last year.
• I’m going to brine and smoke a turkey this year.
• Uriah has to work on Thanksgiving (no surprise there) and a little bit on Friday, when we do our Thanksgiving, so it’s up to me to make that turkey gobble.
• I’m up for the challenge.
• And since I’m doing the cooking this year, I’m make carb-friendly sides.
• I’m glad my parents aren’t picky eaters or we’d have trouble in the Okay Corral.
• I will still eat a piece of pie, though.  It will not be carb-friendly.
• My mom will make the pies.  She’s the best pie maker in the history of forever.
• I’ve been trying to learn her ways for 30+ years.  Her pie is still better.
• We have our 20 week ultrasound next week.
• I love peeking into the womb with no view.  It’s fun for me (and also, it’s peace of mind, too. I’m paranoid & potentially an undiagnosed hypochondriac).
• I wish I could afford my own sonogram machine like TomKat but I’d get nothing done.
• Abby had her first post-braces tightening appointment last week.
• It’s been 7 weeks and the transformation is amazing! Truly and I’m not just saying that because she’s my kid.
• I texted Uriah the Day 1 and Week 7 pictures and told him it was the best money we’d ever spent (second only to the epidural I got with Finn.  That was the best money I’ve ever spent.  Have you had a baby?  Do you know how much that hurts?!).

Until next time…stay classy, San Diego Minnesota.

 

Some visual aids for the hearing impaired to illustrate our week…because it’s so fun to see how other people live, am I right?

This is pretty much how every single morning looks in this house (with the exception of school mornings). Books & sunbeams are how we ease into the day.

 

Finn said the dough was good. I’ll have to take his word for it. They smelled really good while they were baking. I need a bakery. 4 year old feed back is so subjective.

 

It’s like the most glorious happiness when these two play together. 10 years is a lot of time.

 

To recap: I make lists, Abby channeled Tom Sawyer, and Finn supervises like a boss

Hi, friends.

It seems like the best time for me to write is at night, which is funny, because I lose all ability to be a functioning member of society (or my house) between about 4pm and Finn’s bedtime.  But then – hallelujah, by some miracle everyone’s needs have been taken care of, lunches made, stories read, prayers said, water sipped, covers tucked, the dishwasher loaded and I can finally do something for me – like eat dinner.  Dinner is still very low on the list of things I enjoy.  I usually text Uriah and ask him what he wants for dinner, knowing full well that he’s not going to be home until well past dinner time, but every evening I hold out hope that maybe he’ll surprise me and come home early and feed us all.  Dream big, I guess.  I don’t want to make anything; food smells are multiplied by 100 and that’s not a good thing.  I ask Uriah on a daily basis if something died in our refrigerator because it just smells funny to me.  Truthfully, most nights I just go to bed when I put Finn down because I’m powering through the latest season of Hart of Dixie on Netflix – withhold judgment, please – in my jammies, tucked into my own bed until Uriah gets home.  Then I usually peel myself out of my comfy bed and come downstairs to visit with him while he reheats his admittedly sorry excuse for dinner.  If I didn’t, we’d see each other for 20 minutes in the morning and that would be it for the day.  And some nights I am sleeping when Uriah gets home, so that 20 minutes actually is it.  Those are sad days.

So you should know that, with my lack of energy and deplorable appetite, it was very presumptuous of me to create a list last week of The 25 Most Important Things I want to get done before we leave for Kansas City.  To date, about 20 of those things have been checked off of the list, thanks in no small part to Abby and Finn.  Abby transformed herself into a modern-day Tom Sawyer on Saturday morning when I told her that her chore (for the morning) was to rake the leaves in our yard.  We have a couple of pretty big trees and they’d made it their business to shed every single one of their leaves last week.  She recruited one of her girlfriends to help her and I am not even joking when I tell you they were about 80% done by lunch time.  Of course, I shamelessly eavesdropped on their conversations while they raked (I was working in the garden, not just propped up on a lawn chair supervising.  Allegedly).  The things teenage girls talk about would make your head spin.  And the quickness with which they change topics will blow your mind; there aren’t even transitions.  And also…they were talking baby names (a hot topic in our house these days) and sweet Lord, I feel a teeny-tiny bit sorry for the generation of babies they produce. My only consolation is that they will change their minds before they actually have children in 15-20 years.  Finn, of course, contributed by following his sister and her friend around, pointing out leaves they missed and generally being an awesome Yard Foreman.  And playing in the sandbox, which means I knew exactly where he was and what he was doing most of the time.  There was a 10 minute or so stint that he went into the house to go potty but I’m pretty sure he just sat on the kitchen floor eating dry cereal.

Anyway…we have been boring and I have been feeling crappy and in between bouts of feeling like junk, I’ve been frantically doing all the things, like sorting the sandbox toys and putting the lawn mower into storage along with all of the outdoor furniture and our fire pit.  I’ve been cutting back hostas and pulling out extra weeds and planting tulip bulbs like it’s my job (oh, wait…it is my job!  But also because this spring when I am anticipating a baby, I can at least look at pretty tulips pushing their way through the earth.  That, or I’ll be cursing the damn rabbits that will try to eat the tulips that will be trying to push their way through the earth; hopefully it’s the former).  Finn put one of our snow shovels by the front porch (but not actually on the porch because that would have been too logical for a 4 year old).  I still have to get ice melt (it’s on the list) and another shovel (also on the list) and…you might want to sit down for this one: Uriah took the snow blower to the snow-blower-fix-it-shop.  That’s right.  You can safely assume that hell has, in fact, frozen over.  As it stands, he will certainly be able to get into and out of the driveway this winter (we all know I don’t drive in snow) because he will be able to quickly and with ease, dispose of the snow with his not-new-but-improved snow blower. Let’s pause in a moment of silence for this miracle.  And now you may go buy your powerball tickets.

Before I go…have you read anything good lately?  I just finished All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr and I am struggling to find a new book that grasps my attention as well.  My heart still belongs in World War II France, I guess.  And while I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the ending, I loved the characters and they are haunting me.  I was going to read Unbroken by Laura Hildebrand, but then I watched the movie trailer and my overly-hormonal self said now is probably not the right time to dive that deep into a non-fiction book.  So, help? What’s on your nightstand?

 

 

From our Doughnut Date a few weeks ago (water and doughnuts, our go-to when the going gets tough):