altarflame | Entries tagged with being done

There have been some really great times I've been wanting to update about before I forget. Things I really don't want to forget.

Aaron lost a tooth the other day, and at like 5 am as I was wondering if it was even worth it to stumble into bed I realized I had forgotten about it under his pillow. So I dragged a chair out to the kitchen to retrieve the hidden "fairy dust" and got this great idea...See, the thing is, Ananda got $10 for her first tooth. Because it was all the cash we had in the house (a ten dollar bill) and neither of us wanted to run out to an ATM right before bed when we realized that. Since then they get like $2 or something. I then found out the day Aaron lost this last tooth that they both thought this was because "the fairies are mad at them" for searching our house top to bottom for fairy doors the day after that first tooth and $10 thing happened.

I never actually told my kids the tooth fairy existed at all. Annie came to me one day and told me she thought this whole tooth fairy thing she had heard about was a lot of hooey, and whoever heard of money appearing under peoples' pillows, and I innocently said, "When I was a kid it always worked for me." and her eyes got big as saucers and so then they were all excited about that first tooth experiment. When it worked, they went NUTS thinking we actually have fairies around. I would find them randomly under beds or scouring closets, looking for fairy doors.

Then the second and third tooth yielded $2 and $3 and they thought, we better stop looking for them, they don't want to be found and we're pushing our luck.

Anyway. I was listening to them the day Aaron lost this last tooth, talking about that and also conjecturing about what the fairy needs teeth for and all kinds of stuff. Annie was being really smug and bratty about that first time she got a lot, saying fairies like girls better anyway and she's the oldest so it was how they got introduced to our family's teeth. Aaron puts up with so much crap from her, he always just gets kind of downcast when she tells him that sort of thing. So I got very excited at 5 am standing on a chair in my kitchen with my bloodshot eyes, about sticking a twenty under Aaron's pillow with piles and piles of glittery dust (it's usually a tiny bit). It put the spring back in my step :p

And for some reason, btw, that particular tooth really got me. I put the money and the glitter under his pillow and grabbed the tooth and I don't know...I haven't ever thought about baby teeth much before. I have them all, on oposite partitioned sides of my jewelry box up high where they won't be seen...but I never got sentimental. This one got me, though, I was just looking at it and thinking about how excited I would get every time Ananda or Aaron got a new tooth when they were new gummy babies, and how it was one of those in my hand right then, outgrown. It was actually one of his front bottom teeth, that some people reading will remember he shoved to the side when he wedged a nickle in between the two so hard I had to yank it out with pliars. I think he was 3 then. And now he's getting ADULT teeth?! My big 6.5 year old Aaron. He's like James Dean, or Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise - remember when I used to post these pictures of his sleeping as a toddler (like this icon) and say, how can a tiny young boy be so beautiful? Look at him now!

He had fallen asleep in my bed with a fever that night, while I read to them. A little while later I nursed Elise down, on the other side of the (HUGE) bed. She usually stirs about an hour after I get her down and then I have to go spend 15 minutes getting her resettled for most of the rest of the night, but hours passed quietly, so I went to check on her. And the camera (*@#!) was out of batteries, but she had squirmed her way over to him and they were sleeping snuggled together.

The day after the tooth, btw, I found Grant in the kitchen asking me with a raised eyebrow and an incredulous tone, "Hey Tina, did Aaron tell you how much the tooth fairy left him?" I just laughed :p He understood anyway, especially with Aaron all psyched. The two of them went browsing ThinkGeek.com today for him to spend his money - he picked out astronaut ice cream, and this perpetual motion dodo bird.

I've spent a lot of time running my hands through Isaac's hair for the past few days of illness. He sits on the edge of the counter or my lap in the corner of the couch, and I do that...and first of all, it's very, very strange to be around Isaac and NOT be hearing an endless - no really, ENDLESS - stream of chatter and whining and more chatter and yelling. But he's totally calm and quiet now except for the occasional calm and quiet sentence.

I shouldn't like it so much, I know I shouldn't ;) Really though I think most of it is sickness but PART of it is the general leap he's making right now...he's suddenly noticeably taller, he's about to turn 4, he is more reasonable than he was a few months ago, and his hair; I don't know if I would have seen it if I hadn't been pushing it back from his forehead so many hundreds of times. He has silvery white-blond streaks coming in right at the very front. It's kind of awesome, especially with his orangey-blond eyebrows and faintly, strawberry blond lashes. His arm hair is white.

I'm not even sure why but I feel closer to him for the past month or so than I have since he was 3 months old and it hit me full force, and he basically lived in the kozy carrier.

This has been a really, really, REALLY hard week. Grant called in the 2nd day at a brand new job, because I'd not even layed down the entire night after a harrowing day before and a previous night with nothing more than a brief nap, and we were worried we might have to take Ananda or Isaac into the ER for this croup bs...He almost didn't go to his first day when he saw how bad everyone was and knew how tired I was, but it's like, you can't do that, you have to, we need it a lot. Even if it is 13 hours out of the house and me with no vehicle with all five of them sick and so forth. But then today it didn't even seem safe for him to go. The company was really understanding and he's going "tomorrow" (the alarm will go off in like an hour) basically no matter what. But it's like...there's always something, you know? It was late pregnancy and then it was overdue pregnancy and then it was Elise in the NICU with brain injuries. Then it was her fever and getting admitted to Miami Children's, when we had just got back and he was just getting back to customers. She was being weaned off sedatives or I was starting to feel horrible or going to doctors and thinking I was dying, or in the hospital really almost dying. I'm so tired of "things will get back to normal soon" - we've been saying it for SO LONG. The business closed, my cat died, my mom went to the hospital, why is it that as soon as all this good stuff starts (new year, Nancy's visit, this job offer) we all get struck down with illness?

I was thinking this - how I'm so tired and I've been so tired for like...YEARS. How G and I often both feel, as we lean against each other exhausted, that we will always be tired, for the rest of our lives. And all of a sudden I realized we might really be in the homestretch. Elise is 9.5 months old. We've decided we're "done", biologically, due to medical complications and delivery scares...I mean if something happened really freak, and I ended up pregnant, I would not abort, but I really don't see that happening. So our youngest kid is almost done with her first year. We won't have an infant anymore very soon.

Just that - "We won't have an infant anymore very soon." Whoa.

And...Isaac is turning 4. FOUR!! Isaac, the nightmare baby, the high needs, difficult, "spirited" drain on every resource that kept us awake and unable to sit through a movie or a restaurant meal for a full year and a half, before turning into demon toddler from hell...he's turning 4. All that is over. He's getting easier all the time.

Jake's potty trained and speaking well! I tell him we're out of appleseauce and he replies, "How about yogurt?" He brings me the phone to say, "Call Grandma, say hi?"

I don't know if my meaning is coming clear...but...well...this endless night I'm living? These neverendingly harrowing circumstances? I think there could be a light at the end of the tunnel! Really! I can lose weight and keep it off....one day - not anytime soon mind you but ONE DAY - I'll feel like I can leave all of them with a babysitter and go out with Grant without a single sling or carrier or stroller in the van anywhere.

For perspective, when Jake was 9.5 months old I was already pregnant with Elise. When Isaac was 9.5 months old I was conceiving Jake but didn't know it yet. When ANNIE was 9.5 months old, I was 6 months pregnant with Aaron! (and when Aaron was 9.5 months old I was about a month along with a baby I miscarried a couple months later..) So to reach that one year mark and NOT be pregnant - not just not be pregnant but be done being pregnant...

Maybe we'll get out of this hamster wheel of endless cleaning where nobody is old enough to help much and someone comes behind you to empty the tupperware cabinet onto the floor and sweep all the books off the shelf in one go, fifteen times a day.

It's exhilerating to imagine.

Current Music: Yael Naim - New Soul

I have become nearly too busy to bother with livejournal anymore. I really love reading a couple of my closest online friends' entries and I like archiving things that have happened. But it's getting to be so hard to carve out the time. I'm also disillutioned by the seemingly endless stream of busybodies that still lurk about commenting anonymously to tell me they think I suck or they think our videos suck or they think we're sucking on Grant Sr. I mean, whatever, I know you think that. I don't care. I'm not going to start caring. And if you've really been reading this since before I had Isaac just so you could keep thinking it on a daily basis, our thought processes are so different that there's no way your opinion means anything to me.

Aaaaanyway. My weekend ended up pretty awesome. I found out Friday night that my old friend Jess has had an EXTREMELY intense past few months, on the other side of the state. Hearing that someone I really love is having major drug problems at the same time we're still digesting that our friend Eric died of an overdose was enough to have me trying to reach her as soon as I found out, at 1 in the morning. I ended up driving down the keys to where she's staying Saturday night, with Elise. We hung out for a lot of hours...I got home close to sunrise. I want her to know somebody cares, and unconditionally, and I want her to know she can have fun with people without using, but I also just really love having someone smart and funny who is also hyper sensitive about certain things with very similar taste as mine, who totally understands my budding obsession with white nail polish, ballet flats and huge purses...all while being kind of broke and mostly living vicariously through Elle. Somebody who is simultaneously experimenting with Amy Winehouse and Feist, cares about psychology AND thinks motherhood is Really Important. I missed you, Jess. It's a shame you had to come back for the reasons you did, but I will milk it for all it's worth.

Kathy and I were going to drive down with Elise again today, to hang out with her all day, but the Labor Day traffic coming out of the keys would have made it a four hour trip each way :/ And if you're reading this, Kathy, today never once felt like a day I could invite you into. I thought about it but at any given moment it seemed like we were trying to get someone down for a nap or trying to get someone to calm down or trying to feed everyone or something like that. I was cleaning or sitting with someone talking or playing in the rain with a few people every. single. minute. I suppose I need to just get used to the idea that you can be like Laura or even Shaun, and just exist within our space as it happens and we don't have to "host" you.

I let Annie and Aaron fall asleep in our bed last night, after we read. It was hilarious. Annie was delirious in her half-asleepness, and giggling out of control as Jake jumped all over them both. I warned you, I said - sleeping in here means you have Jake using you for some sort of jungle gym until he's out. He was doing anything he possibly could for a reaction from a dead-to-the-world Aaron, including digging in his ribs and armpits and saying *tickletickletickletickle*. We were dying. And then Grant was dying later on, trying to hoist 68 pounds of Ananda into the top bunk O_o

He, Shaun and Bob had a "Soul Caliber Championship" last night, in the backyard with the projector. That equals 3 straight hours of video game playing from which he emerged victorious, for those who are not in the know. Grant typically plays video games A LOT for a couple of days or a week, and then packs them away for a few months, and then gets them out again, repeat. But since my brother's been here and had them set up in the office it's awfully easy for him to wander in there and play with him. He finally said it was getting ridiculous and proclaimed that there would be a Championship, followed by no gaming until 2008. It followed he and Shaun going to see The Bourne Ultimatum. I believe there are two entire genres of movies that he sees with Shaun, now, because I just will not sit through action or horror. Sometimes psych thriller type stuff, but I usually regret it.

It's nice to trade off on the weekends, and act girly or have a man night, and to be together late into the night while the kids are sleeping, and all that. The weeks are getting really crammed with things, and weekends are very definitely set apart in a way they haven't been in the past when G had 7 day, but always flexible, work weeks. We decided against preschool for Isaac in the end, due to cost (he's 3 so not covered by Florida's mandatory free preschool for 4 year olds), logistics (He's not used to waking up that early, transportation would be very difficult at least two days out of the week) and hunch (Watching him try to adapt to being left in Awana on Wednesday nights, I've seen that he's really not ready to be dropped off somewhere for hours every day yet). Instead we got him some educational computer software he LOVES, put him in Awana, and joined a couple of playgroups. I think next year, if he seems more into it and when he qualifies for a really good place for free being 4, we'll persue it. Even still, this fall, starting anytime now, THE WEEKS...it's going to be;

Sunday mornings - church for everyone
Tuesday afternoons - PATH at the park, for everyone
Tuesday evening - Aaron in karate
Wednesday evening - Ananda, Aaron and Isaac in Awana
Thursday evening - Aaron in karate
Friday afternoon - Ananda in ballet
Friday evening - Aaron in optional sparring

Then there's;

First Thursday of every month - Natural Family Meetups
Third Tuesdays of every month - La Leche League (before PATH, this is)

And I'm going to try to move Jamie's (babysitter) weekly time to Tuesday BETWEEN PATH and Aaron's karate if possible, since when we've had her coming conflicts with when Annie's ballet class is going to be.

We made a budget for the month a little while ago. It includes $1400 a month for groceries O_O It's also including a copious, ridiculous amount of out-of-pocket doctor's visits for the month (my moles and Annie's warts at a dermatologist, Elise's followups at ped and neuro, and one ped visit for Jake), as we're still going around in circles with Medicaid and have found out that neither Children's Medical Services NOR Florida KidCare are accepted by the ped we've fallen in love with and have been going to :/ And the contract that Grant got that offers insurance doesn't have open enrollment until November, at which point I will probably also see some kind of gastroentologist or surgeon or who knows what for my herniated belly button, which is getting weirdER. He's never made as much money before as he is now - usually more like half of what is currently coming in - but it's still like water through a sieve. We're trying to come up with a "kid allowance" we can work into a regular budget, to include things like shoes, clothes, school and curriculum supplies, PATH trips, extracurricular costs, etc, and maybe roll over some sometimes to also apply to birthdays. I keep thinking of new things that would have to be included, though, like wondering if doctor's visits would factor in, or if Christmas would be above and beyond. Basically I think a million dollars a month would probably do it :p Seriously though it might be a good tool for us because he would probably hand it to me to manage and then that would be a separate, mini-budget-within-the-budget that would cause me to prioritize better and also know what should come now and what can come later.

I don't know if I'll get the chance to go say this, or have the discipline to, but Becca if you read this - I've read your new lj in it's entirety, and perused your myspace. Your myspace playlist is ENTIRELY either songs I'd forgotten about and loved (massive attack, moby, that "mad world" song, carbon, revolution) or songs I hadn't ever heard (like the wonderwall remake) but needed to. Jake likes it too, and has started dancing :)

Isaac has taken to serving everyone fake food CONSTANTLY. Really elaborate fake food that he needs your lists of preferences for and takes a long time to prepare. Much "Hmm" and "Well..." ensues on his part, and then it's usually some kind of sandwhich or milkshake in the end, comprised of half a dozen pieces of various wooden stacking toys.

Unrelated: I'm starting to find peace with the idea of being "done" and our family being complete (not that I'm totally ruling out adoption one day). It's been a bumpy road with that...if I had had a smooth and easy natural homebirth I think we would have been all set to maybe even go quiverfull once we or Grant Sr moved out. But I didn't. And it just highlights all kinds of non-birth issues, like my attention span and weight loss and maybe sleeping again one day. Mainly I want to appreciate each one of these five beautiful people to the utmost and fullest, and give the most possible amount of love and time to each of them, and for the first time as a mother I feel like I'm starting to stretch that thin. There is something about being done that somehow makes me feel like I can relax and really get into hanging out with Ananda. Aaron is also happy to see me back on the trampoline and eager for me to try out the longboard again one of these days. I've spent SO MUCH of their lives debilitated to some extent by pregnancy or post(surgery)partum. Five is good.

Last: Shaun brought over an old video camera that plays the little tapes we/Grant made with this camera he had when we were 18. They've been packed away all this time. It includes long clips of 4 month old Ananda that I didn't even know still existed - unedited full changings and baths, nursing to sleep, just sitting there for 15 minutes when she started sitting. I am SO GRATEFUL for them because that seems so long gone and far away and I didn't think I'd ever see her that way again. But it's also like a gift from God in that I've been saying ever since we got Elise home from the hospital that I wish I could just spend an hour with one of my other kids at the age she's at, so I could try to wrap my head around NOT seeing her through the prism of brain injury. And it's helped. It's like one more miracle to see it on the tv, to be honest.