Life's been good to me so far

I was so sick yesterday. Like, couldn't hold my head up or my eyes open but couldn't sleep because I was too nauseus, sick. When I wasn't actually puking. Little things like being able to HAVE A CONVERSATION feel novel again, today.

We had an a-ma-zing get together the night before, and I'm really hoping nobody went home with germs and is suffering now. Grant dug a firepit with Bob and the kids and gathered materials and hosed down the grass around it, and it was really just meant to be a s'more party, but we ended up having the Wii set up on a projector in the side yard and sitting around in various rooms talking and also just hanging out around the fire warming our feet - as it was actually a chilly night. It was Laura and Frank for awhile, with Brian for longer (he stayed while they went to a wedding), Kristin and her kids Naja and Darrien, Shaun, my nephew Robby (14), and all of us. It was just one of those times that clicks and everyone enjoys every minute like it's magic. I had made a big pot of chicken and yellow rice earlier in the evening and had a lot of leftover strawberry and chocolate chip muffins, and pitchers of cold iced tea. Laura and Frank were gone by 11:30-ish, Kristin and her kids and Shaun left at like 3 in the morning and Robby spent the night. I think by the time he, Annie and Aaron went to bed their Rock Band band had achieved "Legend" status in San Fransisco.


Christmas Eve kind of sucked a lot, until the end. I had a lot of way-too-emotional talking with Grant and my sister about my mom, and my brother, and my journal entries, and history, and blah blah blah. I was mostly locked in my bedroom all day, wrapping presents and crying on the phone. BUT THEN we went over to Laura's, once Grant and Frank were off, and that ended up being kind of awesome. L and F had bought aaaaaalll this food - honeybaked ham and turkey from the honeybaked ham place, meat and cheese platters, pickle and olive platters, cheeseball with crackers, chips with cheese dip, huge fruit salad, just a ton of stuff. We played Pandora carols and Frank's sister, Linda, came with her kids, too, and it was fun. After Linda and the kids left I gave Laura, Frank and Brian their presents from us and felt really happy that they were all perfect, and then my 5 + Brian opened everything we'd gotten in the mail from Nana and Pa, and my Mom.

AND WHOA. My Nana and Pa sent each kid a gift bag full of small things, with an envelope with $50 in it stapled to the side. My Mom sent each kid a wallet full of gift cards. So they have major shopping adventures ahead. Ananda is talking about saving for either an iPod or spending money for Harry Potter World, and I'm looking forward to getting Elise some new clothes because she's starting to run low, but otherwise I think it's a free for all for the boys. I think Jake got gift cards to Coldstone Creamery, Toys R Us and Target, for instance. Annie got them to Starbucks, Target and Barnes and Noble. She actually told me, "I think since I got a Barnes and Noble gift card and have a library card now, I might actually be able to save my money".

We got out of there too late to make it to Midnight Mass at St Louis, so we rushed to Sacred Heart...where the Midnight Mass was in creole. Their english one was at 10. So, we ended up coming home and reading the Christmas story from the bible and saying the Lord's Prayer. And then they all opened their Christmas pajamas to sleep in.

Still half in their fancy getups:






( Rest of the post, pictures throughout )

BUSY. I've been busy.

And tired, excited, depressed, in love, thankful, angry, defensive, relieved, proud...tired. Did I say tired? You name it. That's been this past week.

Tina, for the 10 millionth time: I just wish I could KNOW one way or the other, if she has had any seizures and if she's going to.
Grant: Listen...I know you don't trust yourself anymore, since this happened -

I'm sure he said more, but I was too overwhelmed by the avalanche of realizing he was right to hear anything else. I felt, all of a sudden, as I haven't felt since she was in the hospital. Like it hurt to breathe. And I realized that this self-doubt has colored ALL of my mothering. I ask questions like, "Do you think it's wrong to let Annie believe in fairies?" and "What do you think about Isaac being out there with the sunblock, with it the middle of the day?" CONSTANTLY. Nervously.

The other night I woke him up to ask if he thought we should put them in public school. Me. Yeah.

I think he stopped talking when he realized I was crying quietly. "I've been trying to come up with a gentle way to bring it up", he says. "I thought you knew that's what it was, Tina", Laura says. No. No, news to me. Here I thought I got off alright and was Recovering. Now I'm all like, "I think I need to talk to Mr. Nerenberg" for the first time since high school.

At some point I was ranting and raving, about how maybe my "mother's intuition" was just my imagination all along. I know, rationally, that it wasn't. Obviously Ananda did stop stuttering on her own. Obviously Aaron has improved tremendously with our home treatments. They can both read and do math and point things out on maps and it's just ridiculous, with the crap I went through drudging through the trenches with Isaac and how close Jake and I are, to even think that. I've known gender beyond any shadow of a doubt during pregnancies, I've known I was pregnant before missing a period. But - .

"I think God just didn't want you to know", he said.

.

Two days? "Holy cow, look at how wildly she's moving! What the heck is this nut doing, it looks like she's having a seizure in there."

"God just didn't want you to know."

I think he's right. And I sat on that for about 2 days of seemingly pointless misery and depression and hopelessness before we got to the real other secondary ________ point that I don't trust God anymore. Trusting God is a nice thing to fall back on. It's a way to fall asleep at night when you're having nightmares that your kids are in the oven, or visions of them snatched away by kidnappers.

"God didn't want you to know."

Yeah. Well. That made me put my tongue in my cheek and downcast my eyes. It made me clench my jaw and look through everything.

This all culminated in me praying out loud in my bathroom like a lunatic. I'm tired of you trusting me this much I can't help it that I'm human I feel guilty for being so angry but I wish you were here to slap across the face and I can't get this Baptist teaching that I'll burn in Hell for even thinking it out of the back of my mind so I need You to let me know otherwise, because I'm going through some big shit here and it pisses me off SO MUCH that you knew I could handle it, that I'd find a way, maybe I wouldn't eat and maybe I'd barely breathe and maybe I'd die a little inside but I'd come out the other side stronger and so many people could see my faith and see this miracle and I should just be grateful, I should just be so grateful like my plans don't matter, my dreams didn't matter, my gutwrenching night after night and day after day with the limp unconscious spaghetti limbs not even flinching during a diaper change I just want to sleep without jerking awake from the twitch of one hand and she's so beautiful and I love her so much that I AM mostly grateful, is the hell of it, I am so glad I had that book and You talking to me all along and crazy reassurance most people never get, You've always revealed Yourself to me in ways I think so many long for and I am grateful and just from saying this much, I feel better, but I'm going to pout about it like a proud toddler as if You were (ARE) my Father and knew what was best in the long run in ways I could never understand

And then I opened up my devotional book and found some business about how God will always forgive us and it's ok to rant to him and be mad at him and he loves us like children, and how you are not going to lose your salvation.

.

So that's part of where I've been.

---

I'm really usually too busy for deep digging like that. Last night I did something I haven't ever done before. I pumped a bottle of breastmilk and left a baby for a couple of hours. ! Can you imagine? Yes, people do this. What if I get in a car accident and can't get back to her before she's hungry again? She can't get substandard care just because she's #5...GRANT IS NOT SUBSTANDARD CARE, GET A GRIP ON YOURSELF. It was completely awesome. I took Ananda and Aaron, in full Gryffindor regalia, and we saw HP5/Order of the Phoenix. I know some people have hated it. I loved it. Really, really loved it. Perhaps this was slightly colored by my not holding or nursing any babies or toddlers or having any 3 year olds whining in the background, as I watched it. Perhaps it's because the whole movie takes place in a world very far removed from things like doing the dishes. Surely part of my joy was seeing it through the eyes of a 7 and 6 year old who were gasping, clutching my hands in fear, and laughing out loud, by turn. In any case, I thought it completely rocked for reasons too numerous (even for ME) to list.

I'm trying to get all the kids on an earlier schedule, mostly because we just need to be, but also because Ananda and Aaron are going to VBS (Vacation Bible School) all next week. Next week is going to be a lot. My brother will have arrived and be staying with us by then. Every day from 8:30-12pm A and A will be at VBS (I can take Elise with me to drop off and pick up, and my brother will stay with Jake and Isaac for that brief bit). Grant will be in California from Monday to Wednesday night. Monday afternoon Elise has a pediatrician appt. - I'm taking Isaac too because he has swollen glands on the back of his head that I want checked out. My sister and brother will stay with Ananda, Aaron and Jake. Tuesday is LLL, and I'll take them all to that. Friday night we'll all go as a family to the Midnight Madness Harry Potter book release party at Borders. And hopefully before that on Thursday Grant and I will get a (with baby) "date" in, with Jamie, the girl from PATH, babysitting the older four. She still has to check her schedule so we may make it another day.

He's working LIKE CRAZY. We do not sleep. We still laugh a lot and are eating really well. I'm pleasantly surprised at how well he's keeping up with this no sugar stuff. He's raking in serious money, as well, and soon we should be caught up on our backed up bills, as well as paying back the loans he asked for when Elise was in the ER. In the meantime, I'm happy to have had the opportunity to help another online family that could use it, via paypal, and also to donate all the diapers Elise has ALREADY OUTGROWN to Miracle Diapers, as they were mostly given to me and are still very nice.

My body is some sort of masochistic wackjob, btw. I'm ovulating already, gearing up for that 3 month postpartum period. What sort of glutton for punishment IS my uterus? Right about now I need fertility like I need a hole in the head. I feel guilty "pushing" Grant towards the vasectomy, even though by pushing I just mean mentioning it, just because I know he's going to go through this mourning period when it's done. He's sad everytime it comes up, even though he agrees it's the only thing to do at this point. It's just hard to imagine putting a lifelong stop to ever having another baby again. But I would have some sort of breakdown if I got pregnant again. Part of me wants to get a tubal IN ADDITION to the vas. Just because that's not 100%, and I know exactly who it is that is the .5, or 3-4, or any other percentage on any bc method. IT'S ME.

Three last things:

1. Ananda's tooth FINALLY came out, a few days back. She ran into my room yelling first thing in the AM, so excited. She's adorable and older looking at the same time, with the gap. The adult tooth is already poking through, I can't believe how she held out with yanking that thing as it hung by a thread of gum(s?). The next day she was waking me up uber excited because IT WORKED AND SHE HAD MONEY!!! And LOOK AT THIS STUFF ON THE BOTTOM OF HER PILLOW!!! It was definitely fairy dust, glitter is WAY bigger and comes off WAY easier, and this was clinging, and it just changed in the light in a way that was OBVIOUSLY magic, it was INSANE!!!

I had to change my clothes and take a shower to get that stuff off of me the night before.

This was coincidentally the same day babyslime posted a ditl that included pictures of fairy doors they spotted in the woods. She was stunned speechless, and then yelled for Aaron, who breathed a long, low "Whoa". Then she asked if we could go live in Canada (where the pictures were taken). Now they are running around under beds and in closets with flashlights, looking for some in our house. Aaron is begging to go in the attic to look for them. I have given Shaun his next carpenter project ;)

She was so excited that she called Aunt Laura in Jacksonville to gush about all this. Slightly back in my right mind, I am positive this is exactly what she needs right now, after the past few months we've had.

2. I keep having, of all things, long and sincere conversations with Grant Sr. It started because we were shaken by some of the things assholes were saying about us being leeches sucking the life from him. Grant approached him candidly, asking if he wants us to leave, wishes we would get our own place, or feels put upon. They talked for half an hour and Sr was very, "Those people are idiots. They don't know me. There are things that can be annoying, of course, like when I can't get to the laundry or I'm tripping on toys. But it's more than outweighed by having you guys here. I missed you guys like crazy while you were in Boston, I'd be sad as hell if you left. Everything is cost vs benefit in life, if I didn't want to deal with this I'd have sold the house a long time ago." It occured to me that people who think he's some inwardly bleeding doormat aren't giving him very much credit. This is after all the man who threw all the dishes away last year, when he thought they'd sat unwashed for too long. He can make his opinions known. And does, when he says things like he did yesterday - I was thinking of ways to turn the office into a bedroom if Grant moves it out of house again in the future, and Sr overheard and said, "We just need a bigger house."

Anyway, we talk all the time now. We talked in the backyard for about an hour the other evening while all the kids played, about neurology and Elise and what a great mother he thinks I am and how I should have no doubts because look at the kids. It's somehow very bolstering to hear from him, because we have very different general life philosophies (he's a smoker ((outside)) who eats a lot of fast food, doesn't go to church, works for the government, totally different taste in movies, no books, etc). So it's not like WELL OF COURSE *YOU* THINK THAT, as I sometimes feel when getting kid compliments from other AP'ers. We talk about what will become of Mindy's kids, and Chuck, and our mutual distrust of Robbie around Ananda (I was so reassured to hear he's talking to him about it too...he's just hanging all over her too much for being a 12 year old boy). And all kinds of stuff.

3. Elise is doing wonderfully. She laughed tonight for the first time. Yesterday she rolled back to belly, and now she's acting like she wants to do it all the time (but not quite usually managing). She's been smiling spontaneously, like when she sees me walk into the room or when she spots a ceiling fan, for a week or so now. Those "Tour of LJ" pink longies that have gotten around so much are capris on her now - they barely cover her knees. I should get a picture. I do have some other pictures, wink wink.

( +some from the past week )

And a P.S. -


That's the onesie you bought, julierocket - I LOVE IT ON HER. You can't see the embroidery all over it in the video, but in person it's just to die for. ...I also have the dress on top of her drawers just so I can look at it every day. It's still too big, but oh, one day it will not be...