Monthly Archives: January 2015

Day Ten: The blog goes live!

If you’re just landing here for the first time…welcome! You may want to read about Restless Roost or go back to the beginning to read the posts in sequential order to get an idea of the purpose of this blog. Or, you could start here and go in reverse. Or…well…I could simply step back, try not to be my usual controlling self, and just let you figure it out for yourself.

I made it to Day Ten. I found pockets of time each day to sit alone with my thoughts and write. It was not easy. In fact, it was much more challenging than I thought, especially after I returned to work after the holiday break. Instead of having a whole day full of leisure, I had a window of about four hours in which to write before bed (that’s assuming bedtime is before 9, a reality for me these days). Those four hours also included time for making and eating dinner, visiting with the girls and Liam, giving baths and snuggles, blowing lots of noses, and reading bedtime stories.

I’m glad I stuck with it; there were a couple of nights when I didn’t think I’d be able to pull it off. That being said, I am still going to try to write and post daily. However, based on my experience this past week, I know that it is not likely to be a reality over the course of the year, given a baby is set to arrive on the scene in under three months’ time. I had to sacrifice too much time with the girls and Liam when we already have a limited amount of time together during the week. The blog may end up becoming a weekend only blog, or a three or four-posts-a-week blog. (I just read about how stockpiling posts on the weekends can help ease the pressure of writing everyday, so that might be a possibility).

For now, I’ll just take it one day at a time and see how it goes. And I’m OK with that. Hear that, husband? As usual, ~~I was~~, you were right.

I Went Through an Entire Box of Kleenex Today (so we’ll keep this short).

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It’s Friday night after a LONG week back to work. Everyone at our house is now sick with a raging cold. Around the dinner table this evening sat two whiny kids and two cranky parents. The girls refused to eat anything on their plates and demanded to sit in our laps (which we did not allow until we finished eating). So, that meant we enjoyed our dinner while listening to intermittent crying, sniffling, and coughing from our little, and complaining and arguing from our big about why we should not hurt her feelings by refusing to permit her access to our laps until we’d finished our meals.

I’m currently typing this post out on my iPhone as I bathe in the tub with our youngest. Liam is tackling dishes while Nora watches an abnormal amount of TV before an early bedtime for all. Happy weekend, everyone!

A local eatery leaves a jar of props out on a table and encourages its patrons to use them to take photographs and post on Instagram using their name. Clever. Now I just need to get an Instagram account.

Writing Center

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My maternal grandmother was a devoted letter-writer. The buffet in her dining room was always stocked with pens and pencils, stationery and stamps, stickers, notepads and other odds and ends, like sparkly celebratory confetti, which she’d thoughtfully sprinkle inside an envelope to mark a special occasion. She wrote to her children, her grandchildren, her dear friends and other close relatives. Although she is no longer with us, I remember this about her fondly.

4th grade students at my school were recently asked to read a piece of text about a postage stamp that commemorated a famous person’s life. The students struggled to understand the text because they had no background knowledge about postage stamps. In the current digital age of electronic communication, old-fashioned letter writing is becoming a thing of the past.

When I saw this great idea for a writing center on one of my favorite blogs, I sought to create something like it we could use in our house for our oldest daughter, Nora.

Our writing center.

Writing letters to family and friends has become one of Nora’s favorite activities. I keep the writing bin on a shelf where she can reach for it whenever she’s so inclined. In it we keep cards and envelopes, fun writing pens and pencils, and a small three-ring binder which holds pre-printed address labels, stamps and stickers. I just bought some really cute personalized labels from Etsy for Nora to use as a return address label. She loves that she can read and recognize her name on the sticker.

Using the model to correctly place the stamp and labels.

I put a stamp and some address labels on a spare envelope and taped it to the inside cover of the writing binder so Nora could use it as a model for how and where to place her stickers. I bought some pages with pockets in which to hold the address labels. Since she can’t yet read the labels, we taped photos of friends and family on the front of the sleeves so she can identify the labels. We just updated our photos by repurposing this year’s holiday cards. The cut-out faces of our favorite friends now line the pages of our book. She’s able to choose a person by photo, select the appropriate label, affix the stickers on the envelope, and stuff and seal the envelope herself. The only thing she can’t do on her own is write the message.

Getting a stamp from the stamp page.

When it comes time to write the actual letter, Nora tells me what she would like to say and I simply scribe for her. This evening she wrote the following letter to my friend’s daughter, Mira, who lives in Boston (my friend also happens to be my husband’s cousin, so Mira is technically family).

Dear Mira,

I hope you come to my house soon when the snow is still here. I hope you have fun in the snow when you’re not at my house. I wish I could come to your house. Can I come to your house when it’s snowing? I really want to.

Your cousin, Nora

Nora insists on signing her own name to each letter. She also watches me to make sure her words don’t run too long. It’s a must that I leave some blank space on the inside of the card for her to draw a picture. I love that she is learning a craft that her great-grandmother cherished. Writing is also a great way for her to connect and keep in touch with family and friends we don’t get to see often. Lastly, it teaches her to be courteous (we send lots of thank you notes!) and encourages her to be thoughtful.

Our little Frances is proving to be just as chatty as her big sister—although not nearly as intelligible as Nora was at her age—so I’m sure this center is going to get lots of use at our house in the years to come.

Twenty-four Hours Ago: A wicked, wicked night.

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Last night was one of those nights I wanted to run away to Mexico. For about five minutes I seriously thought about leaving my house. Not necessarily for Mexico, but maybe the backseat of the car. Our girls are still sick with respiratory viruses of some sort. Frances is also teething. Liam and I co-sleep by way of bed-sharing with Frances, our youngest, as we did with Nora until she was two. Although Nora now goes to bed in her own bed, she inevitably ends up in our bed at some point in the middle of the night. Oh, and I’m also still nursing Frances (more to come in a future post about the pros and cons of bed-sharing as well as breastfeeding while pregnant). Every now and then a series of events such as these come together to create a perfect storm of nighttime restlessness and misery for all those involved. Thankfully Nora slept through all of this particular mess. If only Liam and I had been so lucky.

A synopsis:

8:45 p.m. Go to bed with Frances.

9:00 p.m. until 1:30 a.m. Sleep soundly without incident.

1:30 a.m. until 2:00 a.m. Wide awake with pregnancy insomnia.

2:00 a.m. Frances wakes up and decides to be miserable for several hours.

2:01 a.m. until 3:50 a.m. Frances alternates between tossing and turning, laying on my face, playing with the window curtain, nursing, and moaning, “Noooo. Noooo!!!” Nothing I can do or offer makes her feel any better.

3:51 a.m. I break down and ask Liam to take her anywhere and do anything with her so I can just get one more hour of sleep before we have to go in to work.

3:52 a.m. until 5:11 a.m. In our bedroom: I get that blessed hour of sleep and enjoy a nutty dream where my mom is pulling hair out of mouth that keeps coming and coming as my family looks on in horror and I try to defend myself, “I swear! I don’t eat hair!” Unless I’m doing it in my sleep?

In the living room: Frances reads books with Liam, enjoys a bowl of Cheerios, climbs on Liam on the couch, cries a lot, and gets a diaper changed.

5:12 a.m. I wake up to the sound of Frances screaming “Noooooo!” and decide to go and get her from the living room.

5:13 a.m. I see Liam almost asleep at one end of the couch, and Frances losing her shit at the other end. I scoop Frances up and tell her as politely as I can that she’s going to sleep, or else.

5:14 a.m. until 5:24 a.m. I nurse Frances and she falls peacefully to sleep. Good little girl.

5:25 a.m. until 5:45 a.m. I roll over to face Nora. She, of course, is in our bed now too. Liam is still on the couch. Nora proceeds, after sleeping soundly all night long, to cough in my face, the really phleghmy, spraying kind, for twenty straight minutes. However, she remains asleep.

5:46 a.m. I turn away, back to face Frances.

5:47 a.m. until 5:59 a.m. Frances is awake again, tossing and turning and moaning “Noooooo…” This is starting to get really fucking old, I think to myself. Maybe I should run away to Mexico.

6:00 a.m. My alarm goes off and I hit snooze.

6:01 a.m. Frances decides to fall asleep again.

6:09 a.m. I turn off the second alarm and ever-so-carefully weasel my way out from under the covers without disturbing the girls who so desperately need more sleep. I march grumpily off to the shower, while Liam sleeps peacefully on the couch. The girls are passed out in our bed. Surely there is something wrong with this picture.

The scene in our bed this morning. Queens of the Roost.

The only bright spot: The girls were in bed tonight, sleeping by 7:15 p.m. Fingers crossed things go better for us tonight!

Why Our Son May Just End Up Being Named Fitzliam

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I’ve always been envious of the women who’ve known since childhood the future names of their unborn sons and daughters. Or those who, after consulting with their partners during the early months of pregnancy, have decided on names and feel, with a certain degree of certainty and relief, that they’ve chosen well.

My husband and I do not have a great track record when it comes to making these kinds of decisions. Both of our daughters were named (finally!) in the hospital, the day after they were born. It’s not that we wanted to wait and see what our children looked like before we named them. We’ve just struggled choosing the right name from a small list of contenders. We haven’t been able to decide on such an important, meaningful thing as a name—a future identity—with any ease.

And also, I guess there’s the fact that we don’t prepare well. Waiting until almost the third trimesters to even begin conversations that are more than:

Well, anything sticking out to you at this point? No? Me either.

isn’t very helpful.

So why should things be any different this time around? Even our parents have come to expect that our child will be nameless until at least the day or night after he is born. With all of my pregnancies, my father has insisted on giving the babies—fetuses really—names himself, like Maggie and Seamus, abandoning them only after we’ve stepped up to the plate.

Liam loves the idea of having a junior. This tradition exists in both of our family trees; his father and my uncle are juniors. Liam’s also fond of his name. I am too, but the idea of calling out to Liam at home, or any place really, and having to differentiate between two beings for a lifetime makes me totally crazy. I’m looking for less, not more, stress in my life.

So, we’ve been tossing about William since Liam is derived from that name. I love the name Will, but then when I say it quickly with our last name, Powers, it sounds too much like willpower. I don’t know, maybe we should name our son this, and he will grow into the name and fare far better than his mother and father have in the area of self-discipline.

Liam just picked up the baby name book this past week (which is about right, since we are nearly into the third trimester) to have a look and see if anything resonated with him. I find that when this sort of thing happens the two of us spend more time entertaining ourselves with all of the really terrible names that are out there, instead of locking on to something we really love. Again, an example of how we are lacking in WillPower(s).

When Liam got to the “Fitz” names (Fitzgerald, Fitzpatrick, Fitzhugh), he read that “Fitz” means son of. Mind you, Fitzliam was not in the baby book; it was my guy’s compilation entirely. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t plenty of strapping Fitzliams running about. If you should happen to meet one, will you ask him if he likes his name, and then get back to me? Because if we don’t get our act together soon, Fitzliam just might be a contender.

P.S. We do love the names we eventually chose for our girls. They’ve grown into them quite nicely.

Our girls: Nora and Frances

Anxiety Episode #2: Have the terrorists bombed us again already, or what?

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This past Wednesday, New Year’s Eve to be exact, I had every intention of staying up until at least 10:00 p.m. Bedtime for me is on average at 8:30 most nights, so I thought I was setting a reasonable holiday goal. Liam and I had no plans other than to spend a quiet night in with the girls, a home cooked meal, and some champagne (just a half glass for me!). After we got the kids to bed, I thought Liam and I could watch a movie, or catch up on some stored-up TV favorites.

Instead, I fell asleep with our youngest, probably around 8:22 p.m., while I was putting her to bed. This should come as no surprise to you readers, as this happens five out of seven nights of the week.

Then, a little while later, I heard my oldest protesting to her father about having to go to bed. Since—unlike pregnant me—Liam can still drink plentiful amounts of alcohol and stay up rather late, and (I could tell) had no desire to argue with our nearly four-year-old going on pre-teen, I groggily offered to lie down with her too.

I woke up hours later in my oldest’s bed when the neighbors began setting off fireworks. I guess it’s midnight I thought to myself. At least I got to acknowledge the moment in my sleep-induced haze. I walked back to my own bed, crawled under the covers and proceeded to listen halfheartedly to the celebratory noises. One burst was especially loud and threatening (it even woke up Liam who rarely wakes for anything, least of all a crying child).

This of course got me thinking about gunshots, which of course then got me thinking about bombs, and shortly thereafter, terrorists. Which then led me to wonder about New York City and other big cities and whether the night’s events had passed peacefully or not.

Fearing they hadn’t, I looked at the clock and wondered how long it would take the media to post breaking news if indeed something terrible had happened. Fifteen minutes? Thirty? I willed myself not to check my phone and just go straight back to bed. And then, I grabbed the damn thing anyway and checked first with the New York Times. I was disappointed to find you now have to pay to access the site. Guess it’s been awhile since I visited there. Boston.com yielded no bad news. NPR mentioned the stampede in Shanghai. Why do I insist on reading this stuff at night, before sleep? Or even at all really, since it takes just hearing or reading bad news of some sort to plant the tiniest seed of doubt, or what-if, or it-could-happen-to-me-too in my troubled little mind. Next stop was social media, for surely my friends in cities big and small would be shouting to the Facebookian hills if they were in danger.

Alas, at 12:30 in the morning it appeared the only bad news was taking place in Asia. I offered up a prayer of love and healing for those poor people and their families and one of thanks that mine was OK.

Last Day of Holiday Vacation

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Does it mean something terrible that after twelve days off from work I’m hoping for a snow day tomorrow? Or a snow week, or month even? My husband had off from work the same amount of time so we have been able to see lots of each other and the girlies. The thought of having to go back to school tomorrow is making me want to run away to Mexico. Incidentally, anytime I imagine running away, it’s always to Mexico. Surely there must be other sunny places I could go in my mind. I’ll work on that.

About a month before this break I started making a list of projects I hoped to tackle over the past week and a half. I’m feeling pretty adequate since I was able to cross off more than half of them. My husband, whose name is Liam—but also answers to daddy, doggie (our younger girl easily confuses the two), Baboo (a nickname that has stuck around for two years from when our oldest called him this), honey, babe, and rarely, LIAM! (which is screamed at decibel level 90, after levels 50 through 80 have gone unanswered, often in some kind of instance in which I am in the bathtub behind a closed bathroom door and unbeknownst to me, he is outside in the garage putting garbage away. Anyway, he and I probably logged a good 20-plus hours organizing our basement, creating a craft space for me (let’s hope it gets some use this year!), a play space for the girls, and tons of shelving to store all of the shite we’ve accumulated over the years, yet have no space to put or otherwise display in our small, cramped rental house.

We also enjoyed some meals out just the two of us, as well as time spent with family and friends, an overnight trip to Philadelphia, and some fun activities with the girls, like swimming, library-ing and park-ing, to name a few.

Of course on this last day before back-to-work, the day I hoped to tackle some of the remaining items on my list, the girls have decided to come down with major colds and coughing fits. What is it with this timing? They couldn’t have gotten sick and then spread germs to us while we were on vacation, with plenty of time to rest and get well? Now I’ve got to cancel the sitter tomorrow, have the girls spend the day with my mom, which they will love, and likely take a sick day myself later this week when surely I will come down with the hacking, spasmodic lung illness. How’s that for optimism?

Doing her best to wipe away the runnies.

Anyhoo, instead of being productive I got to spend the day holding my germy babies. It was quite nice, actually. I love that—when I’m forced to slow down and take a break, and instead of being grumpy about it, I’m able to soak it up and appreciate the time I have. Especially since tomorrow I’ll go back to seeing them less. Sigh.

The girls will go to bed early, which means I’ll have approximately two hours before I go to bed to make six batches of play dough for my oldest’s preschool class, make homemade instant oatmeal packets, fold and put away two baskets of laundry, scrub the bathtub and toilet, organize all of the family photos, clean out the fridge, update the girls’ baby books with memories before my mind goes blank, write lesson plans for the week, or at least tomorrow, pack a week’s worth of salad lunches, and get pre-approved for a loan. No problemo.

Or, I could just relax and enjoy a girls’ bath with my little sickos.

At least the ~~blog post~~ is done for the day. Check.

Day Three of the Writing Project: Already in Jeopardy

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When I told my husband a few days ago about my plan for the blog—that I wanted to try to write one post a day for 365 days—he looked at me as if I were out of my mind, only after he asked, “How much is this going to cost us?” (We’re at the end of a holiday vacation spending binge and he is ever our firm budgeteer. Surely he was thinking that this blog, and not the several dinners out or spending spree at Ikea, or even the trip to the Please Touch Museum in Philly which essentially charged adult-like admission for our 1-and-a-half and 3-and-a-half-year-olds, would be the financial straw that broke our camel’s back).

“It’s free!” I said, pleased with myself that my sole creative endeavor of the new year would not be the thing to bring us to financial ruin.

He then told me in a most supportive way that he thought a post a day was too much. That I was setting my aim too high. “How about once a week?” he countered. This man knows me well and has seen me struggle with goal setting and intention making. He’s seen me start a project and then drop it, never to look back again. I told him that I wouldn’t make the blog public to friends and family until Day #10. This way, I rationalized, I’ll have a chance to make a real go of it and see how challenging it is, to make time to write every day, especially after I return to work. If it’s too difficult, or if I fail, no one will have to know about it.

I have to admit. I’m cutting things awfully close on just day three. One would think on Day Three of a new project there would still be plenty of momentum and inspiration, right? I mean, I had planned on writing earlier in the day. Instead, while the girls napped, I made a conscious choice to catch up on some “New Girl” episodes we had sitting in the DVR queue, even after my gallant hubby asked me about posting, ever looking out for my best interests. I’ll just write after dinner, I said to him and to myself.

Well, here I am, an hour before what will technically be Day Four of the blog, restless as ever.

Lesson learned: Do not put off until after “dinner” that which can be done while the littles are sleeping soundly.

Anxiety Episode #1: My kids burn up in the car while I’m being held at gunpoint and/or having a heart attack

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(much of this entry was taken from a journal I kept this past summer, in early August)

According to the dictionary of Google, anxiety is a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. I have anxiety. I suspect I always have, but it has gotten worse as I’ve gotten older. Maybe it’s because I am a parent now. I’ve experienced the fullness and the joy that comes with having and loving children beyond all reason. I’ve become more vulnerable, susceptible to dark thoughts that creep in from time to time, suggesting that something awful could at some point, on any given day, happen to the little ones I love and cherish.

Anxiety is such a heavy word. It makes me sigh just thinking about it. I prefer, in more light terms, to think of my anxiety as thought preparedness. You know, like worst-case scenario planning. It’s like these bad thoughts come into my head, I dwell on them for a little, either dismiss them straightaway or see them through to their terrible end, and then maybe shed a tear or two, or shake my head at the irrationality of it, or perhaps even take some action to help prevent that which I hope so strongly to avoid.

Take, for example, the following episode: Last week I was out running errands with my girls. They had both fallen asleep in the car before I got to the fish market and the local organic grocery. Thankfully, both places were small and had parking lots that backed up right to the storefront windows. I knew it would be OK to lock the doors and leave the girls dreaming in the car while I ran in to get the three things I needed, all while being able to keep an eye on the car.

Of course, not being a mellow mama and all, I couldn’t just leave it at that and run in and do my business. It was a very hot day and some last-minute thoughts crept into my head: What if, while I’m in the store, a bad guy comes in to rob the joint and I can’t get back out to the car in a timely manner? Or, what if I have a heart attack, or a bad fall, or develop amnesia and can’t get back out to the car in a timely manner? Hmmm…Guess I’d better roll down the windows, all four, just to be safe. That way, the girls won’t burn up in the 90 degree heat, and someone will be able to hear them if I can’t get to them and they wake up and start crying. And, maybe I should make it so someone could reach his or her arm in to unlock the door, just in case. Not to kidnap the girls, of course, because I will be able to see them from the window should that happen. But wait, I’m passed out, or dead, right? Hmm…well, better to just leave them only cracked, I think. Because surely everything will be fine. OK. Done.

See? Thought preparedness. Just in case. I got the fish, bacon and milk without incident and the girls never had to know all that went on in my head trying to keep them safe. My husband, on the other hand, did get an earful later. I like to share my little episodes with him. I do this because most times he tells me my bad thoughts are normal. That all parents worry about the what-ifs that could happen to their children. I find this comforting. On the other hand, I often hide the depths to which my thoughts go, and rarely reveal the nitty-gritty, grimmest details of which they’re made to him or to anyone else for that matter. Because sometimes my thoughts go to really freaking dark places, where no thoughts should ever have to go. And, I suppose I keep some details all to myself because there is a fine line between being “normal” in your husband’s eyes and being bat shit crazy. I find I walk that line all the time.

A New Year, a New Blog

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I should exercise more. Worry less. Try meditating. Bake more with the girls. Vaccum less. Be still. Take naps. Play dollhouse and trains and build blocks without worrying that I should be doing something else instead. I should write. I love to write. In short, I should fill up spare moments with meaningful activity, and eliminate the insignificant tasks that consume and exhaust me and make me feel too busy or tired to engage in that which really matters.

I’ve written off and on for years in blog format, paper journals, Word documents. Each time I’ve come up short because I’ve either let the business of life take over, and let months and months pass by without writing. Or, I’ve gotten great ideas in my head that get stuck there because in trying to be perfect, to find just the right words to say what I’m thinking or feeling, attempts at writing turn into a long, drawn-out and painful process that seems best left for dead. Case in point: I’ve been working on this exact blog post at my parents’ house for over an hour. My dad keeps looking over at me typing steadfastly and alternately staring at my screen, and saying things like, “That must be one hell of a blog.” After the last time, I had to admit to him that I keep typing and deleting and typing again and deleting again. And that I’ve got all of two paragraphs going for me.

I’m a master procrastinator, making excuses and delaying that which I know I should be doing to live a better, healthier, fuller life. Why is that?! This blog is a call to take part in a daily writing practice. It is an opportunity for me to find and make time in my day to do something I truly enjoy. To be still and introspective. To be creative. I hope it will be a spark to ignite other areas of my life, creating positive, impactful change. And, I hope you’ll enjoy being along for the ride. Thanks for reading!

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