Category Archives: Stress

My husband asked me if I could make a strawberry rhubarb pie today while he was at work, and other ridiculous requests.

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Just last week my daughter was in the car talking about how much she missed her Grandpa Jim (Liam’s dad, who lives in Connecticut). I told her that we couldn’t make a trip to visit him because daddy didn’t have time off from work. She suggested that I take her and her siblings, without her father, as if this were the obvious and easy choice. And, she suggested that we leave immediately.

I told her we would not be leaving immediately, but that I would consider making the trip without Liam. And so, this past Sunday, I rallied the troops, packed a small boatload full of stuff, and hit the road. It should be noted that my husband, as he was seeing us out of the driveway, was simultaneously loading his golf clubs into the trunk of his car and donning his golf rain jacket, hoping to make a scheduled tee time at 10:00. He sure wasted no time starting his bachelor weekend events. 

The ride north went somewhat smoothly. We stopped for the first time about an hour and a half into the trip, still in Pennsylvania, at a fireworks store. After I peed behind a tree near the parking lot, I pulled Nora’s old potty chair from her potty training days (an absolute necessity for long road trips with small children!) and plunked it down onto the asphalt in the lot. After she did her business, I nursed both little children while sitting on the floor of the car in front of and in between the two captain’s chairs, and changed their diapers. The new minivan is proving to be an excellent investment! Lots of room for road-tripping shenanigans inside her. Because there was no way this mom was trying to drag three little ones into a rest-stop restroom! Firstly, it would have added too much extra time on an already long trip. And secondly, I have nightmares imagining the four of us crammed into a crowded bathroom stall, while I have to negotiate peeing as well as holding a baby and making sure two little ones don’t put their hands all over every stall surface and then put their fingers in their mouths.

The middle part of the trip was a little stressful. The baby screamed off and on for awhile. Frances napped, but older sister Nora refused. Instead, she whined a lot, asked 326 times how much longer until we got there, and twirled knots in her hair like a nervous wreck, something I’ve never seen her do before. I think it was a mixture of being exhausted, excited, and stressed out; the baby crying was rough on us all.

I think I was finally able to relax and drive comfortably with shoulders not hunched up around my ears after our second pit-stop, just inside Connecticut, once the baby fell asleep. Unfortunately, our second stop was in a less private place than the first. Nora did her business on the potty seat inside the car. And, I may have too. Yes, I’m sure you’re visualization of a grown-ass woman squatting down, pants around her ankles, inside a cramped minivan to use a child’s potty seat is spot on. Especially when I add in the details that the girls were giggling like crazy and screaming, “I can see your booty!” the entire time. So humiliating. Thank goodness for shaded car windows!

I made the oldest promise never to tell anyone what she had seen.Yet, here I am revealing it all. Oh well. It was either use the potty seat, or drag the kids inside someplace, which I’ve already mentioned I was reluctant to do. After I confessed the above to my husband, and listened to him laughing for a few minutes, he admitted it was a brilliant idea, really, and that we should probably invent an adult seat to be used on road trips for just these kinds of situations. I’m sure there is already one out there somewhere. I will have to look into purchasing it for our next journey.

We made the four-and-a-half-hour trip in about six hours, stopping twice for about a half hour each time. Not too shabby. And, I only had to use my 130-decibel-level voice a couple of times to ask everyone to shut the hell up, but in slightly more polite terms than that.

The afternoon we arrived proved to be the nicest in terms of weather, and the only real beach day of the four we stayed. So, even though the water temps were in the high 50s, the kids put on their suits and headed down to the water to splash about in the surf and dig around in the sand.

Some other highlights over the next few days included spending time with grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins, eating lots and lots of desserts (always a fan favorite at Grandpa Jim’s), playing on a playground at the beach (I just can’t get over how cool it was that the kids could slide down the slides and land in the sand), and having a seafood dinner with Grandmère (Liam’s mom) while trains rolled past on one side, and boats rocked calmly on the other. I also enjoyred a quick visit with my college roommate. Although, between the chasing after and minding of children, we really just got to see what the other looked like these days, exchange a few smiles and laughs, and document the whole blur with a bunch of photographs.

And now, for the lowlights. Mostly, these happened during the night. I knew they would. Co-sleeping works great for us at home, but not so much when we travel. At least, not when we are limited on space.

Our sleeping arrangement was an air mattress on the floor next to a twin bed. I told Nora to expect that she wouldn’t be able to sleep next to me. She accepted this, at first. And then, in the middle of the night, she fell out of the twin bed and onto the air mattress at my feet. She then refused to climb back up into the bed, and so, slept in a small crack of open floor between the mattress and dresser instead. This seemed to work out well. Frances also managed to roll off the air mattress a couple of times and got banged up by the piano pedals on the floor. Only my kids.

And so, nearly every bedtime was a complete disaster. At home, Liam and I usually take turns putting kids to bed, one or sometimes two at a time. Never all three. However, each night in Connecticut, I managed to have all three awake at 9:00 p.m. or later. Not a good scene. I just didn’t have enough body parts or bed space to nurse, hold, and comfort all three at the same time. This was a time when I certainly wished we had the kind of kids we could just tell to go to sleep and they would, while I sat out in the living room nursing a beer and enjoying some alone time.

As it is, over the past six days, I have enjoyed only an hour-and-a-half of alone time, a world record for me. The thirty-minute car ride home from my parents’ place on the tail end of our trip home from Connecticut (it went about as smoothly as the ride up, except I used the potty seat twice, as I’m an old pro at it now), when I insisted Liam meet us there and then drive the kids home in the minivan, while I drove home in his car in SILENCE. The thirty-minute bath I enjoyed two nights ago, even though the middle girl yelled, “I watch you, mommy!” nearly the entire time from outside the locked door.

And the past fifteen or more minutes that I’ve been writing this post, which I began many hours ago, and have only just neared the end, after I put the baby to sleep. Other than this time, I have been holding a baby in my arms, or had a baby strapped to me in a carrier, or, I’ve been in the presence of one or more of my children, within a five-foot radius or less, for the past 144 hours. I’m in need of a vacation from my vacation.

Which is why, when my husband asked me this morning, before he left for work, if I had time, could I make a strawberry rhubarb pie, I gave him a look that said: You’ve got to be effing kidding me, right?

I don’t think he was kidding, but I think he read me loud and clear, that there would be no pie making happening. At all. Likely ever again. Perhaps he should have scheduled his baking plans in between rounds of golf and dining out, while I was in Connecticut visiting his family.

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Eating fried seafood with her uncle. Incidentally, she looks more like him than her own two parents. Funny how that happens. Love this photo.


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Testing out the frigid waters on a frigid day. Crazy girl.


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The kids and their Grandpa.


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Cousins waiting on ice cream!


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Girlfriend time at the beach.

Question of the day.

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I’m not sure when it began—I think after college—but my best girlfriends and I have, for years, invariably sent e-mails and texts to one another with the subject: Question of the Day.

All of us girls have taken turns posing questions. Sometimes the questions have been mundane. Sometimes silly. Sometimes serious. Once a question has been asked, each girl is responsible for providing her own answer.

It had been some time since one of us had asked a question, so this morning, since I’d been wondering about something, I sent out the following text message:

Question of the Day: What method of birth control are you currently using?

The answers the girls sent back ran the gamut. Abstinence (with an LOL). Vasectomy. Condoms. Pill. IUD—which I always, always, confuse with IED, the explosive devices used in the Middle East. Obviously, two VERY different acronyms, which should not be confused, since one would blow up your uterus instead of merely keeping fertilized eggs from attaching there. Yikes! I guess I should remember—’U’ for uterus, ‘E’ for explosion.

Anyway, I’ve lately been terrified of the possibility that we could have a fourth child by accident so soon after the third…or even a fourth child at all, really. I know that sounds awful, given how blessed we are to have had three beautiful and healthy children. But, I just can’t fathom what having another child would do to our family, and specifically, my mental state. 

I am in awe of mothers I see at church or even in my extended family who have four, five, six—or even seven!—children, all close in age. How do they do it? And remain sane? I just don’t know. 

Although, I guess after one has a fifth child, the oldest is likely able to help out a bunch. And after the sixth or seventh, a mother would have near-adults at her side who could be baby-holders, house-cleaners, and meal-preppers. 

Wait a minute—maybe that’s what we need. Not less, but more! Surely the Duggars have stumbled upon something good here. When they aren’t busy exploiting their children, they’re probably eating bonbons on some beach in Mexico while Duggars ten through sixteen care for numbers one through nine. Brilliant!

Maybe we should adopt a few older children, or at least convince some neighborhood pre-teens to come by daily, to help out with chores around the house and holding the baby (the latter which I did for no less than ten hours today, due to the fact he wanted to be awake and upright to witness everything that was happening around him; five consecutive hours awake for a newborn must be like forty-eight to a grown-up, so I’m totally prepared for him to bug out tonight, but hoping he sleeps like a bear in winter).

Anyway, the birth control conversation is one we are going to have to continue over here at our place. I charted my cycle for six months using the Fertility Awareness Method prior to conceiving the little dude. But the idea of taking my basal body temperature every day until I’m no longer fertile is torturous! Ditto the pill and condoms. And, having a device inserted into my uterus which may or may not explode? Well, let’s just say I’m more comfortable with the idea of NOT having to entertain that scenario, however unlikely the possibility.

So that leaves abstinence or vasectomy. Guess I’ll leave it up to the hubs to make the choice for us.

You. Have. GOT. To. Be. Effing. Kidding. Me.

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The past few days have quite possibly been the most trying of my entire life. I know that’s a pretty bold statement, considering I’ve had my heart broken a few times, lost beloved grandparents, survived taking an engineering physics class, run half of a marathon, biked over major mountains in Vietnam, and birthed three giant babies without pain medication (some of the more trying life events that come right to mind).

I’ll be the first to admit that I get stressed out pretty easily. But I also pride myself on being able to juggle many balls in the air, so to speak, without dropping one. That being said, there has been ball juggling and dropping galore in recent days, and if just one more ball hits the floor, I’m afraid I’m going to need to check into one of those rehab houses used by Hollywood celebs for physical exhaustion, or whatever it is they claim to need help with.

OK. So let’s get into the recent events at our house. Things all began to go south this past Thursday. Liam and I noticed some swelling and redness that had begun to form around the little guy’s circumcision site, which only days before had looked great and seemed to have healed up nicely. I called the pediatrician’s office to describe the blister-like swelling, and they said they wanted to see Rowan, so I made an appointment for later in the day.

Then, while the kids and I were still at home, Frances, our middle child, started with a fever, general crankiness, and complete loss of appetite. And the oldest, Nora, had refused to take a nap. It was shaping up to be a good afternoon.

At the pediatrician’s office, I started to worry when the doctor asked if I minded her getting another doctor with whom to consult and check out the little guy’s bits. Of course, the doc was gone from the room for about ten minutes, which seemed like eternity to me since I had to entertain and distract an almost naked newborn who needed to be held, nursed, and walked around, an ill toddler who was grumpy and also wanted to be nursed and held, and a cranky, chatty, ants-in-her-pants preschooler who was bordering on defiant (this is what no-napping does to her).

While I paced the small office with the little guy, while simultaneously trying to verbally comfort the toddler and shoo away the preschooler, I prayed for patience, peace and quiet, and for the damned doctors to just get the hell in the room already.

When they finally arrived, the tag-teaming duo agreed that our boy will essentially need to have a fresh circumcision performed by a urologist when he turns a year old, since skin had begun to grow on his penis and reattach itself from where it had once been cut. What?!?! This will be done under general anesthesia, they explained. Again, What?!?!

When I asked what had happened, the docs explained that it was just the way Rowan’s body had healed. No fault of ours or the doctor who performed the circumcision. Hmmm.

You might imagine how this all made me feel once I tell you I never wanted a circumcision for our boy in the first place. Why mess with nature? I asked my husband. He won’t look different from other boys. Lots of parents aren’t circumcising their kids these days, I argued.

In the end, I let Liam decide and told him I would support his choice. Grrrr…I tried and succeeded to withhold any I told you so’s when I explained to him what the doctors had said. He offered, “I bet you’re wishing we hadn’t had him circumcised.”

Um, that would be a yes.

Moving on to Thursday night then. Once we got the kids to bed, we started getting ready for bed ourselves. As I was brushing my teeth, I began to feel nauseous. Perhaps it was just the three chocolate Easter egg candies I’d eaten, I thought.

Negative on the candies being the cause of the nausea. Three hours later, around midnight, I began a hardcore puking fest that lasted off and on six or more times until five in the morning. I’m grateful Liam was able to come lay in bed with us to keep an eye on the kids and on me as I alternatively puked and nursed, nursed and puked a feverish toddler and an unsuspecting newborn.

I was worthless Friday, so Liam stayed home from work. Again, grateful. Frances still ran a fever (which she will do, as she refuses all kinds of medicines). Gratefully, she nursed well, so I didn’t have to worry about her continuing to not eat or become dehydrated.

Nora then developed a crazy runny nose. It got so bad, she utterly destroyed two boxes of tissues, and grew a red, raw rash that extended from below her nose and up to her cheekbones on both sides of her face. We gave her some Benadryl, rubbed her face full of Vaseline, and sent her to bed.

I then went to bed hoping that the two bananas and two pieces of toast—all the solid food that I was able to force in my body that day—would be enough to sustain us, the breastfeeding trio, through the night. At least Frances’s fever had broken.

Around one in the morning, Frances got sick. She only puked twice, and it wasn’t nearly as violent or plentiful as my episodes had been. Grateful. And, we didn’t need to change the sheets. Again, grateful. See how I’m trying to find the positives, here?

Saturday morning everyone seemed well enough, but for me. Overnight, I had gotten a migraine headache that was just wicked. I thought my brain might be swelling and my body shutting down, having decided it was depleted, exhausted, and just plain done with life for good.

I chugged some much needed glasses of water and Gatorade, and then, a cup of coffee. Next, I forced myself to eat a lovely meal of spinach and eggs, peanut butter toast, and Ibuprofen (thank you, husband!). I showered, went back to bed, and woke up an hour later feeling like a million bucks, thanks be to God.

It was good timing too, since Liam’s brother and sister had just arrived from Connecticut and Massachusetts, respectively, to meet the baby for the first time.

Gratefully, Saturday and most of Sunday passed without incident. I seemed to be better, though my appetite still hadn’t returned. Frances was still striking on solid foods, but nursing well. Nora’s nose continued to run like a sprinkler, and she developed a loud, hacking cough.

We enjoyed a really great visit with Liam’s family. It was so nice, in fact, I burst into tears the moment after they left to head home. I’m sure my emotional state was made worse by lack of sleep and the stress of the past few days, but it’s hard living away from family and not getting to see them very often. Guess I should be grateful I enjoy my in-laws so much!

Moving right along. This brings us up to last night. Right before bed, Liam started looking pale and concerned.

“Are you feeling sick?” I asked.

“Maybe I’m just hungry,” he said hopefully.

I think deep down, we both knew what was in store. Sure enough, soon after midnight, Liam got sick. And then, Frances had a relapse. Again, we didn’t need to change sheets, only pajamas. I’m not sure I was feeling grateful at that point though, truth be told.

After we got cleaned up, Nora began a hacking fit in the other room, which led me to run the shower on full heat to create a steam room in the bathroom. I grabbed her from bed, even though she was half asleep, and sat with her on the toilet until her coughing subsided.

It was then that I wondered about the superpowers of mothers and all they are capable of doing despite not being totally well themselves, both emotionally and physically. Even when I think I can do absolutely no more, I somehow rise up and do what needs to be done to take care of my loved ones. It’s instinctual. And kind of amazing.

OK. Almost there.

This morning, Frances started with the cough and cold. Only, unlike her older sister, she is incapable of blowing her nose and generally taking care of herself. In fact, she is helpless and hopeless. She wanders around the house trailing Liam and me whining and exclaiming, “Runnies!” every time her nose begins to drip. Or, “Hold me! Hold me!” It is insane how much you can both love and be utterly repulsed by your children in the same instance. When I heard her whining ‘Runnies!’ for the hundredth time today I silently raged, “Will you please just shut the fuck up?!” while simultaneously gently dabbing at her nose and after offering her a genuine hug, full of empathy and all the comfort I could muster.

Liam didn’t head into the office again today, but he’s been working from home. I think the pukes are behind him, but he’s still pretty unwell. And pale.

I am happy to report that as of this writing, I feel ninety-five percent myself, not including the extra postpartum pounds my body is carrying, but you know what I mean.

Sadly, just in the past few hours, Nora has gotten the stomach bug too (insert exasperated emoji face, here).

Before the real deal, she must have run to the toilet fifteen times thinking she was going to be sick. For many of those fake-out times I was in the bathtub trying to relax. I found myself wondering as she cried wolf—I mean, pukes—if and when she finally did get sick, would it be callous and irresponsible of me to continue enjoying my bath through it all? I mean, she’s so mature and capable for her age. Surely she could see herself through the pukes while I continued to enjoy my soak?

In the end, about the fortieth time she came running dramatically—”Aaahhhh! Aaahhh!”—to the toilet, she did let loose all over the rug and her foot, in addition to the inside and outside of the toilet bowl. You’ll be happy to hear I did heft myself out of the bathtub to hold back her hair and gently rub her back, while offering words of comfort and encouragement (though it should be noted I did briefly consider staying put and coaching her from the warm water). Poor girl.

So. What’s left? I’m sure Nora has more in store for us tonight. One time of the vomits cannot be all there is for her. The baby, miraculously, has remained well—apart from the stress of needing a brand new circumcision in a year. I am hoping against all hope that he stays well. Given our luck, though, and the contagiousness of this stomach bug, I am sure we will deal with him soon enough.

At one point today Liam and I just looked at each other like we were ready to give it all up. Throw in the towel.

“Just don’t leave me,” he said, only half jokingly.

I laughed. As if I even had time to consider divorce! Although. Mexico had crossed my mind.

“If we can make it through the next few days, we can make it through anything,” I promised.

The question remains though: Can we make it? Or will one more unlucky event unhinge us both and require the local Children and Youth Agency to come and remove our children from our home? 

Please, everyone, get well. Before the rats catch on that we have food scraps aplenty collecting on plates and other dishes on our counters and tables. Before the film crew from Hoarders shows up at our front door, mistaking our house full of cluttered shit for a house with real issues. Before I run out of clean underwear. Please, get well!

I’m hopeful we’ll get through it.

I’ve decided you can tell a lot about a person by examining her toothbrush.

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At a recent trip to the dentist, I expressed some concern over a spot in my mouth where I had felt some pain and sensitivity when drinking cold liquids. The hygienist explained to me that I had very minimal evidence of receding gums. I was shocked. I take excellent care of my teeth. I attend check-ups twice yearly as I should.

“What caused this to happen?” I said.

She asked, “Do you use a soft toothbrush?”

I assured her I did.

“Do you find that you brush and scrub your teeth rather fiercely to get them clean?”

Hmmm…I assured her I did that too.

“Well, there’s your problem,” she went on. “I used to do the same thing. There’s really no need to brush roughly to get your teeth clean. You can be thorough, but gentle. And try out this toothpaste in the meantime,” she concluded, handing me a tube that definitely looked like something my grandparents used at one time or another. Great.

Well, the toothpaste tasted like shit, so I threw it out. But I tried, and still do, to be mindful of how hard I brush my teeth.

I always get such a kick out of comparing the state of my toothbrush at the end of a month’s use with that of my husband’s. His always looks brand new. I swear, if I didn’t see him brushing his teeth morning and night, I’d say that his perfect looking toothbrush is proof he doesn’t use it. 

Mine, on the other hand, has bent and wayward bristles, pointing this way and that, looking like a wild broom that’s swept the cobbled streets of Boston for over a century or more.

How can this be? 

Is my brushing symptomatic of the stress and anxiety I feel on a daily basis? And my husband’s neat little brush a sign of his almost never ending patience, and peaceful spirit?

I think I might be onto something here. Check your brushes, people. How do they look? Strangly and scary? Nice and neat? Somewhere in between? Do they reflect your state of mind?

I’d like to know.

Anxiety Episode #10: I’m by myself with the three kids when one of them gets terribly hurt and we need to somehow get ourselves, unassisted, to the emergency room.

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There’s nothing like having a new baby in the house to make me feel all kinds of vulnerable. Lately, I’ve been worrying that some tragedy is going to befall one or more of us and that I’ll have to call an ambulance for the first time in my life because I’m outnumbered and overwhelmed.

For the past week or so the oldest kid has complained of chest pain a handful of times. She’s had no other weird symptoms. No fever. No problem going to the bathroom. No shortness of breath. She’ll just randomly say her chest hurts. Then she’ll make a big show full of grimacing and saying she can’t walk for an hour or so and then return to normal.

I haven’t called the doctor yet because she has hours and days of being totally fine and not mentioning it. And because several times when I pressed her on it, the chest pain mysteriously jumped from the top left to the top right side, and then to the lower belly region. And also because I really suspect that what’s been going on is she’s been twist-swinging on her belly on the backyard swing at our house and at my parents’ place.

Still, it’s stressing me out when she complains about this, and I’m watching her like a hawk when she does for the first sign of some kind of serious illness or distress.

The middle child has been coughing a lot lately and randomly choking on foods and beverages. Will she be the one to need urgent care? 

She’s also been working on mastering climbing the wooden ladder on the play set in our yard. The rungs are spaced pretty far apart, so her legs have to stretch to the max to make the climb. She’s done it unassisted but with me or the hubs standing close by just in case. 

This afternoon she went out back for a time with her older sister. I stayed inside, but told her not to climb and slide without me. She said OK, and then promptly went out back to climb and slide without me. 

I watched from the kitchen window holding both the baby and my breath, willing myself to trust her and her abilities to judge for herself what she is comfortable and capable of doing on her own. 

She made it fine. I exhaled, and then raised the window and yelled to her not to do it again. There’s only so much I can take.

Should I even go there with the baby? Every time I load him into the Moby wrap I pray I don’t drop him on his head, onto the hard floor below, despite the fact he’s the third kid and by now my muscle memory has the process pretty well ingrained.

Leaving him alone on the diaper changing pad on top of the dresser? I do it. know you’re not supposed to. But, there’s a limited time during which I know he won’t be capable of rolling his chubby little bum up over the edge. I’ve got a couple weeks or so. But still. Just the thought of him tumbling off is enough to undo me. 

Or the possibility that one or both of the girls, when they’ve got ‘the wilds’ (which is how my husband and I lovingly refer to their hyperactive, sometimes sugar-induced or sleep-deprived horseplay), will carelessly trip and fall and land on the baby and squish his little itty-bitty guts out. 

Not even two weeks old and I’m already imagining and preparing for the worst for him. What a mess his mother is. What a dark, dark mess.

I mean, this is all I need, really. On top of everything else, to be painfully stressed that we are going to need emergency medical care or to be medevacked to the nearest level 1 trauma hospital.

Maybe I just need to get more sleep.

I’ll take diapering a vagina over a penis any day of the week. Hands down. 

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As if being a new parent isn’t hard enough, we have the added bonus of having to care for and diaper a penis this time around. 

I feel like our diapering station is set up like an operating room tray, complete with sterile gauzes and other necessary instruments and tools. With girls, we never needed this. What should be a simple chore involves no less than sixty-three steps, and often, all hands on deck, or at least four hands—Liam’s and my own.

On Easter my dad scoffed in disbelief at my diapering complaints, wondering aloud why it took two of us to change the little guy’s diaper. I just looked at him and said, “Dad, you have no idea.” 

Which of course, he does. It’s just that it’s been over thirty years since he’s had to care for a newborn penis. His memory must be cloudy. Or perhaps he’s blocked it out, due to trauma, which I plan on doing several months from now.

So, I had to remind my dad. 

“Well,” I began, “one person gets the new diaper ready. Another prepares the penis pad (a gauze with Vaseline to protect the circumcision site). Another wets the wipes (our last that remain of the supply given to us by the hospital). Then, one slowly opens the diaper, careful not to disturb any slimy contents too much, lest they creep out and dirty the things around them. Another removes the old penis pad, while still another covers the penis with some kind of cloth until the wiping is complete (We missed this step a time or two, only to be rewarded with a fruitful spraying of penis pee all over the place. Now, this step is essential!). After the wiping, the new protective penis pad gets put into place, the diaper is folded down to avoid adding further injury to the umbilical cord site, and the diaper straps are fastened with a quick prayer that the process will not need to be repeated again any time soon (The boy loves to wait until we change a pee diaper, and then decides to unload his slimy poops in the next few minutes).”

So, by my count, that’s at least ten steps, or ten jobs for ten people. The boy must be wondering about our incompetence as it takes us about as many minutes to complete the task of changing his diaper.

Gratefully, the cord has fallen off and the circumcision site seems to be healing well enough not to require gauze anymore. Also, we are out of hospital wipes, which needed to be moistened with water, and can presumably resume using normal baby wipes. All of this accounts for a reduction in steps by at least five. 

Now I think the only thing we need to protect ourselves against is the wayward spraying fire hose. I can deal with this, though, after the ridiculousness of the first week of penis care. I give you moms to many sons lots and lots of credit for going through this more than once.

Like I said, give me a vagina to diaper any day of the week. Hands down.

I can’t decide which is more annoying: typing out entire blog posts on my cell phone, or using my laptop with a significant broken key.

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For a little over a year now, my beloved MacBook Pro has been without a functioning delete key (see image below: where working key should be, you’ll notice an empty key space filled with glowing backlight).

How did this happen? Well, let me tell you. Last Christmas, I decided I needed a big crafting project for our basement play space. I set my sights on several online DIY tutorials for a child’s teepee and worked for days like a madwoman until it was finished, imperfections and all.

The finished product.

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Two dads trying out the space just to make sure it was safe and suitable for the children. They look quite at home, don’t they?

Each morning for a few days between Christmas and New Year’s I took my coffee downstairs to work on cutting and sewing canvas, spacing out poles, and eventually, assembling the whole thing together. I had my laptop with me on the floor because I was using the online tutorials as a guide.

One morning, I carelessly knocked over my cup of coffee. I didn’t notice it right away, but the coffee had spilled onto part of the Mac keyboard. When I finally saw it, after I let out a string of oh-shit-oh-shit-oh-shit-oh-shit-oh-shits, I swiftly righted the cup, flipped my laptop upside down and ran to get a towel. An initial assessment showed that every key was working except the delete key. An hours later assessment still showed that every key was working except the delete key.

I did some quick and dirty research online to see about replacing the keyboard. It all seemed to point to a very expensive replacement and no easy fix. I’ve never taken it anywhere to be serviced or inquired about a repair. Liam and I have simply dealt with life without delete. It is a HUGE pain in the ass to be typing anything of some length (e-mails, blog posts, lesson plans, etc.), because we inevitably make mistakes when we type, and there is no ease of just hitting a button to go backwards and erase. Instead, we must highlight the error and either type on top of it, or just hit the space bar to clear it. Often this latter move results in creating two spaces between words, when there is meant to be just one, so we have to highlight both spaces again and press the space bar one more time. Let me tell you, it is a real drag.

Forget forward deleting either, an easy alternative option on a non-Mac keyboard. There is this option on a Mac too, using a shortcut, but you have to use the command key in conjunction with the delete key.

Want to go back to a previously viewed website on your browser? Can’t do it with a quick and simple keystroke anymore. Have to use the trackpad to go and press that backward arrow. Major waste of time. Deleting massive amount of photos, or clips in iMovie? No problem, right? WHEN. YOUR. DELETE. KEY. WORKS. Now we have to manually drag everything to the trash. Such a chore.

I suppose it could be worse. We could be without the ‘e’ key, the most frequently occurring letter in the English alphabet, a fact I just looked up online. What would we do then? Substitute with another vowel, like ‘a’? Frances would be Francas. Restless Roost would be Rastlass Roost. Similar enough, right? It might even be fun for word-smithy readers to try and decipher blog posts using that simple key switcheroo, a cryptoquip of sorts.

Liam and I have agreed that the best, though, is when we get to work and use our Dell, district/office provided laptops—machines with fully functional keyboards. We’ll both forget that we can actually use the backspace key. So, we find ourselves doing the whole highlight and type-over bit, and then realize—wait a minute! We can actually just hit this key right here, and all is well with the world again. So easy. So the way it should be.

And because things are not as they should be, I find myself at times preferring to type out blog posts on my cell phone, a fact Liam thinks is just absurd given the small size of the screen. I admit this can be equally frustrating since the keyboard is mini-sized too and this makes it easy for misplaced fingers to type lots of errors. However, when this sort of thing happens, I can just easily hit the delete key, erase my mistake and type again!

Hopefully someday in the future we will once again have a functioning keyboard on the laptop. Until then, we are becoming expert highlighters and type-over-ers. Be thankful for your working keys, people. Don’t take them for granted!

Pet peeves: Part two (a bathroom special).

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I honestly don’t know how he does it, but my husband has this uncanny ability to sense when I’ve just cleaned the bathroom sink. Then, and only then, like a magnet drawn to a piece of iron, does he decide it’s a great time to trim and/or shave his beard. He couldn’t have a different sense? Like, deciding right before I’m planning on cleaning to execute this chore?

After getting his facial hair all over every last surface of the sink, Liam does manage to clean up after himself. Thank goodness for this! But, he usually leaves pools of water all over the edges around the basin. So while evidence of the hair goes away, it ends up looking like he splashed about in there and just tossed water all over the place. Which, let’s face it, is probably exactly how it all goes down.

This is the exact state in which I found the sink last night when I went to brush my teeth, an hour after having just cleaned it spotless post stomach bug of our oldest kiddo. “Seriously?!?” I asked out loud (he was standing just outside the door). He knew exactly what I was talking about. I bust his balls about this all the time.

“What? I cleaned up,” he admitted, with a knowing smirk.

When I mentioned the wet spots, he asked me, “What’s worse? Beard hair all over, or puddles of water?”

“Both! Equally so!” I admonished.

Then, he grabbed the clean hand towel I had just hung up and wiped up every last inch of water. I couldn’t tell him then that I’d prefer he use a paper towel and not add insult to injury by soaking up a perfectly dry hand towel, offending my better sense of order and cleanliness. I know, I have my issues. I thanked him kindly, and then tossed the wet towel in the laundry when he wasn’t looking, and replaced it with a new one.

While we are on the subject of wasting towels, let’s discuss the little girls’ use, or overuse, rather, of washcloths while taking a bath. I keep a small basket of washcloths within reach of the bathtub. This is perhaps my error. I should probably move the basket to where little arms cannot reach it. The girls know I have a firm rule about using one washcloth per girl per bath. I’ll let them each have one, to be fair, but more than that is not necessary. This way, after they finish bathing, I can drape one cloth over the faucet, and one on a hook up near the shampoo rack to sufficiently dry out and be used again on following evenings.

A couple of months ago, Nora shouted to me from the tub where she and Frances had been happily playing. “Mommy! Frances did something naughty!”

I ran in there thinking I would find floating poops or razor blades or something equally dreadful. Instead, I saw, splayed out on the edge of the tub, five or six used, soaking, sopping wet washcloths. Frances had raided the basket and grabbed up every last clean cloth to play with. “Frances,” I said sternly. “One washcloth. You don’t need this many.” The tone of my voice must have clearly communicated my extreme displeasure, for she burst into tears at my reprimanding. Why do I care, you may be wondering? Why make my daughter cry over something so insignificant?

I hate, hate, HATE, having to do unnecessary laundry. In general, if clothes don’t get too dirty, they go back into drawers for wearing another time. We use cloth diapers, and so already do three cycles of diaper laundry every other day of the week, in addition to the normal laundry load.

When a certain child decides to use five washcloths, they end up getting stacked, one on top of the other, on top of the bathroom faucet, where, due to their number alone, they surely will never have time to dry, thus creating the perfect environment for mold and other unsavory bacteria to form, grow, and multiply. So, into the laundry they go. Am I overreacting? Yes, of course. I am aware. They’re just washcloths. But they have the power to undo me. I wish it wasn’t so. Really.

Thankfully the girls have caught on for the most part. We seldom have more than two washcloths in use at a time these days. When the occasional accident happens, and a third cloth sneaks in, the girls are quick to apologize, making me feel like the real OCD jerk I am. I’m working on my reactions though. “That’s OK girls. Not a problem,” I’ll say in a fake, cheery voice. Even though inside I’m trying to control the rage and the urge to rid the house of washcloths once and for all. Grrrrr.

Birthday Season is nearly upon us!

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Next week Birthday Season begins in our house. It will last approximately a month and a half and will include every member of our family. It kicks off with Liam first, followed closely by Nora. Then, we’ll enjoy (maybe?) a little gap of a couple of weeks before the baby is due to arrive. After that, we’ll have another break of two weeks or so before I celebrate my birthday. Franny will bring the season to a close just eleven days after that. I love speculating about how the boy will fit into the mix, and whether he’ll arrive in the middle of the four of us, as he’s expected to, or if he’ll come early or late, and potentially share a birthday with someone else. 

Of course, not to be left out of this holiday extravaganza is Easter. This year, it falls days before the baby is expected. Happy, happy. Yet another event for us to plan. As if five birthdays weren’t enough. Now we’ve got a death and resurrection and baskets and treats and bunnies and eggs to consider.

I read recently in some kind of baby literature that if you’re expecting near a holiday, you might want to preplan everything in advance, or consider postponing until well after the arrival of the child. One mother wrote about celebrating Christmas in bed soon after her baby was born. What if you’re expecting in the midst of five holidays? Do you just make a run for it to Mexico and hope for the best in your absence? 

We recently considered keeping things simple and just throwing a party for all of us toward the end of April, after all the baby excitement has passed. As an added bonus, this plan would allow us to host more people at our small house if we could take advantage of better weather and celebrate outdoors. Who knows what we’ll end up doing. We are very last minute over here at our house.

In the meantime, I’ll be busy pre-planning what I can, and purchasing gifts and Easter basket goodies ahead of time, just in case. And, I will admit that the thought of eating Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Sour Patch Kids in bed on Easter morning is sounding pretty darn good to me right now.

My least favorite thing right now.

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There is nothing I dread more these days than having to bend over to pick something up off of the floor. For the life of me, I just cannot remember pregnancy ever being as difficult or uncomfortable the first two times around as it is now.

When you live in a house with two little litterers, it is just appalling the amount of shite that accumulates on the floors. Coloring pages, hair bands, markers/crayons/pencils, random socks and other articles of clothing, cloth diapers, uneaten food items and enormous crumbs, baby dolls, books, blankets, pillows, and used tissues—these are just a smattering of items I’m observing from my spot at the table now. It’s as if these little people live to scatter every last one of their belongings about the house in an effort to undo me. Blow my nose? Check. Put tissue in the trash? Why? It looks so nice here next to the couch and the dog puzzle piece, don’t you think? Don’t they want their mother to be in a happy place?

And don’t even get me started on the oldest’s newest game of “treasure hunt,” in which she collects as fast as she can, random trinkets and toys and loads them into all the drawers in her dresser and shelves in her nightstand, so that when I go to put away laundry, or retrieve some item I need, I’m bombarded by an abundance of play kitchen food items, wooden building blocks, random stuffed animals and board books. Treasure, my ass. More like, going into the effing garbage and never coming back out again.

It used to be I could whip around the place and tidy up in no time. Granted, the litter was still annoying, but I was able to keep up and on top of the girls for the most part. But now, this garbage collector has run out of gas. I waddle about the house these days and wince every time I see the collective debris. It’s become so challenging to bend over, I just don’t do it. Instead, I try to enlist the girls’ help from time to time to do a big group clean-up. I can often set a timer and make a game of this. The oldest one has been really into beating the clock lately for any number of chores. However, just today she told me that she no longer likes the clean-up game. Great. And, the youngest usually just tells me flat-out no, she will not be helping me to pick up anything. I guess it’s good that I am very talented when it comes to using my toes as fingers. I’m able to pick up a lot with my feet.

Still, I’ve been struggling to get along tolerating much more mess on the floor these days. Even at school I have to ask the kids to pick up pencils or scraps of paper I’ve dropped, as well as to reach inside baskets I keep on the floors. At least there students are happy to help me out and respond favorably to my requests. Just five more weeks or so of this nonsense. I’m trying to enjoy it as it likely to be (read: better effing be!) the last time. But it’s really freaking hard.