Pictures I forgot to put in the previous post...

Once Upon A Time I Was a Knitter

The other day I finished up this sweater:



For this baby:

And I feel so happy that I have completed--not just a project-- a SWEATER in the ten short weeks since Elka was born. It makes me feel like I still have some eensy weensy bit of control over my life. Of course, that control has to be put on the back burner until after midnight and then it has to be reassessed each night to determine whether or not it is more valuable than sleep... But nevertheless, if I look hard enough, it's there.

Anja and Greta have really started drawing [again] lately. They spend hours of each day crouched over paper, drawing mostly pictures of our family. They each have a distinct style, it's obvious when they've been trying hard instead of just "sketching" and I love, love, love to watch this interest develop. Funnily, for Greta it is art; she is drawing a picture. For Anja it's pretend play, just an extension of her "games" where she draws out a story and talks through it as she works. And once Greta finishes a drawing, she's done. But Anja will change one drawing throughout the day as her make believe story evolves. So fun to watch!

So I guess we're all being creative these days.

ohmygoshimsoexhausted

We have a two-month-old now:

Now, let me be clear: To say we've been spoiled by Elka's "good baby"ness is the understatement of the year. Elka is AWESOME. Elka wakes up just once a night after going to bed between 9 and 10 almost every night. Elka is a champion napper [most days.] Elka wakes up happy and loves to lie on her back and smile at her sisters and me until she feels ready for a nap again. Elka loves to watch her green knit rattle bird that hangs from her hammock crossbar. Elka loves to nurse and so she has many rolls. I have to put powder in her neck rolls to keep them from being constantly wet. Elka has four chins.

But for all of Elka's goodness, Elka is still child #3 and while Child#3 is a champion sleeper and doesn't talk much, Child#2 and Child#1 are both very chatty and while they are also good sleepers (finally!) they have very different sleep schedules. Greta is an early riser and an early-to-bedder. She likes to go to bed at 7 or shortly after and wakes up at 7 or shortly after the next morning. Anja, on the other hand likes to stay up as late as possible and has to be dragged out of bed every morning somewhere in the neighborhood of 9:00 [or so.] This doesn't leave very many hours for "me time" if I want to have any sleep of my own. So mostly at the end of the day I try my best to do one last pick-up of the house while Martin catches up on the dishes and we fill each other in on the news of each others' days in the short time where there are no little people awake. Then we collapse into bed and it begins again in the morning.

But sleep aside, while everyone else seems to be getting back into the swing of the school year, we are still enjoying summer!  The other day I made a totally ghetto sandbox for the girls and they love it:

 It's an under-the-bed storage tub. Our backyard has become sort of "off limits" since we've had multiple HUGE branches falling in the places where the kids play. One day a branch fell on the clothesline and took all my laundry down with it, and they went into the kiddie pool where the girls had been playing the afternoon before. That was just one limb of a few, so I don't let us use the backyard anymore. Luckily, we have other places that are nice, like Battle Ground:

 We were there for the St. Boniface annual Assumption Pilgrimage. We didn't participate in the hike, but we came to help feed the pilgrims lunch and stayed out there for the afternoon. We visited the nature center and listened to the bagpipes at a little wedding going on down at the chapel. I wanted to go to the wedding, but Martin wouldn't let me. We went to a late lunch at TC's instead, down the road, and weren't we surprised when the whole wedding party came in for beers while we were there! So funny.

Here's this sillyface:

 She reminds me very much of the way Anja looked at this age. Here's a better, prettier picture:

 Elka is really sweet and snuggly. We are all enjoying her SO MUCH. The girls adore her. And so do Martin and I. Here she is giving me a big smile during a front seat diaper change coming home from our nephew's birthday party in Chicago:

 She loves nothing more than being nakey.

On the way home from Chicago this past time we finally made a stop we always talk about and never do:

Cabela's! It was sooooooooooooooooo much fun! I wouldn't have guessed that a sporting goods store could be such a great family outing, but it was!!  The place is completely full of taxidermy setups, with waterfalls and weird talking mannequins. The best part for Greta was the escalator. She is still talking about it and it's been two weeks. She calls it "that ride at Cablea's" and she loves remembering it.

We're still having a good summer! Glad we're not in school yet!

Oldness.

We've been celebrating around these parts lately. Last weekend Elka was baptized, followed by an everybody-who-has-a-birthday-in-the-next-few-weeks party for all of my side of the family. My parents and nephew were leaving on their journeys so there was much gift-giving and merry-making. And junk food.

The next week, Elka became 6 weeks old. (Last Thursday, to be exact.) We had Greta's godparents over that evening for cake and ice cream because they had not yet met Elka. It was a really nice time! There's something so charming and fun about spur-of-the-moment get togethers with people you really like. And the charm and fun is heightened when cake, ice cream and coffee are involved.

And then today is Martin's 30th birthday! We've been having a really nice day (with the exception of not making it to morning Mass on time and having to leave and feeling extremely frustrated. But it turned out okay because we were able to drive home and have plenty of time to load up and walk to a different church for a different Mass time.) And this is what brings me to the title of my blog post: Oldness.

I think about oldness a lot. I'm slightly obsessed with aging, the inevitable passing of time, and keeping track of years, minutes, events, etc. that come with a life. Specifically, my life and the way I see other lives through my own eyes. This obsession is almost always really depressing, unfortunately. I feel like my kids are growing up too fast, I feel like the next step of our lives can't possibly be as great as this part, I feel like we're so young and strong and happy and soon we'll all be old and wrinkly and we'll be empty nesters and people will look at us and say "check out those people... they sure are OLD."

Today at church I saw Mr. Klinker. He still mows his lawn, he still smokes his big fat cigar while he fills up his huge car at the gas station, but Mr. Klinker is looking really old. And even though the Klinkers are older than my parents, they aren't THAT much older, so I get to thinking, "Gosh, do my parents look that OLD?!" And then I think (with alarm), "DO I LOOK OLD?!?!?" And I realize that, yes, I do. To little children I am an old person. I am "a mom." I have some wrinkles around my eyes, I have a bigger bottom than I used to have, and I probably have that mom-ish look about me.  Maybe not to my peers, but to little children I most definitely am looking like an old person. And in the blink of an eye, it will be more than just a child's perception and I really will be an old person. And my kids will be grown up and moved away and have little children of their own. They won't be hanging from the top of the couch whining at me to stop typing and read them The Tailor of Gloucester for the ninety bazillionth time. (worst Beatrix Potter story EVER, btw.) And even though that scenario sounds pretty good right now, I know that years from now I will feel like I'd do ANYTHING to read that mind-numbing story to them again.

But there's a bright side to this sad obsession of mine and that is that I am getting really good at appreciating my moment-by-moment life. I'm good at stopping to smell the roses, dirty diapers, stinky potato bin that I don't have time to empty because I'm too busy reading storybook after storybook to my children. And yesterday when I was able to slip out by myself for a very, very, very short trip to a coffee shop I listened to a song in the car (Eels) with the line "these could be the good old days" and it made me think that these ARE the good old days! And aren't I lucky to be living them! And even though I'm getting older and Martin's getting older and we'll continue to get older every year, we really aren't THAT old yet (obviously) even though we like to tease each other about it.... and we certainly shouldn't let a 4-year-old's perception of us color the way we feel about ourselves.

So here's a picture of me not being old:

*** The previous part of this post was written on Sunday. Now it is Tuesday ***
 I have always used a wrap-style carrier for our babies and have continued to do so with Elka, but this time around I kind of wanted something less time-consuming (since it takes a whole forty-five seconds to tie on a wrap and get the baby into it.) I was really wanting a sling style carrier, but not a ring sling because I've use them and the rings always manage to annoy me. So I broke down and bought myself a New Native carrier and I really love it. It's perfect to just be able to pop her into it and keep moving. Since she's so little and doesn't seem to like lying down in it, it's not the most secure option--I have the wrap for that--but it's perfect for times like this, when I need to chop up my garlic for dinner but Martin is walking the dogs. Also, she just likes to ride around in it and see the world that way. It's pretty cute, actually.

SHE'S pretty cute. And so are Anja and Greta. We've been working our way through the Little House books and have made it all the way to On the Shores of Silver Lake, in which Laura is pretty much a grownup. I think she's sixteen or somewhere around that age. She discovers she has to be a schoolteacher and doesn't want to. We're about halfway through the book and we were reading it yesterday when Anja sighed and said, "I wish we were still on Little House in the Big Woods." I told her we'd put Silver Lake away till she's older and now we are re-reading about Laura's life in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, which is my favorite one of the books anyway, and Anja's too, since Laura is four years old when the story begins. After we read the first chapter, Anja and Greta started to play "butchering day." They got all their stuffed animals and pretended to cut them up. Then they built a fire and laid the animals on top of it to smoke them. And they were talking about salting the meat, too. It was so cute and silly.

Another activity they (Anja especially) have been into lately is paper dolls. But mostly cats. We read these stories about this cat named Jenny Linksy. The stories were written in the 40's and are just about the sweetest, most nonviolent things I've ever read. They are about all these cats who have a special secret Cat Club and Jenny Linksy is a tiny black cat who wears a red scarf always. Anyway, if you want to know more about the stories you can get them on Amazon, but my point is, they are innocent to the point of being boring. And we have made paper dolls of all the cats in the Cat Club--I cut them out and Anja decorates them--along with a paper doll for each of our family members, which don't get played with nearly as often as the cats. Anyway, imagine my surprise yesterday when I saw Anja playing with the paper dolls, arranging the cats carefully and then taking our family members and ripping them into tiny pieces. !?!?!? The cats were chopping up the people to make a birthday cake for Jenny Linksy!!  This is NOT the kind of activity these stories advocate!!!!!!!! Truthfully, I think she didn't like the people dolls and was looking for a creative way to get rid of them without hurting my feelings. Because if even a tail gets bent on one of the cats, she cries, but she never has been fond of those people.

Elka is very smiley, but of course I can never catch a photo of it. So here's one of smiling Anja instead, with a birthday donut and the birthday boy himself. Thirty!!

One Month Current Events

Pictures, pictures everywhere! Above, Anja and Elka

Elka, at one month. Why is this typing up as a link, I wonder?




We've been spending lots of time on the porch, since our scummy neighbors moved out! No more stinky cigarette smoke coming into my house! No more hollering at all hours! No more vacant eyes staring us down every single time we go outside! No more lighter fluid smells! Life is sweet when the house two feet away from your own is empty.


Anja took the picture above one night. I think it's a nice picture!
 
You might think Anja took this blurry one too, but in fact, I did. I just think her expression is so sweet though, I had to post it. She's getting really good at lifting her head/top half! She LOVES being on her tummy, which makes life easy.
 
These two pictures demonstrate the difference just once month can make! Hard to believe that slimy, blood-covered, cone-headed being is the chubby-cheeked baby she is today. Same amount of hair though.


One month! Good grief, time flies, doesn't it? I spent nine months being miserable in pregnancy, feeling like every hour was creeping by, and then Elka is born and now life has sped up again and she's already a month old--smiling, lifting the front of her body with her forearms, and mostly only waking up once a night. She's turning into a BABY. I never thought I'd miss the newborn stage... but I do! Although she's pretty fun now, especially in the mornings. While she is a champion sleeper, I sometimes worry that nighttime is the only time she's getting any good quality sleep. It's hard to keep a four and three year old quiet for naps.

Anyway, we've really been enjoying our summer, despite the heat and the drought. Sadly, the only thing our garden is producing is bottom blight. Well, and our raspberry transplants are doing well because Martin is pampering them. But my herbs are looking sad and weak, and except for the tomatoes (which are huge and actually have LOTS of tomatoes... just no good ones) nothing grew. And I mean NOTHING. Last year our heirloom tomatoes came up in our raised beds without any care at all. This year we have a box full of dirt. And I tried planting some pepper plants late in the season, but they are still the same size as when I got them! It's laughable, really. Oh well, we are fortunate enough to not only not be depending on our own garden for our food or livelihood, but also we have plenty of sources for good local foods nearby. Except this past Saturday we forgot to pick up our CSA share, so we're a little short in the fresh veggie department this week. So, EAT LOCAL! But once you've made the commitment, don't forget to GET your food!

The last two weeks Anja was enrolled in swimming lessons--her very first organized activity. We signed up with my sister's kids, and all of them had a pretty rocky start.... only one out of six children stayed in their original class--the rest of them moved down a level the second day! And one dropped out. Every day Anja said she had a great time but wasn't going to go back the next day because she was convinced they were going to "make her" put her face in the water. (So you know--her teacher was super sweet and I can't imagine her forcing anyone to do anything.) Anyway, we made it through! And at the end of the two weeks you're given a report that tells you what level you're ready for next summer... Anja is ready for the same level again! Hahahaha, only one of the kids was recommended to move up a level. I'm telling you, we've got some real fish in our family. Har har.

I read some of the regular blogs I read this evening and it seems like everyone is doing exciting things this summer. Well, actually, it seems everyone's exciting lives include broken bones and lost children...... I don't want those things. But my point is, things are anything but exciting around here. Martin goes off to work every morning and the girls and I spend our days being happy together. We've lately been making and decorating paper dolls. It's super hot (gee, have you heard?) outside, so we mostly stay in, except to go out and jump hopscotch or swing on the porch swing. We've been making iced coffee by the jugful and while it's been too hot to take family walks, I did recieve a package in the mail that contained a pair of Indian clubs, so I have to learn some routines with those and then I'll be back on the excercise wagon, which will be good. Very good... especially with all this creamy iced coffee I've been drinking.

But even with all this "nothing" going on, we are having the happiest summer ever. I have yet to feel stressed by moving up from two children to three. Admittedly, Martin and I are not getting a lot of sleep, but it's not that bad... and during the days everything is just pleasant. The girls went through a short phase of fighting all. the. time. about a week after Elka was born, but they've gotten over it.

Greta's been up to her same old silliness, and Anja has been just as creative and sweet as always. The one hard time of the day is when somebody, somewhere, flips the "crazy" switch at 4:30 and Greta temporarily loses her mind until she goes to bed. Sometimes it's a happy crazy, sometimes it's an angry crazy, but it's always violent and destructive. Today she started catopulting cheerios against the wall from the far end of the table. When I told her to go into the bathroom and wash her hands then, she ran by the fridge with her arms out, taking down everything that was magnetized to the fridge. Uuuuuggghhhhh. And you know how some kids like to have their back scratched when they fall asleep? Greta likes to have her tummy scratched! It's so funny. It's another huge difference between Anja and Greta: Greta loves physical contact--she likes to be tickled, she likes her feet rubbed, and she likes her whole body scratched.... Anja, on the other hand, has to wash herself in the bath because she hates being touched SO MUCH that I can't even wash her. So funny!

This is a seriously boring post. AND it doesn't touch on the annoyingness and unfairness of pregnancy that I said I'd post about. I'll do that soon. I still want to. I hope you at least enjoy the pictures. And I hope my next post is less dumb.

The really dumb part is that I started this early this afternoon, and now it's 10:30pm and after working on it all day, this is what I got. Ugh. I'm a loser.

Two Weeks Old!

It's all Elka all the time around this house.

We're all smitten.

I am perfectly aware of how fortunate I am to not have had one single jealousy issue from either of my older girls as this new baby has moved into our lives. It's been an extremely peaceful transition. Martin went back to work on Tuesday and while the thought of being the sole caretaker of three young children was a little scary at first, it turned out to be a piece of cake. This might be because Elka is The Perfect Infant and my big girls are The Perfect Preschoolers. I don't know. But whatever the reason, the past two weeks have been AWESOME.

We spent the babymoon period with Martin home from work hanging out outside. The girls ran in the sprinkler, we ate lunch on the patio, we took a few family outings. Mostly we just hung around and were happy.

And that's what we're still doing! Elka's most wakeful time is first thing in the morning when she's awake for 2-3 hours. She's so fun and alert and since it's morningtime, Anja and Greta are usually happy and so excited to hold her and fuss over her and help change her diapers and clothes... they LOVE having a baby sister. (Greta is kind of obsessed with the idea of throwing up and has been for a long time... she thinks it's awesome that Elka might just throw up at any time, for no reason. She's also really interested in poo, so she loves to see the pooey diapers.) And since Elka is still a newborn and sleeps most of the time, AND since she's a third baby and sleeps really well despite the screeching, drumming, fighting, more screeching, etc. of her older sisters, it's easy for me to still pay attention to the big girls all day long. Today was the first time I've had to put them off, when Elka was tired and fussing (I say "fussing" but it really just means she squeaks a little more) and wanted to be walked to sleep, so I had to tell them I'd read to them when Elka fell asleep. Which she did, in like two seconds, and everything was fine.

I'm telling you, this easy newborn stuff is incredible. I've never had an easy newborn. My newborns have always been the type who cry all the time... you know, to the point of not really being able to leave the house. When Anja was a baby, we would strategically plan our outings to take place only while she was asleep because if she woke up, that was it. It was a constant scream-fest the entire time she was awake for the first few months of her life. But we thought that was normal! And when people (*cough* my sister *cough*) would say how much they loved newborns, I always thought they were lying because the newborn stage was SO HARD. But now I see what she means! If all babies were like Elka (and apparently like my sister's kids) I would love the newborn stage best of all too! 

Oh, and by the way, I think Martin is going to start hiring himself out as a postpartum doula. He cooks, cleans, takes care of older children, brings home fresh flowers, and NEVER complains..... I think we could make a lot of money from him.

I can't believe it's been two weeks already!

My next post will be on the unfairness of pregnancy.

The Birth Story of Elka Rebecca

You might remember three years ago when I raved about my labor/cesarean experience that brought Greta into the world. Well this time was even BETTER.

Let me begin by saying how grateful I am to my OB, who will never read this blog post. My goal for this birth before I was even pregnant was to have a successful, drug-free VBAC. Preparing for such an experience led me to read a lot of traumatic hospital birth stories; a lot of accounts of unsupportive, sometimes downright mean doctors and hospital staff who left women feeling cheated, bullied, and ultimately robbed of the birth experience that they wanted and deserved. I never, ever encountered this from my doctor. He was supportive from beginning to end, giving his opinions and advice without being threatening and leaving all decisions ultimately up to me. He didn’t go on and on about the risk of uterine rupture during VBAC—in fact, at the very beginning he said there was no reason I shouldn’t try for one because I had no extra risks for uterine rupture in the way of thinning and that my incisions were great. I feel like with all the horror stories out there of Big Meanie Doctors I was very fortunate to have the prenatal experience that I did.

And now, here’s the birth story:

My doctor and I had "penciled in" a c-section for the day after my due date because it was a scheduled surgery day. He wanted us to have a bail out plan, but at every appointment he said he hoped he'd see me at the hospital soon. But he kept not seeing me there because no matter how hard I tried, I just wouldn't go into labor. The day before my last doctor appointment before my due date (when we were going to talk about whether or not to go through with the c-section) Martin and I got a 24 hour stomach bug--nothing major, but the next day I didn't really think it would be very considerate of me to go spread my germs to all the doctors office staff. So I called to reschedule the appointment, and try to reschedule my cesarean--which the nurses told me I couldn't do. I tried really hard to remind myself that they didn't know the full story, they didn't know that the cesarean was penciled in, etc.... but still, I was beginning to freak out a little bit... especially as time went by and it was the afternoon of my due date before I heard back from anybody about it. But, the "anybody" happened to be my doctor calling me and telling me that I absolutely did NOT have to have a c-section the next day if I didn't want one, but that if I did want to go that route, I was welcome to keep my noon appointment. We talked over pros and cons, I talked with Martin, I scheduled a regular appointment for the next day, therefore cancelling my scheduled c-section, and less than 24 hours later my labor began.

Funnily, this labor was an exact mix of my Anja and my Greta experience. My water broke as I got out of bed on Thursday morning—exactly the way it did with Anja, I just happened to be getting up a couple hours later. So there I was, stranded on my bed having the most massive amounts of liquid imaginable pouring out of me, Martin downstairs and me unable to shout for him because the girls were sleeping right there.  Eventually I was able to waddle downstairs and get a towel to sit on. I had a cup of coffee and my contractions started up right away. Our “plan” had been to labor at home for a long time. And I did for awhile—and I took a shower (best thing ever)—but then Greta woke up and my contractions were coming really close together though they weren’t incredibly intense yet, but at some point it occurred to me that I would much rather labor someplace else, where there would be a designated custodial staff to clean up my leakage, rather than have my amniotic fluid pouring out all over my house.  So we called The Grandparents to come be with the girls and Martin and I headed off to the hospital.

Early labor went really well! Everything was looking good and my contractions were working very efficiently, though they were super long and super close together. As I was getting ready to go back to the shower for awhile the anesthesiologist came in, who happened to be the same doctor who administered my epidural with Greta. (Really nice lady!) She was going off to surgery and had come to offer me an epidural before she went. At this point my contractions were lasting four minutes and coming a minute apart, so it didn’t really take a whole lot of arm twisting before I agreed to have one.  So there went my chance for a drug-free birth, but I didn’t really care because Martin and I had a pretty fun and relaxing afternoon.  We just hung out and were happy all day.  It was kind of like an all-day date! And while the epidural dulled the pain, it didn’t take it away completely so I was still able to concentrate and make progress all day long. It was awesome!  Eventually in the afternoon I got to 8cm.

And then I stopped. 

And I stayed at 8 for hour after hour as evening came. And during one check he said the baby was getting a pretty big conehead, and it looked like it wasn’t going to be able to make it through my pelvis. Again.

My doctor would have given me more time if I had asked. He had been so optimistic and supportive all day long, but the conehead thing kind of did it for me. That, and the fact that it was getting late and I was starving and I just wanted the baby out and, you know what? I’d given it a really good shot. I feel like I did a really good job making labor work for me. I read a lot of stuff throughout my pregnancy about laboring for a purpose and I applied all the techniques I knew and they worked all day up to that final point.  And I have a feeling that even if I had dilated all the way, that baby never would have been able to get through.

My doctor didn’t do the surgery, but the doctor who did was really, really nice. Much like with Greta’s birth, the operating room had a very pleasant, birthday party kind of feel to it. I don’t know if any of those nurses and doctors actually do care, but they ACT like they care about what’s happening, and that means so much. And when the doctor pulled her out through the whole in my abdomen and announced she was a girl, the next thing I heard him saying to her was “hello, sweetheart!” and it made the experience that much nicer.

I love cesareans. I love the feeling of having almost-total numbness but still being able to feel what they’re doing to you as they slice away your internal layers and then pull out a baby. I’d forgotten how cool it is.

Still, it was too bad I didn’t get my VBAC. The day afterward the doctor who did the cesarean came in and he told me all about how optimistic my doctor had been about the whole thing, how he’d been calling him to update him with every development and how hopeful he was that it would work out in my favor. Isn’t that so nice?!

And so, once again, I don’t feel cheated or betrayed or mistreated in any way. I feel like we all gave it a good last shot and it just wasn’t meant to be.

Hooray for happy endings!