Girl Like The Sea

Here's the deal:
I like to include pictures in my blog entries to make them more visually appealing. What I don't like is sitting around fiddling with uploading things for endless hours on my poor 90 year old computer. Ok, so it's only 90 in laptop years, and is more like one of those 90 year olds you see doing handstands around the lap pool. But with two small children, time is precious, and anything that sucks time out of your life and leaves you irritated with little to show for it gets a low position on the 'things to do'. I keep telling myself that I will blog regularly and enthusiastically when we get a new computer, and as that hasn't happened I have been ignoring my self imposed goal of documenting things. This is my excuse. I have a need to excuse myself every time I actually get on here and type.

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It seems we are coasting through the last sputters of spring. I did think of a situation in which I would be able to suffer heat without feeling too whiny, and that would involve beautiful historic scenery in a Mediterranean country, flowing linen clothes, and not having to get into a car.

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Being a mother is a series of broken mother hearts. Both good and bad. My heart breaks into a million happy pieces, pulling itself back together in heaves of joy and sorrow for the things that have to end someday. The bad breaks happen over their pain and sickness, hurt feelings, my sharp tongue and quick anger, disappointments and tears. Pieces of my heart pull off and float on the air like pieces of paper as I walk by Violet sleeping in her bed, face like an angel. Cracks form every time Clover flips the pages of her favorite books and her sweet voice carries memorized snippets of Dr. Seuss.

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My husband put himself out there and applied for a job in Seattle that fit his position perfectly. It didn't end up working out, which is disappointing, but I am encouraged that he even took that step forward. There is a difference between living in sorrow because you miss your family and having no hope that things might change, and holding that sorrow with a bit of hope. There was also a part of me that screamed "get me out of here before summer hits!" Lol

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For various reasons, and after many lost hours of sleep and internal battles with reason, I came to the conclusion that I am not ready to leave Violet behind for 12+ hrs to go to a U2 show, especially while she is still breastfeeding. I was scared to talk to Tim about for fear he would be upset with me, but time rolled away and the date got closer. We had some issues to work through. Disappointment, frustration, abandonment, guilt etc. The decision was made that at the very least I wouldn't be going, and if we can't sell the tickets that Tim would try to take somebody with him. We don't like to separated and do things without one another, so we are hoping for a buyer.

I am still not at peace within myself. This was a no win situation for me. If I went I would be battling anxiety and dread until we left and then have a hard time enjoying myself...probably becoming quite annoying when it came time to head home "Drive FASTER!"...and the uncertain possibility that Violet won't be able to shake her stranger fear and freak out for long stretches...having breastfeeding compromised on my already precarious milk supply. And if I don't go I will be at home feeling disappointed that I am missing my favorite band, losing out on memories made with my husband, experiences that can never be replicated. I was also excited about Florence nd the Machine opening. Balancing keeping your spouse as number one while caring for little helpless people is always going to be a challenge.

The part of me that is keeping me home also works in Tim's favor as well since it is the part that keeps me tender towards him. It makes me more gentle with his heart and soul than I might be otherwise. Although the strong maternal impulses I have for my kids may not be the norm in our culture, I don't know that the strong adoring feelings I have for my husband are either. I don't think that it is a quality that deserves doing away with - just managing. Circumstances in our culture cause many women to have to forcefully blunt their instincts in order to 'have it all' or earn a second income to keep the family afloat in expensive and uncertain times. I will always be grateful that Tim has allowed me to spend my days with our children, raising them up, filing away memories, learning to do new things I enjoy like sewing and cooking.

My goal is to make a step forward, even if it is a small one. Like having a sitter watch the kids while Tim and I go out to coffee or just stroll through a store together. Then in July I want to go see Crazy Stupid Love (Steve Carell!). I also thought that it might be fun to take Violet with us to an outdoor concert - Death Cab for Cutie is playing one this summer - but Tim didn't seem to see the brilliance of my idea. Lol. He is probably right.

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The house is delightfully quiet in the way that only a house with small children can be quiet. It is quiet without being....quiet. The music and bird chirps aren't masking the sound of a nonstop stream of voices with small vocal cords. They are just there, melody and harmony. I love my kids. But sometimes you need to not hear them for a while!

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We got a sandbox on craigslist that I want to use as a kids pool this summer. We will put it in the front lawn for swimming and then either leave it there or move it to the deck for Fall to put sand in. The huge upside is that it is big enough to cover a good portion of our ugly lawn from the HOA death eaters. Speaking of them, when we heard the herald of their impending inspections, we drained the savings account to buy power tools so that Tim could work on home improvements. He is in the process of fixing our bay window, and doing a good job of it. The garage looks very legitimately manly. It's full of black and yellow DeWalt tools and sawdust. Clover wanted to know what Daddy has been doing so I told her he was fixing the window. Now every time we go outside she says "dada, fix it!".

I sometimes wonder if my husband is a narcoleptic. The other night he was reading Mockingjay to me at bedtime and mid sentence - not even slurring his words or showing signs of sleepiness - he just stopped talking. I looked up at at him and he had his eyes closed, completely knocked out. As a person who has a hard time falling asleep most of the time even under ideal situations, with no brain stimuli, I will never understand this ability of his. It is something akin to possessing x-ray vision or the ability to turn your head around 360 degrees.

My daughter on the other hand can sleep with her eyes open. The first time I discovered this I thought she was dead and shook her violently. Of course, this was just a rude and frightening way to wake up from Clover's perspective and she cried with offense.

It's Wednesday, but essentially I have been living a series of Mondays all week. The most recent unfortunate event is what I tell here:

A while ago, Clover went into our bathroom and shut the door, only to discover that it wouldn't open again. It locked and isn't possible to unlock again from the inside. I had to force the lock from the outside of the knob to get her out. Fast forward to this morning, when I walked into the bathroom and saw Clover barreling towards the door. I knew she was hurtling obstacles to get in there because I was working on painting some cabinets in there and had taken the doors off their hinges, opening access to the contents. So I shut the door abruptly and kept her out, only to discover that the lock had trapped me inside the tiny bathroom, separating me from my 2 year old and little baby.

To my credit, I did manage to keep my composure for about a minute while I assessed things and talked to Clover through the door. At first I was hopeful that the drill was still in there from when I took the cabinet doors off. No luck. The knob wouldn't be forced. Clover realized there was a problem and got upset, and then Violet arrived at the door and started crying. Mommy panic mode and claustrophobia set in. Suddenly I blurted out "Oh God, I'm trapped in here."

At 8 AM, it would be a long while before Tim got home, and there is no window to shout for help from. Even so, the front door to our house is locked and it's unlikely I could get our adjoining neighbor's attention, let alone shout the garage door code through a wall. This left one option: freak out at the door and hope something good happens! There is nothing like the sound of your crying child to make you go a little crazy in the head.....the only problem was that I knew both of them were sitting right against the door, which would be dangerous if I managed to make the door come off the hinges, but I decided through whatever reasoning I still possessed that it was worth it. Goodbye cautious mommy, hello mama grizzly. This door decided to separate me from my children and it must be destroyed. I reared back as far as the tiny bathroom would let me and started kicking with all my might at the door. Never in my life have I been more thankful for cheap pressboard doors. Within a few kicks I realized that I was actually cracking the panel next to the knob. Bolstered by my little success, I kept going, smashing through one layer and working through the next, ignoring the pain in my heel and rejoicing that I would be seeing my kids again soon.

My foot went crashing through the outer layer of the door and I saw Clover's little face peering back at me through the hole. "Mama!!!!" My next hope was that I would be able to reach my hand around through the hole and fiddle the lock open, so I could get out without having to create an even bigger hole for my entire body to fit through. After a few minutes of struggling with the lock and poking at it with a bobby pin, it released and I was reunited with my crying children. After calming all of us down, I then informed their daddy that we would be needing a new bathroom door.

Recent events:

The sudden onset of mobility





Projects





Animal park






It's been fun watching Violet begin to move around and chase her sister. She has been attacking Clover when I'm changing Clover's diaper and there is much squealing "Ahhhhh! Gliglet!! Tickle!!"

Life is a bit crazier in different ways as the baby grows up and moves around. As soon as her butt hits the ground she is into something. Right after pulling earplugs out of her mouth earlier today, I found her next to a tipped over trash can pulling padded envelopes out from under the computer desk.

Clover is learning the alphabet, talking in sentences, making us laugh hysterically and get hysterically frustrated, and becoming a very cute little social girl. We just took the fence down from around her toddler bed so she has free run of the room when the door is shut. The only baby monitor we have is in our room to mic Violet when she is napping. Unfortunately the walls are so thin in the townhouse that we can't tell her footsteps from the neighbor's and don't know when to go tell her to get back into bed and go to sleep. I do find things in different places when I get her up from bed.

I'm still not posting on here as often as I would like, but hoping that when we finally get Violet's social security card, which in turn will allow us to do our taxes, and then get our tax return, finally resulting in getting a new computer, I won't have such a slug to work with and will be more inclined to fire up livejournal.

Recently we were trying to figure out how we could possibly afford smart phones, and instead of accomplishing that we realized we needed to cut other costs instead. Now we have no cable TV and cheaper internet through comcast. It's all netflix and antenna TV for us now! I feel sort of empowered. Like we are sticking it to some mystical man.

What is the proper reaction a mother should have when she opens the door to her toddler's room, and instead of finding a peaceful environment of recently ended sleep, she finds the toddler standing in her bed looking scared, the aroma of poop wafting through the air, her hair cemented to her face in dried snot, and a sea of thumbtacks and safety pins around the bed?

Oh cruel world, that you would curse us with a day that leaves you needing a vacation, at the BEGINNING of the week. To spend a good portion of your day listening to one or both of your children crying, needing for your own sanity to get some cleaning and tidying done and not being able to do it, is not a great way to start off the week. And now here I am, with the first bit of silence (at 3:50 PM), not counting the movie that is currently pacifying the 2 year old who wouldn't nap, and instead just cried with utter devastation until the snot covered everything, and what am I doing? Typing in my blog? Now that I point that out to myself, I feel a little silly. Since I'm here though, I might as well post a picture from the events of the day

Do you know what this is sitting in a puddle under my car?




It's not rain
It's (thankfully) not oil

Hold that thought - the baby is crying again

Here is where I type with one hand while nursing Violet

It happens to be the contents of a large bottle of stout, purchased this morning from Trader Joe's. This is where I vow to schlep reusable totes in my arms, somehow along with my two children, into the grocery store so this never happens again.

Here's the scene: You finally make it home from the weekly shopping trip, unloading the groceries, mentally noting that the bag of groceries in your hand feels rather heavy, and then two seconds later having nothing but a paper loop in your hand while you watch beautiful stout foam violently from the wreckage at your feet, while the toddler screams "uh oh! beer!!", and you chase her away from the broken glass, and you pull item after dripping item from the bag and place it in your two other bags, only to have those things dripped on as well. Then you scrape your things together and herd the toddler inside to the bottom floor, where she melts down because she can't carry her "gucky" (blanket) up the stairs to the main floor on her own, which wakes up the sleeping baby in her carseat, who begins to cry hysterically. You get them up the stairs, along with the groceries, where you have another repeat of the handle ripping from the bag and dropping everything all over again, and you are trying desperately to rinse off groceries and put them in the fridge, while the toddler runs around under your feet whining about this and that and the baby continues to cry, and you contemplate licking the beer off the driveway. The beer smelled great by the way, and the head on it would have been glorious has it made it into a glass and not pooled under my right rear tire.

Today we have Bell's Amber Ale - something I WOULD buy again




Characteristics I noticed on the first glass:
Malty and roasty
very smooth
subtly sweet
medium body

This beer would be awesome in the fall. It's got that yummy autumnal feel. Since I am so used to the Rogue American Amber, this was a lot different than I expected. The American Amber has a lot more bitterness and bite to it, so to encounter something that reminded me of the sweeter pumpkin ales of the fall was surprising. I don't know what this really means, but the Bell's amber tastes American. The only negative thing I have to say about it is that it goes down so easily, I drank, rather than sipped, and my glass was drained really fast. It will be nice to get a second glass and enjoy it a bit slower

Mommy and daddy spend the day working, disciplining the children, cleaning, running errands, cooking, answering cries, wiping butts and noses, being fussed at, clawed on, and demanded of. At the end of the day, when the toddler has been tucked in and the living room is excavated from under a blanket of toys, we like to crack open one of our latest selection of microbrew beer and make an attempt at taking a relaxing breath of air, delighting (hopefuly) our palate, and spending time together.

You can often find us in the beer and wine section of Wegmans during any given weekend, perusing the 6 packs and making a selection based on limited knowledge and eye catching labels. We skew towards sacrificing quantity for quality in the food and beverage department, which means we split a little beer at night during the week, and save one bigger bottle to split on Saturday or Sunday. This means that we want that happy little glass of beer to be a good one, and a good recall for what you really enjoyed and why is helpful. Fortunately, I tend to remember those which we loved and didn't love so much, but it's hard to keep it all straight in my frazzled and frayed brain. So I plan to offload the information into my handy blog for keeps, and maybe even help some of my friends find something they will like. I am no beer lingo expert, but do have a relatively picky palate so while I may have strong opinions on the subject, there won't be any professional level descriptions of my brews. So...don't tease me bro (If you haven't seen the "don't taze me bro" video, you haven't yet lived life to its fullest)

For the inaugural edition I nominate my most favoritest beer - the ROGUE BREWERY CHOCOLATE STOUT

http://www.rogue.com/beers/chocolate-stout.php


I've always wondered what Laura Dern is doing on the label of my beer


This beer is delicious, dark, rich and full bodied. The head on it is thick and creamy and flecked with cocoa. Even though it has a strong presence of chocolate in it, there is a nice bitter element to it as well, which balances it out. It tastes like an oatmeal stout with the cocoa element added in. I like that while it is full of chocolaty goodness, it isn't syrupy or unnaturally sweet and doesn't at all cross over into the wimpy girly beer category (say it like Aanold "guhley bee-ya"). Chocolate stout is perfect in the fall and winter, but probably not so much in warmer weather. I do crave something more crisp and bright in the heat, but wouldn't turn this away should it show orphaned up at my front door. This is my favorite beer. I love Rogue.

Now begins another project, which aided by my new power sander is going much faster than most painting projects. I managed to get the dresser, which we were given for free by friends, sanded down on all visible surfaces and primed. Next I actually have to choose what color I want to paint it, and possibly dream up a stencil to embellish it with. My first thought was to paint it gray, but gray doesn't really go with our living room...which honestly has no cohesive style to it anyway. So why not another mismatched piece of furniture? My other idea was to just paint it the dark espresso brown I am doing the kitchen cabinets. It would make sense to use one of the many cans of paint leftovers I have sitting in our garage, but of course that would be too easy and logical.


After sanding






After priming

This is one of my little seedling starters I whipped up today. Instead of buying anything, I just hacked up some egg cartons and grabbed some dirt from my gardening area in front of the house. Which, by the way, benefited greatly from sitting under some leaves and rabbit poop all winter! The dirt looks lovely - a dark rich brown. Unfortunately for everyone in the house, the only sunny spot to set these dainty little pots o dirt is on the windowsill...in the main play area of the living room. It's possible I may need to set up a fence around them to keep out the wildlife - I mean toddler.

The weather caught be by surprise today, seed buying day of course, and froze back up. Thanks! So no direct sewing of herbs out front yet. Here is my list of seed purchases:

Green onions
Chives
Basil
Oregano
Thyme
Rosemary
Poppies
Peppers
Catnip
Sugar snap peas
Lavender

God only knows where I think I'm going to put all these plants. I have a garden plot the size of a kid's sleeping bag. Not only that but I historically have a red thumb. For all of you who haven't been to hair school, red is on the opposite side of the color wheel from green. Perhaps the by the sheer abundance of things I attempt to plant, I will yield at least three successes. Maybe I will have to dig up more of my small, sickly yard. My wintertime fantasies have included digging around in the dirt under the sun, kids playing (not running into the street or otherwise torturing me), glass of sun tea or lemonade, birds chirping...moving on into evening we are on the deck, daddy is home, parents have a pale ale, kids are giggling, cinematic music floats overhead while we engage in ridiculous levels of adorable family bonding. Oh the lofty aspirations and lowly realities of being a parent. I thought Elmo would never babysit my bookish yet socially adept kids (The Gash children for all you GCC people), and I would become organized by magic.

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Happenings:

While it was still Spring we got to play outside in the afternoon




The cozy coupe was a 2$ thrift store find. Clover calls it and, any other wheeled object upon which to scoot or pedal, a "bus", and is not interested in other names.




The baby: Violet is an amazingly affectionate, needy baby with separation anxiety and a tendency to cry hysterically when left alone or just in her swing or walker. She also can't nap for long stretches without physical touch, and wakes screaming after 5-15 min of sleep. Because of obvious reasons I can't just hold her while she naps all the time, which makes the poor thing pretty sleep deprived much of the time during the day. She does seem to prefer sleeping in her own bed at night though. My how different your children turn out! Clover just wanted to move around on her own most of the time, but never without being able to see me.

Violet does enjoy sitting outside in the grass or the wagon and watching Clover run around. Like her sister, she has a taste for dirt. The latest hiccup in caring for two little kids is that Violet doesn't nurse well with any activity around her, and Clover is never still or quiet. It can be pretty rough with a hungry, cranky baby who can't stop her head from ripping away from nursing at every noise or movement. Consequently I either waste a lot of time trying to get a nursing session in before we go somewhere or do something around the house, or I deal with the crankiness of a hungry, tired baby who can't go to sleep. Meanwhile, the toddler isn't getting enough attention, so she gets louder, more disruptive, and starts misbehaving. Mommy begins to hungrily eyeball the pinot in the fridge and dials up Elmo the sitter while hoping no gray hairs are forming. And yet, the thought of having to leave them behind to go do anything is a sad one, and I feel strange and disjointed without them. And they are so cute! I love my family.