Analog Coast

This post has been writing it’s self for a awhile.  I’m so afraid I may hurt someone’s feeling with this one I’ve left it alone.  But I’m over run with it right now.  I guess if you’re reading this at any point and are offended you can just stop reading right?  It’s my blog, so it is about me.

Five years ago we had already been trying to get pregnant for nearly two years, and we had managed to get a stick to turn blue earlier in the year only to lose that baby that Easter, he or she would have been born somewhere around Dec 10th.  Most of our friends weren’t married or even dating their current spouses.  We were decidedly ahead of the game.  Joyfully we celebrated awaiting Kate’s arrival, most of you know that.  I loved my pregnancy, and in looking back I know I had terrible morning sickness, but I remember my pregnancy as blissful.  It was a sunkissed moment in my life.

Fast forwarding to now everyone is catching up.  I love it!  I am a self professed baby lover!  I love all things pregnancy and baby.  I know the miraculous joy babies bring.  I love watching these little beings change the people I love.  I love watching my friends become parents.  Being a veteran parent, the first, (though Kelly and Lorry have us beat in a practical sense) and a parent of twins I’m often bestowed with many comments such as…  How do you get through it, or more popularly how did you do it with two?  You guys are one super parents.  And while I love the erroneous statement that were some type of heroes, and to share my experiences as a new mom of two and then one, of  how we managed, and hopefully share hope, and perhaps a useful parenting tip.  What I long to hear is something along the line of… My goodness now that our baby is here, how did you ever get though not taking Kate home?  How did you ever say good-bye?  How did you live throught that?  I can’t believe you made it through?

You see, while were grieving during our most devastating days we knew very few other parents.  Those who were where often the most sympathetic, or perhaps most sincere.  They knew what we lost.  When I felt lost.  When I thought no one understood.  I often held on to knowing that one day those I loved would one day hold their own little orb of light, and somehow catch a moment of better understanding.

Don’t get me wrong I never thought that I should be your first thought when the doctor handed you your baby, nor our sadness.  At least I hope not.  But somewhere secretly (perhaps selfishly?)  I hoped that Katie might visit your thoughts in the days that your baby is new.  That maybe there was a very dark ahh-haa moment.  And I know that speaking of Kate must be hard or perhaps impossible to find a way to broach the subject. I know those comments will likely never be heard, nor do I hold it against you that such comments were never said. You’re happy and no one wants to invite misery to a time of utter joy. I understand, I really do. It’s just that sometimes in talking about diaper changes, sleep deprivation, and new baby scares and fears. I can’t help but think, oh but all that stuff is easy, it’s not getting to do it that’s hard. Now it would be a lie to say the first few month with Petra and Elijah were easy, in fact it would be a lie to say its easy now. Deep in me though no matter how hard it is, no matter how scary it is, as long as their chests rise and fall, as long as their hearts beat it’s manageable. I know it makes me a better parent, but I’d take being a lesser one any day.

I think that being far away and not being able to share your joys in a tangible way, perhaps reaches deeper to stir up a bit of sadness.  I think being so far from Katie really engulfed me this Christmas, and I think all the new babies this month stirred to the pot too.  I miss not getting to press my cheek to the warm cheek of your new baby.  I’m sad that by the time I hold him or her, he or she will likely no longer be a new born.  I’m sad because I think I may never hold another newborn member of our family (a long post for another day) I miss you guys.  A lot.

I also feel a bit ripped off sometimes ,that my son was dealt a bit of a shorthand, and  that he has to work harder and therefore so do I.  Sometimes feeling sorry for myself comes in the way of just wishing I could have the easy go others get. Why do I have to take it all on.  And then some days I’m glad it’s us taking it on because we are committed with a resolution of steel to make it better.  That somehow Elijah is lucky to have us, because we will walk the hard road with him.

All in all though, I’ve been pretty happy lately.  My kids are turning into amazing people they have great senses of humour, and I really like them.  I’m pretty happy here in Chicago too, though homesickness does sneak in every now and then.    Unfortunately my headaches are back and everyone here is less tolerant of them.  I worry that somehow our lttles are affected deeply by my constant wincing and such.  This morning Natalia gently reached up to my temple and softly stroked  it while saying.. ow?.  Oh my broken heart, how much they are truly capable of understanding.

I miss Katie, I miss you, I hope to be home soon

Every day, twice a day I get an email from my college full of announcements.  Some student selling a stupid DVD, some prof selling candy apples, some club having a get together, and on and on and on.  Well last Saturday there was an email sent out by a student on behalf of someone going into the military.  After reading the part of giving away 2 dogs (rottweiler crosses) which wasn’t for us, I read that they were also giving away a gecko.  I thought,”Hey, maybe this would be just enough pet for the kids to enjoy without all the added trouble of having a pet.”  So I sent an email saying we would take the thing.  Thursday the gecko was dropped off at my office in a nice big aquarium complete with stand, heating pad, vitamins and a plastic cage for the crickets that the thing eats.  I’m lucky that my colleague the ecologist is a snake/reptile guy.  He came in to look and told me that it was a pretty leopard gecko, that they never bite, feel nice and soft, can’t really climb and move quite slow.  He then reached in to grab the thing and checked it out and then handed it to me.  After a minute or so I put it back, now knowing that a gecko is friendly enough to be handled for a while.

Well, a few hours later I had the thing set up at home and then went to meet the family at a friends’ for supper.  When we brought the kids home Elijah and Petra just beamed at seeing the little thing move around in her terrarium.  I tried to get Elijah to name it, but he didn’t have much to offer so Petra decided it should be named Sally.

Well, Sally in just one day has become a new part of the family.  All three kids like to watch her and I’ve taken her out for the kids to try and touch.  Elijah did ok not squashing her, Petra likes to try and rub her back and Natalia even likes to poke one finger out and prod her, only to quickly take her finger away again.  The most unexpected part?  Erron thinks Sally is really cute.  Our leopard gecko has a real leopard-like spotty pattern, cute little blinking eyes and almost a smile.  Erron let me pass Sally to her this morning and this evening Erron grabbed Sally out of the cage herself to check Sally out and “cuddle” with her.  Who would have thought that we would be lizard petters and cuddlers?

This a neat and tidy little saying that is supposed to mean you get what you put into what ever. Feel as you will about Karma, I hate this saying, like most neat and tidy sayings life never seems to be as neat and tidy as we like to categorize it.  I especially hate this one when it is used to define parenting skill.

I was that once perfect parent who bought into this idea too, until I actually had kids.  The idea that the kid melting down in the grocery store obviously had a parent who did not establish firm boundaries with them and no wonder, not being allowed to run as fast as he can, wherever he wants, has sent him into a writhing, screaming, bitting, hysterical gremlin.  In case your not familiar or haven’t been reading between the lines the above mentioned kid is mine, he’s beautiful and he’s a tough one.

For those of you just starting out on this parenting thing, I’ll let you in on a little secret, every kid is his own, and while how you parent makes all the difference in the world, it doesn’t change the kid at the core.  If you have an easy one, it’s easy. Petra though the tougher baby has been a breeze compared to Elijah as toddlers, and Natalia is even dreamier, though the twin experience may have softened my view of what’s hard.

Petra was potty trained at Christmas, you can take her to a mall and she’ll walk beside you the whole time, if you ask her to put the milk carton in the garbage she will.  Elijah has been through multiple potty training attempts, the last of which we thought if we let him go without underwear he’ll notice when he has an accident, and will therefor be more encouraged to use the potty.  Good thing we have a steam cleaner or our couch/carpet/bed/dinning room chairs/ / / / would all reek of pee.  If you go to the mall you have to strap him into the stroller, or he’ll run away from you as fast as he can, strait into the fountain , all while laughing at the fun game he’s just started,  And if you gave him the same milk carton you gave Petra he’d either play with it, walk past you as you held it out, as though you had just spoken some foreign language, or perhaps take it and throw it at you in anger.

Now to be completely fair to Elijah, he’s had some language delays, so it makes it tough for him to communicate, he can’t get the words out, and he has my patience level, so he quickly loses it in a very big way.  I don’t know that he always understand us either, and so he just tunes out, which may be why although we are screaming hysterically for him to stop he keeps heading towards the busy road, he has no real sense it’s dangerous.

It’s been hard.  I don’t go out without Kyle because it’s nearly impossible to keep track of Elijah. By yourself you can’t run after one kid and leave two unattended while you do it.  Since Elijah big for his age he’s strong, so when he wants to hurt me he can.  An enraged three year old bites hard, hits hard and kicks hard.  Sometimes his fits have left me wanting to pummel him with something hard until he stops his earsplitting shrieking.  Yup, you read that right don’t re-read it, it’s not a proud thought and I’ve never acted on it, nor would I ever, but there are moments where it is sooo clear why some parents snap.

Elijah is a hard kid,and yet when people would comment on it, I would get mad, hurt, or sad. I didn’t want people to see Elijah as a hard kid.  I wanted them to see all his brilliance, the smile that melts polar ice caps, his intense focus when he’s found something interesting to him, his Kyle like curiosity at how things work, that he hugs with his whole body, not just his arms.  And then again,  I would get mad at those who would say things like “oh he’ll be just fine”, or “boys are always a bit behind girls”, because it didn’t acknowledge how much extra effort he really is, it undermined his difficulties.

I’ve always wanted that big family 5 or 6 kids, but lately I was feeling like I was done, that perhaps Natalia was bitting off more than I could chew.

And then something happened…Elijah woke up one morning and used the potty every time he had to go.  We put him in real underwear and then we (gasp) took him out of the house in them, and he stayed dry.  Now most days he is completely accident free in fact, the other day he had a bout of diarrhoea and managed to make it to the potty every time.  Wow! And get this the last four mornings he’s woken up dry and put himself on the potty to pee first thing!! And then there was the hardware store, where we let him out of the stroller and he stayed near the whole time and he listened when we would say “Come this way”.  I’m sure the other shoppers wondered why Kyle and I were walking around with our jaws on the floor.  And lately he’s been acquiring new words and talking in sentences.  I can ask him to put something away and he will, can you hear the choir of angels singing that majestic AHHH right now?.  We can play in the front yard and he doesn’t run into the street, and yesterday I took Elijah and Petra on their bikes by myself around the block and didn’t have to run after him once.

Sure we had to leave church early again last week because he was screaming, but he was screaming because I told him to sit down and stay in one spot, and he was, he was unhappy about it, so he was screaming, but he was obeying.  Normally I walk out of there with him screaming and wrestling me to put him down so he can run about.  This time he walked out shrieking holding my hand.  It’s progress and though it’s far from the kind of kid I ever imagined I would have, nor did I ever think such a scene would make me proud,  I was proud of him.  He’s learning to obey and he’s doing it.

Now we’ll just work on the terrible shriek he has, though I think it may have saved us an hour at the boarder crossing while we renewed our Visa’s.

I can’t even begin to tell you all how tremendously proud I am of Elijah, I swell at the thought of it.  Lately with two well behaved three year olds, and a good one year old I think I might manage a few more little ones in time.  He’s not caught up, and we’re still working on therapeutic preschool to help with his language development, but I see the light,  I see how wonderful he is, only more so, and I just want to squish him.

Okay so I used red as the anti-Green colour simply because it is the opposite of green.  I have so much to blog about our anniversary date, Natalia’s birthday and Elijah s move into real underwear, but as I was gardening today this came to mind.

Sometime ago in the green movement it was said that it was ecologically unsound and very un-Green of you to have more than child, that somehow reduce, reuse, recycle was applicable to children too.  The true Greenies will let you have more than one kid if you adopt, preferably internationally from a third world country, I’m not sure if this is reuse or recycle, reuse I guess, I’d hate to think of how we would recycle kids.  Actually the above is probably not true, the true Greenies likely never have kids for fear that they might undo all of his/her good work.

So when people may I ask did the planet become more important that the people inhabiting it?  Should we encourage people to take drastic measures if their carbon footprint is above a certain level?  Don’t get me wrong I love our planet, and I am throughly disgusted at is abuse, I recycle, try and limit my purchases, hang my laundry outside to dry, and I unfortunately shower less than I’d like cause I often run out of time in the day, and sleep outrules dirty.  But I fail to see how my creating life, and life is beautiful, as a point that some feel they ought to use against me, to accuse me even, as being irresponsible.  If I have five kids who I teach to be good environmental stewards, and you have one who isn’t, don’t I win?

The point was recently brought to my attention that large families living on modest means are likely more sound environmentally unintentionally, by not having the extra money, lights have to be turned off when you’re not using them, clothes are bought second hand or simply passed down until the print on the t-shirt is so obscured by stains that one can no longer determine what it was, car pooling is a must, and food is not wasted, but rather made into that yummy leftover casserole every Friday night.  These things aren’t done solely to be green, but rather as a means to stretch a dollar.

The whole thing leaves me feeling like I no longer want to be apart of the Green movement, sometime ago I heard that some people where trying to make Blue the new Green because it’s the colour of the sky and the colour of our planet as observed from space. I sure hope that the Blue movement has room for my kids, so I can at least be Blue, and not just about the finger pointing that some Greens are doing.

I haven’t had much to write about lately, so I guess I’ll just update you all on the mundane.  My headaches are somewhat better, not gone, still daily, but better.  Hopefully the neurologist will have some insights/cure.

We’ve fished building our patio and gazebo out back so now I have a wonderful space to sit and  relax, we can’t wait for you to come visit so we can share it.  I’ve also been gardening up a storm this year, and I find I quite like it.

Elijah is doing better some days, worse others. He is a full emotion package,  Hopefully we can get him enrolled into a speech therapy integrated preschool.  But we have to wait until august to have him evaluated and the developmental pediatrician our regular peds doc sent us to isn’t taking appointments until October.  So it feels a bit like were sitting on our hands.

Kyle and I’s 10th anniversary is just around the corner.  I had hoped to take a trip with him just the two of us to get away and reconnect, but he didn’t want to leave the kids, so I think we’ll just have an evening out.  It feels like a lifetime ago we were married not just ten years.  And in many ways it was a lifetime ago a different life.  How I ever got so lucky as to find ‘the one” I’ll never know, but he changed me in so many wonderful ways it’s hard to imagine I ever had a life without him.  He drives me crazy because were such different people, but I love him to an endless depth and he makes me better for it.  And it doesn’t hurt that he helped to create four of the most beautiful babies I’ve ever had the chance to hold, and most of them are becoming such delightful little people.

Natalia is about to turn one and baby fever is starting to set in again.  She’s amazing, she’s been walking for months and is starting to talk already.  She loves her brother and sister like crazy always traipsing after them and such.  Natalia really does seem more like a toddler than a baby.

I miss not being at home a lot, but were having a great time here, too bad Kyle is about to start work again soon.

MISS you ALL terribly can’t wait to see and embrace you again.

Erron

What does a quintet of Canadians do on the 4th of July? Why don our red white and blues and join the festivities.  The 4th started first thing in the morning with firecrackers randomly going off throughout the neighbourhood all day.  We worked on the Patio and played in the yard, we had Dominos for lunch and grilled hot dogs and hamburgers for dinner anding to the very noticeable smell of outdoor cooking to our neighbourhood.

We waited until after dinner to tell the kids about staying up past bedtime and watching the fireworks as we would have been hounded with the question “are we going to fire works da-mom?”  all day otherwise.  Da-Mom is Petra’s confused name for us. Sometimes while talking to Kyle or I, and she’s not sure who she’s talking to you get a bit of both, Ma-Dad is Kyles name.

After dinner we put on their tee shirts and Natalia’s dress and got ready to go see the fireworks.  The kids shirts have a silhouette of the USA done in an aged stars and stripes and was printed Faded Glory 2008 in text underneath, which Kyle took an ironic pleasure in.  We opted to go to a local suburb for the fireworks they had planned, as the city of Chicago was planing on 1.2 million viewers in Grant Park downtown.  No thank you, not for us this year. Oaklawn’s show was amazing, nearly as good as Edmonton’s downtown show.

While waiting for dusk in the high school football field they had a band playing music and the kids ran around.  By this point the fire crackers and random fireworks from houses in the neighbourhood began to roar.  The Show was amazing!  It was more entertaining I think to watch Elijah’s face light up, as he echoed Boom after each one giggling. Natalia sat in her stroller trying to reach up to grab the sparkles, and Petra at their greatest intensity looked away and nuzzled into Kyle’s chest a bit afraid.  After it was all done we drove home, and to our amazement everywhere we looked fireworks from every neighbourhood lit up the sky it was non stop!  People were setting off mini shows in the streets nearly as good as the one we had just come from.  When we got home we layed our sleeping and very sleepy kids to bed with no complaints, and listened to the bewildering number of firecrackers and fireworks that continued to be lit.  When Kyle and I when to bed at midnight there was no sign of it stopping just yet, and so we fell asleep to the sound of fireworks bursting above us

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The best of the bunch to check out Elijah's reluctance of having his photo taken visit my Facebook