Soaking it up

Pin It Now that we’re officially in the process of not trying not to try I want to take advantage of the wait time ahead of us. I don’t want to be disappointed every time that I find out I’m not pregnant and I don’t want the next few months of my life to be spent torturously waiting idly for it to happen. What I want to do is to make the most of the preparation time we do have. We always kind of thought that for the most part, when we got married, we would have the freedom to have a baby whenever we wanted. When the pregnancy scare happened, it really opened our eyes to the fact that an unplanned baby is still an unplanned baby - even within a perfectly happy marriage. This baby may very well be our last and we want to soak up every part of it that we can. I realized that by not planning for it, we’re really robbing ourselves of one of the most enjoyable parts of pregnancy -- wanting it and making it happen.

So… practicality first: Changing the family dynamics and what it means for each one of the current crew members. We have plenty of time for ourselves and for our kids now. It will be a squeeze, but we’re confident that we can handle the added responsibilities of adding another member to the crew. Besides, in no time, having a playmate for Matthew will provide us with less entertaining responsibilities in the fairly near future. Another plus: Mary is also older than she was in Matthew’s infancy. She always wanted to help out with things that she was just too young for then; Now, I’ll be able to help her help me change diapers and warm up bottles. That part may prove to be more of a hindrance than a help at first; but I think that it’s good for a young girl to learn the life skills of a mommy - just like it’s good for a young boy to “help” his dad fix things in the garage.

As far as money goes, we won’t be spending nearly what we spent on Matthew. We already have the majors: Stroller, high-chair, crib & changing table. I’m getting a toddler bed from my employers which Matthew should be about ready for by the time the new little one arrives to take over his crib. If it’s a boy, we already have clothes and if it’s a girl than we’re set for life, thanks to the overabundance of nieces on my side of the family. Anything else, we can certainly swing. We will have to budget more for groceries once the baby is a few months old, but I plan to breastfeed for at least a year and to stock up on formula/jarred baby food gradually during my pregnancy so that we’re prepared. Since this is also not our first child, I won’t need to take as much time off for maternity leave and we see no harm in utilizing nice hand-me-downs - which we didn’t use much of with Matthew because we were excited about the whole Baby Store Shopping experience the first time around. Most other expenses such as wipes, diapers, bath accessories/toys are either things we’ve long since stocked up on or things that we’re already having to buy anyway - we’ll just have to buy in more bulk. Again, this is something I’d like to gradually stock up on throughout the pregnancy also, to make for less trips to the store and to keep our budget from having to go up too much after the baby is born.

I’m in the process now of making a list of things we’d like to do before we have another baby, as well as a list of things that we can do to save money/prepare for the new arrival before it comes. I’ve been putting a lot of consideration into our family being the size it is now and trying to think of things that I could be more productive with or ways that I could just be a better mom to them - before I strap myself down with more responsibility. I’m happy with things being the way that they are now, but a person can always stand to improve.

Yesterday Spencer and I were making dinner together and he told me that one of the things he’d like to plan for is to set up a bi-weekly baby-sitting plan for the kids throughout my pregnancy and especially throughout the later months. That will be our walking time… A time when we can walk together through the mall - which was something we got tremendous enjoyment out of during my first pregnancy - where we can get exercise that is good for the baby, talking/shopping time that is good for us, and afterwards, we’ll finish off with a nice dinner or lunch out of the house and without any kids (except for the quiet, well-behaved one in my belly) :-)

I love this part.

The Story for Our Grandkids

Pin It There's a story that we'll never forget from our Honeymoon.

We call it The Story for Our Grandkids.

Our first few days as husband and wife on Biscayne Bay, Miami Florida

It was the last few hours of our six day stay in Miami. We were on Biscayne Bay; a place we decided to spend our last few hours because it was our favorite location in all of the places we’d seen over past week. It’s a famous Hollywood shooting ground for movie scenes and T.V. spots because it’s simply breathtaking. (The scene in Marley & Me where Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson tie Marley to a table while they sit down to lunch, and Marley runs off, taking the table with him -- that’s where we sat.) There’s a strip of restaurants attached to a huge mall that sit on a balcony overlooking the bay where the sailboats dock. Hundreds of them. While you’re dining on three strips of $35.00 calamari, you can look out at the S-curve of the bay swimming out into the ocean, adorned beautifully by the Miami Beach cityscape skyline. It’s incredible. Below, Miami residents make a killing off of riding tour boats around the city, showing where all of the Miami movie scenes were shot and where celebrities like Carmen Electra, Ricky Martin and the guy who created Viagra all live. We thought it would be a cool way to kill the last hour we had before heading to the Airport that afternoon.

I sat down at the edge of the boat where I thought I’d get the best view when “PLOP!” My camera - my very FULL digital camera PACKED with pictures of our wedding and much more importantly the ONLY ONLY ONLY pictures of our entire honeymoon fell into the water!! “What was that?” I heard someone say from the dock… I checked my pocket and immediately DIED. You might have thought that my child fell in -- I jumped off of the boat, onto the dock and I screamed. “No no no no nononnonononononononoNOOOOOO!!”
To make a pretty long story short, the whole tour boat ride that a lot of people paid for was postponed so that I could sit on the dock and cry with my face in my hands, mourning the loss of every memory captured of my one and only Honeymoon. Everybody working the dock tried to console me and eventually they talked us into just getting on the boat since we’d already paid for it anyway. Complete strangers even tried to cheer me up. Spencer’s first thought was to jump in after it, but he was bombarded with “no’s” from every direction, telling him that it’s illegal, that it’s just too dangerous, and that you can’t see anything at that part of the bay anyway because the water was just too murky right by the dock. We got back on the boat in complete disbelief. I wore my sunglasses so that nobody could see me crying. One of the tour guides tried to tell me that it will be Okay because it’s always a part of God’s plan. I wanted so badly to let that sink in, but all I could think about was how terrible it was to lose every single picture -- and for it to happen RIGHT at the very last hour of our entire honeymoon! My camera had hundreds and hundreds of pictures of the best days of my life on it that I’d never be able to recreate. This was my one and only honeymoon, and to top it off, we had to be on our plane in a little over an hour - I couldn’t even come back the next day and try again.
An hour later when the ride was over and when we got back, the people working the dock were using a net to try to find it with no luck. Spencer announced to everyone that he was going in no matter what anyone said. A few people argued with him, but they eventually backed down and said that if he was going to go ahead and do it - that he’d at least need scuba gear because just opening your eyes underneath of the water would give you a nasty infection. He’d also need flippers to swim against the pull of the ships coming in and out. We ran to a crabbing ship to ask someone where we could go to buy some scuba things, but as luck would have it the guy had some of his own right inside of his ship! Spencer waddled back on over to that part of the dock, underneath the balcony of restaurants wearing enormous scuba-diving flippers and goggles. He took off his shirt and emptied the pockets of his brand new American Eagle shorts, tightened his belt and got ready to dive in. He had people hovering over both shoulders telling him that he’s got to be quick, not to swallow any water, to try to listen for the boats coming in, to not under any circumstances get close to the wall because it would rip your skin right off and to remember that you can’t see anything once you’re in the water…. Then he jumped in.
He came up for air one time…. Then about fifteen seconds later, he pounced up out of the water shouting, “Somebody buy me a beer!” with the little pink camera high in the air! I screamed. Then I realized that there was a roar of whistles and applauses coming from the balcony above us! I looked up and saw a crowd of strangers looking over the balcony and cheering for Spencer. He climbed out of the water and we ran to each other like a scene from a movie and I wrapped my arms around his neck and he picked me up, getting me completely soaked while everybody watched and clapped. In the background you could hear a random guy somewhere in the background asking what happened and having two people give him a quick rundown of the story saying, “It’s the last day of their honeymoon, they dropped their camera in the water and they have to leave for the airport in thirty minutes! He jumped in the water and they got it, they got it.” We walked back to the car, sopping wet, laughing out of sheer exhilaration while strangers walked up to us to shake Spencer’s hand and to remind us of what a cool story this will make for the grandkids someday.



It was a good lesson in faith. We always agreed that there was a reason it happened exactly when it did. What we thought would be the worst thing in the world that could have ever happened on our honeymoon turned out to be one of the coolest experiences of our lives and the best ending we could have ever dreamed of having to our wedding. We made a promise to each other that day: That throughout our life together, when things get as bad as they can possibly manage to get - we’ll remember the story for our grandkids; that life’s worst experiences can sometimes turn into the beginning of life’s best.

Ready, set... wait.

Pin It I never thought that having a baby while being married would be the one that I was scared to have. I never thought I’d know the feeling of being pregnant and feeling almost unlucky about it. What a terribly selfish thought, I would always presume. When my dad asked me how I felt about it, in that careful tone - as if he were being cautious not to insinuate that I should feel any certain way - I cried. It took me by surprise when both parents wrapped me in a hug and laughed at me. It never dawned on me that I was now a happily married woman, with a beautiful house and a great job; maybe it wasn’t the perfect time to plan for a baby, but if a baby should come, it was certainly no tragedy.

It had been two weeks since the symptoms had burrowed themselves so deep into me that I knew they weren’t leaving. I still had a week to wait for my next period, but I knew that there was no need to expect it; it wouldn’t be coming for another nine months. My friend who I’d loaned all of my pregnancy books and magazines to, dropped them back off at my house. I reached into the bag of books and pulled out what seemed like a whole lifetime of memories from my first pregnancy - the only one I ever cared to have; nine months of the most magical moments of my life.
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
While Waiting
Eating Expectantly
Your Pregnancy, Week By Week
Somewhere in the first few flipped-through pages of What to Expect, I fell into that old rhythm of being pregnant and remembering why I loved it so much the last time. It might sound crazy but there was a section in it that captured exactly how I’d felt that I swore I’d never seen in there before. I must have passed over it thinking that it would never pertain to me in a thousand years. Somewhere sandwiched between all of the other early pregnancy topics that triggered recognition the moment I read them, was a question reading: My husband and I had the absolute perfect pregnancy and perfect baby the first time. I can’t shake the fear that we can’t be so lucky a second time around. We were lucky last time. We were lucky to find each other when we did and we were lucky that parenthood turned out to be everything that we hoped it would be for us. We were lucky to find out we were having exactly what we wanted earlier than we were even supposed to be able to the day of the first sonogram. We were lucky that my labor was quick and that I only had to push for less than ten minutes. We were lucky that our son was so remarkably, wonderfully, incredibly handsome and that he grew to become funny and sweet and tender and tough and playful and affectionate and clever and utterly perfect! We were lucky that Mary and him became so much closer than we ever thought possible and we were lucky that I got back into better shape than I was in even before I got pregnant. We were lucky that our family turned into this miracle that it’s become since the day that that pregnancy test came back positive. How could we ever be so lucky a second time around? I felt like we were pushing the odds of fate somehow.

Spencer and I talked about all of our fears until we were starting to fall asleep. Then once we got those out of our system, we were left only with thoughts of excitement to maul over together. Names. A nursery. The anticipation of finding out the sex again. Cute maternity clothes. We’d do everything even MORE perfectly this time around. I’d eat fruit five times a day and exercise all the way through. I’d play music for my belly and take way too many pictures. I’d finish Mary and Matthew’s scrapbooks and record everything that happened in this pregnancy. Spencer could proudly say for the first time in his life, “My wife is having a baby!” It wasn’t long before I was completely caught up in all of the excitement. I couldn’t sleep; not that night, and not for about three night following. I waited impatiently for the week of my period to be able to take a pregnancy test that I had no doubt would tell me that I was pregnant. Then we could really start the planning.


Then something I didn’t expect happened. The week of my period, I got my period. I sat on the toilet and I cried with my face in my hands. I didn’t even understand why. I didn’t even want to be pregnant in the first place. Spencer held me while I sobbed in a way that I’d never sobbed before in my life. Somewhere between crying over being pregnant three weeks ago and crying over not being pregnant that day, my life changed. I’m not one to let my children see me cry, but Matthew toddled on over to me while I sat on the edge of the tub and he looked at me with a look of seriousness I had no idea he was even capable of making. I tried to hold it in for his sake, but my face was already wet with salt and tears and tension. He looked right in my eyes; his normally short-lived attention span stood still in it’s tracks. He reached his two-year-old hand to my face and ran his tender palm along my cheek, which only broke me down even more. My normally heavy-handed, rough-housing little bronco of a son stood in front of me for five minutes, running his fingers ever so gently through the locks of my hair, with a calm over him that I have never seen before. He let his fingers run through my hair, from the top all the way down to the ends again and again until Spencer pulled me up and held me some more. I looked down at Matthew, who stayed right by my side, waiting for something to tell him it was all better. I smiled down at him and his explosive smile wiped the floor with my pain. “Mommy!” he said, like I was just walking in the door. This was my family. And there was nothing sad about that, but it would still take me a few days to come back down to Earth and to put this whole fiasco behind me.


Spencer, who had been excited about the new addition from the moment I told him my symptoms, had been the one to just a few weeks ago convince me that we would be fine having another baby. Not long ago I was asking him to give me reasons to be excited about it -- but in the car the other day I found myself asking him to tell me why I should be excited about NOT having one.

I realized, though, that I’m not done being a mom of two yet. As we passed by a warehouse for enormous, wooden backyard playgrounds and swing-sets, I realized that I want to be the kind of mom who doesn’t have to sacrifice luxuries like that because I have too many mouths to feed. We went to K-Mart and backpacks were 70% off. The backpack I’d wanted to get for Mary in the beginning of the school year that was too expensive at the mall, was in there now, looking prettier than ever and we were able to just say “let’s get it.” We even got one for Matthew, too. Just for the fun of watching him walk around the store with it like he was coolest kid on the block.

So we’ve decided that there’s no rush to have another one. But at the same time, our wheels have begun turning and we’re thinking in terms of a bigger family. When we look for a new house, it’ll be a four bedroom - or at least a three bedroom with a den/office/finished basement that we’ll be able to make due with until we move into our permanent home with a new mortgage in both of our names; the house that we plan to grow old in. We’ve decided that the thought of having another one was just too thrilling to let go of completely. We won’t rush into this one; there’s just no need to because we already have our family and we do want to enjoy it being the more manageable size that it already is before we take that second leap. We aren’t going to necessarily “try,” we’ll just let nature take it’s course and if it happens, than we’ll make sure that we’re ready for it. In the mean time, we’re going to start giving a little more love to our savings than we already do and we’ll hold on to Matthew’s things as he grows out of them. And when we plan for upcoming changes in the next few years, we’ll think of them from the perspective of a possible family of five.

A surprise delivery

Pin It Having a baby was the last thing on our minds.
Moving.
Custody hearing.
Switching daycares.
Clarinet lessons.
Finishing my Bible Study class.
Buying a new bed and getting our new coffeepot in the mail.
These are the things that were on our minds. When the first sign came on about two weeks ago, it left just as uneventfully as it had come. In fact, it had been happening for about three days before I noticed at second thought that it had been happening for some time. I was sweeping when it came on again; The feeling of something irritating my breasts. On and on throughout the day, I was having to adjust and readjust my bra in search of some comfort. I didn’t notice it again until the next day, at which point I actually peeked inside my bra to make sure that there wasn’t a piece of lint inside causing the irritation. That’s when I noticed how much tighter my bra had actually gotten. It was tighter in a way that shortening the straps couldn’t accomplish. Just when the idea could be heard rounding the corner to make an appearance I remembered: Oh, wait. It’s September now. The temperature just dropped for the first time all summer to less than 70 degrees. Of course! It’s just my body getting used to the nippiness in the early morning air. It was the next day that it came on again - with too much strength to go unnoticed, while sweat was pocketing itself under my arms on a particularly fast-paced, warm-whether afternoon. There hadn’t been any nippiness in the air for days when the second sign emerged, just as rhythmically as it’s predecessor.

On this particular day, while putting away a few groceries, I felt that familiar tug at my lower abdomen, signaling the oncoming of my next cycle. Oddly, though, the next cramp didn’t happen for a few hours. For two days the cramps would come just one at a time, with each separated by a large block of time that sometimes stretched on uneventfully for hours. I noticed that by the fourth day, I’d been having menstrol-like cramps for almost a week without them increasing at all in severity. By the fifth day they were starting to come in sets of two or three at a time, much more indicative of a period than the ones before it, though even those felt unmistakably like nothing else in the world but period cramps.

I smiled naïvely at the thought, blind as a bat, enjoying the way that it reminded me of being pregnant with my first son. It was a feeling I would have never thought of missing if I didn’t feel like I was almost nearly reliving it. I texted Spencer. “I know that I’m not - but it’s so strange. My body keeps getting the same feelings it got when I was pregnant with Matthew. It’s reminding me of the time I had with my little boy.” Spencer surprised me with the acknowledgment that he’d thought for a few nights that something was different - just a feeling that he thought I was. It was so far from the response that I was expecting, that I didn’t even know what to say back. The thought soaked in, like a spill into a carpet; Slowly but surely, and utterly permanent. Somehow, Spencer knew the night that I conceived Matthew -- but we were trying to get pregnant when we conceived Matthew, so him having some idea of when it happened wasn’t so far-fetched. But the idea of having a baby without planning for it and actually trying to create it was too foreign for me to accept right away. He said that the same way he was convinced he knew the night we conceived Matthew, was the certainty that came over him the night he was sure it had happened again.

Again. The word itself was so heavy. Again.

A week had passed and the symptoms only grew with their momentum. I was inexplicably bloated like a balloon with unsettling gas that made my stomach feel forever full, even when I was insatiably hungry. I couldn’t finish a single meal without setting it down, convinced that I was just eating all of my meals too fast. I’d have to wait for my stomach to settle itself before finishing the last half of anything, even a glass of water. For the first time in my life since I was a kid, I was unforgivably constipated - no matter how much water I drank to counteract whatever was ailing my system. To compound problem, by breasts were stating to feel like I was walking around with a pair of invisible hands crushing them aggressively inside of my shirt. By the time I spoke with my currently pregnant friend on the phone a week and a half after the symptoms came on, I was walking around feeling the way that any woman does into the first day of a terribly heavy period. The cramps weren’t debilitating, but they were close to it and threatening to get worse with every new wave that rushed me like the powerful surge of an ocean surf on a stormy day. She said that she walked around for a week expecting her period to start (and start heavy) for a week when she found out that she was pregnant. It was her dead giveaway. In the middle of our conversation, I had to rush off of the phone and make a quick dash to the bathroom, sure without a doubt that I would find mother-nature making her monthly appearance behind the closed bathroom door. Nothing. That was when I knew that I was having another baby.


A few more days had gone by and I decided to tell my mom. Spencer was almost as convinced as I was, but we knew that it was probably too early to take a pregnancy test. When we checked the calendar we realized that my period was still more than a week away. I wasn’t even close to being late, but every other symptom in the book was taking over my body, making me feel like the intruder of my own skin - the same way I felt when I was pregnant with Matthew. Your body barely belongs to you anymore… Although the actual roommate you do have in there is the absolute object of your every affection, the feeling of your body being taken over is comparable to the way an impolite roommate can make you feel like you’re the one who’s in the way in your own home. One day you wake up and nothing looks, works, reacts or feels the way that you’ve always been used to it behaving for all of your life. My mom finished my sentence, saying…. “You might be pregnant.” A day later, after my dad had heard it through the grapevine, he asked me in a careful tone, how I felt about it. I fell unexpectedly into a fit of tears that strangled me when I tried to hold them back, choking them out of me until I had both parents laughing light-heartedly and hugging me at the same time. This pregnancy was already so unrecognizable from what my experience was with Matthew.



It wasn’t until I had an evening alone with Spencer, and both of the children were fast asleep that we made each other feel a lot better about the impending demolition and complete reconstruction of everything we’ve made of our lives together so far. It might seem backward; like we should have been petrified by the news of Matthew instead of the one baby we’d be having within the sanctity and purity of wedlock well into a comfortably established and happily family lifestyle -- but we weren’t thinking of it that way. To be honest, we were terrified of losing our happy, rhythmic, comfortable lifestyle; the lifestyle that we were just starting to really relish in and be able to enjoy as both of the children grew into gradually more self-sufficient and easy-to-please stages. Mary can adequately make her own bowl of cereal if need be on a hectic morning and we don’t have to trick Matthew into his crib at nap or night-time anymore - most of the time we can simply say, “Ok, it’s night-night time. Give hugs and kisses to everyone.” He’ll toddle happily to each member of the family, obediently give smiley hugs and sincere little smooches, then snuggle up comfortably with his teddy bears the moment we lie him into his crib.

A glimps of our life before the big news

Pin It Where to even start…

Let’s start small.
Mary started getting an allowance. I made a deal with her that if she could remember to do her chores and do them well for four whole weeks, we would start giving her an allowance. I agonized for the last week over exactly how much we should give her (enough for her to be able to watch it grow pretty rapidly - before she lost interest, but not so much that she wasn’t truly earning it). We decided on $4.50 a week. She also has the opportunity to earn an even $5.00 if we notice her doing a particularly great job (like remembering to do them on her own everyday even before she plays and/or doesn’t complain about it when we remind her). Likewise, she can lose parts of it or even the whole thing from complaining too much or saying even once “I don’t even want a stupid allowance” - which she LOVES to say the second something becomes the slightest inconvenience. So far, she’s been doing well and I’m excited for her to be able to start learning the value of a dollar and having fun with the money she earns. Spencer and I are admittedly tightwads - but it’s the reason we keep a beautiful house with wonderful things on pretty puny pay. We know how to live frugally without having to sacrifice the important things or even the fun things every once in a while. Unfortunately, Mary has to hear the words, “no” more often than we’d like to say it to her in order for us to stick to a tight budget. This is also kind of a way to force us into letting her have a little treat every once in a while. The first thing she spent her allowance on was the Book Fair at school, which just made my day.


Speaking of the Book Fair at school….
Spencer and I have finally, after nearly two years of her mother drastically violating every stipulation in the custody agreement, have bitten the bullet and filed a motion with the court to modify her mother’s visitation. When Spencer filed the paper, he was good at keeping it clear and concise - but there was still a pretty hefty list of violations to report. Just about every one in the book.

Not picking her up for any Thursday visitations for nearly a year
Only picking her up a handful of times for her weekend visitations
Not spending the night with her mother for the first six months of the agreement
Weekend visitations always start late and end early - without any notice whatsoever
Never being less than 30 minutes late picking up Mary for visitation (no notice)
Sometimes dropping her off as many as six HOURS early (no notice)
Does not get her on the holidays in her column
Does not schedule summer visitation (therefore forfeiting them altogether) - which are substantial week-long visits.
Does not get her during breaks from school.
The list just goes on and on and on…..

If you remember from last year, Mary’s mom was not at all involved with Mary’s school. She never even met her teacher; I don’t think she even knew her name. Never did a single page of homework with her; not a single project; didn’t read with her a single book; didn’t attend her school functions or her chorus concert. Never even stepped foot in the school. Spencer and I went to all of the parent/teacher conferences/open houses/family reading nights.
Well since filing the paperwork with the court, her mother decided that she better start following the court ordered custody agreement. Not for the sake of actually getting to spend time with her daughter - but just to make Spencer out to be a liar before the court date. Low and behold, she actually showed up to Mary’s school’s Open House. Mary was SHOCKED. I told her that she could hang out with her mom for the night, since she so rarely gets to see her, but Mary went back and forth between both parents all night, just soaking up the rare opportunity to be able to do it. She was on Cloud 9. From Mary’s point of view she saw that her mom came to her school to meet her principal and teacher, like the other normal parents. What we saw was this:
Jen shows up 20 minutes late, long after the principal started his speech to all of the families in the auditorium. Makes Mary point her to the bathroom immediately and disappears for fifteen minutes, leaving Mary in a panic thinking that her mom must have left. We catch her on the walk to the classrooms, after the assembly was over. She signs in right after us as Jennifer STUCKY Mary Stucky (DAUGHTER) <-- The (daughter) part being an unnecessary addition and Stucky obviously not being her last name anymore, as Spencer and I signed in as Joseph and Alicia Stucky right above her. That part wasn’t something we cared about as much as it was just something that made us nervous about what kind of humiliating scenes she was going to cause right in the middle of the Open House in front of Mary’s teacher and all of the other parents. The night went off without a hitch because as soon as the teacher started talking (THE WHOLE POINT IN BEING AT THE OPEN HOUSE IN THE FIRST PLACE, by the way) Jen took Mary and left the classroom, being gone for 75% of the night, missing almost EVERYTHING that the teacher said to all of the parents. She didn’t tell us that she was going to take Mary anywhere - but then again, we wouldn’t expect that kind of courtesy in a thousand years. When they did return, we saw that it was to take her to the Book Fair. We started to think “Ok. It must be so that she doesn’t have to sit through this with us which is understandable. She must be staying for the second session, which started immediately afterward.” Nope. Ten minutes of talking on her phone to her boyfriend while every other parent was asking questions and discussing important things as a group with the teacher, Jen left the building with all of the other parents.

Talk about just doing something for the sake of getting credit for it.


Spencer and I realized that we’re going to be dealing with Jen a lot more often until the court hearing, at which point we’re almost certain we’ll go back to barely hearing from her again. But in the mean time, we’re just going to have to pray A LOT for the exchanges to go smoothly and for patience, compassion and a boatload of understanding to help us remain slow to anger for Mary’s sake and for the sake of the sanity of our household.


In other news: the house went up on the market at 8:00 on Thursday. By Friday morning, we had four requests for showings and two of them have already happened. The house is going to go quickly. We got home last night and the last showing was still going on (a good sign that it lasted that long!) The couple was there for more than an hour and were eager to ask us, as the owners a lot of questions about the area and neighbors. Even after we talked with them for a while, they hung out front by their car and talked for a long time afterward. We also took a tour of our very first house on our house-hunt yesterday afternoon after work. We decided against it, but it’s definitely exciting to get the ball rolling. Keep your fingers crossed for us. The other news will be in an entirely new update, because it shouldn’t take a backseat to all of the prior commotion that took place before it. Keep you posted.

Momma's Boy

Pin It

Nothing like the love between a mom and her son

We did a little redecorating this week. The real Estate agent is coming this weekend to take pictures of the property and we want the house looking it’s best. Our new bed makes our bedroom look like something out of a Home & Garden magazine and our living room still practically smells of the Lilac oil diffusers that are always burning in the Pier 1 Imports showroom. Our dining room is painted “Little Boy Blue” and made into a really terrific playroom for Matthew -- I don’t think that that will exactly help sell the house to anyone who sees the pictures, but for our family it made a lot more sense to utilize the extra space for something we’d actually get use out of everyday, since we already have an eat-in kitchen and our house wasn’t exactly designed for the purpose of entertaining on a regular basis. I spent my entire Saturday cleaning every inch of the house from top to bottom and I still have more work to do today before she comes.

The last time the real estate agent came, it was just to introduce herself and to have a look around. New kitchen floors, a little water damage in the basement, what a cute little room for a little girl…. She made her way into Matthew’s nursery -- a room we’ll have to change soon into something more “grown-up” for him as he fast approaches those toddler years. She turned into his doorway saying, “I guess this is the little guy’s room.” Matthew dropped his little fists to his side and ran with a purpose in after her, screaming “Noooo! No! No! No!” with every determined little step. Spencer and I dropped our eyebrows and looked at each other, confused, and then went in after them wondering what the problem was. You could almost hear him thinking, “Don’t look under my crib! Those Playboys aren’t mine!!” We all got a good laugh about it, but when we convened in his nursery, you could have soaked our hearts up off of the floor with a mop. There he was, standing in the middle of his room, wearing the proudest smile we’d ever seen, looking up at his walls and swinging his arms sheepishly the way that two-year-olds do. He knew that that room was his territory and she needed his permission to step into it. She took a few steps back and knelt down to his level to ask him if this was his room -- His whole attitude changed and suddenly he was beaming with pride. With his chest puffed out and his little teeth showing, he spun around, taking his time to look at every giant wall. It was the first time I can ever remember him really taking it in; seeing all of the novelty clocks and matching picture frames and sailboat themed pieces of furniture - a lot of which his father and I hand-painted - that we took so much time to carefully decide on for him and his very special, very first room. When we move, we’ll be able to set it up in a new way that’s tailored more to his specific likes and personality -- now that he’s physically here and old enough to have some. But the magic of his very first room will be lost, buried under a new coat of paint in a house that will belong to someone else entirely.

I can’t believe how quickly Matthew’s growing up. During his infant years, the days passed by a lot slower. one week didn’t differ much from the last. Every once in a while he’d get a little stronger, learn a new sound, make a different facial expression. It wasn’t often that anything very noteworthy popped up in our experience with him. When something exciting did happen, it was the kind of thing you knew wasn’t impressive to anyone else but you because they were normal baby developments. Friends call and when they ask about how the baby is you find yourself saying things like -- “Oh, he’s wonderful! He um-- crawled today around the living room and it was really cute. He made this really funny face when he pooped that we all got a big kick out of… It was like….- well you had to kind of be there. But yeah. It was really fun. I bought him some pants the other day and a new little hat. He didn’t really have a reaction to it.”

But his mind is just on turbo speed all the time now. He’s adopted mannerisms that Spencer and I didn’t even know we had until we got to see them replayed by him -- probably one of the most entertaining parts of being a parent. When someone says that word “poop” he knows to stick his butt out, slap it a couple of times and spit raspberries; Something that nobody taught him to do. Yeah, I know that it isn’t exactly reciting the “I Have A Dream” speech, but the fact that he can hear a word he recognizes and make his own interpretation of it -- in a way that he knows will get a laugh, no less -- that impresses the hell out of me. When we came into his room a couple of mornings ago to wake him up, his diaper had somehow come off in the middle of the night; He lied there naked and without even opening his eyes, he put his hand to his crotch and said, “My wiener, daddy. My wiener.” At one and a half he can already count to three. He can repeat just about any word (up to about four syllables) almost flawlessly, every time. In the bathtub last night he was playing with his foam letters and numbers that stick to the sides of the tub and to the tile wall. He was lining up the numbers on the edge of the tub, trying to memorize their names and put them into the right order. He obviously put most of them in the entirely wrong order, but when we would say “Get the four…. Op! That’s the six. Where’s the four?” He would say, “That’s tix! That’s tix. Poor, where’d go!? Poor!” and most of the time actually pick up the correct number next.
He also recognizes already that the letters in books or on signs or papers are the same symbols that we sing about in our ABC’s. When he sees a magnet with an advertisement on it for a company, he’ll point to the letters and sing, (in the ABC tune, of course) “BBCBDBC…..” all the while proudly bobbing his head in perfect time to the song.

He’s just such a good kid, too. For a few weeks there he was elbow deep in a hitting phase; he had no fear of anyone - the cat, Mary’s friends, and especially me and Spencer. I knew that it was just a phase but it worried me nonetheless. Oh no. Is he really going to be like the kid you always see at the grocery store or the carnival, punching their mom in the face and screaming for the world to hear that he hates her?? You always see her; cowering down submissively just trying to block blows, burning with humiliation knowing that she has absolutely everybody’s attention - but being too afraid to take control because she knows that someone, somewhere, watching will object to any method she chooses to utilize. I always swore that I wouldn’t be that lady. How do I handle this -- He’s not even old enough to spank yet! My worrying was definitely in vein. The other day he got into the cereal cabinet and spilled cheerios everywhere. I told him to clean it up and he protested determinedly, throwing himself into a fit on the floor. I simply picked him up and quickly put him in the playpen without any toys, saying, “bad choice, Matthew.” Thirty seconds later, I scooped him back up and immediately he pointed to the mess and sung the clean up song, “Clean up, clean up!” I put him down in front of the cheerios and he got to work, handing every last one to me until I physically had to make him stop because there were just too many for him to clean up on his own. Spencer came in and said, “You have to clean up when Mommy tells you to.” He ran to Spencer and hugged his leg. Spencer scooped him up in his arms and Matthew said, “Hi, Daddy.”
“You know, you can’t just always do that when you get in trouble. That won’t always work.” Spencer tried to say in a failingly stern tone, cuddling the almost two-year-old in his arms like an infant.
Matthew simply closed his eyes with his ear pressed comfortably to Spencer’s chest and responded, “Okay, Daddy.”
We just smiled at each other. He squeezed him and let him know, “But it’ll work today.”

For one whole summer

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Our house - Spencer and Baby Matthew on the patio

We've been married now for one whole summer and the transition from August to September has been a drastic one this year. For one thing, Mary's back at school and into the next grade; 4th this year, which means meeting new teachers and starting a whole new schedule of homework, projects, regular reading, chores, and trying to remember to take breaths in between. Spencer's back at school too, starting another year at what was supposed to be a temporary job at First Student Bus co. He's up with me and the crickets before five a.m. everyday now and well into the workday before I end my commute at seven. Of course, all of this means that Matthew's back at daycare again now and between the gas and daycare expenses incurred by that alone, Spencer's part-time hours are hardly seeming worth all of the extra head-ache. The constant supply of extra hours he got at that job last year gave us false hope for what we could expect come September '09. During his time off in the summer we had the automatic withdraw from our checking into our savings put on hold, scheduling it to start back up again automatically the first week of September, which has quietly come and gone.

We'll need it. Buying a new bed was barely the tip of the iceberg as far as our upcoming expenses go. We make it a point to not keep any monthly expenses hanging around that aren't absolute necessities; if we can't afford to buy something outright than it's something we don't need. Period - so even in the worst of times, Spencer and I haven't ever had to worry about how we were going to pay for things, because we've always lived well while living well below our means. But our lives are changing fast with the sale of the house, and it's scary to know full well that our budget is going to be flipped upside down but to not know exactly where, when or by how much. We met with the real estate agent from Keller Williams on Sunday and the house is going up on the market. She's optimistic that it'll sell within the next two months because of the $8,000 tax credit incentive for first-time-homebuyers ending then. We live in a perfect "first-time-buyer" neighborhood.

...We live in a perfect neighborhood altogether. We gave Karen a tour of the house which only made us feel that much more attached to it after she left. We'll definitely be sad to see it go - especially if it happens soon - but I'm trying to keep Spencer optimistic about the new memories we'll make in wherever we end up calling home after this too. Of course, I didn't purchase this house myself with the expectation that it would be the place I grew old in - so I'm also sympathetic for Spencer right now; and he knows that I understand but that I have a duty the keep the morale up in the family. No long faces under my watch... We have enough on our hands just trying to keep things stable for Mary right now - who definitely stands to lose a lot in the move away from her whole neighborhood posse, her top-rated school within walking distance, and a location only minutes away from both sets of grandparents. In a lot of ways this house was the last remaining piece of her mom and the life she used to have Mary had to hold onto. Truth be told, I actually think that at this point it hasn't fully sunk in for Mary. Probably because she's been hearing of this whole property-division mess for the past two years and I suspect that at this point the thought of it ever happening probably feels like it'll never actually come. It's going to hit her all at once.



It's hard to explain how we feel about the move without sounding like we're standing on both sides of the fence. We wanted to have a fresh start someday - and someday fairly soon, at that - in our own home that we could choose and buy and start a life in together. But we wanted it to be under happier circumstances and in a better financial situation than the one we're temporarily in right now. The house we're living in now is the house he bought when he was married to his ex-wife, but at this point we've actually been living in it longer than they were and it's transformed in every sense of the word from the way it was back then - so much that it's unrecognizable inside and out from the way it was the day that I moved in. It's where Matthew had his first room and where I got to build my first nursery and playroom for my kids. It's our family's first home. It's become a place that we truely cherish and not everybody can say that about the place that they live. But at the same time, though, the thought of a fresh start; new walls to decorate and a new yard to make memories with the kids in is almost intoxicating. I can't help thinking that it'll be easier to let go of this place when we have the picture of a new one to take it's place in our minds. We put a lot of work into our kids' bedroom especially so it's hard to think about letting them go, but it's exciting to think about building brand new ones from scratch for them, too. Like I said, I kind of feel like it's my responsibility to keep everyone's spirits high about the move. The best part is that we're in the phase right now of looking, and every new property we glance at is a window into unexplored possibilities for our future. If nothing else, it's fun to look at the picture of a house and try to imagine Spencer and I carrying in groeries from the back of the van in the driveway up to the front door, while Mary keeps Matthew occupied in the lawn, picking "wishies" from the grass.

Being married on Labor Day Weekend -- What it's like after the Honeymoon!

Pin It We haven’t had coffee for 3 days now. Spencer tapped it against a plate when he was doing the dishes and a huge chunk of it overdramatically flew off into the dish strainer. Just the other day I was saying to Spencer that I think the effectiveness of the caffeine in my coffee isn’t reaching me anymore - like I’ve been drinking it so much I’ve built up an immunity to it. I definitely stand corrected. I want my coffee.

I’ve made it a habit of getting up extra early in the mornings. Spencer usually sets up the coffeemaker for me the night before, and sets it to go off around 4:30 in the morning so that it’s ready for me in my hideaway hour the next day. On the weekdays I have to get up that early to get the little ones fed and off to daycare before I leave for work, but on the weekends I like to take advantage of the time I have all to myself, before the first rustle of billowing bedroom comforter down the hall tells me that someone else is getting up to start the unending cycle of needing things from me all day. Spencer understands completely; his hideaway hour is late at night, after everyone else is fast asleep, forgetting about how much we depend on him for just a little while. He lays in bed with me until I fall asleep, but doesn’t crawl in to go to asleep himself for a few hours afterward - which works out because the longer everybody else sleeps in, the longer my alone time is in the morning the next day. I don’t think there are two people in the world more in love with each other than my husband and I, but with having a load of two children this early in our marriage, we both understand the importance of having a little alone time to recharge our batteries. My alone time is spent snuggled up with a blanket in the living room, with a hot cup of coffee, a book and my laptop/camera (to usually upload pictures and to write) -- today I’m missing a very vital part of the equation.


This morning I’m uploading pictures from my friend’s engagement party. I’m going to be a bridesmaid in her wedding and I’m really excited about it. I’ve known she and her fiance for a few years now (actually my brother was friends with her fiance when we were kids so I’ve technically known him since I was like 10) and they just recently moved into their first house, which is where the party was held. She did such a great job with the party. There was a good selection of different kinds of homemade cupcakes made from scratch with all of the other basics. She did it in a picnic theme with picnic baskets on all of the tables holding silverware wrapped in ribbon and fresh wildflowers. She even had little ants holding cards that she decorated in a picnic theme, too, where she stamped little notes about each food item (like “made with real Oreos”). Our table even had a Grilling Mickey Mouse/hamburger salt and pepper shakers. I can’t wait to see how their wedding comes together.

We spent most of the party keeping Matthew from diving fearlessly into playing field of the volleyball tournament going on in the side of their yard, and ended up having to stay in the back portion of the yard that they have fenced off so that our son wouldn’t find a way to kill himself by climbing onto the grill or getting himself entangled in the wire tying the dogs to the deck before we left. We sipped on our beer and hamburgers and laughed about how parenthood has turned us into the life of every party, and about how the parties we go to are so grown-up now. It wasn’t long before the fact that he didn’t get a nap that day caught up with him and we had to head home.

Our little picnic at Bryan and Katy's engagement party

Not long after we got home, we were heading back out again to buy our brand new bed. Marriage has not been good to our poor, rod iron, metal and slat framed bed -- the middle of our bed has become so caved in that it no longer holds the slats in place. There is no box spring over the metal and slats holding up our mattress so the thing has just become pathetic to even look at. Since buying a new bed is quite an investment, we toughed it out for as long as we could - but it’s now to the point where there is a “crater” in the center of the bed that is constantly sucking us in, like a black hole of ridiculous discomfort. It’s a shame, too, because we invested months ago in a gorgeous new set of bedclothes and decorative pillows to match. Now we can put them on the new bed, which is just HEAVEN to look at. I can’t wait to bring it home!!

Our new bed!

The bed clothes that will be on the new bed (and Milo) :-)

We stopped at Sleepy’s down the street and looked at box springs and new mattresses. We decided to hold off on getting a new mattress until we can just go all out and invest in a Posturepedic. The salesman assured us that the box spring we wanted was made of durable metal instead of the typical wood that tends to spit and creak after the years of “bouncing and wrestling” that tend to take place on the bed of a married couple. Good to know. When we got back home to put Matthew to bed, we took our old mattress off of the dented frame to lie on it on the floor so we could get an idea of what kind of condition it’s really in (since it’s hard to tell on our crater bed) and we were glad we decided not to waste the extra money on the mattress. It also gave us a chance to give it a good cleaning before we put it back on, and we decided that today we’d go ahead and buy a steamer to clean things like mattresses and curtains and things in the future. Before we put the mattress back on, we realized that if we did it together, we could actually bounce on the metal rods of our bed and bend them almost perfectly back into place. It had to be pretty hilarious to look at, but it worked as a temporary fix until we pick up our new bed on Wednesday.

In other news:

This little guy or gal is my very good friend Layla's first baby! Nice to meet you, baby!

It's the profile view of the baby's whole body. The top plus sign is the top of the baby's head and bottom plus sign is their little baby bum. Just ten weeks old.

Welcome officially to Motherhood Layla!

Lighthouses

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My husband Spencer and our son Matthew, playing in the front yard.

Spencer and Mary, fishing on the Delaware River

I definitely recommend the book, "That's My Son" by Rick Johnson for any mother of sons. In my journey so far through the adventure of motherhood, I've come to notice that there is a sever lack of reading material for mothers of daughters, as compared to what is available as inspiration for mothers of sons. When I found out that I was pregnant with my little Matt-man a little over two years ago, this thrilled me but as Mary gets older and the challanges we face with with her become more and more intimidating and a lot more confusing, I'm kind of at a loss. This book, though, I've found to be packed with a lot of very solid information about raising children that is insightful, inspirational, and still very solid and grounded; information that a mother of any gender child should be able to draw from and put to good use. In it there is a quote that I actually took the time to find a highlighter and make note of when I came accross it's line on the page:

{On the subject of allowing young boys to evade accountability}

..."You may also be training him to base his decision-making skills on feelings instead priciples. I'll trust a man who uses princliples to make decisions over one who uses emotions everytime. Emotions are unreliable and subject to change on a whim. Principles are like lighthouses that guide ships away from treacherous rocks that would tear holes in their hulls, sinking them and killing all aboard."

There are few bad decisions a person can make in this world that don't somehow have an effect on other people, too. This quote reminds me of Mary and her relationship with her mom; the way that Mary is always in fear of sinking because of the rocks her mom can't seem to avoid crashing into. Mary and Matthew may not have children of their own aboard their ships yet, but training them to avoid the rocks early will serve them well later on in life.

From the beginning, Spencer and I kind of took the stance with Mary that we would cross certain bridges when we got to them and handle issues as they arose. If Mary told a lie, we would explain to her the concept and importance of honesty. If Mary got lippy with her dad or I, we would talk to her about respect. It’s started to come to my attention though that maybe Mary’s starting to outgrow the effectiveness of a short-term method like that. I called Spencer the other day and I told him that I think we should come up with a few goals for Mary to live up to - so that she has some kind of direction and a clear set of expectations from us beyond just getting her homework and her chores done everyday. I want us to think about what kind of a woman we want her to grow into and to think about how we can reinforce those important principles to her throughout her adolescence.

Yesterday was a test of that theory if I ever saw one.

I wrote about how Mary got sick the other day - no fever or accompanying symptoms, she just threw up a popsicle. The next day, Mary’s friend told Spencer that she heard Mary say that she was going to stick the popsicle stick down her throat and make herself throw up on purpose so that she could miss school. Spencer and I talked to Mary about it and she immediately put up those defenses and threw a dramatic, over-the-top fit of dry, empty, fake sobs, swearing that all of her friends (since she didn’t know who spilled the beans) were “liars!! Stupid, ugly liars!” We don’t own any wire tapping software but by now, we know when Mary’s lying and it was obvious that this was one of those times.

So we have a few issues on our hands:
1. Mary lied to us
2. Mary made herself throw up - which is dangerous and dishonest
3. Mary’s passing the blame onto her friends
4. Mary’s playing the innocent victim game (everybody just hates me and that’s why my friends told on me and that’s why you’re going to punish me!)
5. Mary’s making a decision (to get out of school) that would not only hurt her by making her miss school time for no reason, but also hurt me by potentially making miss or be late for a day of work (which consequently inconveniences my employers directly as well) and also put whoever we got to watch her in the position of having to dedicate a day out of their lives toward caring for a perfectly healthy child that should have been in school. Which shows a lack of consideration for the way her bad decisions will effect the people around her.


We decided to let it go since we were on our way out to dinner and I don’t personally believe in bringing fights to the dinner table (especially an expensive Red Lobster dinner that we were on our way to that particular night). After having the night to think it over, I decided with Spencer that we were going to ground her for the rest of the week, which was only Thursday and Friday.
If she did lie, she’d learn that there are consequences for it. If she didn’t lie (which was still a very real possibility) then (as I explained to her) she would learn the benefit of being such an honest person that when questions of a her trustworthiness come up, she won’t even have to defend herself - people will just know that Mary doesn’t lie, so I know that I can believe her regardless of what anybody else says. I explained to her that trustworthiness makes a person absolutely untouchable. All too often in life, a dispute is boiled down to one person’s word against another’s, and when that happens it’s a person’s character and reputation that makes the difference between getting a person off the hook or getting them punished for something they may not have even done.
“Be safe: Score a hundred.”
-line from The Pursuit of Happiness

I told Mary that instead of spending the afternoon playing outside with her friends, she’d spend it inside with me, cleaning her room and practicing her multiplication flash cards until her mom came to pick her up. It gave us some much needed time to go over just a few of the relevant principles of character Spencer and I had touched on earlier in our conversation.


Perseverance
When Mary can’t do something easily, her first inclination is to get angry and push either the blame or the task itself onto someone else. Her next inclination is to immediately say that she’s just “not good enough. I just can’t do it.” We have to be careful not to be too tough on Mary because there are so many traits she gets directly from her mother that we want to protect her from emulating. {It’s why I so often compensate for it by telling her things she should be very proud of that she gets from her mom, like her stunning green eyes and her ability to get what she wants from people.} Those two immediate inclinations come straight from that infamous maternal source. My husband and I agree that we don’t want her to idolize certain behaviors she’s learned from her mom over the years, but we have to take care when we do that in not having Mary take it as a personal attack on her mother. We can’t point out directly to Mary that her mother’s choices are often poor and irresponsible, but we wouldn’t be doing our job as parents if we allowed her to be led astray by someone who has made a lifestyle of being recklessly shallow and deceitful, even if that person is her own flesh and blood.

She tried for all of 2.5 seconds to hang a skirt on the floor of her closet up on the hanger where it belonged before throwing it down and saying that the hanger was stupid and that she’s too stupid to figure out how to get it on there -- leaving it, as she had earlier, for me to do it. I made her pick it up and keep trying until she got it.
“But what if it takes me forever? Can I give up then?” -- Exactly the response I was hoping for!
“Nope.”
“What!? What about till dinner time?”
“Nope.”
“What about all DAY?”
“Nope.”
“What about til tomorrow?”
“Go to bed, wake up and try again.”
It took her about a minute and it wasn’t easy for her, but by the time we were done the conversation, she was reaching to hook it over the bar holding up the rest of the skirts I’d hung up for her in the past.
I got to tell her that very few things in life worth really doing are ever easy. And that nothing great in the world was ever accomplished by giving up. It wasn’t long before she got frustrated with another thing that took more than a second and a half to do right and she was calling herself stupid all over again. I was in the middle of reminding her just how close she was to getting her first allowance when she said:
“I don’t want an allowance. I don’t deserve it anyway. I can’t clean my room right, I can’t make my bed right. I’m just not good enough to get one. I can’t do anything right. So I just don’t want it anymore.”

I don’t know if it was right or wrong, but all I could see was her mom sitting on the floor with her back against Mary’s dresser, looking dejectedly at a pile of papers she just didn’t want to put away, making excuses for herself, except what I heard was:
“I don’t want to be a mom. I don’t deserve it anyway. I can’t raise her right; I can’t win custody of her, I can’t get her half the time, I can’t be happy for her. I ruin everything for her that I try to get involved in. I’m just not good enough. I can’t do anything right. So I just don’t want it anymore.”


I sat on the floor right in front of her, leaned in to get her attention. I looked her right in the eyes and I said, “You are wonderful at everything you put effort into. You study for a test and you get the highest grade in the class; you spend a few extra minutes on a project and you blow everyone away with your talent. When you try, you do incredible things! You won’t be perfect at everything you do, but you’ll never be good at ANYTHING if you make a habit of always giving up the moment something gets tough. Life doesn’t get any easier for people who give up - it just becomes a lot less rewarding. If you want to have that attitude than you’re right, you don’t deserve an allowance and I won’t give it to you. You EARNED your allowance and you need to be proud of yourself for that. Part of earning an allowance is showing that you’re mature enough to handle it - and part of being mature is knowing when to be proud of yourself and what you’ve accomplished. Don’t you ever let me hear you feeling sorry for yourself again; you’re better than that and I won’t allow you to tell anybody any different. I have no respect for liars.”

It got her attention. It wasn’t response she was expecting. I was thrilled to hear her keep asking questions and let what I was saying really sink in. She asked why it was so important to keep her room clean. I told her that it’s not just so that she can get to things more easily and so that she shows appreciation and respect for the things she’s fortunate to have; I told her that it’s preparation for someday when she has a family who will depend on her for a clean, happy home. She liked hearing it that way, like it’s practice for someday when she’s a mommy and a wife. I said, “Just like we depend on daddy to take care of the yard and the cars and to fix things that break.” It was interesting that she pointed out how good daddy is at doing so many mommy kind of things.

I told her that there are some things that boy are actually just naturally better at than girls - because they are easier for them to do -- And some things that girls are usually better at because they're easier for them to do. It's because of the way that our brains work differently. Things like math and science are actually easier for boys because to do because you need to use a lot of the right side of your brain for those subjects which boy brains can use more intensely at one time than girls. She thought that this was SO UNFAIR and that "girls should just not have to do math then, because we’re all just so stupid and it makes us feel like idiots when we're doing our homework." But I asked her to think of something she thinks girls are probably naturally better at than boys…. And the very first thing that came to her mind was “Taking care of babies and kids and stuff.” Yup. Girls are better at that because we use both sides of our brain at the same time, which boy brains don’t do as well, and that makes us better at recognizing other people’s feelings and at being compassionate and at being nurturing. I asked her how she thought her daddy could be so good at doing those things that are harder for him than they would be for a girl (or a mommy) to do… She thought about it for a minute, really looking around for the right answer and then she said:
“Because he loves me so much…. That… I guess he has to try harder.”

She knew she had the right answer when I just smiled at her. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Storybook mom

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Finding out that we're having a baby.


Not long after finding out we were having a son!


The very best moment of our lives; The birth of Matthew Spencer Stucky.
February 4th, 2008

I think every new mom on some level has a desire to be "picture perfect" for her children. I'm not normally a perfectionist myself and I tend to usually err on the side of moderation, but the day that I read the word pregnant on that infamous little stick, my desire was on every level (and taking up space in the elevator shafts between). My husband and I are naturally very grounded people and I know sometimes that was the only thing keeping me from letting myself go entirely into Martha Stuart overkill mode. Especially in the past year, I've become very conscientious about keeping organized. We keep an accordion-style box folder in the living room now that holds all of the mail, sorted into categories so that it doesn't pile up on the mantle for a week waiting for us to find a dozen appropriate places to keep things like mailed tax information, relevant sales ads and most importantly, court documents that have so frequently occupied our mailbox lately. In an effort to make certain things more convenient -- like finding the right coupon before making a mad dash to the minivan in between diaper changes for Matthew and the sixth and seventh of Mary's outfit changes that day -- a lot of other things have become unexpectedly more complicated or frustrating. We have a decent mail-sorting system now, but just getting the mail has become a more daunting task because of the added responsibility of having to sort through it right away. Luckily I have a husband who knows how to handle my mom-moods, when I get on one of my everything is out of place in this house! warpaths. He knows that all he has to do is let me ride it out for a while, picking up just enough to satisfy my hunger for sanctity and balance, then hand me a Corona and send me out to the patio (or the bathtub if it's late) with one of my books and the promise that he'll take care of everything else. We both know that he won't do half the job I could - but we also both know that the kids have a better chance of surviving the afternoon if I calm my nerves, and that's probably worth the few things that will be left undone when I get back down to Earth.

I've learned to do a lot of things in the time that I've spent taking on this new mom persona. I've learned how to make everybody's favorite dinner dishes and how to replace the flooring in the kitchen; I've learned to cure bronchitis in an infant and get rid of warts on a kid; I've learned how to tie-die shirts and the best way to organize Fall clothes in the Summer and Spring clothes in the Winter; I've leanred how to hang new wallpaper and paint the shutters outside; I've learned how to grow a garden of daisies in our flower bed and how to grow new grass in the patches that have started to wear thin on our lawn; I've learned the best specific ways to organize each closet in the house and the most efficient method for clearing scuffs marks on white tiled floors. But I haven't learned everything.

More importantly I've learned to only take on a few new things at a time now and it's been a good change. When Matthew was a very small infant, I couldn't be satisfied with anything; There was just always too much to organize and too much to learn, too many things to build and fix and change and master that I was running myself and everyone else in the family ragged. Spencer was always hanging new shelves and painting walls; I was always replacing things, redecorating, reorganizing, reevaluating and coming up with new goals and new rules for Mary. I even wanted to buy Matthew the "Your Baby Can Read" program. I think Spencer knew that it was just new mom syndrome and that my phase of complete insatiability would eventually run it's course. Luckily it did and now that I've become a lot more lax about certain aspects of motherhood, I realize that I get a lot more enjoyment out of the things that I do decide to improve upon now. Sometimes keeping the house spotless just isn't worth ruining everyone's weekend.

One of the new goals that I've decided to start tackling is Chicken Noodle Soup. Truthfully, I'm actually lacking in arguably one of the most fundamental aspects of being a mom: cooking. To be honest Spencer actually does a lot more of the actual cooking than I'd like to admit. Even when I get something started, he just naturally tends to gravitate toward the kitchen and I end up changing diapers or looking busy somewhere while he takes on finishing up. I've made it a point to learn all of the family favorites by heart and a few quick-fixes for those all-too-frequent busy weeknight meals - but with a nine-year-old who's favorite food is Easy Mac anyway, a husband who's very health-conscious (for the sake of keeping in shape, not always for actually keeping healthy) and a gummy infant who was kind of a late bloomer in the tooth department, I decided that cooking wasn't going to be one of the things I drove myself to suicide over. Now that Spencer took up the job he has now as a school bus driver and he's been the designated stay-at-home dad during the summer, he started to feel even more obligated to contribute by fixing dinner, and when you get home from an eleven hour workday and the house has been in the hands of a man and two kids all day, you just don't argue with that kind of logic.

But times are changing. Mary's hitting a major growth-spurt and Matthew's just on the constant rise, teeth are popping up all over the place and he's in and out of every cabinet he can reach, mutilating cereal boxes on the kitchen floor and learning about the new-found splendor that is just about any truly chewable food. Spencer is back at work again for the school year and as fate would have it, Mary threw up for the second completely random time in the past month (no accompanying fever or symptom of any kind - just a couple of snow cones that didn't sit well). The most recent time happened during the second week of the new school year and in an effort to keep her from missing a day this early in the year, we were shoving thermometers down her throat and babying her like new doll. I've been trying to keep a pack or can of noodle soup on hand for just such an occasion, but it hit me as we were all admiring the on-hand soup's authentic homemade flavor, that the time has come. If nothing else, I want my sons and daughters to grow up reminiscing about the special afternoons they spent as a child, snuggled up at home with mom on a day home from school, sipping on a hot bowl of unforgettable chicken noodle soup that they know mom made with extra love just for them!