There seems to be something about a family with four young children that strikes pity into the hearts of many folks. Perhaps it is because my husband and look younger than our true ages, many people mistake us for early 20-somethings. They assume things, like: 1) we are prohibited by our church to use birth control, 2) my husband is military and these are post-deployment babies, 3) we're mentally challenged. Of course, non of this is true. But, none the less, we still get lots of pity.
There are benefits to the aforementioned pity. Before I get started, though, I want to clarify a few things. For starters, each of our pregnancies was planned. Secondly, we are not any of the following: crazy, overwhelmed, burdened, unhappy, or stressed out. We run a tight and happy ship, with well-rounded and well-fed children. Every night, we have dinner together as a complete family, our bathrooms have toilet paper, my children's clothes are clean, and they arrive at school on time everyday with their completed homework in hand. Lastly, we can afford them. We're not destitute, which isn't saying we're rolling in it cause if you've got $50K to give then we could use it terribly.
Despite all this, people seem to want to give us things. This can't be more true than when we're at some sort of family oriented party. For example, yesterday, Soren's competitive soccer team had an end of league season (we're faaaar from done with this whole thing) party. Each family brought some sort of dish to pass and the hosts provided the hot dogs, brats, beer and $1.2 million dollar home in Rancho Santa Fe to party in. We showed up with our veggie dogs, whole wheat buns, and fruit salad in a carved out watermelon. The Indian family on the team brought an amazing curry and naan. The middle eastern family on the team brought some sort of grain, fresh tomato, and bean dish and pita and hummus. The Hispanic family brought some salsa and crisp corn tortillas. All the other white people brought typical white people things. It was a great array of food, a good time was had, and I happily stumbled out of the party with 3/4 of a Corona Light under my belt.
At the end of the party, there was a huge sheet cake with chocolate mousse filling, gobs of frosting and a black and white soccer ball iced onto it. The cake was so huge that despite the 40 or so of us there, we couldn't even finish half. As we were leaving, the proper British hostess (more recently here from the Bay Area) offered to send us home with some of the food spread. We are so pitiful appearing that people feel the need to send us home with leftovers. This is one of the benefits of seeming pitiful, destitute, Mormon, enlisted and mentally challenged. When you leave foody parties, you often end up going home with yummy doggy bags.
I smiled to myself, imaging all that great food coming home with my poor, starving children. Lars rubbed his hands together, tongue in the corner of his mouth at the thought of the delicious curry and naan for dinner. If we were lucky, maybe she'd thrown in a couple of Corona Lights and a few Modelo Darks?
She comes out of the kitchen, smiling broadly at me and hands me a large tin laden with food inside. Lars and I hop in the car, and then safely out of sight, I take the top of the tin.
Cake. Half a frickin' sheet cake. No Middle Eastern grains with fresh tomatoes, no curry, no guacamole, or standard white people food. No beers even. Just half of a sheet cake meant to serve 80.
I suppose this is karma. After every holiday, I bring in my children's left-over candy to my barrio clinics in the inland where those kids don't have toothbrushes, let alone routine dental care.
Well, there must also be something about being pitiful that makes people think you need chocolate mousse sheet cakes instead of walnut-couscous salad with scallion vinaigrette. Go figure.
And, just now, I ate 2-pieces of it for lunch.

Exercises in Breathing

I'm quietly positioned, flat on my back just like the article tells me to. This exercise is to "quiet my mind". Okay, I'm flattening out . . . just a sec', there is a Lego dude poking me in my left butt.

(-Mommy, what are you doing? -I'm breathing, Soren. Leave Mommy alone. -Oh, can I watch you? -No. -I'll just watch you quietly. -Whatever.)

Toss it away. Reflatten. I'm flattening. My belly's just a scooch slidey, though, so I gotta squeeze my ribs together. Sort of makes it so I can't breath, but the article says flatten. Should I be wearing a couple of sports bras?

(-Mommy, for how long are you gonna breathe for? -A long time, I hope. -Oh. long pause Are you still breathing?)

Okay, now it says "begin with a deep belly breath." Now, as a lady, I gotta say this feels a little awkward since it's hard to do a belly breath without the junk in my trunk oodling out a bit. Not to mention, my ribs are squeezy. This all feels a bit counter productive, and painful.

(-Mommy, please can you wipe me? -Be right there, Annike.)

Get this, now I'm supposed to say some thing positive in the form of a word or phrase. But I can't think of anything to say except "Hi, how ya doin'?" Which sets me to laughing. My ribs become unclenched, my boobs start shaking and I go fetal because it still burns across my c-section scar when any sort of effort is applied to my abs.

(-Mama?! Mama?! -She's in here, Petra! -What are you doing, Mama? -She's breathing, you can watch quietly. long pause -Excuse me, I tooted. -You're excused, Annike. giggles ensue)

Next, I'm supposed to exhale out all this negative stuff. Instead I accidentally belch because I just finished giggling, swallowing big heaps of air in the process.

(-Nah-nah? Nah-nah-nah? Ma-ma? then spitting and pulling of my hair)

Okay, so here's my thing, wouldn't a splash of wine be a bit simpler?

Probably, Too Much Information

Have I mentioned that Tova's been walking for almost 2-months now? Since then, my System has gone to the dogs (the dog from the previous post). Clearly, Tova's walking has everything to do with it.

For example, I have found Petra's toothbrush in the toilet. I had to pretend something else terrible went and happened to it, otherwise Petra would have shrieked her brains out. She loves that ding little baby of ours, but it would upset her dreadfully to learn that her toothbrush passed away in a receptacle for . . . umm, you know. I told her we left it at Elise's, that held her.

Tova's walking is also the reason why I fell 17-loads behind on laundry this week. I fell behind 17-loads! If Tova weren't walking, I wouldn't have to wash her socks. Socks are an awful thing. Plus, in her new found height, Tova pulls the drying clothes off the line and drags them around on the sidewalk chalk covered patio to the point where they need rewashing. With walking comes confidence, with confidence comes more dirt on the clothes and in the mouth, with more dirt in the mouth comes nasty out of diaper experiences.

On top of that 17-loads of laundry (not to mention this week's 24 that I need to get started on) I'm still playing catch-up from last week's of episode Me vs. the Clean House. Tova goes from room to room depositing things where they're not supposed to be, her hands are free so she can carry stuff around now. Little trinkets of the girls' suddenly appear in the grass outside. Lars' socks, from the Clean Sock Basket, end up in her mouth as she traverses 4-rooms in the house to end up plinking her baby fingies on the piano near the dining room.

Today, Tova snuffled herself awake at 7:10 a.m., which meant I had a narrow window in which to Booby Snack her before she got up and started poking around on her baby feetsies; not to mention, I had to scram for my 8 o'clock patient. On top of that, today was a big day at work. Today was the day in which we were having our TG potluck. I made an apple-raspberry pie. It needed to be impressive and dramatic, from taste to presentation and most importantly to where it happened to be displayed on the long table in the break room. Very important.

I had to get out of the house to procure a good spot!

Tovey snacked. Then I raced to get dressed (can't get dressed before feeding the Tovesters, otherwise I end up with drool and snot on my professional clothes), throwing on my fabulous Bohemian outfit in a jiff. With time to spare I peeled out the door, kissing the kids and husband in my wake. Breathlessly, I scooted in the car with my beautiful pie, sliding across my driver's seat only to incur a wedgie in the process.

The pie and I arrived in one piece. I got the coveted spot on the break-room table, and then went about my day seeing patients happily and without trials or tribulations. Except one thing, that wedgie I had from the morning slide across my car seat seemed to be unpickable. Inoperable. Granted, I was wearing my new cute undies designed to make behinds coveted by all who gaze upon them and to reignite passions in marriages that have gotten ho-hum. But still, I'd worn this particular pair before without any problems.

No time to bother, had patients to see. Babies to scan. Mamas to reassure. Endocervical cells to collect. Lumps to diagnose. And, oh dear me, there was the matter of that most impressive pie. Finally, our lunch hour arrived, with my panties in a bunch I plunked down in a chair amidst all my colleagues. I watched them devour my pie, licking their lips, oohing and ahhing with pleasure. Of course, I felt completely satisfied. Happy, well, except for the undie deal. But as a dehydrated breastfeeding mother, I never have to void and so no reason to stop at the WC to check the situation of the unpluckable undi-grundi.

End of the day arrived, I raced the kids into the house, headed straight for my room to change out of my work clothes and whaddya know?! My undies -- inside out and on backwards! Well, I'll be damned if that doesn't explain it all. With little time to dress this morning, chasing after Tova with my arms barely pulled through my dress and all this in the darkness of daylight savings it's no wonder. If Tova just blobbed around in her bed like a good baby should, then absolutely none of this would have happened.

On another note, it's a great professional advantage. Now, when my patients call me with complaints of discomfort in their nethers I will firstly advise them to check which way they happen to be wearing their skivvies that day (then charge 'em $70 bucks for treating them).

Maggie and the Technicolor Dream Coat

The life and times of our sweet Magdalena Humphindinkellheimer are filled with riveting tales of love, loss, humor, deceit and adventure. Her life of intrigue is kinetic and fast-paced, complex to the core.

Recently, Maggie was inspired to change her looks. Don't be fooled by her blase demeanor, she really found it all quite fantastic.

Just another day for our ebullient hound dog.

I would never . . .

I would never bore you with annoying pictures of my kids in Halloween costumes. How irksome is that? To look at pictures of other peoples kids, as if they were cuter or more special than your own. Plus, it's really hackneyed. I mean, for crying out loud, I'm striving for originality here.

Keeping that in mind, the following may or may not be my children just prior to pillaging the outer reaches of the globe/subdivision on their most recent Viking exploits.

I absolutely cannot say with certainty that I clearly or vividly may recall when this picture might have been possibly taken. Really, sort of, I can't exactly particularly remember.

Besides, Halloween was quite some time ago. I only bother to bring up current events.

Work and Life

I'm a failure. I'm being driven to the ends of time on an exhausting and elusive chase. I've read about it in magazines for mothers and parenting families. I've watched Kelly Ripa exude it in her Electrolux commercials. I've watched other mothers from afar, gazing upon them as they seemingly manage finishing out a work day, clickity-clack home in their Jimmy Choo's, where they empty the dishwasher and fix a nutritious dinner while their kids sit quietly (and happily) around the kitchen table scratching out answers to math problems with their perfectly sharpened pencils.

Maybe my problem is that I don't own a single pair Jimmy Choos, we could start there. But really, really I have tried to close that gap on the work-life balance heeled and unheeled. In fact, I have been known to harriedly vacuum my entire house with my dress pants and heels on in a matter of 20-minutes just so I can convince myself that I am truly a master of all my domains. Okay, this also may have been done on some very repressed, sub-conscious level just to prove something to my husband. Unfortunately, or fortunately, high-heeled vacuuming is not something that happens regularly in my world. Despite the house needing a thorough vacuuming everyday, it often goes to an every other day sort of thing. Despite my best efforts at establishing a system, so that the dishes or the laundry or the itty-bitty scraps of paper from kids' projects never get the best of me -- despite my system, there are shortcomings. As it were, The System happens to apparently be my system and mine alone. Not my dog, nor any of my four children, including my amoral 11-month old baby (who has been walking for 1-month now and in her hands-free glory picks up various kitchen objects to deposit into the toilet - and vice versa) and certainly not my husband care for my system of hooks and well-labeled bins, or daily jobs, or spacious compartments, or sanitizing sprays or my constant reminders to put things away in the "correct spot."

Alas, the job of keeping house is mine and mine alone.

Which is why the following happens while I am away at work on my 14-hour nights:

This, sadly, is only a representation of 1/3 of our house. I crave domesticity in violent waves, tearing ruefully at my ever-sagging cheeks when confronted with the task of reviving my ailing system. I become poetic about the covers of Real Simple, taking notes on the 100-Ways to Have a Clutter Free Home, allowing myself to become rosy-cheeked at the thought of chronic perfection. I allow my imagination to play the If Only Game -- e.g. if only I had a cleaning service, if only I was a stay-at-home parent, if only I had $250K . . .

But as I sit here, the reality of the situation becomes garishly apparent:

1) I fed my kids warm, toasty Petit Pain aux Chocolat this morning (2-strikes: one for morning junk food, the other for not dealing with the baking sheets)

2) There is a wet spot on my leg (3-strikes: Tova has a nasty diaper from being on day #8 of antibiotics, she's still in said diaper, I transferred her to the floor)

3) Clothes on the line (2-strikes: they are now dry but yet to be put away, there is a laundry basket waiting to be hung out to dry since last night -- shame on me for not doing a better job at controlling the weather)

4) Chalky footprints throughout the house (3-strikes: I haven't mopped yet, the chalk is still out on the patio not put away, Tova was just eating that chalk)

I'd keep going, but I really need to change Tovey's dipey. And bathe her. And put her clothes in the washing machine.

So, I guess my answer to Real Simple and the the BS load of crap about the work-life balance is the following:

Kelly's 7-Ways to a Simple, Clutter Free Life

1) Get rid of all yer shit

2) Teach the baby to use a potty

3) Join a nudist colony

4) Stop using silverware when eating

5) Eat only take-out (with your hands)

6) Don't buy sidewalk chalk, regift it wherever possible

7) Shape up! Cause Lord knows, if I don't have my shit together not a single one of the rest of ya' does -- and that's the truth. Frickin' Kelly Ripa . . .

I know it's been a while. I'll be back soon. There are no good excuses, but I've missed many of good stories to tell. I missed the opportunity to tell you the story of how I was recently awoken at 1:00 a.m. by a mysterious phone call only to see my husband in our back yard, standing among the clothes pinned to the clothesline, relieving himself. As if we didn't have toilets or something . . .

Soon, friends, soon.

With much love,
Kelly