Playing catch-up

There are so many things I am trying to prepare for, I cannot decide which to work on first--so I begin organizing the house to make costume-making easier, then abandon that in favor of the costume-making which causes the house to be more disorganized. Add that to the tremendous amount of food prep I do daily, and the standard laundry/dishes/sweeping cycle, plus Garrett's new gymnastics and sports classes, plus trying to finish my doula certification packet before the next board meeting, plus continuing to do doula work, and I can't seem to fit any more hours into the day which doesn't help my plight at all.
I am not a super-mom. I am not a do-everything look-perfect person. I do not harbor any desire to keep myself constantly busy. I ENJOY leisure time. So this is make me a little whack-oh. I should explain why all these things need doing, like, right now: we are leaving for CA on Wed and will be gone for 9 days. I will be bringing my mother back with me, and would like the house clean and nice for her. We will be trick-or-treating at California Adventure (did I mention we're going to Disneyland, hooray!), so costumes must be done way early. I am making Morgan's and my costumes from scratch (like with patterns and everything), and they will be awesome if they are ever done. When we get home we will have 6 days to prepare for our birthday/Halloween party (which reminds me, I need to invite people to that), plus actually celebrate our birthdays, plus work on some house projects as Troy is off that week.
Oh, and I haven't had a chance to blog about it, but we've taken the kids off gluten (to clear up a bizarre mystery rash they both get), and limited their dairy intake. So I must make even MORE things from scratch now (for anyone who is unaware, I've gone mega-granola in the last few years-the only prepared foods we still buy are crackers and cereal), meaning homemade crackers and granola (no pun) plus new and more complicated recipes for baked goods (I want to cry at having to abandon my killer whole-wheat buttermilk pancake recipe). I love making food, and I love that my kids eating only good things that I have complete control of it terms of quality and ingredients. But my kitchen is always a mess (if I haven't JUST cleaned it) and I don't have much counter space. But it's fun most of the time, like this morning when Garrett was helping me juice carrots and cauliflower, parsley, kale, cucumber and yellow squash (the last we grew ourselves!). Sounds fantastic, don't it? It's a chugging sort of beverage.
So anyway, here's the end result of all this craziness: it's easy to find most things in my house, because they have a designated place and get returned there. There are exceptions (has anyone scene my glasses?). We will look awesome for Halloween, and will have a really cool party to celebrate with our friends. We get to see my family, and visit the Magic Kingdom. We will have tostadas for dinner with refried beans I make myself (super-yum!). Our house and yard will begin to actually look like the work we've done there has a purpose. We will continue to be healthy and happy, and my kids will no longer have blisters (from the gluten). Garrett has experienced a life-changing transformation, as the removal of gluten from his diet (along with a more rigid eating schedule-every two hrs-an increase in protein, fish oil, and Cinnamon and addition of magnesium supplements) has made such a marked improvement on his ability to control himself and regulate his behavior. Not that he's been a complete wild-child (for those who haven't met him), but he has a history of what I call "the crazies"-where he will suddenly just lose all sense of judgment and impulse control. When it happens you can see in his eyes that he doesn't like it, but he can't stop it-and I become the mom chasing her kid constantly scolding "Not stop that, don't do that, put that down, let go of that," a chant I'm sure you've all encountered in a crowded shopping mall or playground. What's always been so frustrating is that Garrett is by nature very sweet, gentle, and remarkably smart-but those qualities do not show when he succumbs to the crazies. It's taken a year of diet modifications and supplement experimentation, but we seem to have finally cracked it--and oh, is he a happier child. And oh, are we happier parents.
So while I'm running my hind-end off trying to complete my to-dos, I wanted to take a minute (or ten) to remind myself what it's all for, and that we are so thankful for what we have and who we are. We have so many opportunities to be joyful--I just need to slow down and enjoy my joy.

Fun with sleepy children.

Troy went in to check on the kids last night after they had been in bed awhile. Garrett was having a tough time settling down due to a dream he had about evil pumpkins the night before (he loves Nightmare Before Christmas). Garrett was apparently asleep, with his pillow over his head. When Troy moved it, the following exchange occurred:

G (very groggy): I was under that to hide from the scary ghosts.
T: There are no ghosts here now.
G: What about scary pumpkins?
T: No, no scary pumpkins either.
G: Oh, then what's the problem?!?!

And back to sleep.

This might not translate that well in text, but we thought it was freakin' hilarious.

The return of running water.

Hooray hooray, I say, for the return of running (or rather, draining) water! Seriously folks, we have not been able to use our main bathroom sink for TWO MONTHS. Two months. Ridiculous, right? Two months of hand-washing in the tub spigot, of tromping upstairs to brush our teeth (and holy god, finding my disgusting husband's toothbrush in front of the computer). Would you like to hear the tale of how it could possibly take two months to fix a sink? Of course you would.

Way-a-way back in July, in preparation for my sister's family's visit, I decided to finally tackle the slow-drain issue we had occurring in our main bathroom (we have three, but one is in the basement and the other is impossibly tiny and upstairs by the guest room). I am reasonably competent with plumbing matters, it isn't my favorite household task, but I do what needs to be done. So I set about disassembling the drain to clean out what I was sure was a nasty ole' hair clog. While what I encountered was indeed nasty, and hairy, it was not the cause of our blockage. And by the time I realized this, it was too late to delve any further prior to company coming, so we simply marked it out of order.

Now if you've been diligently reading this blog (and who hasn't?) then you know we've had a very busy summer and our poor sink just didn't rate high enough on the list of priorities to get much attention. We did eventually buy a manual auger (a long metal coiled cable with a screwy-lookin' thing on the end that you run down your pipe and then turn the crank to THEORETICALLY grab the clog and pull it out). Once again we met nasty emissions of sludge and slime and gunk, but still no drain. I can't even tell you how many times we dis-and re-assembled the drain-my fingers twinge thinking about it. And the auger-oh how I hate the auger! It twists and yanks, it's heavy, it fights with you and tries to climb back out, it sprays whatever it's collected ALL OVER if you wind it too tightly (I got it in the face last night), it leaves rust marks in coil patterns in the bottom of your tub, it is evil. And it didn't work. Couldn't move the clog.

This weekend was our last attempt. Last ditch effort. Final hoorang. Troy wanted to turn it over to a plumber weeks ago, but I persisted--why give some stranger hundreds of dollars to do a job we could do? We just needed time, and patience, and pants that sit too low. If this didn't work, we'd call in the big guns. It was a close call. In short, after cutting (yes CUTTING!) the pipe OFF with a reciprocating saw, running many manner of objects into and through the whole drainage system, being splattered with MORE yummy disgusting-ness, and finally ramming an extendable broom handle up the d$&% thing to break through the still immovable clog, then reassembling the whole system with the help of some really handle flexible couplings (nifty doo-dads that hold to ends of pipe together with a thick rubber tube and hose-clamps), WE HAVE DRAINAGE!!! WE HAVE REJOINED THE MODERN ERA OF INDOOR PLUMBING! HOORAY!

And let me say how cool I felt walking into McClendon's Hardware, by myself (which usually elicits odd questioning looks from old men and LOTS of "can I help you find something?" from employees), in my ratty best project clothes, covered in stains, smelling of decades old plumbing rot, and heading straight for the pipe department to get another coupling. Not one person asked if I needed assistance. Not one old man questioned my presence. Today, I was one of them.

Still not sure how I feel about that. But if it means I can use my bathroom sink, it must be good. Very, very good.

Babies are stealing my summer.

Our weather has finally decided to warm up and be sunny--for the whole two weeks we have left before fall falls upon us. We have been frantically attempting to take advantage of it, as we still have mountains of things to finish and not much time left for finishing. It has not helped our scheduling that my last client decided to labor for 41 hours (no, I am not exaggerating, though I wasn't there the whole time, only the last 37 hours of it) or that exactly one week later I was called in to help out my partner who had two clients break their water the same day. So it the course of eight nights I spent 3 of them not sleeping. And hello, I should really get some sort of prize for heading home after last weekend's birth long enough to shower and change then head back out for an advanced doula training (I was over an hour late, but none of the other doulas held it against me ;) ). I then insisted Troy and the kids meet me that afternoon at our birth center's annual alumni picnic, at which I spent most of the time laying on a blanket on the ground. Again, it's a pretty understanding crowd--my midwife had also been up all night at a birth. She apologized to Troy for my being, "hooked on birth" and suggested he get together with her husband to complain about us.
The unfortunate side of this whole doula biz is that while, in general, birth is wonderful and fantastic and I arrive home exhausted but buzzing from the energy and joy of it, sometimes it doesn't go right and it leaves a deep emotional dent in me. This last birth went that way--due to a medical "oops" (read: neglect and ignorance) the client had to be delivered by c-sect. This is a young, single girl who had wanted beyond anything to have a gentle, interference free out-of-hospital birth and was only in the hospital because her midwife felt she needed a little help getting into labor (I won't get all technical, it's a standard protocal sort of situation). This girl had prepared herself fantastically well despite the fact that she had no one helping her, and all control was taken from her. And there wasn't anything I could do to help her out of that situation, I could merely try to help her through it. So I've been pretty frustrated and sad this week, which is really too bad as it eventually affects the kids-but they are troopers and love being able cheer me up. And Troy is at his best when I am at my worst, so I know I always have a pillar to hold me up. It amazes me how intuitively supportive he is, and how much he has picked up about pregnancy and birth from listening when I don't think he is. I start to lauch into an explanation of a certain procedure or term, and he'll jump in and finish it often surprising the pants off me. And I'm pretty sure by now he'd make a great lactation consultant (I actually overheard him discussing breastfeeding with a friend of his).
I am glad for the exposure to birth the kids are getting-they are growing up knowing that it is a healthy, normal process, difficult but gratifying. They love watching the videos of their own births (G calls them the "being born" movies) and marveling over how they once were such tiny, squirmy creatures. G asks lots of question when I get home from a birth, wanting to know how big the baby is and what I did that helped the mommy. I have to pat myself in the back for assuming that someday he's going to be a great support for whomever he becomes a parent with.

The Fun of Funder

We had a tremendous thunder storm roll through Monday afternoon (what is with all the electrical storms this summer?). Really tremendous, like Hollywood storms-never-really-sound-like-that tremendous. Woke both kids up from their naps. They were in seperate rooms, as napping together is currently an unsuccessful endeavor, and M woke first-I went to her (she's still in her crib, much to her dismay-when we've let her try sleeping in G's bed, we eventually hear her knocking on the door as their knob is too high for her to reach), got her up, and laid down in G's bed with her to see if I could lull her back to sleep. No luck. Every time the thunder would rumble, she'd curl in to me, quivering-I assured her all was fine and all that, but she often chooses no to believe me. She finally asked what the noise was, and I told her it was thunder up in the clouds. "Oh, it's funder?" "Yes, thunder." "Oh, it's jus funder. It's funder." G joined us a few minutes later, and was reassured, "Buh-buh, that's funder. It's only funder. It's ok, it's funder."
I couldn't get them to relax, and as it was daylight it wouldn't be any fun sitting in a window to watch (as we normally would), so to try and get them to relax about the whole thing we geared up Seattle style (no umbrellas) and headed out into some of the heaviest rain I've ever seen. Our street (on a hill) was nearlya rushing river, much to the kids' delight as they ran up and down it, racing leaf boats to the bottom.
It was during this hour of soaking-wet craziness that I was forced to come to grips with my illness. What drivers and passers-by must have thought, seeing me and my kids in the pouring rain--this is what I imagine them saying to themselves, "That horrible woman, making her children get soaking wet just so she can edge her lawn." I couldn't help it. I was outside, the edger was just leaning there, we always have so much yardwork to do, I just couldn't help it. Plus the ground is really soft when it's wet. I may need to enter some sort of program. At least they weren't worried about the "funder" anymore.

Garrett's Photography.

We got a new camera several months ago, and Garrett asked if he could have our old one. Figuring I could just dump the digital images when he was done, I let him have a go. Here are a few of the 50+ shots he took (I omitted ones we could have titled "wall" and "leg of chair"). I had no idea when he gave me back the camera what I would find.

Make-up in Mirror

Down the Whirley-Tube

Self Portrait

Cake In Dome

Experimental Picture-posting

Stone party! (Dubbed "stones" by my niece when she was 2, not called such because my scones are rock hard, as has been suggested in the past.) Stone-baking is a long-standing tradition for my niece and I, on this occasion joined and assisted by the peanut gallery. You would not believe the amount of deliberation that went into the choosing of each child's add-in--William really thought that, at some point, someone would tell him he really couldn't put chocolate chips in his. Oh-ho the Wells Fargo Wagon is a-Comin' down the street...the kids and Troy got to ride the stagecoach in the Mercer Island Summer Celebration parade-I can't tell you how bummed I was that I had a client meeting and had to take off right after snapping these shots. Troy was uber-thrilled to ride "up top." And I'm not joking. You should have seen him vault himself up there.