Sir e has something he would like to say...

finding the new normal

It has occurred to me that if we were to add two to our dependents (most likely the furry, four-legged sort at this point), and if we were to give them names that started with O and I, respectively, we could have our own E I E I O. This will be a considerable point on the side in favor of getting pets--but I'll still do only one kind of poop at a time, so it will have to wait.

Yesterday was a better day than the one before. We managed a successful grocery shopping trip with no major incidents--personal or mechanical. My mom got me an ergo baby carrier when e was born. I love it. I can put e in it and keep him comfortable and happy for an entire trip through the grocery store. Meanwhile, I am pretty comfortable and happy myself--a big change from all the other baby carriers I've tried. Anyway, with e in there, E in the cart and I walking alongside me (yes, I do see the grammatical issues arising with this configuration of code names), we made it through with E having only one tantrum, I not having any, and e only a little sour every now and then. It's funny, e looks like a delightfully happy, healthy newborn. I find people here are a little more overtly friendly to and interested in children at grocery stores than I am accustomed to (another benefit of the ergo--it keeps baby e safely sequestered). So, when these overtly friendly and curious people confront me with questions and comments about my baby "He's so cute! How old is he?" and I answer "5 months" they look very puzzled and usually say something about how small he is. This doesn't really bother me. He IS small. But I'm never sure what to say. I sometimes just say "Yes, he is" and move on. Other times I try to explain "He spent most of those 5 months in the hospital" but then I find people usually feel bad and awkward about having said something about his size and sometimes I end up getting stuck in a longer conversation (Time is precious when shopping with children. One must move along.) I will keep experimenting. Any suggestions?

E has been having a little well-deserved trouble adjusting to big-brotherdom. Yesterday he hit e in the face with his bag of pretzels. I took him aside and told him that I knew he was a good and kind person and it made me sad when he did unkind things. He smiled, hugged me, and went to apologize to baby e.  I will try to remember that one when many future other ones don't end so well!

A friend has taken I and E to her house to play today (thank you!!) It has been so helpful. I have gotten a few things done, and had some very enjoyable quiet moments with e. (though I suppose most of his moments are quiet ones...). He seemed to have slightly more success with his tummy time today. Instead of just rubbing his face on the blanket, he was actually able to bob it up a little every now and then. He has also been chewing on his fingers a little more.

My goal for this afternoon: Attack teetering tower of messiness on my desk. Find property tax bill. Maybe even get it paid.

decompression

Today was one of those hyperventilateicantdothis sort of days. On my list of frets today:

e is so behind developmentally, and I can't find much time in a day to work with him on improving.
E will be three in a couple of months and I haven't even begun potty training him.
I'm not sure how I will sustain I's education at home.
Our porch roof leaks.
The gutters are falling off.
Our bathroom is still only 3/4 finished.
A thousand other house projects are not yet even begun.
My house is a disaster. Perpetually.
I can't seem to find a new routine that works and DOESN'T involve me getting up at 5am.
The laundry is breeding. I swear.
There is a teetering pile of stuff on my desk--somewhere in there are some medical bills and my property taxes. I must find those.
I & E are constantly at each other's throats. 
e's ambiguously full fontanel
Et cetera, et cetera.

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has these sorts of days. Much of this stuff doesn't matter at all, all of it doesn't matter as much as it felt like it did today, and each thing needs to be taken bit by bit. Not all at once. Insert metaphors here about eating a whale, building Rome....etc.

So. Deep breath. Good things:

I built a pretty sweet (if I do say so myself) barn out of cardboard and popsicle sticks that we'll use in our unit on farms next month for our first go at kindergarten. There is a great Montessori approach to teaching grammar for young children involving farms. We're going to give that a try. I'm excited about it. (Yes, I know that's nerdy.)

We made rainbows out of Froot Loops today. E ate more than he glued (and maybe ate a little glue too), but we all learned neat stuff. The kids were excited about having sugary cereal for a snack. I usually try to avoid fluorescent food. I was going to have I practice counting by 5s with the Froot Loops, but they were eaten too quickly.

I have been noticing e pushing more with his feet lately.

No one in our immediate family is currently hospitalized.

And some funny things happened at the end of the day:

Goose made E some soup in our toy kitchen. She served it to him. He tried it. She asked him how it was. 'Fine,' he said. She heaved a big, offended sigh. 'It's better than fine!!' she declared.

E was having a hard afternoon--one of those cryabouteverything sorts of days (I could relate)--he was insisting that I put juice in his milk cup (which still had milk in it). I explained it would be yucky to mix milk and juice together. Goose (still in the toy kitchen) said very patiently to me, "Mom, you should let your children try new things."

During family home evening we were learning about the proverb "A soft answer turneth away wrath" (we may or may not have a problem with that here...) and we were playing a game where we would read about different scenarios and try to think of 'soft answer' ways of responding. One of them was "Your brother or sister throws a book at you" (which may or may not have happened today...twice). "What should you do if that happens?" I asked. "Duck." Was Goose's response.

T-minus 8.5 hours till it all begins again!

Back? To School?

Our neighbor the groundhog is F-A-T. So fat. Fall must be coming. That means this home school thing needs to get started in earnest soon. Goose would benefit tremendously from a good school--but the public one she would go to here has a 1:30 teacher:student ratio, and has some of the worst academic rankings in the region. I think if you trap her in a room with thirty kids, no supervision, and make her learn the alphabet AGAIN, bad things will happen. She reads almost as well as I do (Perhaps even better. She is always correcting me when I say the wrong words when reading a story. Even if she is across the room. She has them all memorized. It's a little freakish.). Her science and math learning are not far behind her reading. I enjoy planning the curriculum and the lessons. I have  a great year lined up for us, but there is no way of recreating the social and emotional learning she could get in a well designed, supportive classroom. The other day she told me "I'm glad we're having kindergarten at home so I don't have to meet new people." Oh, dear. Not to mention there are the added complications of a new baby who has a busier social calendar than most high school girls with all his medical and therapy appointments. To top it all off, I's personality and disposition don't always lend themselves to home schooling--she is much more likely to think a project is a good idea if it's presented by a teacher in a classroom than if it is presented by her mom in the kitchen. I found this great passage in a book a friend sent me while we were in the hospital. This mom had just lost a battle with her children regarding whether a gerbil should accompany them on a visit at the neighbor's house:

"She stood upon her doorstep once more digesting the knowledge that she could not manage her children. Miss Lindsay, she believed, would be more successful. How did these tall, poised women who could command obedience with the lifting of an eyebrow get like they were? Was it something they ate? But would even these olympic ones be able to manage their own children if they had any? Joanna doubted it and went back into the house in a more cheerful frame of mind."

I keep hoping that, by some miracle, the charter school where I is on the waiting list will call me up and say she is next on the list and would we please come tomorrow (she's number 64...not likely). Instead, I'll just have to practice my juggling skills.

As for sir e, he had his first outings this week--aside from grocery stores and doctors' offices--he went to the park and to church. He still isn't sure what to do about the sun. It is rather brighter than any NICU light. He tends to cope by shutting his eyes and going to sleep. Like an opossum. We stayed only for the first part of church this week. Maybe next week we'll try the whole thing. We still have to be pretty neurotic about germs.

The other day at the hospital I saw a bumper sticker that said "If indoor plumbing doesn't bring you happiness, what will?" The editorial bit in the Cooks Illustrated magazine I read this week quoted from Lonesome Dove--"If you want any one thing too badly, it's likely to turn out to be a disappointment. The only healthy way to live life is to learn to like all the little everyday things." This subject is one I have been considering myself for some time. It seems it keeps cropping up. This life is meant to be hard so we can learn things--but in this life we are also meant to have joy. It is possible to feel joy when you are sad and when things are hard and when you are busy and when you are tired. God, when creating the universe, took regular, purposeful moments to "see that it was good." He did this even when he still had plenty to do (especially since I don't buy the literal interpretation of 'day' in that portion of Genesis. The actual word from which it was translated means something closer to 'a period of time.') In the midst of a lot of work with still a couple billions of years worth of work left to do, God thought it was important enough to pause and say--"Hey, this is good stuff." He further thought this pause for appreciation was worth having his prophets write it down for lots of people to read about afterward. As long as the scriptures are, there is still plenty that has been left out. Like with Hemingway (I promise not to bring him up all the time) if the words escaped the cutting room floor, you know they are important and very intentional. So, therefore, I continue to strive to learn to see the good things in a day--even in a really bad day. If all else fails, I know I can count on indoor plumbing to lift my spirits.

I can already see that these code names are going to trip me up. Even though they are things I actually call the kids, somehow it seems like more work to type that than their names. So, to make things even more interesting, I will also refer to the progeny as I, E, and e--respectively. The people who care about who is which will be able to figure it out, and the people who can't figure it out aren't likely to be the ones to whom it matters. Besides, it's much easier to type. I don't promise to not deviate from other boundaries I have, do, or will set.

e visited the pediatrician on Friday. E and I were terrifically helpful during the visit and earned compliments from the doctor. (a friend sent them little back packs after e was born [thank you!] and when I have to take them to appointments, I fill the backpacks with little amusements. It helps. I also sometimes resort to using the portable DVD player. No, I don't feel like a bad mom because of it.) It was a tolerably good visit for e, though the pediatrician, like the home nurse last week, was worried about the fulness of his fontanel. She is going to confer with the neurosurgeon to see if he should go back in for another head ultrasound or something. Meanwhile, the change in the kind of formula used to fortify his milk seems to have helped with his retching. He still does it occasionally, but he probably always will. It is much better. It is so good to have the whole family under one roof.

Introductus

Look at me. I started a blog. I made one once before, but then I quickly abandoned it. I also started a facebook page once. It is currently collecting cyber dust. I created a dummy email address to go with it so that I could 'lose' it if I wanted to. I guess I lost it. I also participated on that 'Good Reads' thing for a while. I'm not sure I even remember how to get back into my account. I make no promises that this blog has a greater life expectancy than any of those other endeavors, but--here goes, anyway. Perhaps this will at least take the place of those email update things we were sending to family less and less frequently. We shall see. Currently, I've only filled out the boxes that were required to start the thing. Maybe I'll fill in more eventually...maybe not. What fun surprises you are all in for.

Most people, when blogging, create code names for their family members. To protect against identity theft and such, I believe. I will use code names here...but more just because it is fun to have code names. I've never been a big nick-name sort of person. My name does not lend itself to shortening and I think too much about whether I should call a person by his/her real name or by the nick-name--how much acquaintance is required for nick-name usage? What does it imply? Does it even fit in the first place? It's all very stressful. Fortunately, I can just write in the first person and obviate the need to call myself something. My husband I will just call Husband. He has plenty of nick-names (when we were dating, I needed a flow chart to keep all of his friends and their nick-names straight. They all had more than one.) but I will stick with simple. Some friends we have are in the habit of referring to each other as "Husband" and "Wife." The first time I heard it, he said something like "Wife..." and then asked her to get him something or do something. It sounded rather as though "Woman, bring me food!" could have done equally well. I expressed my indignation that one should refer to a wife in such a way (I've never been good at holding my tongue) and they explained that they used the names Husband and Wife in a different way. They had worked hard to earn those titles and they treasured them. I get it. (Nod in your direction. I hope I haven't embarrassed you). So, I use it like that.

The first born will be referred to as Goose. (As in 'silly...'--not a Top Gun reference, although that would be good too). The second will be Little Mister, because he has always been. The third is Sweet Sir. Because he is. We have no pets. I have stipulated that I can manage cleaning up only one kind of poop at a time.

The name of my blog is from Ernest Hemingway. Many people can't stand to read his work (Probably because they were forced to read The Old Man and the Sea in high school and didn't get it--understandable. Try A Farewell to Arms. It's the most accessible one.) but he was doing (as most writers do) some profound thinking about the difficulties and restrictions involved in expressing pure things in an impure system. Using this for my title gives outlet to some of my reservations about this whole blog business--and to writing in general. I suppose, though, that expression is not really like a peach. A perfect, fresh peach is one of the most wonderful sensory experiences in the world (in my opinion). A slightly imperfect peach is pretty awful (again, in my opinion. Fruit and I have a tenuous relationship. My husband jokes that I have a 5-minute window in which I am able to eat bananas. It's more like 12.). Expression cannot be perfect, fresh, or true because the thing itself has to go through too many filters before it gets anywhere. Just ask Plato and Nietzsche. But--as with most things in life--we have to do the best we can, I suppose (don't ask Nietzsche about that. He wouldn't agree. Plato might.).

If you don't know where the blog's address came from, you should listen to more Raffi.

I am not going to go into our back history in depth--though I'm sure bits of it will crop up along the way--I'm just going to pick up with now and go on. I'm not sure where it will go or what I will do with it all, but here is what I have today:

We had our second post-discharge follow-up appointment with the surgeon (second in total, first one since the most recent discharge) and we were able to come back home again (a distinct improvement from the first one). They will be tweaking Sweet Sir's feeding regimen a little. Kids who have had this Nissen Fundoplication thing will often retch. Sweet Sir does. Quite vigorously at times. It is quite sad. Fiddling with how much food he gets how quickly can help. We're going to try that. He is also growing fatter than he is tall, so they are trying to allow him to grow more slowly--at his own rate but in proportion all around. He is looking a bit chubby. It's better than his previous 5 months of being too skinny. I was looking through some photos the other day, and came upon one where he was feeling particularly unwell. It affected me rather strongly. It's funny, too, because I wasn't thinking the day I took that picture, 'boy, my baby looks awful.' But he did. He really did. I am so grateful for how far he has come. I was going to stop by the NICU in order to drop off some more milk for donation today on our way out from the surgeon's office, but I panicked a little and fled. (Sorry, babies who won't get that milk now...) I couldn't go back there. Not yet. It's a little bit like being in a car accident. It's hard to drive or ride again afterward. Slowly, slowly. We can't just put the lid on and move forward, all that stuff has to come with us and get sorted along the way. There is a lot of it that is good and useful. Regardless, it all needs to be processed. It will take time.

Other hard things, aside from our hospital adventures, have also been going on. I'm not going to tell you about them because that's not how I roll (writing these blog things has been a considerable breech of my usual hermit-like habits, but I can pretend when I am writing that no one is reading it. If I seem weird when you say nice things about my writing or whatever I say, it's just because it's all a little horrifying for me and I'm not sure what to do, it's not that I don't appreciate your kindnesses. Thank you for that kindness. Please pardon my awkwardness. [Look at me, being all open and stuff!]) Did you like that? A parenthetical INSIDE a parenthetical. It's grammatically acceptable if you vary your bracket type. But anyway, in the midst of hard things, I have begun singing to myself--much to my children's chagrin (see our previous blog thing for their opinion of my singing). It is more socially acceptable than sucking my thumb, but it affects the same sort of result. From my non-denominational-Christian-church days, I retain a fondness for Christian pop music. Some of it sounds nice--at least sometimes-- (though my taste in music has never been stellar) and it has the added bonus of illuminating and encouraging lyrics (again, sometimes). At any rate, these two songs have been helping lately:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knuHDPbE5es

(one guy in that one has a sweet mustache. the message is good too.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSIVjjY8Ou8

(an important message applicable at any time.)