Mommy Time For Each Of Them

I've now been a mother of two for two whole weeks now and it's been an amazing transformation. James was born with some unidentified inflammation in his body so to be safe, his pediatrician recommended we keep him at the hospital for a three-day course of baby-appropriate antibiotics. That pushed our release date back from the next morning to five whole days later thanks to some complications. It was a difficult week for me because I wanted to nurse my baby, so I needed to stay in the hospital for that same week as well. Perhaps the biggest thing I regretted, aside from having my family split in half for a week, was not being able to take care of my daughter. Poor Scarlet was exclusively in Daddy's care for the week and it really showed in her daily visits to the hospital.

She was dressed in clothes but not necessarily matching ones, and her hair was always left down and unruly. She chose her own shoes each day, so they never matched her clothes and almost always had red glitter on them. She was also happy and cheerful and well fed. She let me hug and kiss her when she played in the hospital room, but Daddy was her obvious preference. It was hard for me to sit by and watch her develop a stronger relationship with her father at the expense of losing her relationship with her mother. Now maybe I'm being a little bit dramatic about the whole thing and maybe my week away didn't permanently affect anyone except for myself, but I reserve the right to be a bit dramatic because I still have a lot of hormones raging around inside me as I recover from this most recent childbirth.

In any  case, I was determined to spend some one-on-one time with Scarlet once I got home. The thing I didn't consider was my own recovery. I took Scarlet to the library one day, and had to sit the entire time while she raced around and played with toys. It was difficult for me to even sit on those silly wooden chairs thanks to this labor being more difficult than the last one, so I was grateful to be going home after Scarlet had had her fill of the library. A couple of days later I felt stronger, so I took her to the zoo with Josh and James. Turns out I'm not quite recovered enough to go walking around for an hour. It was exhausting agony and I looked for every opportunity to sit down. A few days later I ventured forth again with Scarlet to the park, where I helped her down the slide and played with her on all the jungle gym toys and pushed her on the swing. Enough time had finally passed that I was able to play with her without it being a physical accomplishment by then. Thank goodness.

Josh already spends each morning with her, which used to be my personal Scarlet time before James kept me up all night and I needed the morning to catch a few hours of sleep. So even that time is lost to me. And I nurse James so often that it commonly falls to Josh to feed Scarlet lunch and put her down for her nap and make her brush her teeth before bed. I'm still struggling to get in my one-on-ones with her.

Tonight I gave Scarlet a bath while Josh fed James from a bottle. Scarlet stomped around in the water without ever sitting down, per her usual. I poured water from a cup all over her to get her clean, and she endured the shampoo and rinsing I gave her afterward. Then she played with her bath toys and showed them to me one at a time. I watched her play and I responded to her when she showed things to me, and we generally enjoyed our one-on-one time together. I dried her off and combed her hair, then lotioned up her arms and legs and dressed her in clean pajamas. She smiled and chattered the entire time. She was happy and sweet and wonderful as I prepared her for bed. We said a prayer together, with her folding her arms and I holding her in my arms. Then we sang a silly song and she kissed her dad and her baby brother good night. I gave her her polar bear toy and tucked her in bed and kissed her cheek while she she looked at me with her sparkling eyes. I just love that little girl.

Now maybe there won't be a lot of one-on-one opportunities with Scarlet as James continues to need a lot of my time, but I'm not so concerned as I was a week ago. What time I have, I can share with the two of them. Bath time and bed time aren't as much fun as a trip to the library or a walk around the zoo, but those chores present an opportunity to give my undivided attention to my child and I have learned that by taking advantage of those activities, I have time enough for both my babies.

I finished...(finally)!

I signed up for the instructional design degree this past January and it was amazing. I really enjoyed my classes and loved the challenge of completing them as quickly as possible. I finished all twelve classes by March 17th and then I got scared. The capstone intimidated me. I thought I could complete it fairly quickly if I just got going on it, but I couldn't seem to bring myself to get going. I basically shut down.

March ended, all of April rolled by, and then (shocking even myself) May completely passed. I began to imagine the possibility of not completing the program and just accepting the knowledge I learned from the program and counting it as worth the price. I avoided my school emails because I didn't want to face the concern of my capstone facilitator. I avoided phone calls from my mentor. I kept saying I'd spend the weekend working on my capstone and then I did anything I could to not find the time on the weekends for schoolwork.

Josh used to ask me if I was planning on working on my schoolwork each night. I'd shrug and watch a lot of tv instead. He normally leaves me to my own insane goals, but it really made me feel guilty that he would bring up my school so often. I could tell he was anxious for me to not lose this opportunity. I spent a lot of sleepless nights worrying about not graduating. It would give me the worst insomnia and then I'd be depressed and exhausted all the next day when I'd have to  start over with the denials and the time-wasting. I kept analyzing my chances for graduation as each day slipped by but I could not bring myself to resume work on my capstone. I didn't want to pay for another semester and I didn't want to end the semester without the degree and most importantly I didn't want to finish my capstone to earn the degree during my current semester. So I kept going around and around inside my own head. I lost my motivation to clean or cook or even regularly change out of my pajamas. And since I was pregnant, I grew more and more lethargic with each increasingly hot month. I can barely move now without some sort of discomfort and my stress has gotten so out of hand that I was hospitalized for high blood pressure and chronic headaches. That was ridiculous. Something had to give.

Now, granted, a lot of this crazy thinking is just typical pregnancy brain for me. I struggled with the exact same thing as an MBA student when I was pregnant with Scarlet. (Why do I keep thinking that pregnancy is a smart time to earn a master's degree?) I couldn't motivate myself to complete my classes then either. I had insomnia then too, and all my fears and doubts and concerns would pile themselves on top of me until I couldn't breathe and I certainly couldn't sleep. For me to slowly, grudgingly stir myself from my stupor this time around, I had to have my poor mentor beg me to contact her or she'd be forced to kick me out of the program.

So I emailed my mentor to indicate I'd still like to work on my program requirements even though it was June 4 and I had less than a month to complete my entire capstone and oral defense. But she was forgiving and kind and didn't offer a single word of rebuke, which--as a people pleaser--would have made me shrivel up and want to hide some more. Instead, I was motivated to please my mentor since I felt like I owed her for all those weeks of neglect.

I jumped right into my capstone. I worked on it every night. I worked on it through the three-day weekend. I worked on it in the car on the drive down to Las Vegas and on the drive back to Salt Lake. I worked on it while my youngest sister was in town to visit after returning from her mission. I didn't give myself a night off until I had completed the entire capstone and submitted everything.

Then my facilitator took over and helped me get my tasks approved and even helped me come up with my research questions. She scheduled my oral defense before all of my tasks had been passed because she was so confident that they would pass. That left me having to create my presentation as quickly as possible. I had to discuss my research study for at least 30 minutes and use my created slides to present the information. I practiced my presentation exhaustively in preparation for my oral defense while developing a nice summery cold, and then I presented my defense with a raspy voice and a runny nose. Totally, totally worth it because my facilitator was all praise and admiration for the amount of work I did and the speed with which I completed it. In 21 days I had completed my entire capstone class. My facilitator was so nice that she graded the presentation within the hour so that I'd get to see this little jewel in my student portal before the day was over:

Oh yeah! Finished all my classes with a whopping five days left in the term! So now I am nursing my cold in victory and Josh and I have dinner plans to celebrate tomorrow night (so I can recover a bit from this silly cold) and I'm just so so relieved. My stress headache is already smaller and I can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel. There's just one more pending event in roughly nine days that I need to wait on before I'll be able to take a maternity leave and possibly get a good night's sleep (yeah, yeah, even I don't see it happening but I like to dream). I am so happy to have taken that program, I'm so happy I finished it, and I'm so, so happy I was able to take away a diploma before my first term ended. All of my school goals have now been met and although I may never pursue another degree, if I do I'll reread this post so that I remember how difficult it was...and possibly how worth it that it can be so long as I finish what I started.

Scarlet Takes on the Birds

This past Saturday I had intended to hole up and focus entirely and exclusively on my schoolwork. But it didn't rain as it has the previous three Saturdays and I didn't want to waste this golden opportunity, so Josh and I took Scarlet to the Tracy Aviary instead. I've been meaning to go for a while but since an aviary is like an extremely limited zoo, I just didn't see the point. Holy cow, this aviary is incredible, though! Not only do they have absolutely fascinating birds and beautiful exhibits, but the grounds are fun to play on and there are play places for the children and the foliage and landscaping it beautiful to walk through. They offer a really interesting wetlands tour and you can feed the parrots or the pelicans and the South American exhibit is indoors and really steamy and possibly too hot for overly pregnant women. It's all just a ton of fun and I regretted getting there later than we had planned because we had to rush out of there to put Scarlet down for her nap. Overall it was well worth the trouble and I'm glad schoolwork got postponed until Monday.

The hornbill was almost as big as Scarlet.

The trick is to lob the fish gently into their mouths.

You can see him widening his lower bill to catch the fish.

The pretty parrots all in a row.

Scarlet was justifiably frightened of the peacock after he spread out his tail feathers.

5K 2015

I ran a 5K for the first time in 2012 and it was so liberating and enjoyable that I vowed to run at least one 5K every year for the rest of my life (or until I don't like doing it anymore). This year I actually got to run the same 5K that I ran in 2012. Also, my sister Rebecca signed up for the insane half marathon.

This is her at mile ten, totally crushing it.

 I had a lot of fun because I got to run with my mom and we went at a fairly moderate pace. I've run just before getting pregnant and I've certainly run after being pregnant, but I've never run a 5K during pregnancy.

Finish line!

At 31 weeks, the oddest things happen to your body. Apparently without my knowing it, my center of balance shifted, my hips widened, and I had more trouble running than I should have had. I also, for the first time in my life, had muscle cramps in my thighs. Becca helped show me some leg stretches to do after the run but I couldn't understand why I needed them considering I've never needed to stretch or had muscle cramps after such a short run. Whatever I did while running, I was off from my regular stride because after we all stretched I tried to stand up. And I couldn't move my legs. While the brave Becca wearily rose from her stretching after her daunting and impressive 13 miles, I cried out and slowly rolled onto my hands and knees. I needed Josh's arm to walk to the car, and I have been hobbling and whimpering ever since.

I also got a lot of comments from people passing me at the finish line and at the restaurant we ate at afterwards. People, I got the okay from my obstetrician before doing this. He said it was totally fine for me to run a 5K. He's had pregnant women run marathons. He clearly hates me very much. Also, I clearly hate myself very much because this was way harder than any of the other races I've run. I think I'll wait to give birth before doing another one of these bad boys.

So the moral of the story? If you're going to be a baby about running, don't run the same race with a mighty half marathoner. You're going to come out looking like a huge wuss. :)

Our landlord won't let us get a dog...

...so we put a leash on our two-year-old instead. I was embarrassed to have put a leash on my child like she's some sort of canine, but that went away in the first ten seconds.

The first ten seconds of her trying out the backpack with its "monkey tail"

Scarlet loves the monkey backpack and I love that she doesn't resent being steered away from oncoming traffic and that I don't have to constantly chase after her and pick her up. It has been increasingly more difficult to do that ever since I entered the third trimester.

Whenever Scarlet puts on her backpack, she expects to go somewhere. She insists on wearing it all day long regardless, but she also expects to go places. The backpack has apparently forced us all to be more active. Josh and Becca took her on a hike on Saturday. Then we went on a second hike later in the day that I could join in on. On Sunday we took her for a walk around the neighborhood. Yesterday we went on another hike for FHE. Today I took her for a walk during my lunch break. She has been more active than she's ever been before and it's thanks to that silly leash.

We discovered that using the stroller to get her places isn't very effective anymore because she grows restless and wants to run free. She also has no desire to live, so she doesn't pay any attention to sidewalks, streets, or oncoming traffic. The leash has cured us of all of those concerns. So if you are a parent of a toddler and feel the slight shame of having to kennel your child at night and serve dinner out of feeding bowls without utensils, don't be embarrassed! Go the extra mile and buy a leash for that kid as well. It'll make a world of difference.

Reading is Stressful

I can't read my books right now because they're stressing me out. In Middlemarch, the author worked for more than seven hundred pages to create the most complex entanglement of conflicts. There are exactly 130 pages left and I SERIOUSLY doubt she'll be able to resolve everything in such a short amount of time. In fact, the conflicts are so complex that many of them can't be resolved without affecting the happiness of other characters and their problems. I'm in such an agony over this conundrum and so terrified that the ending won't be as satisfyingly conclusive as I'd like it to be, that I can't seem to bring myself to finish the novel. And this is after six hard months of working through the book.

Then there's Gone With the Wind. My favorite movie ever, my favorite fictional character ever (Katie Scarlett), my favorite everything. I started reading this book and loved it so much that it was easy for me to get through the first four hundred pages and I kept telling Josh how enjoyable it was. Then things got tough for Scarlett and I'm not liking the personality change she's undergoing during this difficult time in her life. I'm worried that her little boy is too neglected and that there's something physically wrong with him as well. I'm scared to death that he's going to die and I can't seem to bring myself to read the next few hundred pages to find out. I'm not even halfway through the novel and I know the story so well that I know of other impending deaths that will make reading the rest of the book already difficult. But Scarlett's son doesn't exist in the movie so I have no idea his plight and I can't stand the thought that he'll die unloved and alone. It's breaking my heart. I had to put the book down and I haven't been able to pick it back up yet.

My third current novel is The Midwife's Tale. I have read the two sequel novels in this series but never the first book, so I was pretty happy to finally find it available at my library. The problem is that I've read the two sequels, so a big portion of this book's plot has already been recapped for me and I do NOT like what happens. Somewhere in the unread portion of the book there is an infant baby that is going to be murdered and the murderer is going to walk away free and that rankles me so deeply that I don't think I can bring myself to read about it at the moment.

So...I'm stuck. My books are too hard for me to emotionally cope with and that leaves me bored because I can't read. I suppose I could pick up a new book but what's the point? In my sensitive state, I'm sure I'll find something miserable about the story to latch on to, which will leave me unable to finish that book as well. In the meantime I've been looking at Netflix a LOT, trying to find *some* show or movie that entices me. Was tv always this stupid? Have I finally become an enlightened person who is too good for television? Ooh, never mind--there's a documentary on honey badgers**. Gotta go.


**Josh loves nature documentaries, so we legitimately watched this on Sunday night. I'm not proud of myself, but I was mildly entertained. Those honey badgers are crazy!

Scarlet Eats Noodles!

So last night Josh was the one with the craving--for Noodle and Co. We almost never go there because it never sounds appealing to me, but I had it at a work conference last week and decided it was pretty darn good, so we chose to splurge and buy dinner last night. We put Scarlet in the stroller and tossed a few library books in the back to return, and then went for a very beautiful spring walk through our neighborhoods. Noodles and Co. is about a twenty-minute walk from our apartment, so we got there fairly quickly, despite Scarlet literally NEEDING to stop and smell the flowers.

Josh was insistent that Scarlet get her own meal, which we almost never do because she just doesn't eat much and it's a waste of money to buy her food she won't eat. I deferred to Josh with a little bit of doubt in my mind, but I figured we could always just take Scarlet's leftovers home. Boy was I surprised when Scarlet downed her ENTIRE PLATE plus a breadstick. I was pretty floored. Scarlet enjoyed her meal so much, she could even be coaxed away from wandering over to other tables and eating on her dad's lap instead.

After dinner, we walked to the library on our way back home. Scarlet loves dancing and playing in the reading circle. We also let her play with the toy cars they have before picking up some books for ourselves and returning some old books. The weather was absolutely gorgeous the entire time we walked, with flower blossoms floating on the wind and brushing past our feet. It was a very relaxing evening.