Occupational Hazard

I have a new blister on my hand today.  From my steam mop.  Does that seem ridiculous to you?  Because it does to me.  I know so many people who are fans of the steam mop, but I have to say I am lukewarm about it at best.  And the fact that I got a blister from it today didn't help its case.  It's so strange that I got a blister.  I mean, I've had that thing for over a year.  It's not like using it was an uncommon occurrence.  A couple of weeks ago I got two enormous blisters from the lawn mower.  That I can understand.  I haven't used the lawn mower since Amelia was a baby.  But blisters from house cleaning?  Something that I do routinely?  I would have thought I'd have calluses by now.  Oh well.  I guess I should look on the bright side and be grateful I have soft and delicate hands...

Seperation Anxiety

It's 1:00 in the morning and I can't bring myself to go to bed.  I'm sitting here in the office/baby's room, reading blogs of people I don't even know.  Every so often I will hear little grunts and sounds of a squirming little body coming from the sleeping baby in the room.  I think that's why I can't leave really. 

I want to be with my little baby as much as possible.  I spend a whole lot of time lately just hanging out with him.  Talking to him, holding him, protecting him from his loving siblings.  I don't know why, but tonight especially I just don't want to leave him. 

Maybe it's because so many of these random blogs I find are written by women who have had a child die.  I think a lot about what it means as a parent to have a child die.  I think about how it always feels so out of the ordinary when a child dies, but yet it happens so very often. I remember that it happened even more often not so long ago in history.  I reflect on the lives of all of those pioneer women.  A woman who had NOT experienced a child's death was certainly the exception then.

I feel so lucky for every day I get with these four of mine.  I try not to think about what it would be like without them.  But sometimes I just can't help it.  It's those times that I find myself in a baby's room at 1 o'clock in the morning, relieved to hear every toss and turn.  I dismiss the idea of leaving him for the night to sleep in my own bed, a whole hallway away from him.

Those Days

Does anyone else with little children ever have one of those days?  Those days when you really want to walk into your kitchen, grab all of the fruit snacks and cracker packets and dump them on the table, walk to the freezer and snip open all of the Otter Pops, turn the television on to PBS kids, and go back to bed for the day and let the kids live it up?  I was feeling a bit like that this morning.  But, I overcame it to an extent and made the little ones blueberry pancakes and made all the beds and made sure they all got dressed and gathered some laundry and fed the baby a couple of times in there, and then I did lay down with my little bundle and take a nap.  I LOVE taking naps with babies.  Of course that "nap" was interrupted for several reasons including CT needing to know how to make the sound come out of the computer since Dad hooked it up to speakers, Lily wanting me to take the plastic wrappings off of  the "Princess and the Frog" DVD that Tyler's mom sent her the other day, and Amelia wanting to know if I had washed her favorite blanket yet, since it got a little damp in the night.  I'm sure you can figure out how.  I finally fully committed to my day and spent some time on the treadmill and told the kids we were heading out to the swimming pool after lunch.  I'm sure the kids will have more fun doing that that than they would just watching PBS kids all day with unlimited snacks...or maybe not.  But I'll feel better about myself anyway. 

Summer

Things I Love About Summer:
1) No morning rush to get kids to school. 
2) No nighttime rush to get kids to bed.
3) Little tan bodies with bright white behinds.
4) Popsicles for dessert.
5) 98 cent strawberries.
6) Our annual family reunion.
7) Hearing the kids shout "Cannonball!" each time they jump in the pool.

Things I Loathe About Summer:
1) The heat.
2) The humidity.
3) Girls sweaty, straggly hair minutes after you finish putting in the pigtails and cute bows in the first place.
4) The electricity bill.
5) Dealing with wet swimming suits and towels all the time.
6) The heat.
7) The humidity.

Photographic Evidence of Progress

Hanging out in the NICU under the special light to treat jaundice (with his cool "shades" to protect his eyes).

While in the NICU he looked like this - IV in his head, feeding tube in his nose, etc, etc.  Plus he went down to 4 pounds 9 ounces. 

Once we got him home he was looking much more comfortable!  No tubes, wires, or anything!

He's just still trying to figure out what that whole week with the beeping machines and the bright lights was all about...

 P.S.  At his 3 week doctor's appointment on Thursday he weighed 6 pounds 10 ounces!  That's really good.

He's a Keeper

So I had a baby last week. Wesley Bisel Brock was born on March 10.  (Amelia says "Baby Wes-a-ley")  It was a little crazy.  I hadn't been feeling my best so I called the nurse at my doctor's office.  She said my symptoms sounded like a gallbladder problem and to eat a low fat diet.  Luckily, the next day I had a regularly scheduled doctor's appointment.  The nurse called me back and checked my blood pressure...thirty minutes later I was all prepped for a C-section waiting to be wheeled into the operating room.  I had developed a sudden, apparently severe, case of pre-eclampsia (which, as some of you may know, Tyler refers to only as "some strange disease").  The whole situation really freaked Tyler out at first and he was worried he was going to miss the whole thing rushing to take the girls to play with friends and gather our hospital stuff and meet me there.  Once he was there and the operation was started he was quite fascinated and kept standing up and peering over the drape to try and see all of my internal organs laid out all over the place.  He said he couldn't ever get a good view.  He did managed to see them pull out the baby.  We thought it was kind of funny that the doctors kept saying "he was breech too!".  It's not like he was ready to be born.  He was 36 weeks.  He still technically had four weeks left in there.  He was still moving all around and not at all in "locked and loaded" position.  Anyway - he made it out at a whopping 5 lbs. 6 oz., 19 inches long.

Unfortunately that wasn't quite big enough for his little body to regulate his blood sugars and they took him to the NICU the night he was born.  He ended up staying there for a week.  We got to bring him home yesterday and it has been more adorable than I could have imagined to see the kids with him.  Especially C.T.  I told Tyler I wish I could make a video of every time the two of them are together, like their own little reality show.  I can't handle the cuteness.

I Don't Get It

What is it that I don't get?  I'll give you some hints:

1) It is animated.
2) It is feature length.
3) It has a lot of big name stars lending their voices to it's characters. (Why does Cate Blanchett always gets roles of ethereal women with long flowing hair?  In this case, ridiculously long and ridiculously flowing.)
4) It is a Japanese import.
5) It is supposed to have some greater meaning about harmony or nature or true love or something. 

Did you figure it out?  It is the movie "Ponyo".

We have a tradition of watching a family movie on Sunday afternoons.   As a child my family always watched "Wonderful World of Disney" on Sunday nights and I remember those times fondly.  Now we use our handy Netflix to pick one family friendly movie a week.  This week I convinced the family to watch "Ponyo" because it was rated "G" and I remember vaguely hearing some good reviews of it a couple of years ago. 

For some inexplicable reason, my kids LOVED it.  I myself was kind of freaked out by the whole thing.  Particularly by Ponyo's parents - the androgynous looking father with the hideous purple bags under his eyes and the bafflingly large aforementioned Cate Balnchett as the mother. 

The kids want to watch it every day.  I made a rule that they can watch a half hour of it per day.  I can't decide if they would grow out of their Ponyo phase faster if I just let them watch the whole thing a couple of times or if I keep up the installment plan. 

It's not all bad - the little boy in it has excellent manners that hopefully my children are noticing.  Maybe they'll start calling all adults "San" from now on...