His and Hers
When you’ve got a large family, you spend an absurd amount of time cleaning things. (I may have mentioned that before.) Laundry and dishes pile up the moment you turn your back, and clutter happens in the blink of an eye. I put so much work into the house at large, that my bedroom is the one to suffer. My clean clothes languish in the laundry basket, my dirty laundry piles higher and higher until my 5 year old comments on it, and my bathroom… sigh… my bathroom. I wouldn’t say that there are chores that I actually like, but if I had to rank them, cleaning the bathroom would…
Of Mice and Men
I was in the 10th grade when I read Of Mice and Men. I had gotten behind on the reading track, but as English was (and is) my favorite subject, I determined to finish it before class. I picked up my softly worn copy, curved the cover around the spine to fit nicely in my hand, and I slunk down into my chair at the back of my Algebra 2 classroom. Out of the line of site of my tiny red-headed teacher, I read on uninterrupted. I flipped through the pages, reading faster as I neared the end the end of the book and the class period. I remember the…
It’s the Little Things
Confession Time: I’m horrible at budgeting. Like really bad. It’s easy to sit down and figure out the big things like rent payment, utilities, car payment, phone bill, etc., but I struggle to properly allot for the little things. A t-shirt here, a stop by Starbucks (or two or three…), a trip to McDonalds on the way home from church, diaper genie refills; these are the things that get me. Fortunately, my husband is far better at financial budgeting than I am, so this is an area where I defer to him. However, I realized that this problem manifests itself in all parts of my life. Time budgeting… I am…
2018: A Year In Review
What We’ve Learned: Flash: How to roll Wonder Woman: How to have better head control Batman: How to walk slowly and how to properly pronounce “D” and “T” words Superman: 20+ sight words Mom: How to create hand lettering and watercolor designs Dad: How to properly install bathroom light fixtures and plumbing What We’ve Loved: Flash: Mommy milk and older siblings Wonder Woman: Being a big sister Batman: A big house to run in Superman: Another baby in the home and riding a school bus Mom: Having the final baby and multiple family vacations Dad: Selling the house and having a significantly shorter commute What We’ve Accepted: Flash: Tummy time…
Tis the Season for Reminiscing
The chicken thighs were boiling in my large stock pot on the stove, the air filled with the warm fragrance of chicken stock, and I was peeling and cubing potatoes. The next step would be getting the biscuits cut up for dumplings. This is one of my favorite meals to cook because it has 3 ingredients and is almost mindless in its preparation. Added to the fact that I always make it in obscenely large quantities, it’s one of my go to recipes to share with families in need of a meal, which is why I was making it again this week. Listening to the thwack of my knife against…
Finding Joy
There is a hush over my house. I hear the whirring of our white noise machine and my soft typing on this keyboard. Occasionally I hear my own sniffles, the jangle of a dog collar, and the chirp of a smoke alarm signaling it’s need for new batteries. This is a rare occurrence in our household, me managing to get up before anyone else, sitting in a quiet house. My husband is sleeping in, meaning he didn’t have to get up at 4:30, my sons have stayed in their own bed all night long, the baby has been fed and cuddled back to sleep, and Wonder Woman’s feeding pump hasn’t…
Flash Joins Our Family
AKA, how I had a baby on my bathroom floor. I guess it started with his nickname, we chose it soon after finding out I was pregnant. As an English major, I should have seen that for what it was, foreshadowing. His birth day started with brunch. A delicious sweet potato biscuit topped with pork belly and perfectly cooked eggs benedict. It was wonderful, I’m still thinking about it. As my very pregnant self scarfed down every scrap of food on my plate and chatted with my girlfriends, I ignored the occasional contractions I was having. At this point I had been having them for weeks and was 0 for…
The Exhausting Mundane
We’ve entered a new phase of life. I call it The Exhausting Mundane. It was a gradual slip into this new normal, and it’s been hard for me to wrap my brain around it. I guess that’s why it has taken me so long to update our blog. On paper, things are easier. Superman is now 5 years old, he’s incredibly helpful and independent. Batman is growing up too and there’s been a giant jump in his independence, especially when combined with help from big brother. Wonder Woman is out of what I’d call the acute phase. She’s now 18 months old and for the most part, she’s a very…
One Year Later: A Medical Update
We have now had Wonder Woman in our arms for a full year. I can’t wrap my head around all that has happened, all that we have survived together. As many of you know, and we haven’t been shy to share, it was statistically unlikely that she would live for a whole year. I’d like to take this time to update you medically on where we are at, what her future holds, and answer what I can about her prognosis from this point on. To say that it was unlikely she would reach her first birthday to me rings as both true and untrue. Because her system is so fragile,…
Happy Birthday, Wonder Woman
When I was a little girl, my family visited Omaha Beach in Normandy, France. Though I understood very little about the significance of the location, I have always remembered the trip. Specifically, I remember running with children of different nationalities up and down into grassy spaces that seemed like bowls carved into the ground. I remember my mother telling me that those bowls were craters caused by bombs from WWII. I didn’t understand the significance, my six year old self couldn’t imagine the type of destruction that could leave permanent marks in the earth decades later. I couldn’t comprehend the death, the grief, that each of those craters caused, rippling…
