Pete and Me

To be perfectly honest, all has not been peaceful on the homefront lately. How could it be, really? We moved to Maryland and I cried nearly every day I was there. And I didn't hide it. I cried to him. I cried and cried and cried. And I puked nearly as much as I cried, because I was so sick during the pregnancy with Elizabeth. So we get her home from the hospital and I told him, "I love you but I can't be here anymore. I need my village. I need to go home."

This prince of a man went to interview for another job. When he was on his way to that interview, he got into a crazy car wreck and but for a few inches and some serious heads-up driving, would have been gone. Forever. That reality is one I continue to digest on a daily basis. After getting the call, I loaded three kids, one of whom was on a nasogastric feeding tube that had to be dangled from that little hook in the backseat that holds your dry cleaning and whatnot, into my oh-so-cool (and really, it is) minivan and picked him up from Harrisburg, PA, where his car remained. We drove back home that day to find the shingles of our roof blowing into the driveway. Seriously? Hadn't we been through enough?

Apparently not. We listed our house on a Friday in April and I drove to NJ with the kids that Sunday to see "the house." This house, the one in which we are currently living. I loved it. I bid on it. I bought it. Pete agreed, said yes, trusted me. And here we are.

We sold our house in the worst housing market in decades in a period of 30 days. He got the new job, after managing to get back up to interview for it without getting into a car wreck. And so we went for it. We took a loss on the house in Maryland and paid too much for the house in New Jersey. But we went for it, believing in fate and things happening for a reason.

So we've been here a month, and Pete's started the new job. He is so busy and under a tremendous amount of stress, but I believe that he is happy with this new company and with the amount of responsibility and input he has. And I am happier than I have ever been. I've caught up with my friends, given the kids oodles of playdates and friends to see again. We've run errands to all of the familiar places and had our family in and out of our house as if we had a revolving door put in place. Things are great.

So why all of the tension and stress between us? Why does he believe that I'm slacking off and not pulling my weight around here? Why do I feel like he's a monster once he's finished his 10-12 hour work day who just wants to yell at everyone? Why are the kids acting like caged, uncivilized animals?

Because...everything has changed. Again.

We've gone from place to place, house to house, state to state, school to school, job to job, lack of routine to lack of routine. So what do you do when you realize that you are settled when you have never been settled before in your life?

You lash out at the ones you love the very most in the world.

The kids are coming down from a most insane roller coaster ride that has taken up pretty much their entire childhood thus far. We've only been married seven years and we've moved four times and lived in two states. What does that say for the stability of the world we've given to our children? Not much. It tells them to live in suspense, and continue to wait for the proverbial shoe of change to drop. And Pete and I are exhausted, by life, by our roles, our jobs...by each other. I've spent a lot of time this week in both of our sets of shoes, appreciating both of our sides and wondering if we'll get back to zero. Will we find that equilibrium we want, and how hard will it be to happen upon it?

Then I walked out of Lizzie's room tonight, pulling her door shut quietly behind me with her tucked soundly into her bed, and peeked in on Pete and Erin and Meghan. He was supposed to be tucking them in, and bedtime has been a major point of contention lately, with me wanting peace and him wanting quiet, and both of us only acheiving chaos. I was nervous. I was afraid to even look in. Would there be more punishment and yelling? Would this be yet another cog in the "This Family Doesn't Look So Good" wheel?

No.

It would be the beginning of the next chapter. The chapter of peace. The chapter of quiet. The chapter where Daddy is telling stories about the dinosaurs that used to roam the earth, standing between their beds with little girls staring at him with amazement. He was C-3PO and they were the Ewoks, listening to tales of days long ago, when none of us were here, but clearly, Daddy knows all about it. And with that scene, my frustrations fell away into the God awful shag carpet in the hallway that we need to replace, and my love for him came welling back up inside of me like it did when I saw him for the first time fourteen years ago, when I was a child myself. With that I know that we will be ok. I can see that in the eyes of two of our daughters as they watch their father, the man with whom I made them, as he lights up all of our worlds and continues to hold us all together.

There are way too many people trying to piss me off today. And my breaking point lies with Pete's dog. I realize I am being cruel and impatient and mean and not a lover...and I do not care. On top of everything else, that dog just peed on my kitchen floor AGAIN!

He peed on my kitchen floor last night, too.

Add this to the people from whom we bought this house who are haggling with us over the $500 that we put into escrow because they couldn't figure out how to get their crap out of this house in time for closing, even though they'd been under contract for three months. They are offering us $250.

Yes, I'm serious.

I'm trying to pay bills, cancel my gym membership in Maryland (no one will call me back), set up a playdate/birthday party for Erin for tomorrow, shop, get a cake, get 400 other gifts for birthdays in the months of August and September (because people love to get busy and make babies between Thanksgiving and Christmas), clean the house, plan a family party for Sunday, get physical appointments for Erin and Meghan, and dentist appointments for all four of us. Not that I really have a hope of being able to make and keep appointments for myself. I have had a temporary filling in place for nearly two years because I can't keep appointments.

Yes, two years.

Now the dog is howling to come in the kitchen.

Meghan has been crying over the breeze blowing in the wrong direction for a week. The baby is teething, had hand, foot and mouth, a bacterial skin infection on her face and a yeast infection-diaper rash. And as far as Erin goes...it's her birthday today and she's happy and pleasant and wonderful and feeling very six. But please refer to blog post below about battles on the home front with her.

I don't sleep. I eat crap food. I don't exercise. I haven't had a pedicure in years, nor a haircut since March. Just had my color done on Friday...now can't have a haircut for another six months because the freakin' highlights were so ridiculously expensive, I almost passed out at the checkout.

So is the dog peeing on the floor that big of a deal?

In a word:

YES!

Looking for the Light

The past week has been one of great mental struggle. I am stuck back in the NICU, smelling the smells, hearing the monitors and bells and alarms, listening to the doctors rounding on their little patients lying in steel cribs, hooked up to monitors and IV poles. And I cannot shake the memory of walking with my baby's bed as it is wheeled into the operating room, giving consent to irresponsible doctors to open her up and attempt to fix her intestines...and then walking out and leaving her there, not knowing if I would see her alive again. And then doing it all over again when the surgeon did not do it correctly the first time.

I wonder when these memories will be no more than memories, instead of these vivid realities that insist on gripping onto my shoulders, shaking me and shouting in my face, reprimanding and punishing me like a child for all my wrong-doings and mistakes I have made. I cannot understand why this life is so cruel that my innocent child would be forced to endure such pain and suffering before she ever took her first breath of fresh air beyond the walls of a hospital. I suppose this is why the memories are still walking with me through my days and nights. I have not reached a peaceful place with what happened to my child, to my family, to my life. And perhaps if I write, I will get there.

She is so strong and determined. So brave. And she had no choice to be anything but that. And that angers me. It is of some consolation when people tell me she will never remember her experience in that hospital. But I do not entirely believe it. I feel that it will stay with her in some way, continuing to solidify her strength of mind, body and spirit. It will always effect her and has contributed to who she is. It will always be the place from where she came. Her survival is miraculous and the way she is thriving is inspirational. I take my cue from her, from all of my girls. If they can rebound and go on after everything that we took on as a family, then I can, too. I just hope that these dark places become brighter as the time passes us by. The darkness is paralyzing. The only thing that lightens it is being blessed enough to spend all my days witnessing the growth in my daughters and the healing in Elizabeth.

Battles on the Home front

Erin Brighid, my first born, will be six next week...God willing. I am hoping that both of us make it to her next birthday. This child brought me such angst and indigestion this morning, I seriously contemplated walking into my bedroom, locking my door and sticking my head beneath my pillow for at least three hours.

She, and her sisters, have been with me continuously for nearly eighteen months. School was a complete joke last year. She had a dance class, and that was about it. We pulled Erin and Meghan out of school because when Elizabeth was so sick in the NICU, I refused to take a chance that colds and flus would enter our home via the germ factory that preschools typically are. Any germs would have inevitably been passed along to me, rendering me useless and banned from being with Lizzie. But even before we withdrew them from school, Erin has kicked and screamed her way into every classroom which she has ever encountered. I don't know if it is a lack of emotional development or maturity (that's what I like to tell myself), or if she just figured out how to play me early on and will continue to try to do it until the end of time.

So, I decided to send Erin and Meghan to a Vacation Bible School this week. Each morning they go for three hours. They will be excited and have fun, I told myself. And then the tears began. The very patient teachers allowed the girls to stay together in the "Just Finished Kindergarten" class, partially because of the obvious separation anxiety, and primarily because the younger class that Meghan would have gone into was packed with about 60 children. They smiled at this solution (probably again thinking they had gotten one over on old mom) and off they went, holding hands and looking angelic.

All was well. Until I awoke the monster this morning.

An hour of sobbing, tears streaming down her face, telling me that she hates Bible school (ouch, sorry God), and that she never wants to go again. I saw an opportunity, a make-or-break situation, the stuff of which men are made. I went for it, needing only the occasional support from friends on IM. So pathetic. I informed the monster that she could go happy or she could go sad, but she was going, and there wasn't a thing she could do to make me change the plans I had made for us today. I ignored her, got her sisters ready...and we were all out the door by twenty to nine.

Today I won.

This is just one of many battles waged on the home front with this child. She is willful, strong, brilliant, stubborn and determined to get her way. And I have to recognize my short comings where she is concerned. I have sheltered her and allowed this behavior to continue for nearly six years, out of fear, naivete, and sheer exhaustion. I have been beaten down, and I haven't wanted to stand up and fight back the right way. I've allowed the control to slip through my fingers like sand and watched, with a feeling of helplessness, as it has fallen into hers.

I love her in a way that she'll not know until the time, should the time come, that she has a baby girl of her own. But I am worn to the nub by her as much as I love her. Before she arrived, I was not yet a mother. She created this role for me and we have been figuring it out together every day, every step of the way. I guess something clicked in me this morning that said that if I'm willing to be tough on Lizzie to teach her to sleep, then I must also be tough on Erin to teach her to obey. I didn't get a manual on how to mother, and she didn't receive a rule book for all of the ins and outs of good behavior when we entered into this relationship with one another.

We'll keep learning together, and she'll continue to make me who I am as a mother, as we wage these battles and fight these wars, hoping all the time that at the end of the day, there will be peace in our house and love in our hearts. I can only continue to hope that my mothering improves and I take back and maintain the control around here. Sooner or later we'll figure this out.

Return to my life...as it should be

We moved back to New Jersey last week and into our new home this past Monday. The walk-through was a disaster, as we tried to imagine our this house without the seller's belonging in it. We had to try to imagine it empty because with twenty-five minutes left until settlement, they were still taking their belongings out. The place was filthy, there was a Mustang with no engine up on jacks across the street, the engine and other random car parts in the driveway, motor oil and other combustibles strewn across the lawn...it wasn't pretty. Then we went to closing, and the sellers didn't show for another hour and fifteen minutes. Again, not pretty. Long story short, they finally got all of their "stuff" off of our property on Thursday. They also may have been secretly using this house as a fraternity, like in Old School, because that is the only explanation with which I can come up to explain the utter filth and funk that was left behind. But now the house is clean, and we certainly do have our work cut out for us...but I love this place. I love the rooms, the way our belongings look in them already, the way Erin and Meghan are so happy and peaceful. But mostly I love the fact that our house has been filled with our friends and family for the past five days. It just feels so much better to have them with us and near us and in and out of our door.

So I'm back...back to the homeland, back where things make sense and shopping is ridiculously accessible, back to the place that I call home, not because of what it looks like or where it is, but because of how it feels to be a family here and for all the people who we love and love us who are clearly as happy to have us back as we are to be back.

Now I have embarked on the path of "teaching" Elizabeth (or torturing her, depending on how you look at it) how to fall asleep on her own. She has been playing me like a cheap fiddle and I'm realizing that my motherhood-amnesia has gotten the best of me with this kid. I kept telling myself that I couldn't remember how to do this sleep-through-the-night thing, that it had been too long and she'll get there when she's ready. I've been so afraid to see her as a "normal" baby, so if she cries, I'm there to hold and feed and rock...and so, seven months later, that's exactly where she wants me. It has become a problem. So today I required her to put herself to sleep for both of her naps, and she did it, but it was so painful. She cried and screamed and coughed and choked on her dramatic phlegm and cried some more. And I know that this is the right thing to do, but it is so painful. For both of us. At bedtime tonight, things didn't go as smoothly as planned, but she is now asleep and I will just take the remaining hours of the night as they come. But I will not feed her no matter how hard she cries. This I promise.

If I am committed to making sure that life gets on a normal, predictable path, I must accomplish this. I have to get her on a schedule that includes sleeping through the night. I'm going to lose my mind otherwise.

I guess this is the point in every mommy-baby relationship where tough love rears its ugly little head. And so I have to get tough because I love her. I did it for Erin but not for Meghan, and now Meghan still can't cope without her pacifier. Ugh, I just admitted it...my four year old still has her pacifier and I have no immediate intentions of removing it from her person. And now anyone who may read this will know.

Thank God there aren't that many of you out there.