We just finished a family movie night and the twin’s first viewing of The Wizard Of Oz.  I watched remembering my childhood and how much I loved the movie then.  I found myself wondering; did my mother think the same thing when she watched it with us?  It’s one of those things that truly are timeless.  I couldn’t help but think someday my children will be watching this movie with their own children on some new high tech digital holographic format.

Predictably the kids found some parts scary, especially little man, but the biggest surprise was the emotional way Baby Girl reacted to the idea of a girl being lost and not able to find her way back to her family.  She had the misty eyes and the quiver in her voice when as she sought to understand.  She was genuinely concerned about what might happen to Dorothy and how she would get back to her family.  It was a joy to see the empathy developing in you young little heart.

Recently DH and I headed up to our local snow hill for a sledding adventure with Baby Girl and Little Man.  It’s one of those places where you sled down on tubes, and then a tow lift pulls you back up to the top.  We were having a great time and had taken several runs when Little Man stopped at the tow rope operator introduced himself just as grown up as can be, and asked the operator what his name was.  It was Aaron.  Every run after that included a “hi Aaron!”  “What does that do Aaron?”  “How old are you Aaron?”  “Thanks for doing our sled Aaron.”

I kept waiting for Aaron to show signs of irritation, but he seemed cool with it.  In fact he seemed like it made his day.  I started to wonder; how many people do I see and interact with each day without ever even looking at them or acknowledging them?  I am very self-centered so I would venture to guess the number would be astounding.  How many Aarons do thankless jobs all day every day and nobody knows their names?  It doesn’t take much to say, “Hello, my name is…” and to call a person by their name, even if you don’t go that far, a simple smile and a thank you would probably go a long way.  This week I’ve been trying to be more aware of the people around me; the ones ringing up my groceries, the ones taking my tickets, or my order.  I’m hoping it will not be a short term change – because NOBODY should do a thankless job.  I’m going to do my best to be the THANK YOU.

I’ve been in a fog the last few weeks.  I have season affective disorder (SAD) and I have been trying to use alternative methods to prevent symptoms. After having a VERY bad reaction to anti-depressants last year (I stayed awake for four days) I’ve been unwilling to try anything new.  Additionally we are struggling as a family to manage the increased cruelty and disrespect meted out daily by our teen, and DH and I have been rocky in terms of communications and expectations.  In short I’ve been angry, frustrated, and feeling like nobody notices or cares.  I have been feeling unappreciated, unnoticed, and unwilling to give any more to those who don’t appreciate what I give daily.  What’s funny is there is no “big thing” it’s just a bunch of little things that mount into a giant frenzy of frustration and bitterness.  When I try to express it I sound petty and ridiculous, but that doesn’t make the sting any less painful.  I wonder how much is my SAD and how much is justifiable discontent.

The problem with openly discussing something like depression is that people around you tend to dismiss your frustrations, and any negativity you bring to light, as a result of “your issue.”  When in fact that’s only half of the story; sometimes you are in a foul mood because those around you are acting like self- centered asses.  I am willing to concede that at least half of my struggles of late are a result of my need for sunlight, but amazingly after DH took me out one-on-one, spent REAL time talking to me about things beyond our children, and paid me a few sincere compliments; I am in a far better position to handle the rest of the madness.  Then today I got some time to spend with former colleagues and friends who have always been great about reminding of my value and worth.  I am a new person.  It turns out I’m pretty simple -fill my cup, and I’ll pour it all back out for those around me… but when I run out – I don’t run very well or very long on empty, and I can get deeply empty.

The house is overrun with projects and good intentions.  There is all the creativity that spurns the start of new messes and piles of ‘to finish’ and before I know it there are 45 balls being juggled and no conclusion.  It’s maddening.  It’s also the way my mind works.  Today I took a huge step in reigning in the chaos.  I go to church with Rebecca Stuhlmiller, who is writing a book about getting control of your home and time, called “Redesigning Your Homemaking”.  She volunteered to come to my house and help me make a plan.  In the time we had she wanted to focus on the area that adds the most frustration to my day.  This is an easy decision, while there is chaos everywhere; it’s most agitating in my very small kitchen (because I LOVE to cook).

So we went item by item, throwing away, donating, cleaning, and organizing.  This may seem like something that I could have done all by myself, but I couldn’t.  I just couldn’t see through the clutter.  I couldn’t find a place to start.  I couldn’t be as thorough and meticulous on my own.  Case in point; the area above my sink has housed the same “stuff” for the last 5 years.  I’ve never really questioned what I have there, and why.  One of the items is a kerosene lantern.  Rebecca asked why I have it there.  I answered “in case the power goes out.”  In all seriousness, without an ounce of sarcasm she asked, “Does that happen often?”  Then I thought about it.  Our power goes out maybe once a year for less than 30 minutes.  In the event of a power outage I could probably use a flashlight to find the lantern (if it was dark when it happened).  But it made me think… is this how I live my life; cluttered just in case?  There is nothing wrong with having the lantern, but why have I let it take up some of the most valuable real estate in my home?  It made me wonder what else I should move or toss, and I am already making a list of items to purge.  My frugality makes it hard to get rid of things, but at some point the sanity has to be more valuable.  Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up at least some of this momentum.

I’m really not so good at the home-making thing.  I’m a good cook, but that’s where it ends.  I hate housework and therefore don’t really do it.  I want to decorate my home nicely, but I really have no idea what to do or how to start.  I do what I do because I’m pretty good at the mom thing (well don’t ask the teen, she thinks I’m the worst mother ever).  So when they put “home-maker” on a form that asks for my occupation, I feel like I’m lying if I check that box.  Now if they had a box that said full time mommy, and teacher – well I could proudly put a check in that box.

I have been attempting to do a better job recently.  I am making sure the sink is empty and dishes are done each night, keeping up on laundry and getting it put away when I’m done, and I’ve managed to find the dining room table.  That being said my house is still so messy that last week I purchased two new shirts and two undies sets and I have not been able to locate the bag since.  I confident that I got home with it, or at least I was, because said he got his athletic tape out of that bag, but I have torn the house apart and can’t find it.  I’ve decided that lingerie and two new tops are not worth the hours I’ve poured into finding that bag – I’ll just wait until it surfaces, cause it would just be weird to call the store and ask if they found my underwear bag over a week ago; wouldn’t it?

I have always appreciated a well-placed thank you.  There are a hundred ways to show someone you are grateful. As creative and thoughtful as many of them are, nothing is quite the same as an honest heart felt “thank you”.  I try really hard to say thank you when it’s appropriate, yet as much as I try – I miss it sometimes.  I have so many people who deserve to hear thank you from me for the little things they do each and every day to bless me and my family.  Sometimes in small ways and other times in huge ways I could never repay.

From a very young age there have been angels along my path who have encouraged me, led me, and helped me out. Some of them did it very intentionally others probably don’t even know that they were instrumental in pointing me along the right path.  Those who were my first big inspirations are the ones I have probably never said thank you to.  So I’m thinking it’s time to write a few letters and say a few long overdue thank yous.  If I die tomorrow, I want them to know what their love and support has meant in my life.

I love a good solid 8 hour night of sleep.  I’m not a night owl.  In fact I can’t usually figure out why people would stay up past eleven unless they are out having fun with friends.  I’m a morning person; I have always loved to get up and get my work done early in the day.  Before the twins were born our family had a rhythm.  The Teen and DH love to sleep in.  If they didn’t have somewhere to be they would sleep until 11am or later.  I on the other hand consider 8am to be sleeping in- Even when I’ve had an unusually late/wild night I can’t really sleep in much past 8.  Saturday morning was mine, my time to read, watch TV work on a craft project or do anything else I wanted to.

Enter the twins:  Baby Girl is a night owl, just like her father.  She would stay up all night if we let her (she wouldn’t be pleasant, but she’d do it).  Little Man is a morning person.  At age 2 he got up on his own at 4am and opened the back slider to go outside a play.  In addition to installing a high bar lock, we had to put a clock in his room and teach him was 7:00 looked like.  He is required him to stay quietly in bed until then.  I don’t really know how early he gets up, but we have several times heard him open his bedroom door and shout “Woo hoo – it’s 7:00!”

Sleep has been hard to come by since the kids were born.  Despite attempting several “sleep training” techniques, we could NOT get them to sleep simultaneously.  She is hardwired for late nights and sleeping in, he passes out early, and then hits the ground running.  They didn’t sleep through the night for the first 13 months.  The first five months I averaged 2 hours of sleep nightly.  As they got older I’d get more like 5 hours.  When they finally “slept through the night” we were overjoyed.  It didn’t last for long.  A few months later Little Man started having night terrors.  If you’ve never witnessed a toddler having a night terror, it’s violent screaming like they are hurting, and no amount of calming words or back rubs settles them down.  They can scream for 30 minutes non-stop in the middle of the night.  There went the blissful nights of sleep.  It also made for some interesting hotel stays.  This went on for over two and a half years and finally ended this fall.  Little Man hasn’t had a night terror since October.

Last night as we were getting ready for bed DH asked if we were finally going to be able to sleep through the night.  Well that was the wrong thing to say.  Baby Girl has now become a sleepwalker.  Ah man… back to the beginning we go.  I guess I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

I went to see Rent with a couple of girlfriends today.  It’s been a while since I’ve been out with girlfriends (no hubby’s) and it was great.  Not just because we were able to eat boatloads of garlic at the Whitehouse Grill, but also because we were able to talk about girl stuff .  It’s not that we can’t talk in front of the men-folk, but one of the ladies is expecting, and there is just “girl talk” when it comes to pregnancy that men don’t really care to hear about.   The other great thing was being able to watch a musical without feeling guilty for dragging him somewhat against his will.  If I have 535,600 minutes left to live, I was very happy to spend 240 of them with the girls.

I have really good intuition the kind that in most instances it is right on.  It has taken me many years to trust it, and I am still learning to rely on it. But even when facts suggest otherwise; my instincts usually know the score. Yet I often find I’m hesitant to outwardly admit that I am making decisions based on a gut level “know”.  Part of that is being married to a pragmatic that needs facts to back up everything.  I tend towards the dramatic side and he balances me out… however he has little or no regard for “gut check”.  It’s the reason that when Little Man was 18 months I allowed myself to be convinced to take him to the county fair.  Others kept saying “it’s probably teething.”  In my gut I knew it wasn’t.  I knew he was sick.  By the end of the day his fever spiked to 106 and I rushed him to the ER.  Still I felt I had to justify that choice to DH lest he think I was overreacting – so much so I double checked with my friend who is a paramedic, his response was “A fever of 106?  Get that baby to the hospital”.

The fact is most of my truly terrible motherly mistakes (actually most of my bad mistakes in general) have occurred when I ignored my inner voice. While I tend toward the dramatic, I am not one of those “sky is falling” type of people.  I am rational and contemplative in my decision making process, but at the end of the day, when all the facts are presented there is still the gut.  Little Man had an ear ache last month for several days.  He never had a fever, but the consistency of pain made me finally take him to the pediatrician.  He was given a through exam and I was told it was just pressure from his sinuses (from a cold he had).  The doc explained to me that without a fever it’s usually not an ear infection.   OK, noted, I’ll be sure not to bother you unless there is a fever next time.  I have ignored my inner voice the past few days,  when Baby Girl started complaining of an ear ache three days ago (having had a cold, but no fever) I chocked it up to sinus pressure…. But I knew she had an ear infection.

I am kicking myself today, because last night around 11pm she woke up screaming that her ear hurt.  She continued until midnight when she finally went back to sleep.  This morning she wakes up happy as a lark.  No ear ache, no fever, sniffles almost gone, and I considered not taking her (fear that the doc would think I’m one of those overreacting moms).  But I decided to hell with what anyone else might think, I want to know she’s OK.  It took exactly 20 seconds for the doc to tell me hear eardrum burst – Well now I feel like a crap mom.  Why don’t I listen to my gut???  It knows things.

So that I do not ever feel the need to justify listening to my gut, I am making a list of the things my intuition was right about.  Maybe it will empower me to listen to it always.  And really who cares if DH or anyone else thinks I’m over reacting, I’m mom, it’s my right.

1)      I knew I was pregnant with twins, in my gut I knew it.  It was the first question I asked during a 7 week ultrasound, but when they only found 1 baby I didn’t argue – Cause wouldn’t the doctor know?  You’d have to be crazy to lay there spread eagle and insist they keep looking.

2)      During the end of my pregnancy I knew something was VERY wrong, but my doc kept telling me that I was fine.  I didn’t want to be a whiner so I sucked up the pain of kidney failure and all the other effect of PIH.  Thank God for the nurses at the hospital who finally stepped in and called my doctors out.  It took the head of the OB department stepping in.  Why didn’t I advocate for myself??  I didn’t want to be a people to think I was a baby? Did I seriously put the lives of my children and myself in danger to protect my reputation for being tough? Embarrassingly yes, I did in fact do that.

3)      When I took Little Man to the ER at 4 months because he was too sleepy, and they made me feel like I was overreacting – he was overdosed on his heart meds and his heart rate was way too low.

4)      I knew the twins were VERY sick at 12 months, and needed to be seen right away.  I wasted a day justifying myself before finding out they had RSV.  They were miserable.

5)      That sick little man had at 18 months turned out to be MONO – I nearly killed the poor boy for a day at the fair with grandma.  Grandma would have understood that he was sick; I just didn’t want to disappoint her.

6)      Baby Girl’s ear drum ruptured because I was too afraid the doctor would think me a worry wart- Are you kidding me??? We pay for insurance for a reason, and really it’s not like the doc is thinking “no thanks, I’ve got all the business I can handle”

7)      The people who give me the creeps and make the hackles on my neck raise;  I don’t need to explain why they will never be alone around my kids (the littles or the big).  My “creeper instinct” has been right on since I was little, and I am not about to turn it off when it matters most.

8)      Those times when something about a situation with my teen doesn’t feel quite right, I will say no – even if I don’t have a good “reason”.  Even if it makes her hate me.  Because on more than one occasion we have found out after the fact that it was exactly the right call to make.

I haven’t posted for a few days.  I haven’t been really in a good mental place.  I have been frustrated, overwhelmed and feeling overall discouraged.  The kids are pushing every button I have and I have been taking the bait.  It has been far from my finest hours.  I feel overwhelmed by my duties at home, and the commitments I’ve made outside the home.  The obvious solution is to let the extra stuff go, but those are exactly the things keeping me sane and giving me the most happiness.

I know that I am extraordinarily blessed so I feel like whiner any time I complain.  The problem is that being a stay at home mom was never my dream.  I do it because it makes sense for my family right now.  I love my children and cherish my time with them, but they can push my buttons like nobody else.  And that’s just what they’ve been doing.  It almost seems like they had a “kid’s meeting” and decided that they would simultaneously search for any cracks smash against them until I break.  Lately I fear my breaking point is getting closer and closer.