I passed some Komatsu equipment this evening.
It wasn’t moving at the late hour, of course – it just sat there waiting for Monday to come back around.
But it made me want my Daddy bad.
I’m 31 years old and I want my Daddy.
I think I’ll always call him Daddy.
That he’ll always be Daddy.
He can still calm me down by telling me that everything is going to be okay. Even if my brain says otherwise, my heart believes him and because it calms me down, things ARE always okay. He can still put me to sleep by rubbing my head. He can still make me laugh and light up and feel silly and young and lightweight…
He’s my hero – my knight in shining armor – my first contact in a time of need.
I don’t think I’ll ever be okay with not being able to see Mama and Daddy on a regular basis – whenever I want.
I love Nicholas.
I love Molly.
But I can’t help but feel that being this far from your support system is detrimental to a marriage and to your children.
I realize that I am supposed to be okay with Nicholas becoming my support system.
But that’s not how I was raised, nor how the people who raised me were raised.
My family lives within a hundred miles of where they’ve lived for 400 years.
My family is such a rich and wonderful part of the lives that they touch that not having that for Molly or for my family is weighing down my heart.
I have trouble understanding how other people compartmentalize this sort of thing better.
I just want to sit in a hot tub of water, read a book and eat a tub of buttercream icing.
The plight of the SAHW.
June 20, 2011
I’m waiting for it to rain.
It’s in the forecast, it needs to happen.
No, it’s not so hot here that I need the rain to cool things down.
I just feel better when it rains. More settled.
As though the water washing over everything will help cleanse me and my cluttered thoughts.
Everything seems so cluttered lately.
I’ve lists of things to do in my head but very little motivation to accomplish.
Every time I pick something up, wash something, vacuum something – it’s a very short amount of time before it’s messed up again.
Plates left on tables that end up on the floor because I think I’ll wait him out – wait for him to pick up the plate… and the dogs get to it first.
Clothes dropped by the front door throughout the house.
Empty water glasses everywhere… up to 3 a day.
As though the setting down of those things makes them become invisible to all but me.
Even now I find myself sitting at the corner computer desk in my youngest daughter’s room – the corner that was supposed to simply BE a corner in HER room has become a computer room that I store some of her things in.
I need a nap, a rest, a break.
This staying at home thing is such a blessing and I don’t mind being the one in charge of the chores and cooking and cleaning. I mind the simple lack of respect that I’m getting – it’s so easy to pick up after yourself. To not make things harder on someone.
C’mon, rain. Hurry.
Whoa. What a month.
The Lord saw fit to grant me another birthday on this Earth, which is wonderful.
31 years.
That sounds like a lot longer than it actually has been.
Just yesterday I was riding my bike with the neighborhood kids and drinking root beer with my grandfather.
You hear that life is short, but that phrase doesn’t cover the sheer bitness of it.
Abbey surprised me with a visit to Minneapolis.
Mols and I were lazing about and I hear the door open.
I thought Nick was sick – something HAD to have been wrong for him to come home in the middle of the day. Instead of his face, the smiling face of my eldest came running through the door.
Best. Surprise. Ever.
Life is just better with both of them around.
Things are hard on that front, but adulthood tends to be hard. Hard and rewarding.
It would be nice if someone would tell you at the beginning of an uphill battle if the effort was going to be worth it.
for instance, homemade chicken and dumplings from total scratch? Good, but not worth it.
Homemade chicken dumplings made with rotisserie chicken from the grocery store that I don’t have to bake myself? Totally worth it.
You just need a guide – a scale.
Dang it. Now I want some dumplings.
Gone are the days when I can visit the dollar store and walk out happily with a $1 plastic toy.
I don’t know when exactly I became the expensive adult that I am, only that when I look around, my toys are extensive. And expensive.
Recently my dear husband and I splurged on a new Canon camera.
A $1000 camera.
Very unlike the $200 camera I purchased on my own a few years ago.
Sure, we have the means.
And apparently had the opportunity.
Which is bad with us, because we are good at making the most of our opportunities.
And couldn’t even manage to leave the parking lot of the camera store to sleep on the decision.
But. That being said, we’ve made the most of our new toy and our ability to learn anything techy with enough time…
And have started getting ‘lifestyle’ shots that show our day to day activities much more clearly than our stupid iPhone cameras can.
Yes, this entire post was for posting Molly pictures.
So sue me.
Some things just strike you as a little Off.
May 19, 2011
Today is my birthday.
I turned 31 today.
That’s not so old – not so bad.
Just. Mind-blowing.
Mind-blowing that it can all move so quickly – the years.
Where did they all go?
I sit here aware of the movement of every single passing moment.
31 years.
If rationale was a good legal argument.
May 5, 2011
Another day, another blow.
My dad always tells me that the only way I can know if I’m making the right decision is to make one, wait ten years, and then judge the outcome.
Unfortunately I’ve found that bit o’ wisdom to be true – especially when it comes to parenting.
I’m a good mom.
I’ve made the best of the situation I chose for myself.
Had I known better, I would have chosen better. Especially for Abigail.
I grew up in a poorish suburb of Memphis, just to the south in north Mississippi.
I was a pregnant teenager in a school that had more than its share.
Compared to the girls that walk the halls of that school now, we were all quite conservative.
And that is where my daughter goes to school.
It blows my mind to think that there are areas in other parts of the country that don’t have a 25% STD rate.
That have middle schools without pregnancies and that have children that wait past the age of 13 or 14 to have sex.
Granted, my daughter hasn’t chosen that path yet – and I, with my poor judgment, waited longer than that – but the statistics are grim.
It’s not unusual for girls to marry right out of high school and never venture far from their place of origin.
It’s not unusual for parents to be okay with their children only achieving the same level of success that they themselves have.
That is intolerable to me.
I was a teenage mom.
I have ‘Some College’ on all of the forms that I fill out.
I have worked three jobs at a time to make ends meet.
Abbey’s father lives 2 miles away from where we attended high school with his wife of 10 years.
They know little to nothing of what’s going on in their country and are content to answer questions with opinions they’ve heard from others.
I want Abbey to have more, to be more.
I can’t think of another way to accomplish that without taking her out of the area.
I’m married to a man that made the right decisions.
That got his PhD at a young age with hard work and that continues to make his way up into the world based on his work ethic, knowledge and sheer stubbornness.
We’re equals in terms of intelligence and many values – only I stay at home and change diapers because I’m blessed – and he goes to work and converses with Nobel Prize winners.
I’m not saying that we get everything right now – we don’t. We’re human.
But we’re damn sure a better jumping off point than the area either of us grew up in.
The choices my daughter is making without me there tell me several things.
One, that she needs her mother desperately.
Two, that she needs different friends.
Three, that she needs therapy and medications to help her maintain a mental balance, just as the majority of the rest of our family does.
I’m praying so very hard right now that she can get all of those things.
It’s beyond the issue of mother vs. father now.
It’s beyond the issue of who wants her with them more – because, believe me, it would be so much easier to allow her father to be the one in charge of these next 4 years after I’ve handled the last 14. But I’ve never taken the easy path with Abigail and don’t intend to now.
The truth is that she would be better off with me because the environment that she’s choosing for herself in Mississippi is a destructive one.
And sometimes a fresh perspective, a fresh place – a place to start over is essential.
Almost as though I fell off a wall.
May 3, 2011
Once again I’ve let time get away from me.
Should I talk about the Osama death?
Should I talk about being a home mommy?
Should I talk about the things Molly is accomplishing every single day?
Should I talk about the realization that I’ve been away from my first born for 7 months now?
Should I talk about how things aren’t quite right in my head – I’m too near tears on a daily basis now for things to be right… and at the same time I’m happy in many ways.
Should I talk about all of this?
I guess that’s the problem with having limited computer access – oh, don’t take me wrong – I CAN get on a computer every day if I want to… but it’s upstairs and I’m downstairs and finding enough time to think that doesn’t feel like it should be devoted to cleaning or sleeping is hard… and it means that when I do take a few moments out I’m searching and stretching to make some sense out of the mental notes I’ve added to my ‘rolodex’ the past few weeks.
In short? I’m clueless.
Clueless about what to say.
And what to do.
I’m overwhelmed by small tasks like laundry and cooking dinner and am increasingly aware that I’m just not carrying my weight in the way that I imagined I would.
Being away from Abbey means my views on being here with Nick and Molly have taken a very real, very different tone than they may have otherwise.
It’s hard.
So while the world goes on their semi-political rampages this week with the news of Osama’s assassination and while Molly imitates my funny voices that amuse her so much and while Abbey hurtles towards the end of her middle school years, I wait. I’m just not sure for what.
I’ve got a new theory on the origin of orange dye.
April 3, 2011
What was once a favorite past-time is now a forgotten hobby.
Ah.
My dear blogging friends.
I’ve no idea how Ms. Erin manages to update as frequently as she does, because her child actually moves about under his own steam at the moment and I’ve had one of those – it takes tons of effort to keep up with them. In fact, when those of that age are quiet, that’s when you worry!
What is it with parenting anyway – I’ve worked three jobs and gone to school and had more energy than I do now, sitting at home daily with a baby that is pretty much content to sit in my lap, poo through her diapers and chew on her fingers.
Oh.my.gosh.
The poo.
I could write novels about the sheer amount of poo this child is able to shoot from her body.
Women, you know how our weight varies from day to day by a few pounds or more?
Molly’s varies from diaper to diaper.
And you know it’s coming.
Her face starts turning red, marking the beginning of the Olympian effort to comfort her… stomach?
And the grunting noise – like a jet engine mated with a dying hippo.
You can’t forget it. It’s unmistakable.
And I’m glad my child is healthy.
I’m glad she’s gaining weight prodigiously and I’m glad that my body is producing enough of the right kind of milk for her to continue to be healthy.
I’m equally as grateful that laundry stain remover was invented so my child doesn’t have to wear bright orange garments everywhere.
Because baby poop is ALMOST as good a dye as aircraft paint.
And I know one day Molly may run across the above paragraphs and require therapy and bribery to ever speak to me again.
And I’m okay with that, because as far as I’m concerned, the three days of labor and hellish pregnancy means that we’re even.
Plus, she was doomed to therapy with my genes anyway.
Batshit crazy family that I spring from.
Still – cheesy moment here – I’m loving spending this time at home with her.
I dread ever seriously thinking about going back to work and find myself praying/hoping/wishing on a daily basis that my husband would get a 5 figure raise and this life could continue for the foreseeable future.
Until that time, I’ll leave you with this: (if you have access to Instagram, upload the app – it’s fantastic!)
the new joys.
February 13, 2011
Hi.
First off, let me introduce myself.
I’m Lish – the person that used to write here, that got knocked up, VERY pregnant and eventually had a baby that has been eating up all of her time.
Actually, the baby has been eating everything.
She – her name is Molly – is a comfort eater and apparently I’m the best shaped pacifier in the known universe.
I’d feel flattered, but the lack of sleep just makes my brain mushy and mostly my biological clock just likes to jump out and cuddle her big ole baby cheeks.
I think I could fit her whole face in my mouth if I didn’t think the authorities would consider that child abuse.
But really, can you blame me?
Molly and my husband's creepy toes.
Pay no attention to Nick’s creepy feet. He can’t help it.
Unfortunately for her, Molly has inherited them – luckily they’re cute when you’re only 5 weeks old.
Yep, 5 weeks.
5 weeks since one of the most memorable days of my life.
The Day of Pain.
The day the epidural phoned it in. Which isn’t true, but had they checked me before they’d given me the epidural I’d have had to go au natural – as it was, the thing didn’t kick in until about 7 minutes after she was born, but that just means I didn’t feel my stitches and didn’t have to walk for the first hour or so.
NIIICE.
I won’t really describe the event, except to say that being able to feel enough that I could tell her head was out while her body kicked on the inside is in the category of FREAKING WEIRD.
Now that I’m over feeling like I’m dying, I totally dig that memory.
So far Molly is a dream baby.
She rarely cries, sleeps 4 hours at a stretch, is cheerful and easily entertained and is just so chill about everything that comes up.
I think I could have a million of them just like her if I could avoid the pregnancy bit, but so far everyone tells me that’s sort of a requirement.
Darn it.
So I’m enjoying this staying at home bit.
Though my youngest would trade me for her daddy at every point in the day but dinnertime, I think that bonding with her like this is going to remain on the list of top favorite things I’ll experience in my life.
I wish I’d had this chance with Abigail – but life is life is life.
And life is good.
Busy and very good.
In fact, I’m being paged right now.
For the next thirty minutes or so, she’ll LOVE me.
Waking up in a new world
January 4, 2011
Life goes on up here in the frozen tundra.
Tundra does imply that there exists more outside of my window other than grey and cold.
Most of Minnesota is grey it seems – and half of the time I find it pretty in a barren way, the other half I’m hiding under the covers in my bed, trying to avoid the wind chills.
This is quite the winter for this Mississippi girl, with record snow levels so far and plenty to watch and learn.
I’ve learned that I love soups and stews and dumplings and am expanding my repertoire to include them.
I’ve learned that I love to knit, really love it, but… Sort of stink at it.
I’ve learned that living without my child on a regular basis empties my life – I love being with my husband full time in a way I could never have imagined – but that happiness does not detract from the fact that I miss my daughter every second.
I’ve also learned that I’m quite the pregnant wimp – I lack the ability to suck it up and being unable to breathe and clean my house makes me WHINE!
This morning I woke up at 5:30 to take my husband to the bus stop for racquetball practice – not all that exciting for me, but for a man that hasn’t played in 2 months, well… Let’s just say I earned enough wife points to let me out of cooking tonight.
Have I mentioned how much standing up and moving around sucks right now?
Whine?
Molly, the baby, is baking right along – I’m excited to meet her but in this, my last week of pregnancy, I’ve reached panic mode.
What, in the world, am I going to do with a baby? Love her, sure – but it’s been 14 years since I last took care of a young one. I’m a little out of practice. Okay.
A lot.
But, I can’t wait to see her little face.
I can’t wait to have all my family together.
That’s when life will enter the officially perfect phase.
