For the past week, my sister and six month old niece were in town visiting. My niece is in the round-headed, huge eyes, soft skin and cute, squishy thighs stage where she tripods her legs and arms to sit up and hasn’t started crawling yet. I was soaking in her baby smell and staring at her perfectly round cheeks while rocking her to sleep before she jetted back home thousands of miles away. I won’t get to see her again for months and by then, she’ll be giggling and crawling across the floor and her legs will be leaner from motoring around- she’ll probably have a few teeth and maybe her hair will be long enough to curl around her ears.

At two and a half years old, the triplets have lost all semblance of infancy. Over the winter, their legs grew long and tall so they look like young fawns running across the grass. Their faces have grown leaner and more child-like and Lily’s ringlets cascade down her back as she clomps around in my shoes. I look at these amazing kids that have grown up in the blink of an eye, glance back at my niece’s picture and know that she is soon to follow.

Parenting a baby, particularly triplets, is messy, loud and happens at breakneck speed. By the time you get a chance to reflect, the sweet baby is a walking, talking child. Who invented this cruel system? I’m sure there are evolutionary advantages to this because by the time you miss your baby, enough time has passed that you forget how exhausting mothering a baby is so you decide to have another.

That can’t happen with us for a multitude of reasons so I have to enjoy the beautiful babies of my siblings and friends then hand them back to go home. I’ll miss my niece - I wish I could see her grown and develop day by day like my nephew (I am also lucky enough to have a nephew in town who is seven months old and gives me the best smiles whenever he sees me. He also has awesomely chunky baby thighs and arm rolls. Nom Nom Nom.) but I’ll take what I can get. Now, I’m going to go watch my huge children sleep and try to freeze time.

my life has been a whirlwind of nuptial adventures for the past weeks leading up to my friends’ wedding saturday night. it was a spectacular occasion that came together even better than i had imagined in our months of discussions. it was an occasion where the extensive planning and well thought out details merged so well that i found myself saying, “wow! that is so cool/pretty/such a good idea/hilarious” even though i knew 90% of the plans ahead of time. it was quite a party. the ceremony itself was at the local botanical gardens, specifically in the country’s largest japanese garden, and it was naturally decked out with the most varied colors and varieties of tulips that i’ve ever seen. the weather forecast had been dubious all week- to the point that the bride’s aunts had requested novenas requesting sunshine and ten more degrees of warmth. the morning of the wedding it was gray and cloudy but the sun showed itself two hours before the ceremony and it never rained. the reception was in a banquet room/kid-sized city in a children’s museum and the party had the entire building at our disposal. guests in formal wear dove down twisty slides, got pictures taken with their hair standing on end and hands on a giant, metal static ball and jumped in front of the flashing “shadow wall” before getting down to the regular reception craziness of dancing, drinking and debauchery. between talking to people and chasing my eldest son and husband though the exhibits, i feel like i never stood in one place for more than two minutes the entire party (my throbbing feet were not happy after 12 hours of non stop movement). like all of the weddings i have been in, it felt like it was over moments after it began and this morning i was left laughing and reminiscing with a wilting bouquet. the newly married couple, anna and tony, are jetting off to the beach and i hope the end of the beginning of their marriage adventure goes as smoothly as their wedding day. i think i am going to need a week to recover from all of the excitement and standing.here are a few of my favorite shots from the day:

I just wrote a little post on my phone & now it is gone. Drat! It was the greatest post in the world, this is just a tribute.

I love electronic gadgets and technology. It is the American way; every problem can be solved with drugs or computers. Headache, anxiety, auditory hallucinations and seasonal allegies? Here’s your pill. Afraid of abusive babysitters and can’t get a date? Here’s your web cam and internet. But what happens when you build up a tolerance and your laptop’s hard drive craps out? We just aren’t used to that level of reality anymore. I go for walks past beautiful spring blooms and force myself not to check my text messages and email alerts on my handy dandy crackberry. I am writing this from said berry of crack because my laptop, Helen, died. She is on her way back to HP (Which may stand for huge problems. Shoulda had a V8/shoulda bought a Mac) and I am left updating from a microcomputing phone. I may need more pills.

Everyday, I berate myself a little for not posting but I’ve been suffering from blogstipation. I have plenty that wants to come out, it just isn’t! Enough with the poop metaphor- I’ll do what I always do when I can’t write a real post. I’ll list some random stuff with lots o’ links:

• Since we’re discussing random stuff, may I tell you how much I adore twitter? It has a 140 character limit so I can’t ramble which is wonderful for such a verbose person as myself. I twit (tweet?) away all day with random updates answering the question, “What are you doing?”.  I need to repost the feed here but you can find me over there rather often. If you want to write random oddities without commiting to a blog, start twitting.

• I still post pictures regularly on flickr as well but many of my photos are friends and family only. If you’ve been missing out on the kid pics, drop me an email and we’ll talk about adding you. flickr just started letting pro members like myself add videos and I just added my first poor quality kid video. Check it!

• Like my buddy Kristy, I think about how this site fits into my evolving online and real life and if it is necessary. I remind myself that it is just my blog angst (blagnst?)  that I often come back to when I don’t want to write and my continual struggle with feeling embarassed by blurting shit out. 

• Speaking of blurting shit out, I recently started reading this site which is amazing. Crystal over at boobsinjuriesanddrpepper has been chronicling her battle against depression and bravely explains some horrifying incidents in her past that led up to her hospitalization. If she published her story as a book, I would buy it and wait for her interview on Oprah. It is nice to see someone going balls out and spilling her true stories instead of hiding behind a socially acceptable mask.

• I was way too excited about The Biggest Loser and Real Housewives of New York finales. I haven’t watched American Idol at all this season and am saving my Top Chef’s for a random spree of back to back recorded episodes. I seem to like the more esoteric reality shows and get really geeked out over Ace of Cakes on Food Network (I love Geoff). I could babble on about The Biggest Loser (I was glad the winner won) and Real Housewives (Simon creeps me out and Alex needs to go to a damn orthadontist with some of their high-faluten money! And who the hell lets their kids act that way in nice restaurants even if they are rich? Helllllo!!! Also, Ramona? Ooooh girl, you are one catty bitch. I love Countess LuAnn though she needs to spend more time at home and Betthany has such massive Daddy issues that her seemingly nice boyfriend should RUN). Random reality shows have become my guiltiest pleasure this side of dark chocolate. 

• The always lovely Miss Zoot is scheduled to have her baby boy soon! I enjoy her writing, stories and how often her life/likes/dislikes are eerily similar to my own. Just wanted to give her a shout out and tell you to go read her if you don’t already.

• I love all ya’ll for reading/commenting/emailing. Recently, a friend and I discussed at length how our “online lives” are so enriching because it is sometimes difficult to make connections in real life.  The funny thing was we knew each other in real life but talked more in depth about our online lives and became better friends for it (thanks Anima). I don’t know what I would do without you innernet people! XOXO

When they find out I have multiples, people often ask me if I watch Jon & Kate Plus 8. It is a reality show that follows the lives of a Pennsylvania couple with twins + sextuplets= 8 kids/2 sets of multiples.  I regularly record the show and watch a few episodes at a time. The sextuplets (three boys/three girls) are three and I believe the twins (girls) are six years old. Kate, mom, stays home with the kids and her husband, Jon, works full-time. Having multiples and being a stay at home mom is where our similarities end. Kate is incredibly organized with a strict schedule and she keeps their large house very clean. She admits she is a bit of a germ-a-phobe so she does things like scrub the bathtub twice a day. Kate also buys as much organic food as possible and often makes meals from scratch. Honestly, Kate makes me feel like a disorganized, mess of a mom. I watch the show in awe and couldn’t figure out how she had time to do everything. Last night, however, I had a big A-HA! moment when I watched a “behinds the scenes” episode. Laundry is my nemesis and I am never caught up with the piles of dirty clothes. There have been rare instances when I was caught up and learned there was a bigger problem because I don’t even have room for all of the clean clothes in the closets or dressers. This gives me an excuse to always have at least five loads of dirty laundry sitting in baskets because if there were clean they wouldn’t have a home. On this magical behind the scenes look, Kate showed how she separates the laundry and constantly washes and dries loads. I constantly wash and dry loads too so I was with her on this. The next shocking revelation made me feel much better about my domestic goddess status. SHE DOESN’T FOLD OR PUT THE LAUNDRY AWAY. Every week, one helper folds, stacks and sorts the laundry! The next day, another helper puts all the clothes away for her. Hot damn! If I had two weekly laundry helpers, I could be caught up as well. She still kicks my ass in the scrubbing and cooking departments but maybe if I were on national television, I would make those things a higher priority. I feel as if a small burden has been lifted off my shoulders with the knowledge that even Kate can’t keep up with laundry by herself.  And with that, I’m off to fold more stupid laundry. 

Happy Monday! Hope you had a good weekend filled with sunshine like we did. Excuse my chipper attitude, I’m just reveling in the late arrival of spring. According to the local paper, March in our area was the wettest it has ever been since they started keeping track in the mid 1800’s, including during the Flood ‘o 93. Now, the flowers are blooming, it is mostly warm outside and I can herd the kids out back for much needed outdoor playtime. w00t! My springtime goals include: cleaning out the garage, donating more crap to goodwill, planting annuals in the flower bed, hanging a useful bird feeder, going outside with the kids as much as humanly possible and moving closer to those home improvements*.  Do you have any springtime projects or ideas for making any of mine easier? Wanna come over and draw with chalk on the back porch?  

*Upon consideration, I think I sounded like an enormous brat in my last post for looking our gift $5000 grant horse in the mouth (um, why is it a bad idea to look a gift horse in the mouth anyway?). I’m incredibly grateful for the free money, just overwhelmed by options. And a brat. 

** Horse idiom explained here because, the more you know and all.

We are trying to decide which home improvement projects we want to start this spring. The city we live in gave us a $5000 grant towards energy saving or structural improvement projects and that is a gigantic help but there is more than $5000 worth of work so we have to choose what will make the biggest impact. I am leaning towards replacing our ghetto-ass front double doors because they are very energy inefficient which adds to our gianormous heating and cooling bills.

The doors are original to the home and the previous pieces of shit white trash criminals who left drug paraphanelia in our yard, punched holes in the shower then continued to use it ruining all of the drywall and subflooring in the bathroom and oh yeah, duct taped the ripped seams of the carpet owners had damaged and glued the main door back together. Needless to say, it doesn’t function as well as it used to. Between Lily’s energy hogging oxygen concentrator and compressor, night nurses needing to use electricity even when we are asleep and our shitty doors, our electric and gas bills are outrageous. We’ve managed to stay on top of them because I learned there is no break on rates for homes with medical equipment, only a registry which they will kick you off of every six months if the doctor doesn’t send them a letter saying the equipment is still being used. Gee Ameren UE, why not just require letters informing them when someone goes off the equipment or maybe change it to yearly updates? You aren’t giving a price break in exchange for this medical equipment recognition- you are just putting us on a list that might get our power turned back on faster if it goes out. Of all the utilities, the electric company has been the least helpful in understanding the special needs that come with a medically fragile child with life supporting equipment. At least we weren’t one of the homes without power for weeks in the middle of the summer two years ago. Ameren, I’m not a fan. /tangent

The doors will probably be replaced which is one part of the “home entry improvement” plan. The other issue is the rotted wood under the shingles and siding of our front porch overhang. Whoever planned the house decided a small, flat roof sitting at the bottom of the slanted, house roof was a good idea. It was not. The water, etc has damaged the porch overhang to the point that generations of birds live in our porch roof and dive-bomb us when we go outside. We had an estimate done to repair the damage two years ago where the guy warned us the roof was going to fall off and zeul would take over the earth if we didn’t fix it. We didn’t fix it because oh yeah- we had three babies- and it is still standing but now it is tilting a bit so that is also on our list.

Being an adult sucks. When I was a kid, I used to dream about getting $5000 to buy whatever I wanted in the toy store. When I was a teenager, I wanted $5000 to buy clothes and CD’s. As a college student, I wanted that money to travel and see concerts. Now? I’m calling contractors and getting crash courses in roofing and fascist utility companies. I finally get thousands of dollars and not one toy or trip but hopefully the thrill of a lower power bill.

Dear Lady Behind Me in Checkout Lane;

Yes, her hair is naturally curly. I cannot imagine using a curling iron or those pink foam curlers my mom tortured me with on my two year old’s hair. If I tried to roll her hair and force her to sleep on curlers, she would probably back hand me and she’s stronger than she looks.

Regarding your inquiry as to if she is an identical triplet with her brothers? I point you to Henry Gray’s famous book, Anatomy of the Human Body. Indeed they do look alike but I assure you they are not alike in every way for she is a FREAKIN GIRL and they are boys.

Sincerely,
Disheveled Looking Woman Trying to Answer your Questions while Placing Groceries on the Conveyer Belt and Pushing Six Small Hands Away from the Candy and Disney Fake Cell Phones.

this interview with the author of “the ten year nap” about educated, professional women who give up their careers to stay home with their children was worth a listen.  soon after, i read this essay by dutch over at sweet juniper about how parenting changes your life so fundamentally that looking back on your childless self is a difficult but worthwhile exercise. 

on rough days, i question my life’s trajectory of school, school, school, career then bam! stay at home mom. i’ve whispered to myself, “why did i go to college? what was the point of building a professional life when all i do is run after kids and try to will myself into cleaning and cooking? i could have dropped out of junior high to do this!” being a stay-at-home parent has torn down my ego and made me examine who i am and who i want to be. i have also been a working parent and have known how exhausting and guilt-inducing it is. there is no easy answer and i guess parenting itself makes me look back on my childless self and further realize how much i have to learn about balancing my life. the kids have forced me to grow up in ways that never would have happened without them, no matter how old i grew or where i worked. so there’s that.