I actually just typed this up as an email to my friend, Sara, who is out of town.  But then I decided that since it really is a pretty good summary of our weekend that I should post it here.  I keep meaning to get back into posting stuff, so might as well start now.

We survived recital weekend, but just barely.  Friday night was dress rehearsal from 5:30-9:15.  I didn't realize it would take so long, so neither D or I ate dinner before we left.  Forgot the blanket to sit on to keep her costume clean when not on stage.  Also forgot anything to do to keep busy.  Amy 0- Dance 1.

Saturday I did better, remembered all key items, including food.  I thought it would go faster than the night before because they didn't have to all learn the finale, but we just replaced that with a slideshow, thank yous and awards.  I didn't buy tickets because why would you pay to watch it Saturday if you already were there for most of it on Friday and paid to see it on Sunday?  Well, apparently this is another instance where I was not thinking like everyone else.  Luckily for me when I came back around 7:15 (thinking I would be sure to be there a few minutes before the end) and they hadn't even gotten to the intermission yet(!) I ran into Jennifer Klaers who had an extra ticket and I at least had a place to sit for the next TWO HOURS!  So once again, it was dance from 5:30-9:15.  Keep in mind that there was also hair and make-up time before each show.  Amy 0-Dance 2.

Sunday came and we went strawberry picking out at Silkey's (me, D, E and V) and despite V getting tired of it and quitting right away we picked just over 36 lbs. in an hour.  Making today jam day.

But I digress.  So, with the 2nd day in a row of obligatory nap for Darby, who is not used to going to bed at 10:00 pm and the strawberry picking there wasn't time for much else.  Kyle and the other girls went to the pool because the heat index thingy was 91, but Darby and I stayed home to get her ready.  Once again back to the High School for dance.  This time we had to be there at 2:30.  We brought everything we needed, and my parents and Kyle and the girls all made it there on time, so despite the fact that it was another 3.5 hours of dance I'm calling this one a tie.  Final score Amy 1- Dance 3.

Look what I did!

Ha!  Take that crappy winter-of-everything-breaking!  You may have lasted longer and been colder than any winter I remember, and you may have seen the demise of way to many items in our house, but I declare myself the winner!  'Cuz I made myself a cool new purse!

And no, it's not perfect, but I'm so proud of myself that I'm going to ignore the voice in my head that keeps pointing out the mistakes and flaws and I'm going to use it anyway.  So, ha!  Winner!

Oh, and it still needs a button on the little flap, but I haven't had time to find the perfect one yet, so for right now it's an open top.

To The Love of My Life

Happy Valentine's Day to my amazing husband.  And because our anniversary was almost 2 weeks ago and I still haven't given you a card, Happy Anniversary, too!  

I know it's cliche' but we've been through a lot together.  And I feel like this picture about sums it up.  

Seriously, though, I am completely surprised by how things have evolved so far, but at the same time I can't imagine any way life could be any better.  I distinctly remember telling my mom and dad soon after the wedding that we probably wouldn't have children until we had been married about 5 years.  Ha!  So here we are 10 years, 2 apartments, 3 houses, 3 dogs, 5 kids and 3 cities later...  And I don't think it's possible to love you any more than I already do.  But then again, I think I've been proven wrong once before and this time I'm actually excited to see it happen :)

And in closing:

I love you, Kyle.  Thanks for everything.

It's A Good Thing Somebody's Paying Attention

Today was a preschool day for D so we were out the door and on our way to school pretty early this morning.  D climbed into the van and started doing her seatbelt, I buckled V into her seat, closed the door, walked around the van, got into my seat, did my seatbelt, put the van in reverse and as I was backing out of the garage I heard a small voice yell at me "Hey!  Buck-a!  Buck-a!"  (That's 2 year old for buckle, in case you weren't sure)  Turns out I neglected to strap E into her seat.

Like I said, it's a good thing somebody was paying attention.  

Everyone but the Dog

A sweet family picture so you, too, can be amazed by how innocent they look and how crazy they are! Don't let those adorable smiles fool you! These are the very same children who are responsible for my fast-emerging gray hairs.

Job Title, Part 3: Janitor

So, bodily fluids are, unfortunately, a pretty big part of what I do all day.  I used to joke that I spent all day walking around our house turning off lights and flushing toilets.  I now see that I should never have joked about that.  I am paying for it now.  I am paying for it by cleaning up things from places they shouldn't be at all hours of the day and night.  But, like the blog's name says, you either laugh or go crazy and luckily this time I am able to laugh about it.  Here's what happened one morning last week:

I woke to the sound of yelling and general merriment coming from the "Big Girls' Room" at about 10 minutes to seven, but since they are supposed to stay quietly in their beds until seven a.m., I went to investigate.  (Really, I went to chew them out, because if they wake the twinkies up before they're ready to be awake it makes for a bad day for all of us.)  I walked in to see D lying naked on her completely stripped bed, yelling "I smell like pee!" repeatedly and A changing her underwear in the middle of the room.  Only L is a. quiet or b.  in bed.  I talked to D and found that she had had an accident in her bed, but was fine except for some slight paranoia about a pee smell and moved on to questioning A.

It went something like this:
me: "Anna, what happened to your underwear?"
A: "Nothing."
me: "Then why are you changing them?"
A: "Because they smell like potty."
me:  "Well if they smell like potty, then they must have potty in them, and that's not nothing.  That's something."
A: "No.  Nothing happened."
me:  "Get back in your bed."

The morning progressed. The twinkies miraculously slept through most of our noise until at about 7:55 I heard them.  Since we were right in the middle of getting snowpants etc on and shoving A and L out the door and towards the bus I decided to wait a couple of minutes to go get them.

I opened the door to their room and the first thing I thought was how terrible it smelled, but I figured it was just a smelly diaper or two and I'd get them cleaned up when we went downstairs (we keep all their diapers in the living room because we are hardly ever in their bedroom.)  I walked across the room, opened the curtains, pulled up the blinds and as soon as I turned around I saw it.  V was standing naked in her crib looking at me while her footie pajamas and dirty diaper were on the floor next to her crib.  The top half of her body was clean, but her bottom half, her sheets and the beautiful hand crocheted blanket in the crib with her were another story.  E was fine, but apparently a bit disgusted by how filthy her sister was.

Doing damage control is what my life is about right now and I started in quickly.  I got E out of her crib so she'd stop crying and could play with D.  Then I went into the bathroom right next door and started filling the tub; it was clear Vivi would need more than just a wipe down with a washcloth to get her clean.  I walked into their bedroom, picked up V as carefully as possible so as not to get anything on myself and carried her to the bathroom.  This took 30 seconds maximum.  I walked into the bathroom and what did I see?  A fully clothed E sitting in the bathtub.  And me with only two arms!  What an inconvenient problem when you have more than one child.  I set V down, told her not to move and fished E out of the tub and stripped off her clothes amidst great torturous screams.  I turned around and started working on some of V's filth with a disposable baby wipe, in the hopes of keeping some of the chunks out of the bathtub, but quickly discovered that it was too cemented to her skin to come off with anything that flimsy.  (This is where it gets really gross, you may want to stop reading if you haven't already!)  Keep in mind that it is now about 8:15 a.m. and I (what a way to start my day) wiped dried poop off my daughter's skin with warm water and my bare hand!   Eeeeeeew.

That's not actually the end of my incredibly disgusting day, but that's a good place for a break.  Sorry if you are completely grossed out now.

I Am A Broken Woman

So, back in early November, my laptop died.  Right in the middle of using it the screen went black and it has not been seen nor heard from since.  That alone would be cause for sadness here, but as long as we still have the desktop we'll survive.  About three days after that as I was (literally) running around getting ready to take Darby to preschool I moved a partial can of Kilz primer from our back hallway to the basement stairs.  It was an attempt to keep it from getting spilled.  But you guessed it; it spilled.  A quarter gallon of bright white, heavy-duty primer on our shag carpeting 5 minutes before we should be walking out the door.  Then, a few days later, let's say one week later to be sure not to make this more dramatic then it already is, we had a rainstorm.  Which in November in Minnesota means there was ice.  My van was parked outside (there wasn't room in the garage, a problem we have since remedied) and when I tried to open the driver's side sliding door (coincidentally, on the way to preschool again), the handle came off in my hand.  Damn!  In the house I went to get a blow dryer because I still needed to use that door, frozen or not.  So, I ran upstairs, got the blow dryer and on my way back out to the garage my leather shoe ripped/tore.  I stayed amazingly calm, changed my shoes and we were on our way.  Somewhere in there was a hole in the tire of the van and the monitor of the desktop died.  Yesterday the washing machine was draining out the bottom as fast as it was filling and today our central vacuum wouldn't turn off.  I unplugged it from the wall, but could still hear the canister running in the garage, so I went out and pushed the main power button which did exactly nothing and finally had to unplug the canister from it's power supply.  

Whew!  Do you think it's possible that the universe is actually conspiring against me, or does it just feel like it?

So, lately I have been feeling like the "laugh" part is not coming as easily to me as the "go crazy". Actually it has been for quite a while now and I really don't feel like delving into it too deeply right now, but suffice it to say that things have been feeling pretty dark. So that's my explanation of why I haven't been writing anything. I was already worn out from pretending to be ok when I had to speak to people in person and I didn't have the energy to pretend here, too.

This post isn't funny, or even about the kids per se, but it is for the kids. Today I found an old journal that I used to keep full of quotes and poems and other things that I found inspiring. I had been thinking about this poem for a few days now and finally was able to put my hands on it. I'm happy to say, it resonated with me in just the way I remembered it doing 9 years ago. At that time I was newly married and trying to figure out what to do with my life. Now I have 5 kids and I am still trying to figure out what to do with my life. The conclusion I come to whenever I read this poem has not changed, though; it's not the details of your life that matter, it's the way you live your life amidst the details.

The Invitation

by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn't interest me

what you do for a living.

I want to know

what you ache for

and if you dare to dream

of meeting you heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me

how old you are.

I want to know

if you will risk looking like a fool

for love

for your dream

for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me

what planets are

squaring your moon...

I want to know

if you have touched

the center of your own sorrow

if you have been opened

by life's betrayals

or have become shriveled and closed

from fear of further pain.

I want to know

if you can sit with pain

mine or your own

without moving to hide it

or fade it

or fix it.

I want to know

if you can be with joy

mine or your own

if you can dance with wildness

and let the ecstasy fill you

to the tips of your fingers and toes

without cautioning us

to be careful

to be realistic

to remember the limitations

of being human

It doesn't interest me

if the story you're telling me

is true.

I want to know if you can

disappoint another

to be true to yourself.

If you can bear

the accusation of betrayal

and not betray your own soul.

If you can be faithless

and therefore trustworthy.

I want to knowif you can see Beauty

even when it is not pretty

every day.

And if you can source your own life

from its presence.

I want to know

if you can live with failure

yours and mine

and still stand at the edge of the lake

and shout to the silver of the full moon,

"Yes."

It doesn't interest me

to know where you live

or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up

after the night of grief and despair

weary and bruised to the bone

and do what needs to be done

to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me

who you know

or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand

in the center of the fire

with me

and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me

where or what or with whom

you have studied.

I want to know

what sustains you

from the inside

when all else falls away.

I want to know

if you can be alone

with yourself

and if you truly like

the company you keep

in the empty moments.

So even though it is not funny, I am including this because I want the girls to see it and someday I hope they read this blog. It is, after all, for them that I am writing it all down.

The Story of Lucia's Lost Tooth

Ok, so this story is actually from a couple of months ago, but I am just finally getting around to writing it down. Better late than never!

A little background; It was an unusual day to start with because it was "Pet Day" at preschool which meant that Samantha got to go to school and I was there to pick Luc up. Except for a handful of times I have been exclusively the drop- off mom this year while our neighbor has handled all of the pick-up duties. So you have to picture Darby, Lucia and Reilly (our neighbor) in the far back of the van, Vivi and Lizzie in the middle row and Samantha, our 100 lb. St Bernard in the middle aisle between the twinkies.

We get everyone buckled in and I am about to start the van when Lucia holds out her hand and says "Look mom! I lost a tooth!" "What?" I reply, thinking I must have misheard her. But no, she says it again and there in the palm of her adorable, 5 year old hand is her tooth. So I ask her about how she lost her tooth and she tells me, in great detail. Apparently she and her friend, Joey, were playing Pachycepholasaurus when she accidentally hit the side of her head on the climber-thingy. She told me that the teacher came over and checked her out and there was a lot of blood and she (the teacher) reached in and pulled out a molar from the back of her mouth. I sat incredulously listening to her until she stopped and then I asked her if she was ok. "Yep!" was her only reply. Ok, then. Still in shock that she

1. Could have hit her head hard enough to knock out a molar
2. Wasn't bruised and battered looking
3. The teacher hadn't mentioned anything when I picked her up

we drove home. I spent the rest of the day saying things like "Really? Tell me again how it happened. I just don't get it, Luc." and "Can I look in your mouth? I want to try and see where it came from." and she let me look, but it was so dark I couldn't see much of anything.

Later Kyle came home and she told him all about her tooth, too. We talked about it a little, but dinner time was crazy, as usual and nothing more was said until bedtime. We went through our bedtime routine and as I was brushing her hair I said to Lucia again, "Luc, it just doesn't make sense. How do you hit yourself hard enough to lose a tooth, but not have a bruise or a sore mouth?" and Kyle looked at her tooth again and said, very calmly, "That's not a tooth, is it? It's a rock." and without even one second of hesitation she replied "No. I just wanted to see if I could fool the tooth fairy."

And then she proceeded to leave it under her pillow for the next three nights so that the tooth fairy could come pay her for her "tooth". She persisted until the tooth fairy finally stopped by one night and left a note under her pillow that said "That is not a tooth, it is a rock! :( "

A Compliment, I Think.

Lucia: "Mama, you're my favorite mama ever!"

Darby: "Me too!"

Lucia: "Except when you make us do stuff."

Darby: "Yeah."

Uh, thanks girls. You're both better than all the other daughters I've never had, too. Except, of course, when you're not.

Signs that I have truly and completely lost my mind

1. I am organizing a community garden in Northfield. I have recruited 3 other women to help and we are having a meeting tomorrow at my house. And I promised them coffee and treats.
2. I am running in a 5k on Saturday (Yes, that's 2 days from now!) and I have run less than a handful of times since we moved here in 2008.
3. We (Kyle and I) are building a small deck outside our back door. This wouldn't be crazy if there was any time other than 3:00 to 4:00 in the morning to work on it.
4. We (Kyle and I, again) decided yesterday that if we're going to have a deck that the patio should go in first. So sometime in the next 2 weeks the concrete guy is coming to pour a patio in our backyard. Why not, right? Those giant holes for the deck footings just add a little excitement to the obstacle course that is our backyard right now. And really, if one or two of the kids happen to fall into one of the holes, then we wouldn't have to chase around to keep them out of trouble. Come to think of it that might be the way to go after all. We can keep those holes as small child containers for when we want to get stuff done! Just kidding. Maybe.
5. And the number one sign that I have lost my mind- I am sitting here instead of getting something, or anything, done.

H1N1 here we come!

So it would seem that Anna has a case of the swine flu. She has been tired for a couple of days and last night she complained of her legs and arm being "achy". I took her temp last night and it was 101.3 so we started in with the ibuprofen and tylenol to try and keep her comfy. I got up last night to make sure she didn't miss a dose and by this morning she looked fine. I thought maybe I had been a little too quick to call it the flu, but as the day goes on I can see I was right the first time. As the morning progressed she went from perky and happy to tired and wiped out. By the time I took her temp at 10:45 it was up to 103.3 and it hasn't gotten below 101.2 since then. Poor kiddo. Right now we're alternating Ibuprofen and Tylenol every 3 hours and she's drinking really well, so there's nothing else we can really do right now. I guess we'll just start watching movies and see how many we get through by the time we've passed it around to everyone! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the twins don't get it, or if they do that it is at least after Vivi's surgery next Tuesday for her ear tubes. I've been so anxious to have this surgery over with that it would be pretty hard to take if we had to postpone it.

7 months!

I thought that I should at least post a couple pictures of Vivi and Lizzi since it IS their birthday today. And I still do not have a baby book for either of them. I keep telling myself that it is because we are now digital people and I will put together a photobook for each of them that will include only pertinent information and (this is the really genius part) it won't have any blank spaces to make me feel bad for not filling in such important information as "Who watched the first time you rode a carousel". However, this plan will only work if I actually get going and do it and so far, well, the guilt's still here. But I digress, these are pictures from today, September 23, 2009, and they pretty much capture what they're like right now.

Elizabeth, in the top two photos, has her tongue out all the time now. She has 2 teeth coming in now so we're hoping that accounts for the weird tongue behavior. Or that at a minimum she will stop by the time she gets to high school. She is crawling all over now and, if not closely supervised, will head off on little expeditions to see what goodies she can find on the floor. Lucky for her the older girls like to leave treasures lying all over the house so she can always count on something new and interesting to shove in her mouth. And if all else fails she likes to pick up clumps of dog hair (yes, I'm admitting we have them floating freely about) and try to eat them. She's a smart one, that Lizzie :)

And Vivian, in the bottom two photos, has really started to fill out. Her cheeks are getting chubby and she is developing little fat rolls on her thighs etc- yea! Please try to look past the spit up draining out of her nose in the top photo. I was trying to capture her newest trick- mini push-ups! She just started doing them within the last couple of days and it is a major improvement. Before whenever she was on her belly she would put her arms behind her and lift her legs off the ground so that she looked like she was flying. She still does that plenty, but at least now we know it's not permanent ;)

Someone sent this to me today and though I've read it before, it was always pre-kids. I know we are very lucky that Vivian seems to have a very mild form of 22q11 deletion (what we've been calling DiGeorge's or VCF), but it's still there. And it will always be there. And the worry will always be there. I don't think there's any way that we can know that she is missing part of a chromosome and ever get used to it. Right now I feel like I am constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop and I suspect that feeling, while it might lessen, will never really go away. So if you wonder what life is like with Vivian, I'd say this about sums it up.

©1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved. Article printed with permission of the author.

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away...because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

Overheard today while Lucia and Darby were having lunch together:

Darby: We took the babies to the doctor today. And me!

Lucia: Did you get shots?!

Darby: Yep! Right here (shows her 1 band-aid)

Lucia: Did you cry?

Darby: Yep! But only a wittle bit!

Lucia: Good job Darby!

There was more, but my memory is so terrible I can't remember what they said right now :( Hopefully it will come back to me soon! When it was going on it was adorable; they looked like two old friends catching up after a long time apart. Maybe that's how it feels to them when Lucia has preschool- like a really long time to be away from each other...

A conversation with Darby last week.

Me: Dar-by. Wake up sweetie. Time to get up. It's almost time for dinner.
Darby: I don't wanna get up. Is it morning?
Me: No, but nap time is over. If you don't get up you won't be able to sleep tonight.
Darby: Momma my head doesn't feel good!
Me: Oh really? What's wrong with your head?
Darby: It neeeeeds more sleeeeeeeeeeeeep!

I had a great conversation with Anna last week. Before I tell you what she said, though, you need to know a little background information.

1. We were talking on the phone while she was in Orlando and I was here in Northfield.
2. She was there because Kyle's parents took the 3 older girls to Disney World for 4 days.
3. While packing I had told her she couldn't bring her dress-up clothes because "it would be too warm in Florida for her long, hot dresses" but what I really didn't want was for her to wear them and feel bad that her homemade dresses weren't as pretty as the expensive dresses that some of the other girls would be wearing.

Anna: "Oh, and mom? I have seen 22- No, 23, girls wearing those dresses and they don't look hot. They look fine."
Me: "Oh, really?"
Anna: "Yes. They don't look hot at all. They look fine."

Tomorrow's The Big Day!

ok, I'm way too scattetered right now for much, but here's what's up.

Vivian has Tetrology of Fallot and the repair is tomorrow at 8 am. We will be leaving Northfield at about 5:30 to get her there at 6:30, then surgery at 8. It should take about 4 hours and then 7-10 days in the hospital. We're going to spend the first night with her and then probably commute for a few days depending on when she is awake and able to breastfeed again. As soon as she is able to feed normally I'll be staying at the hospital and Elizabeth will stay with me.

Thanks so much to everyone who has already written/called to say they are thinking of us! I'm kind of a hormonal mess anyway, but all your kind words have touched me so much that I am teary several times a day. (the funny part is that I keep rereading the messages and crying all over again! I'm loony, I know!) Anyhoo, keep up the good vibes for a little while longer and I will try to keep you updated as often as time allows.

Good news- she's growing!

Just a quick update after our visit with the Nurse Practitioner today. We weighed Vivian as soon as we got there and were very happy to see that she is up to 8# 13 oz.! Good news for the little peanut as it means she is no longer falling off her growth curve, but has popped back up to about the 10th percentile. She watched her eat, too, and was happy with how she is getting the milk into her body (she paces herself well so she doesn't get out of breath, has good coordination regarding her suck/swallow pattern) so it seems that her slow weight gain was probably a result of her body using the calories faster than it could take them in. She'll keep getting the bottles for now, and we're going to keep doing weekly weight checks to be sure, but my fingers are crossed that this is one issue that we can mark as resolved. I am also hoping to be able to go back to exclusively breastfeeding after her surgery when she should stop burning through calories so quickly. Lucky for her (and me!) having Elizabeth continue to nurse while Vivian gets a little help should make it easier to go back than if she were a single baby.

Some recent photos

Darby , Anna and Lucia having a tea party with real raspberry tea for lunch about 3 weeks ago
















Elizabeth sleeping yesterday (4/27/09)














And Vivian giving one of her best smiles last week (4/24/09)