The Fish Pond

The BandAid Story, Life and Death, and a Really Long Post

When I was seven years old, we lived with my grandparents in this beautiful monstrosity of a house down in Bethesda with 6 bedrooms, I don't remember how many bathrooms, but a lot, two family rooms, two dens, plus basement space, table space kitchen, separate dining and living rooms, you get the idea (what I wouldn't give for that house now, but alas, it has been out of the family for over 20 years and would cost well over a million dollars to buy it back).  Along with it was the appropriately sized backyard, in which my parents set up a good sized above ground (I think - my memory of the time is a bit hazy on that part) pool for my sister and I to play in.  Being the 1970's, supervision was lax at best, so my sister, who was 4 at the time, and I had the run of the place.  Drowning?  Kidnapping?  Broken bones?  Bah.  Not there, not then.  My mother was in the house doing whatever it was she was doing (probably just enjoying the peace and quiet, I now recognize), with only occasional glances outside to see what we were up to.  Everyone else was at work.

One lovely bright summer day, I believe in either late July or early August 1977, my sister and I were playing outside in the pool, and we had a bunch of non-pool-toy items that we were playing with, like cups, bowls, squirt bottles, empty shampoo bottles, and some pill bottles.  Back then, they still made some of these items out of glass, and, being the 1970's when supervision was lax, we had those precious glass items to play with.  Good times, they were.  Anyway, in the course of our play one of those lovely glass pill bottles got broken.  Being the responsible, intelligent older sister that I am, I told my sister to put it someplace so nobody would cut themselves on it, seeing as how I didn't want to stop playing to do it myself (what?  it was a lazy summer day, and I was seven).  Remember, she was four.  Four years old.  She put it someplace else, but I was too busy and having too much fun to actually see where that was.

The day wore on, and sometime in early afternoon I went back in the house to find more stuff for us to play with in the pool.  For some reason, and to this day I still have no idea why, I went around to the front of the house to go inside.  I gathered up a bunch of sand toys, buckets, shovels, scoops, and other stuff we usually used at the beach, and went back out the back door with a stack of this stuff chin-high.  I couldn't see where I was going, and I was in a hurry.  It took only three steps to find out exactly where my sister had left the broken pill bottle.  I launched a battery of pool toys across the yard, whirled around, and ran back in the house, leaving a tell-tale crimson trail of footprints behind me.

I burst into the house, shouting "Mom!  I need a BandAid!"  My mother looked at me and my trail, turned a little bit green, and ran out of the house for a second.  She came back in, grabbed me, and wrapped a towel and some ice around my foot.  She then proceeded to call my father to come home from work.  Now.  I didn't understand all the hullaballoo, and kept saying "But Mom!  Just gimme a BandAid and I'll go back outside and play."

My father got home, and we piled in the car, with my mom driving and my dad in the back holding me on his lap with probably the fourth towel wrapped around my foot.  I think my sister was with us, but I am not sure, because I kept asking for a BandAid.  I kept saying it didn't even hurt, just give me a bandaid and I'll go outside and play.  My dad gently explained that I had nearly cut the last two toes on my left foot off, they were just hanging on by a little bit of skin, and that we had to go get them sewed back on.  It never occurred to me what that might involve.

Back then, family doctors that lived in the neighborhood and practiced out of their houses were commonplace around there.  Our doctor lived just a couple of miles away, and he had his office space set up in the basement of his house.  We were whisked right in to the examining room.  I was still asking for my BandAid, but I was starting to get nervous at this point.  My dad put me in the chair, and my doctor quickly looked at my foot, then turned around and started doing something with his back toward me; I couldn't see what.  I asked one more time for a BandAid.

The doctor turned around with a needle that to me in my seven-year-old not really understanding what's going on brain looked to be about a foot long.  I quickly decided that was going to hurt.  Really hurt.  I screamed, yanked my foot back, and kicked the doctor squarely in the face with my bloody foot.  My mother turned positively emerald and ducked back out into the waiting room, while my father sat on me and put me in a wrestling hold that would have made Hulk Hogan proud.  The doctor stuck me in the leg to numb me up (it hurt), I screamed holy terror, my dad kept up the good work, and the doctor sewed up my foot.  I got seven stitches.  And I got my BandAid.  I wonder what the people in the waiting room thought - it was very much like the scene in Finding Nemo when Darla is in the dentist's office and Nemo and Gil are executing their grand escape plan as Marlin and Dory fly around in the pelican's mouth trying to rescue Nemo - lots of screaming and noise and thumping.

It turned out that I did nearly sever the toes.  The reason they didn't hurt to me was because the nerves were completely severed and thus the pain messages to my brain just weren't getting there.  I only needed seven stitches because my toes were quite small (still are), but realistically I should have been taken to the hospital to have a surgeon sew them up.  The nerves ended up being crossed, so to this day when I point my toes, those three flex, and vice versa.  I've forgiven them for that now, but it took a while.

Two weeks later, we returned to the doctor's office to get the stitches out.  I asked my father if it was going to hurt, and he told me no, it wouldn't.  So I practically flounced into the office and up into the chair.  The doctor cut the stitches and yanked them out with a pair of pliers.  I screamed - it hurt almost as much as the damn needle did when I got stitched up.  When we got into the car, I looked at my dad and said "Daddy, you lied to me."  And then I proceeded to not even acknowledge his presence with anything except a steely glare for at least a couple of weeks.  It was the first time I had direct evidence my parents had lied to me about anything significant - I still believed in Santa and the Easter Bunny at that point.  (Note to parents:  do not ever give the There Is No Santa/Easter Bunny and the Big Sex Talk at the same time)

I try now to be careful about the white lies I tell my kids, but I frequently don't do a very good job.  We do believe in Santa/Easter Bunny/Tooth Fairy here.  I hate battery powered toys that make noise at about a million decibels, so I frequently remove the batteries and say the toys are broken, or "forget" to buy the right size batteries that we need (Little Man is now on to me here, though, as he can use a screwdriver and get his own batteries, the little shit.  Now he needs a job to afford those batteries).  For a while I would tell my kids Barney wasn't on when they wanted to watch it, but now they all know I just can't stand that doofus purple dinosaur.  But when they ask me the big questions, I try to always tell them the truth to the best of my ability and their understanding.

Yesterday we were having breakfast at our favorite coffee shop/train station and went to the museum next door.  There was a little boy there, a little smaller in size than Little Man, who was running and playing and putting his nose against the glass to watch the model trains run around the layout.  He was covered in some sort of red splotches on his body that I couldn't identify, and he wore a baseball cap, but when the hat was pushed back a couple of times it was clear his hair was thin and he had a few weird bald spots, almost like mange on a dog.  I was worried about my kids and what they would say/do, but apparently I shouldn't have.  Little Man latched on to this boy as though he were the last on earth, eagerly grabbing the boy's hand and dragging him around to watch the trains from different angles, pulling him out to go through the caboose they could play in, and asking him "Do you wanna be my friend?"

BigDaddyFish got a call from work, so while he dealt with that I went and sat in the caboose while the kids played and ran around.  The little boy talked to both the kids and adults readily and easily, using a vocabulary and manner that showed he was really older than he looked.  There was something else odd about his appearance, but at that time I couldn't put my finger on it.  I was a little concerned that maybe he might have something contagious that might be a concern for me, because of the pregnancy, but I mulled it over and ultimately decided that his father wouldn't have brought him out to that place if he was contagious (I know, this was probably stupid, but worked out okay).  The kids had a great time playing.

While they played, the father came in and talked to me.  I had been asking the boy about school, trying to figure out how old he really was, and finally asked the boy how old he was.  He told me he was four, but his father reminded him he is actually six.  He said the boy just started school this year, because he has had leukemia since he was one and a half, and has been in and out of treatment since then.  He had a bone marrow transplant a year ago and the cancer has been gone since then.  However, his little body is reacting to the marrow, effectively rejecting it, but the boy is healthy enough right now to go to school, and he is going to NIH to get it treated.  That's what caused the weird marks on his body, and his lack of hair (he doesn't have eyelashes, eyebrows, or finger/toe nails, due to the chemo/radiation treatments - that's the thing that looked odd that I couldn't place).  I immediately felt like shit, both out of sorrow for what this poor, sweet little kid had been going through, but also for my earlier concern about his skin marks and my selfish thoughts about my pregnancy.  I commented to the father how sorry I was, but also how impressed I was with the child's strength, and noted how happy he and Little Man were and how well they were playing.  The father took a picture of all the kids playing together, and asked for my email address so he could send it to me.  I gave it to him and also said we could set up playdates for Little Boy and Little Man to play, and he said we would.  The little boy said he was tired and thirsty and told his dad he wanted to go, so everyone said warm goodbye's, and Little Man hugged the little boy.

We got in our car to leave shortly after they did.  As soon as we were in the car, Little Man asked what the red marks were on Little Boy's skin.  I told him, and the other kids, everything, about how he had cancer called leukemia, and he had been sick, and all about what a bone marrow transplant is, and how he is still a little bit sick, but he has good doctors helping him.  We also explained about the medications given for leukemia, how they kill the cancer but also do damage to healthy parts sometimes.  I dreaded the next question, thinking they would ask if he was going to die, because the truthful answer is probably.  But they surprised me - they only asked if they could catch it, and if he was feeling better.   BDF and I both explained that it wasn't contagious and said he was feeling better right now.  We then told them we will try and set up a playdate when the little boy's father emails me, and that was the end of the discussion.

But I can't help wondering if the lack of conversation about what the future holds is to them as big a lie as my father telling me getting the stitches out wouldn't hurt (he honestly thought they wouldn't hurt that much, but he also knew that he'd never get me in that office without a total hysterical breakdown if he told me the truth - he told me this much later).  So far the father hasn't emailed me, but I hope he does, and I fully intend to follow through on the promise of playdates.  Am I setting Little Man up for a huge kick in the gut if they do have playdates, and the little boy ultimately dies because his body fully rejects the marrow?  We've already talked about death a lot here, because my mother died so long ago, but also because my grandmother died back in January.  We've also had the loss of a pet.  We've talked about how we don't definitely know what happens after you die, but that we believe in Heaven and life with God.  So they know everyone dies eventually.  But realistically, I recognize that this boy and Little Man could become quite close, and if this happens and he dies, this person will be the closest person to Little Man to die, and the first child death he knows about.  Will he be able to handle it?  Will I?  I just pray that I do the right thing, and that Little Man knows that I meant the best when I ultimately screw up, no matter what I do, and that he forgives me later.  Just like I forgave my dad.

Where We Are, and Where We're Going

The comments left about this post over at Julia's have got me thinking about where I live, and why, and where we'd like to go, and why.  This is actually a hot topic over here right now, because we do recognize that we have to move sometime within the first year or so of this baby joining us.  The first year he will sleep with BigDaddyFish and me (we hope - Little Man actually didn't, because in spite of his nursing he slept through the night fairly early on and wasn't comfortable sleeping with us like his sisters did - we all slept better once he moved), but then once he needs to move we have no place to put him except maybe the family room, and that just seems weird.  Or the basement - and that's a whole nother problem.  So we have been examining long and hard what we need, what we can afford, and where we'd like to live.

We live in the DC burbs on the Maryland side.  The burbs has a lot to recommend it - in fact, I grew up here in the burbs.  We are close enough to the city to have the benefits of it within reasonable reach, but far enough out that we have fewer problems, though they are not all gone.  Family and most of the only friends we've ever known live here.  We have a comfortable, quiet neighborhood, good schools, a great library and public transportation system, wonderful recreation opportunities, and still have some open spaces for the kids to play.  If it weren't for this newest baby, we would be here for quite a while.

We live in a 3-bedroom, 3 full and one half bathroom townhouse.  It has a a loft over the master bedroom that houses our computer/office equipment, as BDF is a contractor that really lacks a "true" office - he has space on client site, and a cube available offsite, but it is more of a "hotel" space than an actual office.  We have a large kitchen that is bright and airy, with skylights and a bumpout area over our full deck.  The deck overlooks the forest, because we live on the edge of a large park and lake, which happens to be a drinking water reservoir, and so will never be developed like most of the county here.  We have a full basement that was useless until recently due to the water leak; we are slowly trying to dig out of the mess (we've kept far too much stuff for far too long), and use the space as a playroom or family room rather than the storage room it has been for years.  It is a really, really nice house, for a townhouse.

But it does have its problems.  The two bedrooms that are not the master bedroom are really, really small.  Little Man's room really cannot hold another child - it was clearly sized to be nothing other than an office or a nursery.  We've got a reasonable solution for him with a captain's bed with drawers underneath it, and his dresser with shelves over it, but the closet is practially nonexistent, and he can't keep many toys in his room.  The girls' room is larger, but once Sunny needs a big kid bed (she's in a toddler bed now) the space just will not work without compromises I'm not willing to make.  We could bunk them, but in order to do that we'd have to get rid of Trout's bed, which was my bed when I was a kid, and matches the rest of the bedroom furniture.  It is an heirloom quality, four poster bed with canopy.  We have the canopy removed until the girls are older, to prevent anyone from hanging on it and destroying it, but it is a lovely bed, and Trout loves it.  It is just a twin size, so it doesn't take up that much room, and I'm just not willing to let it go.  We could find a different solution, but the windows in the room come down to within 2 feet of the floor, so we can't put a bed in front of the windows because someone will end up falling through a window, and that would be bad.  Since we are the end unit, we only have neighbors attached to one side, but that's still neighbors attached to one side that we have to work hard to be considerate of, which is a bit of a challenge with so many kids in the house.  Our yard is so small it can be cut with scissors.

As far as the area is concerned, it has its cons, too.  Commutes are insane.  It is really hard to find affordable housing near where you work.  The subway system was designed to get commuters into and out of the city from the burbs every day, but the reality is that now people are going burb to burb more than into and out of the city.  And due to housing costs, people have had to move further out than where the subway reaches.  Crime is higher here in the DC burbs than in many other similar suburban areas. 

Then there's the expense.  It is costly, costly, costly to live here.  Average home prices are $650,000.  Taxes are crazy.  Commutes average something like 45 minutes each way, and the cost of gas is higher here than most of the country (as I've witnessed first hand on many road trips).  BigDaddyFish's commute is currently 45 minutes from here to his client site, and about 45 minutes to one hour to the main office in Virginia.  If he tried to do it during the rush time (I can't say rush hour because it's more like 3 hours), it takes twice as long, if he's lucky.  Flex time is great, but it still means he doesn't see much of the kids during the day during the week.  It is more expensive to move closer to his office, and the client site is in SouthEast Washington.  Go ahead, google it.  'Nuff said.

We bought our house at a good time, back in 99, for about $180K.  Our property taxes alone are $3500/year, and climbing right now due to higher assessments.  If we had sold this house six months ago when the real estate market here was still hot, we would have gotten $450K for it.  So why didn't we do it?  No place to go.  We want to move up to a single family house, the next logical step from here.  BigDaddyFish would really like to have a little land so we can have a garden.  That will cost us at least $575K.  We've looked at plenty of single family houses that are less, but they are smaller than this house, including the bedrooms, with yards not much bigger than this one.  The other option is going further out.  BigDaddyFish's commute is already too long, and we really don't want to make it worse.

Having gone to rural western PA this past weekend, we really got to thinking about how that area compares to here.  The air was clean, the rolling countryside was beautiful, and prices were way way lower (1.39/lb for red grapes, vs. $4/lb here - why?? truck has to go just as far...).  It was a slower, more peaceful way of life.  The people weren't pretentious and stressed out like they are here.  There was a sense of freedom that was intoxicating.  But...

But.  There's always a but, isn't there?  There isn't much of an economic base.  You have to drive a couple of towns over to find a grocery store, and there isn't much competition.  Here, if you don't like a particular grocery, go a couple miles away, and you'll find another.  The lack of resources for things like medical care was astounding to me - BDF picked up a phone book and some other literature, and he said "You know, there's an OB in XXX town."  One.  OB.  For who knows how large an area.  I love that I have many choices in my medical care available, that if I didn't Iike my OB (who I love, incidentally), or my pediatrician, or thought they were incompetent or giving me care that was lacking, I have hundreds of choices to find a new, better one.  I like that I have an emergency center 3 miles away, and a full service hospital within 10.  If I didn't like that one for some reason, I have 3 more within 15 or so miles, and a bunch more slightly further away, including specialized services for cancer.  They didn't have much in the way of libraries.  And for the teenagers, there isn't much to do, which I think directly correlates to the fact that around there, people get married right out of high school and have kids right away, and can't take advantage of many of the opportunities that life has to offer.  I was a WAY old mom out there, and I'm only 36. 

I'm certainly not saying that there is anything wrong with living that kind of life.  But BDF, who has been bugging me to chuck everything and become farmers, realized that we'd give up so much that is important to us if we did that.  We like our libraries.  We like the quality of our medical care.  We like the fact that Target is nearby, and bookstores, and clothing stores, and shoe stores.  We like the abundance and quality of our schools, and the fact that preschool is available if you want it.  We like that there are lots of parks and playgrounds and pools and movie theaters and museums and things to do.  He is a bit on the antisocial side, so he doesn't feel the need to have people around, but I do.  He needs broadband (frankly, I do too, but not like he does), and UPS delivery.  He needs maps that aren't line drawn, and actually include ALL the streets, not just the bigger ones. 

Then there's what we want for our kids.  We want our kids to make the most of the educational opportunities that are available in life.  Not just college, but recreational, life-learning education.  I think it is more likely that the kids will become more educated if they are surrounded by more, highly educated people.  But we don't want them to become pretentious, or stressed out because they lack the freedom to just be.  We don't want to put them at a disadvantage economically because it is so hard to get started in such an expensive area.  We don't want them stuck here struggling because this is where their parents chose to be.  We'd like something more in between. It's a tough balancing act.

So where does that leave us?  Right here for now.  We are investigating other places, trying to find a fit that is better for us.  BDF makes his living as a computer programmer, so that does limit us somewhat to markets that can support that.  I would be happy to go back to work, but I work as a writer/editor type person, so my work is more flexible as far as location, and my earning potential isn't as good as his.  So, what about where you live?  Do you think you live in an area that we would find to be a good fit?  If so, let us know.  Post your location and what it means to you.  Both of us have always only lived here, except for brief stints in college, and we don't have the resources to go everywhere to see for ourselves.  Can you help us narrow our search?  I know the right place for us is out there - it just may not be where we are now.

P.S.  Where the hell is my brain?  DIVERSITY.  I can count on one hand how many people of color, any color, we saw in PA.  It is more diverse in my row of townhouses.  Diversity is VERY important to us - we want our children to know many kinds of people and cultures.

On Reluctance

Okay, I want to preface this by saying I'm not trying to complain, merely explain.  I want to give a real picture of what life is sometimes like as a stay at home mom, or SAHM.  I recognize that not every SAHM feels this way, and I also recognize that a great number of mothers, maybe most, don't have the choice to stay at home or not.  I'm not here to debate any of that - only to relate my experience and thoughts.  I also want to make clear that I am in no way judging anyone else's choices - being a mother is hard, no matter what your career/life balance is.  What works for you isn't what necessarily works for me, and vice versa, and I feel strongly that we all need to support each other, no matter what our choices are.

I always spent my life believing I would be a SAHM, just like my mother before me.  This is in spite of the fact that until my first was born, I was the primary breadwinner in the family.  I worked as a technical writer/emergency planning and management consultant at a large "Beltway Bandit" scientific company for six years before my first child was born.  It was a very fulfilling job, and I was very, very good at it.  I was willing to sacrifice for the company, putting in the long hours typical of washington, DC consultants.  I had a few health problems and some depression a couple of years before my daughter was born, and my work was an integral part, if not the most important part, of my coping and support.  I was happy.

When I unexpectedly became pregnant (I was told I would need medical intervention for that), my DH was unemployed due to a company relocation that granted him a generous severance package, so he was taking his sweet time finding another job.  He got one within a month of finding out, but I was still earning more than he was, though not by much.  It was clear pretty early that I was going to have to work after our baby was born.  So, after much struggle finding a child care arrangement that worked for us, I went back to work part time, and it seemed like the right balance.  Enough time that I wasn't going stir crazy at home, enough time that I didn't feel like someone else was raising my child for me.  Oddly enough, it became clear to me during my maternity leave that I was really missing my job.  I recognize now that I was probably a touch depressed, but we muddled through, in part I think because I did go back.  I worked part time until I was 7 months pregnant with TheBoy, when I was put on bedrest, a unique torture and misery all its own.

I managed to make it through bedrest, mostly with the help of friends who came by to visit, mostly from work.  They would bring lunch and sit with me; my hairdresser even came once and cut my hair for me.  I didn't feel isolated.  Then TheBoy was born.  He was born 9-12-01, and when he was born, at 39 weeks, his lungs weren't ready and he was very sick.  We didn't know if he was going to live or die for at least a week, and he was in the NICU for 15 days.  Due to the turmoil around our country at the time, I couldn't escape it; but even though I was overwhelmingly sad, so was everyone else, even if our reasons differed slightly, so again, I had support to get through it.  (Incidently, TheBoy is healthy as an ox now, even though he was the sickest, biggest baby in the NICU at the time.  I'll post his birth story sometime later.  I also mourned more for our country's tragedy on 9/11/02, since by that time I had a healthy boy and could emotionally handle grieving the attacks.)  I again went back to work part time.

Then, we had Sunny.  She was unexpected, so unexpected that when I took the positive test, I cried to DH on the phone "I'm pregnant, what are we going to do????" and he simply answered, "Uh, hon, you're gonna have another baby."  He took it in stride; I panicked.  What was I going to do?  Well, I did what I did before - went back to work part time.  This time was different, though.  In order to make it work financially, I couldn't afford to put all 3 kids in paid daycare all the time, so my father in law came twice a week to watch them.  He's a great grandfather, but not the greatest babysitter in the world, especially with babies.  Certainly with a baby that refused to take a bottle.  I would have to run home and nurse her.  She never did take a bottle, and nursed nearly two years.  Eventually the strain of trying to work part time got to me, and I knew I had to do something, but didn't know what.

I knew, from my maternity leave with RT, what being at home would be like.  First, the housework.  I HATE housework.  I don't care who you are, or how happy you are with the result, but housework, the endless laundry, the cleaning of the constant messes, is absolute drudgery.  I've been doing laundry since my mom died when I was 15; I've had enough, but if DH does it, he does it all mixed together in hot water, and I really like my clothes in different colors and in the same size they were when they went in, so I have to do it.  Plus, with 3 kids under the age of 5 (at that time), they aren't much help, and are pretty much a mess machine all on their own.  The big two would wait until I was nursing and then wreak havoc on the house - they did this when I was home, so I knew it would just get worse.

Second, was the sense of identity that my job gave me.  It meant I was someone more than just my kids' mommy.  That I was still FishyGirl.  I liked the job, and while I didn't like the politics that usually went with it, being part time meant I could usually keep my head down and avoid the worst of the trouble.  I liked the sense of accomplishment that making my clients happy gave me, when I knew I'd done a great job on a project.  I never got that sense of satisfaction from having a clean house or a perfectly folded pile of laundry.

Most importantly, was the social aspect of being at work, and the overwhelming isolation that SAHM's in Suburbia can experience.  My townhouse development is a ghost town during the day, because everone worked.  That left me to make friends with nanny's who can't speak english (I"m not knocking that, it is just hard to make friends if you have trouble talking about the weather), and a couple of fundamentalist Christian mothers who homeschooled their kids and really didn't want to have anything to do with anyone who wasn't just like them.  Most of my friends were friends from work.  I was reasonably certain that our friendship would suffer when I was no longer "easily accessible."  It had already broken down since I'd had the kids, and I knew it would get worse.

Finally, there was also the perception of "What do you do all day?" that my DH has never really understood.  He complains the kids behave better for him than they do for me, so I must be doing something wrong, and doing nothing all day.  I've tried to explain that if he stayed home all day they would behave the same for him, but he doesn't get it.  His salary has gone up dramatically, so when Sunny was about a year old, we had the option of me staying home.  He told me to do whatever I wanted to do, but it was clear he thought I needed to be at home.

Really, I thought so too.  I just didn't know how to do it without losing my mind.

We talked it out, and we figured I could find a way to make it work.  So, I quit my job.  And took on the hardest one of my life.

And here I am.  Largely isolated.  My friends, as I suspected, have slowly drifted away.  They never call me, and only call me back once I've left several messages for them.  The housework sucks.  The house looks like a bomb hit it all the time, because I can't keep up.  I haven't been able to make friends (where are all the normal people, anyway?) beyond acquaintances.  My oldest is the only one in local school; TheBoy goes to preschool a suburb away, so bonding with other moms has been a challenge - you have to drive so far away to do anything.  I'm in the minority with the number of kids I have, most have only 1 or 2, and with #4 coming, well, it's just hard to link up with people with similar outlooks.

Don't get me wrong, there are times I am so grateful I get to be here with them.  I am blessed to have been able to nurse them for so long, and that was supported by being at home.  They are funny, and loving, and so close to one another, and I love being here to watch their relationship with one another blossom.  I am very close to them, and I think it is important to make sure the foundation of our relationships are strong now, before the tough teenage times hit.  But the constant noise, and fighting, and messes, and the difficulty in going anywhere (why the hell does it take an hour to get out the door to go to the post office, anyway?), and the laundry....well, I could do without it.  And I don't get much me time.  And I'm lonely.

And I know it is only going to get worse.

So this blog, this is my lifeline.  This, and all the mommy blogs I read.  I will be adding to my list soon; there are amazing women out there, with lives not unlike mine, who are struggling just like me, and yet write so much more eloquently than I can, who can capture the poignancy of these days, while they are little, so much better than I can.  I know it will get better; this one will be my last child (unless the OB botches the fixing), and they will grow up, and I will go back to work.  One day I will look back and treasure this time with them, more than I already do, because it will be too soon over.  But for now, enmeshed in it, I feel like I'm just treading water.

So I just keep swimming.

Update

Sunny woke up Tuesday, everything just fine, using her arm just fine, weight on it and all.  So, we went off to sports class, she played Tball, no sign of injury.  Easy.  I was grateful I didn't have to go traipsing to the pediatrician and pay a co-pay for essentially nothing, during which the younger 2 probably would have picked up some bug.

This weekend was the Spring Fair at Trout's ES.  This began with a yard sale in the morning, and ended with the fair itself along with the basket auction.  Sunny found a bag full of Barbies, about 8 of them, for a dollar, so that was her purchase.  She was so proud of her Barbies, carrying them around all day and holding them up saying "Sish one danshes ballet"  "Sish one is swimming" and so forth, giving them all kinds of activities.  Trout found some sort of baby doll with a backpack that turned into a sleeping bag for the doll, so both girls were happy.  TheBoy, though, poor kid, was so disappointed, because there were hardly any boy toys there.  I tried explaining to him that most boy toys get broken so don't make it to yard sales, but he was just so upset.  We tried to find other yard sales, but really couldn't find anything good.  So at the spring fair, we bid on several baskets, trying to get one for him; the school did a good job of having a fairly equal mix of boy and girl themed baskets.  Well, after certainly getting outbid on several (it was a silent auction) we brought home 5 BASKETS! One for Trout, one garden-themed for kids that mostly will be for Sunny, and THREE for TheBoy.  He is in toy heaven.  We are thus trying to declutter some of his old toys to sell at our own yard sale, telling him how happy he will make some other little boys.  All three had a great time playing on the inflatables and watching teachers getting dunked in the dunk tank.  Best of all, the fair itself was free, so we only had to pay for some of the food and the baskets.

Friday was my 16 week checkup, and for the first time with all our pregnancies, BigDaddyFish was there to hear the baby's heartbeat the first time I did.  They couldn't hear it last time, but it was 2 days after the sonogram for my first trimester screening, so I wasn't worried about it.  For a variety of reasons, BDF wasn't able to go with me to hear the other babies, so it worked out well.  All other things look great, and we have the big sono on June 21.  Crossing our fingers to see what this baby will be!