Chappy

I have an aunt who is just the best at aunting (that's her over there, in the stunning hat, at my wedding reception.)  Everyone should have an aunt like this. 

Example: the time she bought her sisters and nieces crazy hats, including a turban (my sister) and a 20s-style cloche (me.)  She then took us all, wearing our hats, to high tea at the Four Seasons, for a Mad Hatter tea party.  We were quite the sensation. 

Example: she has, for decades, kept a bust of Elvis and a fake Christmas tree covered with purple feathers on display in her home, year-round. 

Example: she insists on "candlelit breakfast."  There is no one so elegant.

She has a teeny tiny cottage on Chappaquiddick, a bit of Martha's Vineyard that is sometimes an island or sometimes a peninsula, depending on the tides and how actively the sea has been reclaiming the beaches.  She took six or more of her nieces and nephews to the cottage for "cousins' weekend" every summer that I can remember.  And now she's invited our children to do the same.  So this year, Jon and I took the three little ones on one big boat, then one small boat, to the cottage, crammed them all in, and had a wonderful, perfect weekend.  With little to no sleep and little to no privacy, but, just look at this:

tired selfie attempt on ferry no. 1

 This is childhood to me.

Not pictured: the Flying Horses (epic), candlelit breakfast (of course), me driving around the island for hours with a baby who insisted on trying to wake the whole house at 5 a.m., then seeing a deer running full-speed across the sand dunes (sleep-deprivation-induced hallucination?  possible), fireworks at 10:00 pm (three hours later than the boys should have been awake), a farm stand with cucumber-basil popsicles, lots of snuggles with an incredible aunt. 

when I decided to be a mom

My friends from college like to tease me about my wholehearted embrace of my life as a mom.  Apron-wearing, cookie-baking, itsy-bitsy-spidering, mom.  They are right to laugh at me, since they knew me as a college freshman.  At that age, I announced that driving a minivan would be my worst nightmare, that the thought of going to a playgroup made me nauseous, that I would always live abroad and travel and go to cocktail parties and wear fabulous clothes.  And for some reason they remained friends with me, the saints. 

But then . . . I decided to spend a semester of my junior year studying abroad in Cameroon, which is a country about the size of California on the west coast of Central Africa.  I went to Cameroon for all the wrong reasons.  I knew that they spoke French, and I wanted to work on my French.  So far, so good.  But I also wanted so badly to be different - to live a life that was other than everything I had known - that it hurt.  Everyone went to Paris or Aix or Switzerland (the privilege!  I know, I know) - so I was going to go to AFRICA.  Also, my parents hated the idea, which made it even more attractive.

I knew nothing about Cameroon.  I didn't know about its complicated history of colonialism and civil war, about the hundreds of language spoken there, about the diversity of landscape or religion.  I knew nothing of its staggering beauty, its incredible food, its exuberant, hospitable people.  So I got on a plane after a tearful and dramatic goodbye with my boyfriend, and landed many hours later in a place that seemed like a foreign planet to that sheltered little girl.

After a couple of days of orientation - mostly lectures on all of the diseases we would certainly contract - we were sent off to our first month-long homestay.  I nervously arrived at a good-sized house with a corrugated tin roof, accompanied by Elvis, my homestay brother, a charming and handsome 16 year old boy with a life-size cut-out of Beyonce tacked up above his bed.  (The names in that family!  They had an Elvis, a Prince, a Jeanne D'Arc (which I quite like, actually)).  The house seemed quiet. The first room I saw was an empty formal parlor, with a dozen matching chairs upholstered in green velvet, and potraits of the Cameroon president and my homestay father on the walls.  Next we passed through a narrow hall, which opened up into a kitchen filled with more people than I had thought could fit in the small room.  It seemed like dozens of faces, all smiling and welcoming me in rapid French that I could barely follow.  Soon it was made clear that these were all siblings.  20 of them.

20 children.  My parents are each the youngest of six, so I thought that I knew about large families.  But this?  I had Elvis write down everyone's names on a sheet of notebook paper, and it soon became clear that there were three wives in the family.  (Oh, Cameroon has polygamy?  I had no idea.  None.  Seriously, I should have read at least ONE book about the country before moving there.)  

The culture shock was intense, certainly.  But even more so was my crushing homesickness.  I felt ill, constantly on the verge of tears.  Everything was awful, I had made a huge mistake.  Making it worse, the kinds of things that I was good at at home- schoolwork, field hockey- were useless to me in Cameroon.  I had thought my French was passable; I still couldn't follow half of what was said to me.  I didn't know how to wash my own clothes using rocks to beat out the stains; I didn't know how to cook over a fire or tie a headscarf.  I had always thought of myself as competent, if nothing else.  In Cameroon I was useless, a child.  I was flat-out scared, and I wanted to go home.

I wanted to quit, but do you know what saved me?  Those children.  One child in our family, a little girl, about two years old, had severely bowed legs.  I imagine that in the West she would have been fitted with leg braces and been fine, but in Cameroon she walked with a limp.  She was my favorite.  When I got home from university I would pull her on my lap, play little games and sing songs with her.  She never teased me about my French (she mostly spoke their native patois anyway) and she seemed to like me.  She braided my hair and taught me how to say hello and goodbye in her language.  

Other times I held infants (so many infants!  Almost every woman had one strapped to her back all day) so their moms could tend to something else.  One day I walked home with a young mom whose husband was away with the army.  I carried her tiny newborn, wrapped in a blanket, as we walked through wild fields and over a bridge no wider than a single board.  I was so terrified that I would drop that bitty, perfect thing.  Here was something I could do, and do well.  I could help take care of the babies.  I clung to those children and their unquestioning acceptance of me, useless and lost as I was.  I found my footing and made it through.

Those children- their happy faces, their loud songs, their little chubby arms around my neck, those little content infats bouncing on their mothers' backs as they went about their work - I wanted it, all of it.  International travel, money, a fancy career - I still wasted a few more yearsstupidly chasing all of that when I came home, but underneath it all was a longing for babies.  I started counting the days until I could start my own family.  Ten years later, there I was, driving a minivan full of babies to a playgroup.  I am so glad that I was so wrong.

endure for a night

I first thought of this blog as a kind of scrap book, a way to document the life I'm living with my children.  But I think it's ok to start moving past cute baby pictures, though there are some of those too, don't worry!  Oh look, here are a few, from a recent playdate with cousins:

But right now I want to talk a little bit about how things are going.  And how right now, I am scared.  Deep-down, nails-bitten-off, awake-in-the-middle-of-the-night, scared.  Because, for a bunch of reasons that aren't all that important, I have to find a new job.  I am my family's financial support, and I have three babies to feed.  If I can't pull this off, we're in serious trouble.  So I worry, and chew my nails, and try really, really hard to think about anything else.  Sometimes that works, but sometimes I feel like the walls are closing in and I can't catch my breath.  And I'm flailing around, trying to think of something, anything, I can do that will bring in the income we need (yes, need) and will still allow me to be truly there for my kids.  Not "there for my kids" in the sense that every mother is there for her kids, because of course we all are.  But physically there - on the first day of school, at the soccer game, over afternoon snack.  I have a few crazy plans, but any one of them would be a huge leap of faith and risk failure on a massive scale.  I'm terrified.

But you know what?  We've actually been here before.  We thought we were in a crisis a few times - a job search that went nowhere, a house purchase that fell through, a new baby on the way when we hadn't quite gotten all of our ducks in a row.  And it all worked out, every time.  And every time, the result was better than I could have even imagined.  So why am I so afraid?  Why haven't I learned?  Listen, I know, I know, that life doesn't always work out.  People really do lose their homes, have to start from scratch.  I'm not unrealistic about that, and that's what keeps me up at night.  But I also have to remember that we always come through it somehow.  And maybe a leap of faith every now and then is for the best. 

summer days

I'm a big believer in boring summers.  They should be so boring, they should be endless. Each day should last for weeks, with not much to do but examine cool new bugs and make up games in the woods behind the house.  So we've been doing a lot of this:

And it's been good.  So, so good.  Now, I'm not a purist.  The kids went to the pond every day for a half-hour swim lesson (the town offers them at something like $3/day.  How can we say no?) followed by lazy lunches at the beach with friends, lots of free swim and sandy bathing suits.  Afternoon naps, loads of books.  I read the boys The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and they can now identify fauns on sight.  Conor is learning to read.  We're planning a weekend on Chappaquiddick with my aunt and uncle.  But still, we've been able to slow down and just have a boring summer. 

This summer has made me so happy, and the thought of going back to work full-time (I'm at 3 days a week now), which is a looming possibility, is getting harder and harder to stomach.  I know I'm going to need to just put on my big girl pants and do what's best for our family.  I know that.  But oh, it's going to be hard to let these days go. 

Name change?

I don't know, I'm just playing around with the blog name a bit.  Hoping for a bit more anonymity, maybe?  Anyway, this is a poem I love, I thought it seemed appropriate:

Birches

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay

As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain. They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells

Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,

And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed

So low for long, they never right themselves:

You may see their trunks arching in the woods

Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground

Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

But I was going to say when Truth broke in

With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm

I should prefer to have some boy bend them

As he went out and in to fetch the cows—

Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

Whose only play was what he found himself,

Summer or winter, and could play alone.

One by one he subdued his father's trees

By riding them down over and over again

Until he took the stiffness out of them,

And not one but hung limp, not one was left

For him to conquer. He learned all there was

To learn about not launching out too soon

And so not carrying the tree away

Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

To the top branches, climbing carefully

With the same pains you use to fill a cup

Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

It's when I'm weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig's having lashed across it open.

I'd like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:

I don't know where it's likely to go better.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

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Source: The Poetry of Robert Frost (1969)

everyone's a critic

Being a mother is humbling, isn't it?  Recognizing the tremendous responsibility, the impossibility of the task, all that?  Also, because your children will tell you to your face when you look a mess.  Ahem:

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Conor: "I don't like your hair like that [ponytail].  I like it when it's all . . . wide."

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Finn: "WHO COLOR ON YOU BACK?"  [tattoos] [Finn only ever yells, hence the all caps.  Also I think he was really alarmed that someone had attacked me with markers.]

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Me: "Conor, do you like this scarf?"

Conor:   [Half-smile, nod] "Mmm-hmm."  [Walks away, shaking head, silently mouthing "noooooo."]

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Conor:  [With wrinkled nose] "Mom, can you just -- change your face?"

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Cass hasn't gotten mouthy yet, but we're dealing with a lot of this:

1.  "Nothing to see here, mama.  Scoot."
2.  "She'll never notice if I just swallow this real quick-like."
3.  "I HATE YOU I HATE YOU."
4.  Onward.

And this has nothing to do with anything, but Conor "graduated" from pre-school (since when is that a thing?  No matter, it was pretty cute) and summer is ON. 

Happy days.

One Hot Mess

It's a good thing she's cute, because this is gross:

Why wasn't I watching her, you ask?  Oh, that would be because one Mr. Finn had just had an accident of the particularly messy variety and I was in the bathroom with him and an entire package of wipes.  And I am pretty sure there was poop on the doorframe of my bathroom (I cleaned it.  You can still come over, it's safe now, I promise.)

Nothing but glamour over here. 

lessons from Monica

My husband's grandmother, who died one year ago today, was just the best.  She was tiny and sweet, always the first to snuggle a baby or bake a batch of cookies, but she had a streak of steel running through her.  She was one of 11 children, a farm girl from Wisconsin, a nurse in Hawaii during WWII, wife of a surgeon, mother of five.  And oh, did she make us laugh. 

Things I learned from Monica Cass:

1.  Cook dinner, even if you don't want to.

"I have cooked dinner for my family almost every night for more than 60 years.  And I hated it every single time."  No matter.  The family gathered around her table over and over again, it was the best part of their day.  She knew that. 

2.  Every woman should marry a man who loves to dance.

She didn't.  She should have.  She was a jitterbug champion.

3.  Use the good silver.

And put it in the dishwasher, even.  Life's too short and there are lots of people at the table, so bring it out.

 

4.  Never drink light beer.

"Give me the darkest beer you have."  To our waiter, when she was 89 years old.

5. Sometimes, you just need to put the baby on the fire escape.

When Jon's grandfather was a young doctor, they lived in an apartment on Staten Island. They loved to socialize, and would have friends over to watch the fight on tv on Friday nights.  So, she would put the baby in a basket on the fire escape, with a bottle of milk mixed with a little bourbon. And she was a great mom. 

 

Resquiescat in pace, Monica. 

Easter Vacation

To the gentleman who refused to give up his aisle seat so the baby and I could sit across from Jon and the two boys: I hope the extra leg room was worth it.  I really do.  And I'm sorry about having to pass puke bags, poopy babies, and goldfish crackers across your relaxed self every 8 minutes or so.  Truly I am.

BUT - the trip was worth it.  Thanks to the generosity of my wonderful in-laws we spent five days in the southern California sunshine.  I loved it all. There's almost nothing more boring than other people's vacation photos (except for Mary's!  Rome!) but this one needs to be shared:

I have always said that I would never take my kids to Disney.  No, MY children would vacation in Italy and Bhutan, Namibia and Finland. And they would LOVE IT.  And yet - one day at a theme park seemed a small sacrifice for the absolute joy it gave those boys.  A whole world designed just for them. 

Plus I hear the flights to Bhutan are pretty long. 

Look how pale!  But sunshine!  Succulents!  California, I get it.  I do.


Family Photos September 2013

Inexcusable absence from this space.  I know, I know, I know.  But I've missed writing here, and want to check in more frequently.  So, why don't I start with something easy - some photos that we recently had taken of the family.  Our photographer, Margaret of Unusally Fine Photography, also took our engagement and wedding photos 5 years ago, and is incredible. 

 

I normally hate being photographed.  I get so worried about turning the right way and lifting my chin and making sure I'm sucking my stomach in and what my hair looks like.  Then I see the photos and I immediately start to criticize something.  But then months and months go by and I'm not in any photos with my kids - I think when they are older they are going to want to know what their mother looked like.  And they aren't going to care if I was still carrying a few pounds of baby weight or had messy hair that day.  (The fact that these are probably heavily 'shopped doesn't hurt).     



Cass' Birth Story

I will, I will, I WILL get this down before her two-month checkup.  I WILL.

I spent the majority of this last pregnancy absolutely certain that my baby was going to be born on the side of the road on the way to the hospital.  I told Jon he had to watch some YouTube "how to deliver a baby" tutorials or something, because he was definitely going to have to catch this baby.  Finn was born in 90 minutes, start to finish, and I knew that if that happened again there was no way I would make it to the hospital this time since we now live so far away.  The math went like this: 10-20 minutes for me to be sure I was in labor, 45 minutes for my mom to get here to watch the boys, 45 minutes to the hospital (more than an hour if it was rush hour) = baby on the side of the road.  The numbers didn't look any better if I went into labor while Jon was at work.  Then two weeks before my due date, my cousin gave birth to her third baby in an ambulance, not two blocks from her house.  See?  IT RUNS IN MY FAMILY.  (I have this theory that since we come from an unbroken line of Catholic peasants, we are exceptionally uncomplicated birthers.  Right?  Wouldn't our genetics just favor fast, easy deliveries?  Someone needs to do a study.)  I kept running scenarios over and over in my mind, trying to figure out the best plan.

So when I started having regular contractions about three weeks before Cass was born, I put everyone on high alert.  I thought I had had Braxton-Hicks contractions with Conor and Finn, but I must have imagined them, because these hurt.  Really hurt.  I stopped working and started spending all of my time focusing on the contractions, as if I could will them into turning into real labor.  It was exhausting.  I finally decided to ignore them completely and go on with my life, and immediately felt much better.  My midwife stripped my membranes at my 39 week appointment, which cause the contractions to get more intense that night, but it faded away by the next afternoon.  I was already three centimeters dilated, but I knew that that didn't mean much - I had been that dilated with Conor and Finn for weeks before they were born.

Three days after my due date, Jon and I were at the home inspection for the house we had just bought.  We walked around the house and property for about two hours, and at some point during that time something changed.  The contractions didn't feel any stronger or any closer together, but something was just - different.  I think the baby must have dropped very low, or it was just intuition, but as my mom (who is also my realtor) was leaving I said "Keep your phone on tonight."

We took the boys out for pizza for dinner, and when we arrived home, we got the news that Jon's 92-year-old grandmother, who we both loved dearly and were very close to, had passed away from cancer earlier that evening.  Jon had traveled to New Jersey to see her and say goodbye a week before, but I had hoped to have the baby before she went so she could meet her little namesake.  Even though we had expected the news, the grief was still overwhelming.

I stayed up too late that night, watching Breaking Bad reruns I think, and didn't get to bed until midnight.  At 1:30 I woke up with a staggering, overwhelming sensation in my abdomen - just a phantom memory of pain, a contraction I had while I was asleep.  I woke Jon up to time the contractions.  Yup, seven minutes later, another one.  We jumped out of bed right away, knowing that we were racing against the clock.  Jon called my mom and the midwife, who told us to come straight in.  While we were waiting for my mom to come and stay with the boys, I got in the shower.  I had eaten an orange the night before, and for some reason I thought I could still smell it on my hands and the smell was really bothering me.  I get preoccupied with little things during labor.

The contractions kept coming - every five minutes, then every three.  I did a lot of moaning and hanging off the staircase banister, or the counter, or the back of the couch - anything that could support my weight while I swayed.  Jon started out by rubbing my back and saying "shhh, you're ok" during contractions.  After I told him to stop saying that because I was most certainly NOT ok and did not care for being shushed, he switched to "you're doing great" which was much better.

My mom got to the house, and Jon already had the car running and our bags inside, a towel on the passenger seat, and my favorite Decemberists songs playing.  I had wanted to take our minivan because I thought that the space in the back would be useful for the roadside delivery I was sure we were facing, but was glad that Jon chose the stations wagon because - heated seats!  That heat felt so nice against my back during the drive.

Jon made it to the hospital in about 25 minutes, which is 30 minutes faster than I was ever able to do.  Good man.  I was so happy to be there.  We went in through the emergency room since it was about 2:00 a.m. at that point and the other entrance was closed.  By then I was feeling a lot of pressure and just wanted to be in a bed, so I was maybe a tiny bit rude to the inebriated ER patient who wanted to chat about how many kids I have during a contraction.

Because I'm a little delusional, I guess, I refused the wheelchair and walked up to labor and delivery, stopping every minute or two to hang onto a hand rail along the side of the hallway and moan through my contractions.  A very worried-looking aide got us to the maternity triage area, where Mary, the midwife on duty, helped me to undress, got me onto a stretcher, and checked me.  I remember her saying "you have fast labors, right?"  I said yes, that my second had been born within minutes of getting to the hospital.  She said, "Well, it looks like you're going to do it that way again!  You're at nine centimeters."

They rolled my bed down the hall to a delivery room,  and things get a bit hazy after that.  I remember that the room was very dark, and that it was just me, Jon, Mary, and a nurse.  I was on a fetal monitor, but couldn't see the feed or hear any machines beeping.  Time is strange when you're in labor - everything seemed to slow down dramatically.  I remember feeling like the time between contractions lasted forever, and turning to Jon and saying "I think my labor stopped.  I haven't had a contraction in 15 minutes."  He looked at me like I was crazy and said I was having contractions every minute or so.  I remember praying to Jon's grandmother, who I am sure was already with God and watching out for us, to ask God to help me deliver this great-granddaughter of hers.  I thought of my friends dealing with miscarriage and infertility, and tried to offer some of my pain for them.  These were fleeting, half-formed prayers, but I know they were heard. 

I wanted so badly for the baby to be born, and for the contractions to be over, but felt very overwhelmed and confused.  Both Conor and Finn had been delivered by midwives who were of the legs-back-count-to-ten-PUSH variety, which I didn't mind and was expecting.  Mary, however, just kept saying that I was a strong, healthy woman, and that I should  do what my body was telling me to do.  I had no idea what my body was telling me to do.  I tried a few pushes - nothing.  I just wanted this baby to come on her own, without me having to do anything.  I wanted to lie still and have her just arrive.  I was scared of the pain of the delivery, and I remember whispering to Jon that I didn't want it to hurt. 

I asked, "Can you see her yet?"  Mary said, firmly now, "Well, you have to push.  You know that."  So I lay on my back, pulled my legs back, and counted, like I had with Conor and Finn.  I still couldn't figure out how to push, and started to feel nauseous.  Mary said "Try lying on your side, you'll feel less nauseous.  I can catch her however you want to deliver her."  So I lay on my side, and gave a couple of small, grunty pushes.  That did it - her head was born right away, and her body followed in a rush with a couple more little pushes.  It was 3:30 a.m. on May 14, and I had a daughter. 

They put her on my chest and she started to nurse right away - she nursed for more than an hour, and then they wheeled me to the recovery room.  We were able to leave the hospital the next day and get her home to her eager big brothers and extended family, who welcomed this little one with a particular joy.  She was, and is, a spot of bright light in their, and our, sorrow.

best-laid plans

This is my third six-month maternity leave in four years, and I look at each of these breaks from the office as my chance to play at being a stay-at-home mom.  I picture crafting, going on little day trips, having delicious meals on the table when Jon gets home from work, all of that wonderful stuff.  That's what staying home with little ones is like, right?

But then a couple of weeks ago, Jon came down with a combination of Lyme disease and two other tick-born illnesses (a lot like Lyme, but on steroids) that landed him in the hospital for two days and, between the pain and the painkillers, kept him in bed for about a week.  I haven't seen someone so sick since I studied in Cameroon during college and 11 of my friends came down with malaria.  That sick.  And I was not a very sympathetic nurse - it took about five days before I stopped thinking about how much his illness sucked for me, and started to consider the possibility that it might suck for him more.

But back to it sucking for me - I was operating in survival mode for that week, with no one to help me with bedtimes and grocery shopping and late-night baby wakings.  I was pretty proud of myself if I managed to get the boys breakfast (read: dry Cheerios in front of the tv) or out of the house to the library or playground once or twice.  Jon is much better now, and I have just started to feel like things are somewhat under control again.  Wah wah wah, I know.  But the first six weeks with a newborn are tough enough, without a major health crisis, a home purchase, surgery on the dog, and almost two weeks (!) of well-meaning house guests thrown in.  Last whine, officially.  I promise.  

And, still, my worst day at home is better than my best day at the office.  I mean, really:

 I get to hang out with these lookers all day.  Best job ever.  And we frequently have afternoon dance parties to Thrift Shop in our living room, which they frowned upon at my office.

Now I'm getting ambitious, and packing everyone (including the dog!  Who will hopefully be heavily sedated - maybe we have some leftover Percoset from Jon's treatment) in the van and going to NYC for the weekend.  Finn on the subway - that should be interesting. 

My first three weeks as a mother of three

Conor "reading" to Cass.  Sweetheart.

I've been tip-toeing into this whole mom-of-three thing.  Jon has been home with us until now, but he goes back to work tomorrow, so the real fun should start then.  So far it's been slightly chaotic but manageable - the baby is a dream, especially now that I've figured out how to nurse her (they are each so different!), but the boys are . . . hellions.  If they are left to play together for more than five minutes, they will certainly try to murder each other.  Especially if I am marooned on the couch with a nursing baby and can't get up to stop them.  Is this a boy thing?  A two- and four-year-old combination thing?  Finn, charming as he is, is particularly challenging.  We found this in his room after his last nap:

"I rip Bear Hunt Catch a Big One.  It otay."

No, it not otay.

Anyway, I'm coming out of the newborn fog and want to record some moments from these first few weeks before they are lost for good:

1.  The first time the very alarmed Finn saw me nursing Cass: "Mama!  Her try to eat you belly button!"  (We'll work with him on the finer points of the anatomy of the female torso someday.  Or not.)

First day home.

 2.  After the pediatrician told me that Cass has reflux (like her brothers, ugh.  The spit!  The never-ending spit!) and that I have to cut out all dairy from my diet, Jon's immediate reaction: "Well, at least it's not alcohol."  Truth.

3.   We threw a low-key fourth birthday party for Conor, with store-bought cupcakes, pizza, and a slip n' slide for the kids and a bunch of their cousins.  I didn't hand-make a single thing.  It was a lot of fun, and it seemed like my sleep deprivation hadn't caused too many problems in pulling off the party.  Until the boys opened their little gift bags and dug into the "candy sticks" I had given them:

Do you know what these are?  CANDY CIGARETTES.  Yup.  I was obviously not paying close enough attention.  Oops.  But can you believe they still sell these??!!  Otherwise, happy kids, happy party.

This one is from May 21, his actual birthday.  I just love his little serious face.

4.  Last weekend we went to the annual open house at John Crow Farm to pick up our meat share.  Gorgeous day, great music, free beer, and very happy animals.

Someday I am going to figure out how to make photos look nice and professional on this blog.  Not today.

Why don't the ducks fly away?  Don't they know we are going to eat them?

5.    We bought our first house!  It's totally normal to buy a house and have a baby in the same week, right?  Excellent planning on our part.  I actually think I may have started early labor during the home inspection.  Details to come.