Life was grand.

Sarah and I were talking about something when all of a sudden, we both heard Bean say (quite loudly), “HOLY SH…” Immediately, it was silent out on the porch.

“What’d he say?” Sarah whispered.

“I don’t know,” I whispered back. And then turning to Bean, I said casually, “What’d you say, Buddy?”

He looked right at me and clear as a bell said, “Holy shit.”

Now, I know the appropriate thing to do in these situations is to ignore your child. Bean wasn’t doing it for attention, and so I didn’t want to call attention to the phrase unnecessarily, but I turned to look at Sarah and she was literally falling off the front porch swing where we were sitting because she was laughing so hard.

Which got me laughing.

Which got Sarah laughing.

Which got me laughing.

Which got BEAN laughing.

And then we had to stop. Because if he knew what we were laughing at, there was a good chance he would say it again. So, we stopped.

And then Sarah started laughing again.

And then I started laughing again.

Goodness, I never knew inappropriate language from a toddler could be so funny! NOT THAT WE ENCOURAGE THAT, but still. It was good for an afternoon giggle.

One thing that I did NOT think about in my summer daydreams was the fact that I would have two children with me all summer. Not quite sure how that slipped my mind, but it just did not register in my margarita-hazed thoughts. When it finally dawned on me that I would have two kids home with me this summer, I can’t lie. My first thought was, “FUUUUUUUUUUDDDDGGGGEEEEE!” which was quickly followed by, “HOW WILL WE ALL SURVIVE?!?!?!” which was quickly followed by, “WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH THEM????? ALLLLL SUMMERRRRR LONGGGGGG????”

But then, last weekend, we had our first family weekend in the pool. Chris has been fighting with that darn pool since we bought the house. First he had to fix the pump, then the timer on the pump, then get it all cleaned, then he got it all fixed and ready and a cold snap came. So, he spent the next week keeping it clean so that when it was warm enough, we could all get in. And then we went out of town. Two weekends in a row. And that sent the pool into a downward spiral. He has spent the past two weeks getting it back to swimming shape and just last weekend it was time for the inaugural swim.

AND IT WAS AWESOME!

We spent the entire weekend outside, either in the pool or the yard. The kids had a blast, Chris and I had a blast, the dogs had a blast. It was just a really great time. And then I remembered how much we were in the pool last summer. How tan Bean and I got. How much we both loved swimming. And now, I’m excited about summer all over again!

I’m co-chair of my church’s vacation Bible school this year, so Bean will be doing that for one week, and he’s doing a summer camp at the theater where Chris works for a week, both Bean and Gracie are taking swimming lessons at the local Y, and we’re traveling some, too. It should be a busy, full summer and I can’t wait!

I took the sticker off this weekend.

Looking in that rearview mirror every day kept me in the past. Every time I looked at that sticker, it was because I was backing up. Sometimes it was backing up my car, and sometimes it was backing up emotionally. I’d look at that sticker and think about all the things I didn’t have in my life anymore. The people who we came to love at Yale, the house that became our first home, the jobs that started out our career paths, the seasons that gave us so much happiness…all of it. Every time I saw that sticker in my rearview mirror as I backed up, I’d mentally and emotionally back up a little bit, too.

This week, I was backing my car out of my parking spot at school after a particularly rewarding day of teaching that made me both proud and happy to be a teacher. I glanced at the sticker and thought to myself, “Oh! That’s still on there?” I couldn’t remember the last time I had noticed it. Probably not for months. “I should probably take that off,” I thought.

Just like that. I should just take it off.

In the past year, we have been establishing ourselves where we wanted to be in Orlando. We’ve built a life that not only satisfies me the way that our life in Connecticut had, but goes beyond that and makes me feel complete and whole. I can’t imagine my life being anywhere but here. I know where my kids are going to go to school in a couple years. I wake up every morning and drive to a job that fulfills me in ways I didn’t even know needed fulfilling. I come home to a family that is funny and happy and energetic and exhausting and constantly keeping me on my toes. I lay down at night beside the one person in the whole entire world that could give me this life. I can honestly say that I have never been this happy in my life.

You should see my house right now. It is a disaster zone. (I say that like that’s a change from the normal, every day state of my house…) But you know what I did today? I went on a glass bottom boat tour with my mom, my best friend, my grandma, and my two kids. We came home to the hustle of bath times and bedtimes and Sunday evening chores to get ready for the week. And as I sit here now, my house is finally quiet and the rush of the day is calm and if I had to give one word to my day after all that chaos it would be “happiness.” Just pure happiness. Happiness that I got to spend the day with three generations of women, all who have inspired me in ways I don’t even think they know. Happiness even though the kids were tired and grumpy when we got home and fought bedtime hard core. Happiness even though I got absolutely nothing done that I needed to for this upcoming week. Happiness even when I’m exhausted and feel like I need another weekend to recover from this weekend. It is all just happiness to me.

Running has been an unexpected joy in my life, but I think it is really the sign of something much deeper happening to me right now. With every step I run, with each early morning I rise, with each mile I clock, I am doing something that brings me happiness. For a long time, happiness was situational for me. I was happy when things were happy around me. But something in the past four or five months has shown me how to live in a state of happiness, even during times that may not necessarily be happy. On work days when I feel ineffective in the classroom, I still feel happy in my career. On days when dinner is late to the table and kids are crying and dogs are barking and Chris texts to say he hasn’t even left the office yet, I still feel happy. I feel other things that sometimes dull that happiness – frustration or exhaustion or anger – but at the end of each day, there is always happiness.

Deep, deep down in my soul there is happiness now.

Turns out, I don’t need to be constantly reminded about specific times in my life that have made me happy. I don’t need a sticker in my rearview mirror to remind me of happy days. That happiness is inside me. It goes with me. It’s there on good days and on bad days and every day in between. And when it is that prevalent in my life, when I don’t need reminders or moments that show me how happy I am, when it just comes that naturally from inside, then it’s time to take down that sticker.

The Front Carry serves so many purposes in life. It’s like the sandwich bags of baby holds. You can just do so much with it. Here are some of my favorite reasons to use the Front Carry:

1. To keep grubby hands off of me when I have to pick them up to take them to the bathtub for an immediate, emergency bath.
2. To keep grubby hands off of me when I’m dressed for work and they have peanut butter toast hands.
3. To keep slobbery mouths off of me when I need to keep my clothes clean and dry for something.
4. To hide my tummy pooch.
5. To distract crying babies. (I think the hanging thing distracts them and they stop crying long enough to think, “What the heck is going on here? How am I not falling?”)
6. To fend off people I don’t want to talk to. Babies are very distracting. Especially hanging ones.
7. To make my way through a crowd. No one will run into a baby, but they sure have no problem plowing into me.
8. To keep a dirty diaper from soaking through on my hip. (Please tell me I’m not the only mom who’s had this happen…)
9. To balance me when I’m doing squats. Or carrying a load of laundry. Or carrying a toddler. (NOTE: If said toddler is dirty and/or grimy, the parent may implement the illusive and effective “Double Front Carry.”)
10. To keep beach sandy feet from wrapping around me in a death grip.

Just be sure you hold on tight in the Front Hold. It can all go wrong very quickly.

P.S. I’ve lost my camera cord.  Normal photos will resume as soon as I find it.

We had to be at the surgery center by 6:00am, so we got the kids up and going at 5:00 and headed out. They checked Gracie in and we waited for almost an hour (which really irritated me because they made us get there so gosh darn early). The hardest part of waiting was that Gracie hadn’t been able to eat breakfast that morning, and so we made Bean wait on his breakfast, too, until Gracie went back in to surgery. Otherwise, Gracie would have been really mad. So, we had two tired and hungry kids to keep entertained. It was a little tough. I brought a backpack full of activities, so we all four sat around and played games and colored until it was time to go back.

When they finally called Gracie back, it went relatively quickly. We had to put her in a hospital gown and sit her in the big hospital bed. She was not happy with any of that. She didn’t want anything to do with the hospital. She pretty much cried from the moment we went back to the moment we left. We did as much as we could to keep her happy, but it was hard to blame her. I don’t like hospitals either.

When it was time for her to go back with the doctor, a team of nurses came to get her. Gracie had been infatuated with one of the surgical nurses from the moment we got there. I don’t know what it was about her, but Gracie just stared and stared at her the whole time we were there. Whenever this nurse came into the room, Gracie would actually stop crying and stare at her. When it came time for them to take her from me, that nurse came and got her and Gracie was so distracted by staring at this woman that she didn’t really notice that she was leaving us. I’m sure she cried when she got back to the operating room and realized we weren’t there, but I just try not to think about that…

We waited for about 15 minutes and then the doctor came out and brought us back to a little private waiting room to tell us about the procedure. She said it went well, but that Gracie’s ears looked awful when she was in there. There was so much fluid in them and both her eardrums were inflammed. The doctor said she cleaned and drained everything out, but she still put her on an antibiotic and ear drops to clear up any infection. Overall, though, she said it went great.

“She’s a feisty girl!” the doctor told us.

The nurse told us that Gracie might be sensitive to sound for the next couple days because she isn’t used to hearing at full volume. They told us to try to keep things a little quiet that day to help her adjust. With two dogs and two small kids, our house is anything but quiet. Turns out, Gracie ended up being the loudest of them all! By 10:30 that morning, Gracie was back to her normal self. She was babbling, yelling, laughing, playing, walking, and just generally enjoying life with her newly improved ears.

So far, she has been perfectly fine with her tubes. The only time we’ve noticed anything different was this morning. Normally, Gracie is the last of the family to wake up in the mornings. We all get loud with getting dressed and having breakfast around 6:30, but Gracie sleeps through that and doesn’t wake up until I go in and get her until 7:00. But this morning at 6:30, I heard her start crying in her crib, which was another difference because she never cries when she wakes up. I found her sitting in her crib, mad as anything. She wasn’t even crying, she was yelling with her hands over her ears. It was such a clear message: “WHY ARE YOU ALL SO LOUD?!?!?!?”

And then tonight, she woke up several times when the dogs started barking or when Bean started yelling, and she has never done that before. I think she is just able to hear a lot more now and it seems to make her a little bit lighter of a sleeper. I’m pretty sure she just has to get used to her new ears and then she’ll be just fine with the volume in our house.

At least, I hope so because I keep looking for a volume button for our household and I have yet to find one…

So far, the tubes have been such a blessing for little Gracie. It was a super easy procedure with so very little recovery time. I’m so happy for her. New ears are so fun!

This afternoon, I had a voice mail from the doctor’s office asking me to call them back to answer a health questionnaire for Gracie. Since I teach, it is really hard for me to step out and take a personal phone call, so I sent Chris a quick email and asked him to call the doctor’s office for me. He emailed me back an hour later and all his email said was, “That was hard.” When he got home from work, he once again told me how hard the questionnaire had been. Finally, when he said it again over dinner, I asked him straight out, “What exactly did they ask you?”

Following is the question and answer session Chris told me he had with the nurse. I dare you to read it and not wet your pants.

Nurse: How old is Gracie?
(Correct answer: thirteen months)
Chris: She’s still a baby.

Nurse: How much did Gracie weigh when she was born?
(Correct answer: 8lbs, 2oz)
Chris: She was medium sized.

Nurse: How much does Gracie weigh now?
(Correct answer: 21bs)
Chris: She’s about the weight of a watermelon.

Nurse: How tall is Gracie?
(Correct answer: 29in.)
Chris: She’s pretty short.

Seriously. These are the things my husband knows about our daughter. It’s frightening. I told him that we have to get there early tomorrow so that I can correct our paperwork so they don’t dispense the anesthesia for a short, medium-sized, watermelon weight baby.

Late in my pregnancy with Bean, the advice changed from how to survive my pregnancy to how to survive the first few months as a new mom. Without a doubt, the most frequent advice I heard was, “Sleep when the baby sleeps!”

Hearing that before I had any children, it seemed a little silly. Of course I’d sleep when the baby slept! What else would I do? But within one day of having Bean finally in my arms, I realized how much there was to do!

For one thing, I’d had a c-section, and so I had to take care of my own healing body, but that would have to wait until he slept because I couldn’t change bandages with a newborn in my arms.

And there was the laundry. Oh, Lord! The laundry! Epic amounts of laundry because I insisted on changing Bean’s clothes every time he touched anything and because we went through so many blankets and burp cloths on a daily basis.

And there were other tasks, too, like sending thank you notes, cleaning up the house for the next round of visitors, and preparing meals. I started to understand very quickly why everyone gave that advice, but I still didn’t know how to follow it. With so much to be done, when would I ever sleep again?!

It really wasn’t until Gracie was born that I finally figured out how to sleep when the baby slept. The first thing I learned was to lower my expectations. I learned to accept that my house wasn’t going to be tidy and neat every day. Some days I managed it, but other days I didn’t. And on those days when the house looked like it had imploded, I just let it go. Because in the grand scheme of things, dishes in my sink or laundry piles on my floor weren’t the worst things to happen.

Another tip I learned was to get “close enough.” Gracie was a colicky baby, and on days when she cried for hours straight, I settled with getting the laundry “close enough” to the washer, and so I’d collect all the dirty laundry from around the house and throw it into piles on the floor of the laundry room. And then (this is my favorite part!) I’d shut the door and walk away. I did the same thing with dishes. We bottle-fed, so I had bottles everywhere. And we ate when and where we could in those first months, so that always left a trail of dishes.

Then there were the guests who were stopping in to visit, which meant there were coffee cups and snack trays sitting out. Dishes were everywhere, and when I had a few minutes free, I started getting them “close enough” to the dishwasher. I’d make a sweep through the house with Gracie in one arm, collecting all the dishes and throwing them into the sink with the other arm. I’d get to them later.

Getting “close enough” made my whole house feel neater and organized because at least the messes were contained in specific areas, and the rest of the house could be salvaged. That did wonders for my new-mom psyche.

In the evenings when Chris got home from work, he and I would work together to actually DO the laundry and WASH the dishes. Having that extra set of hands to help was such a blessing after long days at home with a newborn!

The last thing I learned was to let people help – and not just Chris. When my parents offered to come over and help for an afternoon, I asked them to do some laundry. When my Grandma asked if she could come bring us a meal, I said yes (and I even let her do the dishes!). Before I had kids, I would never have asked someone to do my chores for me, and even with my first I had a hard time. But by the time Gracie was born, I learned that that’s just what people DO. Anyone with kids knows what position you are in as a new mom, and it makes us feel useful if you let us help. We feel like we’re passing the torch, and what a heavy torch it can be!

Using these simple little tips throughout your busy days as a new parent will actually free up some time for you, and you’ll be surprised that by the time the baby is ready for a nap,  so are you!

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It was actually a very sporadic decision. Bean was once again not eating his dinner on Saturday night. This time I was getting really frustrated because it was all his favorite things, and he wouldn’t touch any of them even though he’d been saying he was hungry for 20 minutes while I made it. I thought about it and I just knew that if I put that plate on the living room table and let him stand up to eat (like he sometimes does with snacks), he would eat it in no time.  Maybe, I thought, it’s the location that bothers hims. 

Everyday at school Bean eats all his food.  His teachers say he’s an excellent eater, in fact.  And yet when he’s at our table, he will barely touch anything.   I know he’s a toddler and that toddlers don’t necessarily eat much at dinner time, but Bean eats nothing all afternoon or evening.  And he’s a tiny guy who is starting to actually lose weight.  So I have been really concerned about his lack of interest in mealtimes (or food in general).  Desperate to try something to get him interested in his meals, I wondered if maybe he would eat better at a table more similar to what he has at school.  So, Chris went up to Bean’s room and brought down a little table and chairs set my Grandma gave him for his first birthday.  It’s been in his room for him to color at and play on, but we thought maybe he’d actually enjoy a little table that’s just his size.

We ended up having to move our entire kitchen around to fit this tiny table.  We moved the kitchen table back against the far wall, which is fine since we aren’t seating four at dinner yet.  We moved the high chair out of the kitchen and promoted Gracie to Bean’s booster seat.  She’s been in heaven this weekend in her new chair.  She just squeals as she eats now.  We moved the bookshelf out from the corner and under the window, and made a little place for Bean’s table that’s close to where we are eating, but out of the way.

So far, it’s been a big hit for Bean. He is so excited to sit at his own table now. The rule is that if he’s eating (even just a little bit), then he can stay at his table. But if he’s not eating, then he has to come sit at the table with me, Chris, and Gracie. He cleaned his plate the first night, which made me really happy. And on the plates since then, he has made a good effort, which is more than he has been doing.

I think the name of the toddler meal game must be to keep things interesting. Bean ate really good for a while when I started playing with the presentation of the food he ate, and then he got bored with that and stopped eating. And he did really good for a while when I rolled all his fruits and veggies up into wheat tortillas with toothpicks in them and called them “toothpick sandwiches,” but then he got bored with that and stopped eating again. He did pretty good when we played, “The Game” together at meals, but he got bored with and stopped eating that time, too. The last successful bout of eating we had was when I mixed everything into bowls of all-natural, unsweetened applesauce, but he eventually got bored with that and stopped eating again.

I think the trick is to keep things fun and new at mealtimes. I’d much rather just put a plate of food in front of him and stand over him until he eats it all, but I don’t have that amount of time in my day and I don’t think he’d eat anything anyway. So, I’m okay with having to tap dance a little bit to get him to eat something. I’d rather jump through hoops and have him eat something than stand there frustrated while he eats nothing.

Anybody else out there have some tricks up their sleeve to encourage eating in their toddlers?

I have been inspired by them this year and have been working to keep up with their incredible reading pace. In the process, I’ve read a lot of books myself. Some have been better than others, but most of them I’ve really enjoyed. Here are the most recent books to find themselves on my bookshelf:

The Ballad of Tom Dooley by Sharyn McCrumb – This was a random book I found at the public library. To be honest, I was in a hurry that afternoon because I had both kids with me, and the only reason I grabbed this book was because it takes place in the rural mountains of Tennessee, which is where my Grandma was born and raised. That’s really the only reason I checked this one out. Turns out, it was a great find because the story is actually really interesting. It’s about this very rural community just after the Civil War. The main character is a poor, morally questionable young woman who goes to live her her even poorer cousin and her husband, and it’s about how their lives all cross paths with Tom Dooley, a young, drunk veteran of the war who manages to ruin everything around him. The characters are not lovable – they aren’t even really likeable – but the story is really well told and the plot keeps you interested.

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult – This could be the single-most important book I’ve read as a mother and as an educator. It is an incredibly disturbing, powerful, and moving story about a school shooting. I was hesitant to read it at first, being both a teacher and a parent. But what the book focuses on are the choices our children make and how we can help them make better choices. The boy who kills his classmates was viciously bullied for just about his entire life. It was heartbreaking to read for me because the bullying began when he was just a year or two older than Bean, and it touched such a raw nerve with me. It follows the shooter all the way up through school and shows how hurtful and heartbreaking being a teenager can be. As a teacher, it instantly changed the way I managed my classroom. I talked to all of my classes about the book. We had open discussions about bullying and pushing people beyond their limits. In my own home, it made me more aware of not just how my kids will be treated as they grow up, but also how they treat others. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has any kind of interaction with kids – their own, or otherwise.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller – I have explained this book to other people and they just didn’t seem to find it as interesting as I did, so this one might not be for the masses. A friend from church recommended this to me and then organized a group of people to meet for dinner to talk about it. Sort of like a one-book book club. I had to miss the dinner, but I was really bummed because of how much I loved the book. It’s an autobiography of an author who found his life at the center of a documentary. Film makers wanted to turn his life into a movie, but they basically told him that his real life wasn’t interesting enough, so they were going to have to “doctor up” the truth to make it more exciting. The book is about the process of writing that doctored up movie and how somewhere in the process of creating a fake exciting life, he decides to go out and make his actual life exciting. He begins to make better choices, like committing to ride his bike across the country for charity, even though he had never ridden before and was overweight. He also talks about incredibly inspiring people he’s met and why their lives were so powerfully significant. Basically, it’s about living a better, more full life. The guy is a Christian author, but the book isn’t a philosophical or Christian-based book, but he has a really great view of faith, if you ask me. I read this just after the first of the year, and I honestly think that reading this book was the first step towards me becoming a more active, more healthy, more fulfilled person this year. Months later, I still think about the principles of this book on a weekly basis.

11-22-63 by Stephen King – I read this one on my Kindle while Chris and I were in Costa Rica. It was my first Stephen King book, and I was a little nervous because I don’t like scary books. But some friends at work insisted that this was not a typical Stephen King book, and that it was actually an incredible story about what would happen if the JFK assassination were prevented. The book is about a time travel portal and the man who decides to go back into time to try to stop the JFK assassination. But it’s about so much more than that! He actually goes back and lives in the 1960′s for several years leading up to the assassination, and it’s about the life he builds there and the relationships he makes. I’m not into sci-fi or anything usually involving time travel, but this book was amazing. The plot took twists and turns that I never saw coming, and it’s told in such a masterful way. I am a Stephen King fan and I never even knew it.

The White Queen by Philippa Gregory – I read a couple of Philippa Gregory’s books in college and had mixed feelings about them. I love historical fiction, and it’s not something you find a lot of in mainstream books these days, but she took the sex part of the stories a little far after her first few books came out and when that happened, I quit reading her books because they became more trashy than historical and I lost interest. But I had heard that this book began a series of hers that was more along the lines of the original type of writing she did. I was so happy to find that was true! This book tells the story of King Edward of York and Queen Elizabeth in the 1400′s. I love the strong, female main character and it is just the right amount of historical fact to make it interesting, as well as entertaining. This is the first in a series of books she calls the Cousins’ War and I will definitely be reading the rest of the series.

Matched by Ally Condie – I started this book today at the recommendation of some of my students. Though it is a young adult novel, it is supposed to be pretty good. I started it this morning, and after sitting down with it a little tonight after dinner, I’m already half way through it, and it’s pretty good. It’s about this futuristic utopian society that matches you to your spouse. It follows the main character as she is matched to her best guy friend, but then discovers that she might have been mis-matched. It’s about her struggle between her assigned match and her desire to get to know the other boy she might have been matched with. It’s a social commentary on free will and what lengths we will go to to keep it. It seems like a great beach book because it’s easy to read and at the core is a love story. It’s the first in a series, and I think I might add the rest of the series to my summer reading list.

So, that’s what I’ve been reading lately. Next on my list at the library is Ken Follet’s “World Without End.” I read “Pillars of the Earth” and it was one of my favorite books ever, so I’ve been waiting for a chunk of time to read the second one. Summer kick off seems to be the perfect time! If you’re interested in seeing other books I’ve read, or following along with what I read this summer, be sure to follow me on Good Reads. My user name is KatieMC.

What about you? Have you read anything good lately?

This week we started giving her her food in a real bowl. Some days, she eats right out of it and doesn’t even blink. But, then there are other days…

Maybe we’ll wait a little bit longer on the plate…