Yesterday, as we were driving home after picking up Noah, she told us something that had happened at school that day. And then I flipped out a little bit. She told us of an incident at school that classified as sexual harassment. I was livid, asking her questions, getting all the details. Noah had to step in and tell her that I was not mad at her. No! I wasn’t mad at her! I told her that, and then explained that what was said to her was not okay and that I was really glad that she told us.

Once I got all the details from her, I told Kaylie that I’d go with her in the morning to talk to her teacher. I did, and her teacher reacted exactly as I’d hoped she would — she took it seriously. Mrs. B told Kaylie and me her plan of action and I left, satisfied that the incident would be dealt with.

I got a call from the principal just before I left to pick Kaylie up after school. He told me how it was dealt with and I was very impressed. When Kaylie got in the van, she was happy and bouncy. I liked her school before this happened, but I like it even more now.

I told Kaylie that if anything like that ever happens again (I like to think it won’t, but I’m not that naive), she needs to tell me. She needs to tell someone. I also told her that it’s important to remember things exactly as they happened. That it’s important to tell the truth, and not to improvise or make up details she can’t remember.

I want my girls to know that it is not okay for someone to touch them when they do not want to be touched. It is not okay for someone to threaten to touch them. It is not okay for someone to talk about touching them, even if that person is supposedly joking. It’s not okay.

I want my girls to know that their bodies are their own. Nobody else has the right to touch them without their approval. Nobody else has the right to threaten them. I want them to know that they have rights and they have people who will make sure that those rights are honored. That they have people who will be on their side no matter what.

Sometimes I want to wrap my kids in bubble wrap and put them in a padded room, to keep them safe. I know this is not realistic. I know they will get hurt and I know that bad things will probably happen to them. I also know that I will go all Angry Mom on anyone that hurts or tries to hurt one of my babies.

I didn’t start asking Noah to do MD photos until 2009, but I found photos of me and the girls before then, starting only at 2005, somewhere around May-ish. Before then, I don’t have a digital copy of a photo of me and Kaylie, and my scanner is broken. So. Anyway.

Oh! Before I show you the photos of me and the kids over the years, in keeping with the MD theme, I’ll show you a couple of me and my mom. The first is a photo that my Aunt Jane sent me, which I also posted here. The second –of me, my mom, and my sister Erica — is from last summer, when I went to BC for my Opa’s funeral.

1983:

2011:

photo by Chelsey Poelman

And now, the photos of me and the kids. We did photos again this year and … it didn’t go awesome. Getting three kids to look in the general direction of the camera is harder than you’d think. I didn’t even care about smiling. Just LOOK AT THE CAMERA. It’s all good, though. I never expect perfect photos when it comes to kids. And plus, reality is much better.

2005:

photo by my mom (I think)

2006:

photo by Randee Armstrong

2007:

I’d just given birth. Not that you can tell or anything. (HA!)

2008:

photo by Teresa Braam

2009:

photo by Noah (and all the one ones following) (two-year-olds are fun!)

2010:

this is one of my very favourite photos. i love the contrast the red roses give.

2011:

2012:

take one. Preston is not impressed with the whole sitting down thing. and he was sticking that gun in his mouth the very wrong way.

while Preston walked around, I got some photos done with each of the girls, just in case the whole me-and-three-kids thing didn’t work out. i really like this one of me and Kaylie, but it would be a lot better without Liliana’s photobomb.

that’s better

this kid. so much stress, so much laughter.

i bribed him with a bit of nursing and he finally came over for a photo. he’s such a goober.

take four thousand one hundred and fifty-two. this is the best we’re gonna get.

There is usually a gift for moms at church on Mother’s Day, which is a kind gesture, but how does it make the childless mother feel? What about when they make all the moms stand? How does that make the childless mother feel?

Both my kids came home super-stoked on their last day of school this week because each of them had a gift for me that they’d made. Now don’t get me wrong, I love these gifts, and anything my kids make me, but what of little A in Liliana’s class who does not have a mom? Maybe she just made something for her grandma? I’m willing to bet that, in a room full of 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds, it came up that A’s mom died, and I bet it made her sad.

I don’t know. I don’t know the right answer. I just hate seeing people hurting, especially if it is avoidable.

I’ve seen things about No Mother’s Day all around the blogging world lately, and saw Christy Turlington Burns on the Today show Friday morning. Here is a video to explain No Mother’s Day:

And here is a little more of a closer view:

The purpose of Every Mother Counts‘ No Mother’s Day is to raise awareness for maternal mortality. By raising awareness, the hope is that people will step forward to support efforts to lower maternal mortality rates all over the world, thereby lowering the maternal and child morality rates. It is a proven fact that children who have a mother are more likely to survive their first two years of life.

Noah, always showing me things he thinks I’ll be interested in, forwarded me this article that talks about that talks about the State of the World’s Mothers. The latter talks about countries that value women and provide the best pregnancy/maternity care and benefits, and countries that do not value women and do nor provide anything close to adequate care for mothers or children.

When I gave birth to each of my three babies, I had a skilled doctor (or three, when I had Kaylie), I had at least one nurse around almost all the time, and I had a huge, clean room in which to birth my baby. If I’d wanted, I could have had a home birth and been cared for by one or two midwives (like my super-amazing sister-in-law did). Both options are free and both options are a thousand times safer than the conditions in which many women of the world give birth. After giving birth, I had the right to an entire year off work while getting paid 55% of my regular wage. Some employers (none I’ve had) even top-up the government’s 55%, some up to 100% of an employee’s regular wage.

Ninety-nine percent of the 360,000 women who die annually while trying to bring their children into the world did not have it as good as I did. That means that, annually, the children of 360,000 women are left motherless.

So, this Mother’s Day, I am going to be thankful for my mom, and for my kids, who make me a mother. And I am going to find out what I can do to help the motherless, the childless, and those who do not have access to the healthcare and benefits that I do. Because that is what we’re here for, right? To help each other? To make sure everyone has a right to life? To seeing their children born? To having a mother throughout their childhood and beyond? To not being hurt unnecessarily by exclusionary holidays?

Like I said, I don’t know what the right answer is. I really don’t.

That little “who to follow” section on Twitter usually annoys me, but earlier I saw Raffi there and was taken back 20 years. Baby Beluga? Oh Mister Sun? Down By The Bay? RAFFI! So I followed him. A couple minutes later my phone beeped its twitter reply beep. When I checked it, I saw this:

HOLY CRAP! Raffi @replied ME! HE KNOWS I EXIST! Holy star-struck-ness, Batman!

Now what did my profile say? It said, “I’m not a very nice person.” Why did it say that? Because I hate writing bios and I was feeling especially self-deprecating that day. And because I have a sarcasm problem.

Oh, nothing, just a little Twitter conversation with Raffi. NBD.

I then played Raffi songs for the kids for the next couple hours. Preston loves them. He was walking around with my iPhone (on which the songs were playing) with a giant smile on his face, doing little squat-bounces, which are his super-sweet dance moves.

I also texted my husband and called my mom. And freaked out on Facebook. Can you believe some friends don’t/didn’t know who Raffi is? UNFRIENDED!

*~*

my first 29th birthday
“Mama, how old are you today?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“What comes after 29?”
“DEATH.”

Okay, I didn’t say “death”. I said “thirty” and then I got momentarily depressed. I used to think 30-year-old people were old. I no longer think so, as I have good friends who are in their thirties, forties, and even fifties and I do not consider them “old”. (Unless they tease me about being old in which case I remind that person that he is twenty-six years older than me and is now considered a senior in some places, not mentioning any names, RUSSELL.)

But when it comes to me, my age, I can’t comprehend it. I’ve heard people say that lame cliché all the time, “But I don’t feel 30!” Yea … I just graduated high school, did I not? Um … 11 years ago. HOLY CRAP HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

I don’t like birthdays. Why? I don’t like attention. I know, what am I doing writing a public blog if I don’t like attention? Well, I have a social phobia, and it’s not like I’m on stage reading my posts to you. I get to hide behind my computer screen. I’m a behind-the-scenes kind of person. My wedding? Standing in front of 200 or so people? ANXIETY HELL. So, I hide my birthday on Facebook and I don’t advertise it anywhere (until after the fact, I guess, which I am doing now). And then I get in trouble from friends who were like, I DIDN’T KNOW IT WAS YOUR BIRTHDAY WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME? And they are the sweetest people ever. As are the ones who force Happy Birthdays on me and make my day bright. I got happy birthdays from everyone in my family, and that is quite lovely. I like my family.

Noah booked his parents to watch the kids and took me out. He forced me to have a good time. We had dinner, we shopped with my fortune of birthday money (new clothes! for the first time in years!), we saw Five-Year Engagement (hilarious, but could do without the awkwardly inappropriate sex scenes), we picked up our baby (and left the girls for a sleepover), and we went home. And then Noah went back out and got me ice cream. Because he rules. All in all? A pretty rad birthday. Even for someone who doesn’t like birthdays.

And I got to talk to my brother who I rarely talk to because I suck at big-sistering and he’s a pretty neat guy. And then my phone died mid-conversation. Sorry about that, Nick.

*~*

the death of Jeff
I read this post of Dooce’s a couple days ago. It’s about a man named Jeff who suffered from bi-polar disorder. He saw no way out and he took his own life. He wrote a final post, because he cared about his cats and didn’t want to not be found for too long, and then he was gone. On his about page, he described himself as “someone who cares”. He cared, but he thought there was not a single person in the world who cared about him.

My heart was so, so heavy after reading that. I’ve been there. I’ve never attempted suicide, but I’ve googled fail-proof suicide methods. I’ve planned what I would say in the note to my kids. I’ve tried to decide how to make the “clean-up” easiest on the person who discovered my body. I remember the last time I felt that way, in December of 2010, and I never want to feel that way ever again. It sucks to be that low, and I’m so sad that this Jeff guy felt like nobody cared. My only hope is that his death is not in vain, that his story causes someone to snap out of their depressive funk and sees that they are worth it. That they have value. That someone does care.

*~*

the cover of TIME magazine
Have you seen this?

image courtesy of TIME

I used to think that nursing past a year was a long time, that it was kind of odd. Now that I nurse a one-year-old, I don’t find it the least bit odd. Funny how that happens. I went to a breastfeeding “support group” when Kaylie was teeny tiny and the women there kind of freaked me out. I was nursing a seven-pound newborn and one lady was nursing a giant three-year-old. I don’t remember what the conversation was about, but I do know that I never went back.

Now here’s my stance on breastfeeding: Do What Works For You. Don’t like nursing, or cannot nurse? Fine! Formula is not poison. Formula-fed babies can grow up to be healthy geniuses and exclusively-breastfed babies can grow up to be unhealthy highschool-dropouts. Want to only nurse for a couple months? Fine! Some breastmilk is better than no breastmilk. Want to nurse in public? Fine! I eat in public, your baby should be allowed to, too. Want to nurse until your kid is three? Fine! Just because I think it would be weird for me to nurse that long doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to do it. Want to nurse until your kid is nine? Um, you were that lady on that extreme-parenting show, weren’t you?

When I first saw the Time cover (Noah emailed it to me in the early morning), I thought the kid was about six. A little … old? I dunno. Apparently he is only three (turning four next month). It’s obviously a shock-value extreme-parenting thing that TIME is doing and something that will sell magazines (good work, TIME, I totally want a copy now), but there is no way I’d want myself on the cover of a magazine while breastfeeding, no matter what age my child is.

Jamie Lynne Grumet, the woman on the cover, said, “People have to realize this is biologically normal. It’s not socially normal. The more people see it, the more it’ll become normal in our culture. That’s what I’m hoping. I want people to see it.” I think she got her wish. Lots of people have seen and will see it.

*~*

This week’s Canadian Family post: 5 Essentials for a Kid-Friendly Road Trip

*~*

Friday. FRIDAY! It’s F.R.I.D.A.Y! I like Fridays.

Preston has been sleeping in my and Noah’s bedroom since we brought him home. Noah’s been wanting Preston’s crib moved out, but I haven’t been ready. He still nurses a couple times at night and having him in a different room was just not logically logistic. (Say that five times fast.) Yesterday, though, I decided it was time.

We live in a three-bedroom house. The girls share a bedroom, there is a play room, and then our bedroom. The original idea was for Liliana and Preston to share a bedroom, but we just can’t trust Liliana alone with her baby brother. The girls don’t like sleeping alone, so they moved in together a couple months ago. All three kids’ clothes are in their sleeping room and there’s usually a play pen in there anyway for Kesler to sleep in, so I figured it made the most sense to just have all three kids sleeping in there and keep the play room just for toys.

So last night was Preston’s first night in with his sisters. It went relatively well. The girls didn’t notice when he woke, and he was up the same amount of times as he usually is. I haven’t talked about sleep-training in a while, as it’s kind of at a stand-still. Preston still goes to bed at about 6pm and he doesn’t get nursed until after midnight. He wakes 1-2 times before then, but it takes only a couple minutes to put him back to sleep.

I usually leave my bedroom door closed at night, but last night I made Noah keep it open. I had to be able to hear my boy when he woke. It’s weird having him so far away, but it’s also kind of nice to be able to go into my room at night without having to be so silent and paranoid of waking Preston. I don’t believe in the phrase “never wake a sleeping baby”, but I sure believe in “never wake a sleeping toddler”.

I know this whole parenting thing is about training our kids to be independent (and honest and kind and generous and all that jazz), it’s just so much harder with my baby. My last baby. And it’s all going too fast.

Last summer I started dreaming about gardening, which has never happened before and made me feel old. Only grown-ups do gardens, right? My mom did a garden when I was little. I remember going to get manure and watching as it was tilled into the dirt. I remember picking peas, mixing them with raspberries, and covering them with a bit of sugar. Delicious.

Both my grandfathers were gardeners with incredible, beautiful gardens. I remember picking blackberries from my Grandpa’s garden, eating home-grown kale in our borecole, and Sunday lunch with freshly-butchered chicken in Grandma’s soup. My Opa used his produce in his cafe and always gave me big bags of potatoes when I traveled through.

I’ve been thinking about what I want to plant, and I’ve talked to a couple friends who are looking to garden this year. Yesterday I came across this post from Jessica at Balancing Everything. She talked about and linked to a (long but very informative) video entitled Back to Eden. It talks about how things grow in wild nature and taking those same techniques (or, lack of technique) and applying them to gardening. It’s brilliant.

I’m not exactly sure when planting starts in Saskatchewan, but I know we have a very short growing season, a lot shorter than the one in BC. If I remember right, our landlords planted in July and harvested in October.

This is the space I have to work with:

It’s small enough that I won’t be overwhelmed and large enough that I’ll still have room for everything I want to plant. Now I just have to find some free/inexpensive mulch/wood chips.

Do you garden? What is/are your best gardening tip(s)?

This week is kicking my butt. All five of us have had a cough for weeks now. I’m so sick of constantly saying, “Cover your mouth!” “Cough away from people!” “Did you cover your mouth?” “DON’T COUGH RIGHT ON THE FOOD!” I finally took the kids to the clinic on Tuesday and both girls have ear infections and are on antibiotics. I’m on them as well, for what I was told is a sinus infection, but what I’m 99% sure is just the allergies I’ve suffered from for the last bazillion years. Kaylie’s had the cough the longest and is on different antibiotics this time. Expensive ones. Noah was literally speechless when I told him how much the drugs were. Thank God (literally) for prescription coverage.

Preston’s been teething (AGAIN)(13th and 14th teeth) and just popped through his bottom left canine, with his bottom right one about to pop through. These teeth have given him even more trouble than his molars did. Drool and whining are aplenty.

I’ve been training for the 10k at the end of the month and doing my cleaning job on my spare evenings and Saturdays and hanging out with babies all day and every time I turn around it’s Thursday again (here’s my Canadian Family article this week: Clearly Organized Bags: An Easy Way to Corral Your Child’s Toys) and some weeks I live for Sundays, the day we have absolutely nothing work-related going on.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy all the previously-mentioned things (save for the teething and coughing), but sometimes I can’t keep up. I get annoyed that I can’t stay on top of stuff at home and Noah keeps telling me not to worry about it and he takes care of so much. He does the dishes and the laundry and the bathroom and he vacuums and he bathes the kids and puts them to bed and I’m so thankful he does so much. I’ve been going to bed too late and I’ve been exhausted all day. I know things will get better when I get into a routine with everything, I just have to get there.

This week has been extra crazy with super-fun stuff like hanging out with Ugandan kids and having a visit from my friend Matt. We’ve been good friends since high school and a while ago he messaged me to say that he was coming through and was thinking of stopping by for a visit. I haven’t seen him in about eight years, so I was quite looking forward to it. I absolutely love it when people I know come through town because it’s so rare. It’s nice to see a familiar face once in a while, you know?

I found this photo of us in Grade 11 on a band trip in Whistler, with our friend Tom:

Nice ski-goggle tan, Matty.

He hasn’t changed a bit and he said that I haven’t either, besides the thing about being married and adding two more kids. And, you know, I thought he was here to visit me until he and Noah hit it off and started ganging up on me. Those bullies. It’s a good thing I CAN DEFEND MYSELF and throw a few punches right back at them. Go watch your hockey. I DON’T EVEN CARE.

The girls totally enjoyed having Matt visit and made him play video games with them. He said he now understands all the Liliana quotes I put up on Facebook. Preston kept his distance, as he usually does with most people, but finally gave Matt a few smiles.

I just got a Facebook message from another (also-formerly-from-Terrace) friend who is going to be in town on May Long, and her message totally made my day.

In less-fun stuff, I’ve battled nightmares on and off for the last couple years and last night I had a pretty harsh one. The nightmares are extremely vivid and based on real-life deep hurts, so they always leave me in a deep funk in the morning. Last night I had a particularly horrid one and this morning sucked. I wish I could just shrug nightmares off, but they are unforgiving.

Both girls had the day off school and had a really hard time BEING QUIET while the babies were sleeping. Granted, one baby slept for three hours and the other for two (I checked on them numerous times to make sure they were STILL BREATHING, as they usually sleep for about an hour), so it was a long time to BE QUIET AND NOT FIGHT, but when Noah called around 11am, I was at the end of my rope. He came home for lunch, brought me a coffee, and then freed me of both girls for the afternoon.

The boys finally woke up and ate great for lunch. I wiped them down, took them out of their high chairs, and went to make sure the playroom was baby-friendly after the girls were in there. I then walked into the living room to find Preston holding my (now cooled and almost-but-not-completely empty) coffee cup upside-down. He and Kesler were stomping the puddle of coffee into the carpet. It’s a good thing the carpet is brown.

I’m so glad today is Friday. I love weekends so, SO much.

The girls had an extra-special playdate yesterday. Noah’s parents’ billeted Watoto kids came over for a couple hours and had a total blast. The girls asked over and over and over, “Are the Watoto kids here yet? When are they coming? Are they almost here? WHY AREN’T THEY HERE YET?” All four girls went straight out to the trampoline and giggled and giggled.

Preston, Sharon, Maria, Liliana, Kaylie

When they were done, they tried to ride bikes. The Watoto kids hadn’t ridden bikes before, but they are incredibly curious, energetic, and brave.

It took them a bit to learn how the pedals worked and I pushed each girl on a bike for over half an hour. That doesn’t sound like a long time, but one girl wanted to ride Noah’s bike, which is too big for even me, and I just couldn’t say no to her so I held on to the back of the seat and the handlebar and ran around and around and around the trampoline. I tried to tell the one girl that I was tired (and ready to pass out), but she pointed to the seat and said, “Push!” So push I did. Every once in a while she’d say, “Leave!” and I’d let go and she’d fall over. But she got right back up and wanted to go again. I’m pretty sure that if they’d stayed the entire day, both of them would be riding without training wheels no problem.

Both girls thought Preston was just the greatest. They packed him around and put him on their shoulders and passed him back and forth.

One girl came inside to use the washroom and didn’t go back outside. She was checking things out and discovered an xbox controller. She turned it over and over and pressed all the buttons. Noah turned on the xbox, showed her how it worked, and let her play Kung Fu Panda for a couple minutes. Liliana “helped”, too. “No, that way! Follow the green dot! Press A! No, PRESS A!”

When it was time for the girls to go, both of them ran up to Sue with their index fingers pointing, “One more! One more minute! Two more … five more minutes!” They wanted to go back on the trampoline.

They were allowed to and afterward we went to have dinner at the in-laws’ place.

I’ve seen three or four of the Watoto choirs and they are a blessing every time.

And also, these kids have 4,386 times more energy than I do.