Devastation

My mom called me this morning with the news regarding Christian music star Steven Curtis Chapman. For those who haven't heard, his five-year-old daughter Maria was killed Wednesday evening. She was struck in their driveway by an SUV driven by her teenage brother. You can read an article about this tragedy here.

This affects me on two levels. The first reaction is to the utter, unimaginable devastation that family is feeling for not only the loss of a child, but the guilt of the sibling. His life will never be the same. And to lose a beautiful daughter. Well, lets say I don't even want to comprehend that pain. My fervent prayers are with them today. May the Lord somehow comfort them. I just can't imagine.

The second level that affects me is the glut of pain we are experiencing in this world. I feel so much pain for the Chapman's loss.... but what about the 50,000+ people in China feeling that same excruciating pain? or the tens of thousands in Myanmar? It's easy to look at the horribly large numbers of dead in other countries, and withdraw emotionally from it. If we let each of those losses bring us so much pain, how could we function?

But I believe God feels each of those individual losses, even more than we feel for a loss within our own family. I cannot imagine God letting this mess go on much longer. He's got to be coming back soon. These tragedies have galvanized me--I have to do what I can to help Him come as soon as possible. Whatever the sacrifice, this pain and suffering has got to stop. Please, Lord, come quickly.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment

I was lucky enough to escape the house for a couple of hours, so I decided to stop by Kohl's and see if they had anything interesting. I wandered around aimlessly for a while. Well, not exactly aimlessly. I was checking out all the clearance items. I love Kohl's clearance. You can find some really good deals, if you know where to look. Any lucky me, since I worked for Kohl's for almost 4 years, I know where they tend to stash the good stuff. Helpful hint: troll the periphery. In almost every department, they will put their clearance items as far back as they can (excluding wallspace--that's prime real estate for retail), generally on an endcap. On my last visit, I found some Christmas wall art they must have found stashed in some dark recess of the backstock, for $2.00 each. During the Christmas season, they retailed for $34.99 (although you can generally get anything for 40-50% off at any given time). So now my new Christmas decorations are nestled in my garage, waiting for my second favorite season to arrive.

I went through pretty much the entire store without finding anything that struck my fancy. As I walked towards the front of the store, I passed by the swimsuit section. I must not have taken my medication, because I stopped to browse. I thought to myself, "Hmm... this is a really cute print. I've pretty much lost all of my pregnancy weight, so maybe it's time for a new swimsuit." In all fairness, I do need a new swimsuit (even though I go swimming maybe once a year). My current swimsuit I bought while I worked at Kohl's, even before I got married. Yes, that long ago. It has outlived its usefulness, but I hate swimsuit shopping, so I continue to use it, driving my husband to distraction.

So I peruse the "Juniors" section of the swimwear, because although I may be mother of three, I refuse to shop in the "old lady" section of swimwear. As much as I would like to wear a full-coverage swimsuit like they had back in the day, I have too much pride for that. So I start pulling off some two-piece suits.

You can tell that it's been a while since I've shopped for swimwear, because I figured I needed the size of swimsuit that I wear in my regular clothes. So I grab a few size 6s in several different styles & cuts and make my way to the fitting room.

I'm naively excited, because I really like the material & colors they are using these days. These swimsuits are super cute! And they I try to put the first one on.

I was fortunate enough to be facing the mirror as I began my attempt, so I got a full visual on my look of surprised horror as I squeezed my apparently-not-as-small-as-I-thought body. After I miraculously pulled it over my head and covered (part of) my torso, I had to check the tags again, thinking maybe I had grabbed a size 0 instead. No such luck. As I'm standing there with bulges and rolls of before-unnoticed fat protruding from this nicely patterned swimsuit top, I get the strange impression that I trying to wear one of Sofia's suits, all the while gasping for breath as this merciless scrap of spandex constricts my ribcage.

I glance at the matching bottoms.

There's no way.

Happy Mother's Day!

Mother's Day is an interesting holiday. I think most of the country believes it is a day to honor mothers, and to show them how much they are appreciated. It is also a day that many myths of motherhood are perpetuated, even by fellow mothers.

Allow me to explain. I am speaking, of course, from the perspective of a young mother with three small children. Motherhood for me is different from the motherhood of, say, the 65 year old woman from church. Speaking of church, we had a lovely mother's day service today, complete with Bible readings on the topic of motherhood/womanhood (Prov. 31) and specially selected hymns for the occassion. My personal favorite was "Love at Home." Now, I have never really been a fan of this song (ask Filipe), but today, it really struck me as somewhat ironic. The lyrics are so sweet and serene:

There is beauty all around,
When there's love at home;
There is joy in every sound,
When there's love at home.
Peace and plenty here abide
Smiling fair on every side;
Time doth softly, sweetly glide
When there's love at home.

I get such an uplifting mental picture when I focus on the words. Then I look over in my pew at my three rapscallions: Sofia's pouring fruity cheerios into her hand, but managing to get most of them on the pew or the floor, Sam is trying to grab another kid's truck that has struck his fancy, but the other kid didn't think it was a good time to share (sorry, Brady!), and Ben, dear Ben, is throwing a tantrum on the seat because I won't let him run down the aisles. None of my children are joyful in the sounds they are making, and I'm not feeling particularly peaceful, either. And since I'm counting the minutes until we can leave, time doth not sweetly glide for us.

My point, here, ladies and gentlemen, is that Motherhood is idealized, especially from a religious perspective. The Everyman Mother, on the other hand, experiences something quite different. At this point in my life, rather than have a lovely little poem read for me, I would love it if the earliteen Sabbath School would sponsor a morning of child care for the mothers, so for once we could actually listen to a sermon, instead of playing referee between our kids (and sometimes the kids next to us!). Instead of focusing on the image of a glowing, perpetually cheerful, nurturing mother, please acknowledge that this job includes a lot of impatient, even angry times, and that it's okay if we don't live up to the honestly beautiful idea portrayed in Proverbs 31. I would like some affirmation that even if I don't enjoy being a mother all the time (gasp! did I just type that!) it's okay, it doesn't make me a bad person, or a bad mother.

Being a mother of three little children is a contact sport, it's an active occupation, it's depressing, frustrating, annoying.... But I wouldn't choose to do anything else. I love those children more than life itself. And I talk bad about my kids sometimes, but just like a mama bear, if anyone else suggests a threat, I will maul them. Okay, that sounded a little more graphic than I planned. But I still mean it. My children are the brightest, sweetest, most loving children I have ever met. They just drive me crazy sometimes. And that's okay, because even if that line didn't make it into the final editing of "Love at Home," it doesn't make it any less true.

"There is laundry all around,
but there's love at home;
There are many screeching sounds,
but there's love at home.
Toys and puzzles here abide,
games and dolls on every side;
Lack of sleep make-up hides,
But there's love at home!"

Recovery

I believe my last post ended with the optimism of a better day on Wednesday.

What a fool.

You can tell I'm still a rookie at this whole parent thing. I keep forgetting...as soon as you think you see the light at the end of the tunnel, it's really just the train coming, so watch out.

Sam did not have good night. He and Sofia both slept with me, since Filipe was away on business. Sam kept waking up, and his fever spiked. After medication, it seemed to go down. In fact, he asked for breakfast on Wednesday, and seemed to be doing well, despite a temp of 101. But by noon, it had spiked again. I finally got in touch with his doctor's office (who says they should be allowed to close for lunch? Don't they know that's always the EXACT TIME I need to talk with someone??) and made an appointment for 2:30. We were there at 2:00. They took us back, took his temperature, and--104.8! That was after I had already given him some medication. So they gave him more, checked ears/throat/chest, and all was clear. So no idea why he's such a hot potato. So we have to go to the Children's Hospital for a bevy of tests. Sounds like fun!

They pin the poor kid down, three nurses in all, and take turns trying to find a vein in his arm. This takes at least 20 minutes. I'm leaning over him, holding his hand, trying in vain to comfort this screaming baby, when the room suddenly gets very hot. I'm sweating, my feet start tingling, and I think, "Oh, crap. This isn't good." I make the mistake of peeking over at them mutilating Sammy's arm when I realize I have to sit down. I remember, oh, yes, I don't think I've eaten yet today. It's 4:30pm. One of the nurses runs to grab some cold cloths for my headand neck, while another gets me a cold Gatorade.

What a great mom! My son is roasting inside his tiny little body, forced to endure cruelty at the hands of strangers, and I not only slow the process down by stealing his nurses, but I leave him to face the pain alone. Not one of my finer moments. I know it's my own fault, have to take care of yourself so you can take care of the children, blah blah blah. Bottom line: I wasn't there for my son when he needed me. Lucky for me, he's only 18 months old, so I don't think I'm going to have to pay for additional therapy for him, but still.

A few heel pricks and an injection and a catheter later, and we're ready to go home. My little man has bruises all over his arms and legs, and he is beat. He missed his afternoon nap on top of everything.

We get home, and not one hour later, Sofia throws up all over the living room floor. So which child do I take care of--the vomiting 3 year old, or the high-fever infant? Fortunately, Filipe had gotten home shortly before, and he jumped in to take care of Sammy.

Happy ending to the story: Sofia now feels better, and is back to jumping around on all the furniture. Sam's fever has gone down, and all of his tests came back clean. So we still don't know why the high fever. But at least it's gone. And Ben has yet to show any symptoms of anything--keep your fingers crossed! All 3 children went to sleep as normal, so here's hoping they sleep through the night--I sure would like to!

Dr. Mom

The life of a housewife includes many job descriptions. Some are glamorous, like spousal stylist, or chef extraordiaire. Some titles are not so glamorous, such as toilet scrubber or booger-nose wiper. But there are some titles that would really rake in the money in the "real world," such as CPA, Executive Personal Assistant, Chaufer, or, as the role I'm taking on this week, Doctor. You can call me Dr. Mom.

To be fair, when a mom takes the persona of Doctor, she really is also playing Nurse, 24-hour Caregiver, P.A., Candy Striper, Labratory Assistant, and Janitor. I'm sure there are other titles I've left out, but you get the idea. And of course, this goes for working mothers as well as the SAH moms.

So Saturday we come home from church, and without any warning, Sofia gets sick. I'll spare you the details, but we'll just say it was several kinds of sick. Still don't know exactly what happened, but it wasn't fun. And it wasn't a 24-hour bug, because she got a fever that night which stayed all day Sunday, too. So then she started complaining about her neck hurting. She cried when I made her touch her chin to her chest. So I basically panicked, and after calling the 24-hour nurse hotline, got my insurance card ready to go to the ER. Good times. Luckily, I checked her temp again before leaving, and her fever had broken. She also had started perking up, acting like herself again. Thank the Lord it wasn't meningitis.

Monday, Sofia's feeling mostly better. I'm thinking, "Good deal, this wasn't so bad. Ha. " Tuesday morning, Sam has a fever, higher than Sofia's was. Actually, he woke up at 12:30am with a fever of as high as 104.9. Yikes! Luckily, it came down pretty fast with water & Motrin. Two hours later, and his fever has broken, so hopefully he's over the worst. But by my estimation, Ben should be coming down with something on Thursday morning. That's just how these things work.

The icing on the cake is that the sick kids are grumpy and needy all day long (I don't blame them--I'm that way when I'm sick too, but my mom is no longer in-house), but also wake up a lot at night. Notice it's 3am right now. This equals a very tired mommy. I've had to skip fun things this week, like opera night at the local vege restaurant, and the zoo with friends. All so I can stay home and not earn a paycheck while I take care of the children's wing of the Fernandes Medical Center.

My intention is not to complain about every minute of my life. In fact, there's some sick pleasure (no pun intended... well, maybe) in having a moderately feverish and lethargic baby want to do nothing but lay on your chest all day.... just cuddle. That's good times. Although it would be better without the fever/lethargy.

I'm telling my husband to watch for the bill. I'm no cheap doc.