Snow, Chocolate & Surprises

The last week has been one of mixed emotions.  Feelings of immense joy and celebration, combined with feelings of frustration and claustrophobia.  Unless you've been under a rock in the US, you know that New England has experienced an unprecedented amount of snow in the last three weeks.  It's been absolutely, unbelievably insane and I have two boys suffering from severe cabin fever to prove it.

I know one day we'll look back on this and say, "We survived!", but in the meantime we've been doing our best to keep our sanity.  In the last two weeks we've taken the boys to the Boston Children's Museum, the Museum of Science, baked a variety of treats, and celebrated Valentine's Day. 



The family that shovels snow together, goes stark-raving mad together.

On Thursday, we discovered that we are, in fact, having a Baby Girl!  I literally screamed when the ultrasound tech told us.  Like, "I just won a car" scream.  John proceed to smile ear-to-ear for the rest of the day.  I have caught him several times staring off into space.  When I ask him if he's okay, he just responds, "I cannot believe we're having a girl!"



I'm a girl!

S has been adamant that we were having a girl since the beginning.  When you asked him, "Is the baby in Mommy's tummy a boy or a girl?" he, without fail, would always respond "It's a baby girl!"  He would also say that he had a baby in his tummy, so I wasn't inclined to trust his judgment.  When we came home from the appointment I said, "S, you were right!  We're having a baby girl!"  He responded with a simple "I know!" 

L usually responded to the same question with, "Uh, it's a bulldozer!"

 

Creepy open mouth shot.  She kept opening and closing her mouth and waving her hands.

To celebrate our Big News and stave off snow poisoning, I did two things.  First, I baked a very large chocolate cake with a cream cheese frosting filling and chocolate buttercream frosting on the outside. 

I experimented with all new recipes.  The cake was good, but not as moist as I had hoped.  In my defense, I have an incredibly low-grade oven that makes baking tricky.  You can find the cake recipe here.  The cream cheese frosting was fantastic, and that recipe can be found here.  And the chocolate buttercream has to be one of the best I've ever had.  Seriously.  My only regret is that I didn't make a double batch in order to really cover my cake (recipe here). 

The second thing I did, was go shopping.  I had no idea it would be so fun to shop for dresses that I don't have to give to someone else! 

Her Summer 2015 wardrobe is under way!

Tender Mercy? Try Miracle!

We are fortunate enough to own two cars: a 2008 Jeep Patriot and John's Kia Race Machine aka a 2001 Kia Sephia he bought brand new when he was 18 years old. 

There is nothing innately fancy about the Kia Race Machine.  It has a standard transmission, you have to manually unroll the windows and unlock the doors.  It's at a point in it's life where the radio doesn't always work, so you get the opportunity to drive around in silence.  Particularly fun with children or an overly-talkative person in the car!

This car has nine lives.  Sure, it's got dings and knicks crunches, but it keeps hanging on.  Everyone close to us has experienced the Kia Race Machine.  This last year it has had a number of issues, all that we've fixed, but the fear is that it may be on it's last leg.

The Kia Race Machine:  Keep on keepin' on

We had to take the car into the mechanic yesterday and leave it over night.  As a consequence, the boys and I woke up at 4:00 am to take John to work.  As many of you with toddlers know, this can be a terrifying experience.  The boys were in good spirits all the way to John's work and did not freak out when he left.

On our way home, I talked with them about how "it is still night night.  When we get home, we need to lay back down and take a little rest before breakfast."  They weren't thrilled with that plan and they made sure to let me know.

Upon arriving home, I wrestled them upstairs and back into their room.  The whole time I kept thinking, "S has preschool at 9:30 am. How am I going to get these boys back to sleep so they are not wrecked for the entire day?"

I put them in their beds, they cried.  I gave them cars, they cried.  I turned on night lights, they cried.  I sang to them for 20 minutes, they cried.  Finally, I asked them to say a prayer with me.  I prayed and said something like this: "Heavenly Father, I know you can help these boys return to sleep.  We have such a big day ahead of us and I want them to be happy.  I want them to have fun.  I know you love them and you want them to have a good day as well.  Please help them to return to sleep."  After closing my prayer I decided to have faith that Heavenly Father would help me and the boys.  I KNEW He would help them sleep, and quickly banished any doubtful thoughts.

I shut the door, entered my bedroom and, this is not a joke, within 60 seconds heard complete silence.  S and L share a room and typically spend at least 20 minutes playing, laughing and/or screaming.  Not this time, though.  Not a peep.  They slept for the next 2 1/2 hours before I woke them for breakfast.  If this wasn't a miracle wrought by the hand of the Lord, then I don't know what is.

I know God hears our prayers.  I know God cares about the small things in our lives.  I know He is ready and willing to bless us with miracles when we are in need and have faith.  I know God loves us.  I know God loves you.

I just hope He loves the Kia Race Machine enough to pull it through its latest malady.  :-)

The boys reading their favorite periodical: The Auto Trader.  They're always on the look out for our next vehicle.

*Update* The Kia Race Machine is back on the road and ready to party!  Two miracles.  BOOM.

Milestones

Yeah, I know, it's been a while.  I began with a "Look at me!  I'm starting a blog!" burst of energy, which clearly waned, but I'm back for now.  I may not have been writing (because I just don't have the time and/or energy most days), but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking or taking note of all kinds of things to write about.  I really need to carry around a journal to record my thoughts as they come to me.  Actually, I *need* an iPad, but that's a whole other story.

I recently returned from a trip to Phoenix where my youngest sister, Brandy, graduated from high school.  I can remember being in the hospital and holding her after she was born and now she has a high school diploma and nose piercings.  Ca-razy.



Siblings

It was blistering hot the whole time I was there, but it was fabulous to visit with a small group of family and friends.  If you're reading this and thinking, "Umm, I didn't see you while you were here!" consider this my formal apology.  I really tried to get around as much as I could.  However, I didn't have my own car, there are a lot of you and one of me and I was truly there to celebrate Brandy's graduation.  Love you!

John took the week off of work and stayed home with the boys.  We had originally wanted to go as a family, but that small issue of being able to afford it kept coming up.   This worked out great because, although I missed the boys terribly, it gave me a break and it gave John some precious time alone with his guys.  They went to the park every day, played cars, got dirty and I'm sure bathing was limited.  Of course, in true John fashion, when I returned home I was greeted with flowers, everything was immaculate and there was freshly baked banana bread on the stove.  You don't have to tell me how lucky I am (I was married once before, remember?).  John is constantly doing things like this without ever being asked.  We certainly have our differences and conflict, but it is truly minor compared to what it could be.  Despite that, I sometimes feel like a failure when he seems to "outshine" me.  This sounds incredibly petty and self-centered on my part.  It's not so much that we're in competition, because we're not, it's that being home with the boys full time is difficult for me most days.  I guess I just want to know that John has his parenting struggles too. 

The older the boys get, the more fun we have and the easier it has become for me.  I still have moments every day where I want to run screaming from the house, where I can't bare to change another poopy diaper (we had six SEVEN poopy diapers today alone), and I end the day completely wiped out.  To quote a good friend, having really little children is really, really hard.

And that brings me to a hypothesis I have formulated.  I do not believe this is an original thought nor may it be applicable to everyone, but it certainly describes my short 2 1/2 year stint in parenthood thus far.  Here it is:

A person will be subjected to the highest emotional highs and the lowest emotional lows throughout the parenthood experience. 

This is not to say that one cannot experience euphoria or despair outside of parenthood, because you certainly can.  I know I have in my own life.  But the frequency and the ease with which you experience this range of feelings within parenthood is unique.  This is why parenthood is so hard, but also so rewarding.

I believe my hypothesis is supported by statements found within the book, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life by Terryl and Fiona Givens.  Beautifully written (many passages read as prose), this book delves into some of the most basic and difficult questions humans have about God: Is there a God?  For what purpose did He create us?  Is He a harsh and cruel God, or kind and loving?  Does He deserve our love and adoration?  Do we, as humans, cause Him pain, or is He above suffering?

Among other things, Brother and Sister Givens come to the conclusion that "humans and their world do matter to God" and that, as His children, "His heart is set upon us".   God is not above suffering, nor can He avoid it.  They continue:

"God chooses to love us.  And if love means responsibility, sacrifice, vulnerability, then God's decision to love us is the most stupendously sublime moment in the history of time.  He chooses to love even at, necessarily at, the price of vulnerability...His freely made choice to inaugurate and sustain costly loving relationships is the very core of His divine identity."

Furthermore:

"...it turns out...that God is not exempt from emotional pain.  God's pain is as infinite as His love.  He weeps because He feels compassion.  As the Lord explains to Enoch, 'unto thy brethren have I said, and also given commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood...and misery shall be their doom; and the whole heavens shall weep over them, even all the workmanship of mine hands; wherefore should not the heavens weep, seeing these shall suffer?'  It is not their wickedness, but their 'misery,' not their disobedience, but their 'suffering,' that elicits the God of Heaven's tears." (Emphasis added.)

If God feels such infinite pain because of our misery, why then, would He have created us at all?  He created us and loves us because the joy He derives from our successes, our progress and our happiness exceeds all of the costs associated with loving us.  And this is parenting.  This is why I choose to be a parent: the love I feel for my boys and the immense happiness I feel simply because of their existence outweighs the difficulty, the pain and the heartache. 

As I type this, L is sitting in his high chair, eating pizza and making farting noises with his mouth, completely oblivious to anything else that is going on in the world.  His ability to make me laugh make all the poopy diapers totally worth it.

Here's L with puffed rice stuck to his face.  Classic L.

Perfection

L turned one year old last week and I can hardly believe it (side note: we'll be celebrating this weekend, so there will be pictures to come).  This year truly has gone by so fast.  This may sound negative, although that is not my intent, but S's first year of life seemed to go by so slowly.  I counted every week, keeping track of his exact age constantly.  I tracked every milestone and checked them off in my head as he grew.  But now, having two Goobies, I barely have time to get them into clean diapers let alone track how many months, weeks, days, hours and minutes L has lived.  With S, I was terrified that if I didn't obsess track his progress he'd somehow never cut teeth or figure out how to walk.  With L, I am so much more relaxed, despite being even more busy, and it has proven to be a much more pleasant parenting experience.  And, without my obsessing tracking, L is cutting teeth, on the verge of walking, and feeding himself just fine.  Progress achieved.




Happy Birthday L!
 

I believe all new mothers experience this to some degree.  But, it is also a fact that obsession attention to detail is makes up the very fiber of my being.  I can't help it.  After some time in therapy as a young adult, I learned that my need to control and "keep up appearances" stemmed from my feeling out of control as a child.  As the oldest child, I was already predestined to become a perfectionist.  Being surrounded by a chaotic environment just added to my desire to control and protect.  This served me well in academia, but it did not serve me well in my first marriage nor in other relationships.  My desire for perfection, which does not enable me to admit failure easily, kept me in an abusive marriage for longer than I should have been.  In fact, it was some of those same reasons that put me in that marriage to begin with, ignoring red flags and other's protestations. 

I also have a very bad habit of internalizing others' problems to the point where it begins to affect me emotionally and physically.  In my mind, obsessing over something makes me feel like I'm doing something.  If I think about it long enough, I'll be able to solve whatever the problem is.  The issue with that is I end up obsessing over things I have absolutely no control over and I end up getting sick, frustrated, overwhelmed and depressed. 

I learned a great exercise in therapy that helped me to understand what I was doing and how to re-train my brain.  Choosing to not obsess over things that are outside of my control does not mean that I don't care, that I don't love, that I don't have charity.  It means that I am going to find the things I can do, do them, and not allow myself to be torn down in the process.  In a way, it's exerting charity towards myself.  Here's the exercise: you get two cups.  Label one with your name (in my case, "Brooke") and the other with the name of Jesus.  Every evening, write down on individual slips of paper what you are worried about, bothered by, stressing out about, etc.  Then, one by one, assess what you have written out and ask yourself, "Do I truly have control over this?" If you do, it goes in your cup.  If you don't, it goes in Jesus' cup.  You are allowed to pull items out of your cup one at a time to form action plans.  Anything in Jesus' cup, you can't touch.  You can't even think about it.  You have turned it over the Lord and it now belongs to Him.  If you try to retrieve that problem for yourself, you are stealing from the Lord and NO ONE wants to be guilty of that!  Every time I began to obsess about something I'd say to myself, "This belongs to the Lord.  Stop stealing!" and then I'd strive to refocus my thoughts.  Sometimes this required prayer, and that was totally within the rules.

The foundation of this exercise is having faith that Jesus can do what He's promised to do.  You have to believe that He can heal all afflictions, all infirmities, and that He can make all right.  You also have to accept that your time line does not necessarily line up with the Lord's time line.  And, the hardest part of all (for me, anyways) you have to accept and respect the free agency of others.  Individuals have to make their own choices and you can't force anything otherwise.  (But, let's be honest, it would be nice to be able to revoke someone's agency for a short time now and again.)

And, now, here I am: a perfectionist among toddlers.  Talk about irony!  While it has been a bumpy transition, S and L are teaching me so much and John's love and support have been invaluable.  I've had to let things go: the house can't be perfect all of the time or even most of the time, there will always be food one someone's clothes and the dogs have to go longer in between their baths.  Sure, we all stink, but I'm not flipping out anywhere near as much as I used to!  Progress achieved. 

Delish!

Irish Twins

I've got a list of things I'd like to write about, and I'm sure I'll get to them at some point.  But, why not kick off the weekend with a True Story?  If you know my family (and extended family) well, then you know we've got stories.  Why these random occurrences happen to us, we'll probably never know.  But they do, so I might as well share for your entertainment and enjoyment.

Last Friday night, John and I took S and L to run some errands.  The first stop was Costco, where we needed to pick up diapers, milk, and giant bags of chips.  You know, the essentials.  Strawberries and blackberries are finally coming back into season and we grabbed two big containers of each.  My boys are addicted to berries and we eat them like they're going out of style. 

As soon as they were placed in the cart, S started saying, "Strawberries.  Strawberries!  STRAWBERRIES!"  We made our way through the store, grabbed a few more chips, and headed to the check-out.  After paying, we decided to sit at the tables in the snack area and allow the boys to get their strawberry fix before heading off to run more errands.  Two older ladies were sitting near by and began asking us questions about the boys.  The All Time Number One question we get is, "Are they twins?"  Nope.  15 months apart.  That is usually followed up with, "Oh!  Irish twins!"  Now, I always thought Irish twins were 12 months a part or closer.  Actually, let's take a moment to find out.  Google to the rescue!  Ah ha!  I was right:

Definition: The term is used to describe two children born to the same mother in the same calendar year or within twelve months of each other. The phrase originated as a derogatory term associated with Irish immigration to the United States and England in the 1800's. The implication was that large groups of close-in-age siblings were the result of uneducated, poor Irish Catholic families' lack of birth control as well as self-control.  In modern use, the term is not intended as an insult, but rather a description of siblings born close together. Irish twins are not actually twins and they are not the same as having twins, which are defined as two siblings born from the same gestation.  (see Irish Twins)

Now, back to our story.  One of the women began to comment on their blond hair and blue eyes. 

Woman: Oh, how I love blond hair and blue eyes!  They're adorable.

Me: Thank you!  We enjoy having them around.

Woman: *look of disappointment crosses her face* My granddaughter has brown eyes.  It's too bad because blue eyes and blond hair are perfect.

Me: *now slightly uncomfortable* No way!  Brown eyes are so pretty!  Dark and mysterious...

(White Supremacist) Woman: No, blond and blue.  My daughter had blond hair, but it began to darken when she was around 7 or 8.  I used to put Sun-In in her hair and make her sit in the sun.  I'd say, "Don't tell anyone that mommy is making you do this!"  She just had to keep that blond hair. 

Me: Oh...wow...I...

(White Supremacist) Woman: What is your ethnicity dear?

Now, this is not the first time someone has asked me this in New England.  It seems to be a preoccupation of sorts that certainly has to do with the history of the area, but it's odd and disconcerting none the less.

Me: *really uncomfortable* Uh, Scotch-Irish, German...

(White Supremacist) Woman:  Ah yes!  The Irish and the German!  There it is!  I told my son, "You have to marry a blond haired, blue eyed Irish Catholic from Chelmsford or I won't like her!" 

Me:  Wow, okay, well we really need to get back to our strawberries.

You're probably thinking,  "Brooke!  You should have said X, Y, and Z!  That's what I would have done."  And you're right.  I should have said, "My boys are perfect because they are MY boys.  Even if their hair was green, and their eyes were purple, they would still be perfect!"  But, these things happen so fast and so out of the blue.  For all of  my wit and wisdom (sarcasm intended), I sometimes feel blindsided in these situations and just look for a way to end them peacefully.  

On our way out, John and I were laughing at the audacity of this woman to make those kind of comments. She just assumed because we looked a certain way, we would totally agree and understand what she was saying!  I told John, "You know, when she asked what our ethnicity was, I really wish I would have told her we were Jewish!" 

I guess I'll just have to tuck that in my back pocket for next time.