Dear Lady Behind Me in Checkout Lane;

Yes, her hair is naturally curly. I cannot imagine using a curling iron or those pink foam curlers my mom tortured me with on my two year old’s hair. If I tried to roll her hair and force her to sleep on curlers, she would probably back hand me and she’s stronger than she looks.

Regarding your inquiry as to if she is an identical triplet with her brothers? I point you to Henry Gray’s famous book, Anatomy of the Human Body. Indeed they do look alike but I assure you they are not alike in every way for she is a FREAKIN GIRL and they are boys.

Sincerely,
Disheveled Looking Woman Trying to Answer your Questions while Placing Groceries on the Conveyer Belt and Pushing Six Small Hands Away from the Candy and Disney Fake Cell Phones.

this interview with the author of “the ten year nap” about educated, professional women who give up their careers to stay home with their children was worth a listen.  soon after, i read this essay by dutch over at sweet juniper about how parenting changes your life so fundamentally that looking back on your childless self is a difficult but worthwhile exercise. 

on rough days, i question my life’s trajectory of school, school, school, career then bam! stay at home mom. i’ve whispered to myself, “why did i go to college? what was the point of building a professional life when all i do is run after kids and try to will myself into cleaning and cooking? i could have dropped out of junior high to do this!” being a stay-at-home parent has torn down my ego and made me examine who i am and who i want to be. i have also been a working parent and have known how exhausting and guilt-inducing it is. there is no easy answer and i guess parenting itself makes me look back on my childless self and further realize how much i have to learn about balancing my life. the kids have forced me to grow up in ways that never would have happened without them, no matter how old i grew or where i worked. so there’s that. 

we had a lovely easter filled with family, ham, pinwheels, those malted milk balls that act as lipstick if eaten correctly, potatoes (and sweet potatoes!) and children hopped up on sugar. the temperature plunged last night and light flurries forced the easter egg hunt into my parents’ basement but the kids still managed to have a great time shoving jelly beans in their mouths and extras in their pockets for they are candy chipmunks. when we got home, i hid every piece of candy and forced them to eat ham and broccoli after they dumped an entire large box of honey nut cheerios everywhere. there were sticky, honey-coated crumbs crushed into the carpet and hundreds of broken cheerios coating the kitchen floor. i found lily stomping on them and giggling while her brothers threw them up into the air and watched them bounce. they were also shoving the cereal in their mouths for more sugary goodness.

 it wasn’t easy, but i coaxed them out of their sugar high long enough to get them bathed. i noticed the bath water turning green after i put ethan in the tub and realized he had smuggled jelly beans in his tightly clenched fist into the tub.  just when i fooled myself into thinking everything was under control, one of the triplets shit in the bathtub. i bathe the three of them together and it happened so fast that i didn’t know who was responsible for the large floating globs of poo floating in the water but i do know two of the kids were trying to catch them in their hands. this is probably the second time any of my kids have pooped in the tub and each time i’m temporarily flummoxed because really, what is the best course when you have three toddlers sitting in poo water when you know that once you remove them from the tub, they will run around naked and probably piss on the floor? i grabbed them out of the tub, pushed them out of the bathroom so i could spray every anti-bacterial potion available on the tub until i was gagging on fumes. i scooped, sprayed, scrubbed and rinsed the tub, grabbed the three naked, slippery toddlers, put them in and turned on the water only to find only cold water pouring from the spout. now what? i had to get the poo water residue off them so i quickly soaped them down, winced and dumped coldish water on them. they didn’t like that too much but i didn’t like cleaning up poo water so it is what it is. after a mere hour, they were squeaky clean in their footed pajamas and mellowed after a high fructose corn syrup hangover.

it really was a good day, poo and spilled cheerios aside, and watching the kids find easter baskets and hidden eggs was a wonderful experience. the triplets are finally on the verge of understanding parties and they definitely know how important their family is in their lives. their eyes light up when they the people they love the most together in one house and they run from relative to relative in excitement (and for candy). i am grateful to have the means to make the kids baskets, for a loving family and for all the chocolate i will be sneaking out of my kids’ baskets.

earlier this month, when lily went to the emergency room for the second time in a week, she desperately pointed to the nurse’s scrubs. at the time, lily’s lungs were probably functioning at about 40% capacity which was causing her to pant like she had just finished a triathlon but she was determined to express something about this nurse’s uniform. every time the nurse walked in, her eyes lit up and she pointed so everyone would coo “yeeeah, shamrocks! shamrocks are pretty! green!” but had no idea why she cared so much.

after her extended hospitalization, she was back on her feet within two days and her normal personality returned. in the hospital, she tended to shut everyone out to deal with the over-stimulation and pain and would barely look at me (but if i tried to leave the room to go to the bathroom while she was awake? she threw very sad, gut-wrenching yet silent tantrums). she coudn’t use her speaking valve with a respiratory infection because it makes it harder for her to clear any secretions and without it, her voice was a soft squeak that was very hard to understand.

the day i knew she was feeling stronger and the color returned to her cheeks, i put her purple speaking valve back on. she grinned, and said, “purple!” which is what she calls the little device that lets her breathe in through her trach, push air through her vocal chords and out her mouth. at that time, i happened to be wearing some green, shamrock mardi gras beads (because, why not?). lily looked at me, looked at the beads and shouted, “BROCCOLI!”.

OH! I suddenly remembered the emergency room and her excited reaction to the nurse’s shamrock scrubs. Lily loves broccoli and well, shamrocks look like broccoli. Of course! I smiled, gave her the beads and she ran away shouting, “Broccoli! Broccoli!”

I forgot today was St. Patrick’s Day until about an hour ago when the oldest pinched my hip so hard he left a mark. I changed into a green shirt.

Recently, one of my bestest internet friends shut down her blog after years of detailing her life online. I have gone through the typical stages of grieving (which I will always remember thanks to that handy “Death and Dying” class senior year of high school. Catholic school= weird); denial, “No she didn’t”, anger, “That slut faced whore!”, bargaining, “If I UPS her one of my kids, she’ll have to write about that!”, depression, “I think I’ll lay in bed and eat these brownies. Honey, pass me my crazy pills.”, and acceptance, “Well, fine then. Harumph.”

The unexpected consequence of what feels like losing a friend due to the loss of her blog is that I’ve been over-thinking this live diary I’ve created and maintained for almost five years. It weighs on my shoulders and is a constant source of guilt- I scold myself for not updating enough, for not being a better writer, for not telling the whole truth and for caring what others think enough to not tell the whole truth. I started this for fun and many days it is a burden. I have to consider everything I say because I don’t want to offend anyone and sometimes want to hold my own life closer to my heart and not have it parroted back to me the next time I get a phone call. I hate the questions and disappointment that comes with barfing my life across the internet. I wonder if I should start a different site where no one knows me but that seems so hard and like I’m trying to hide something which I’m not but the public nature of this thing makes me shy and guarded. I want to tell wonderful, funny stories with great analogies and inspiring tales of parenthood but it never feels good enough. I already fear that I am eclipsed by parenthood and writing only about my kids makes me feel like I’m disappearing further into this role. I’m tired, busy and selfish and I don’t feel like sharing.

I have to remind myself of why I started this- so I would remember how I felt and what happened in this period of time. I have the photos but without the words, I don’t know that I’d remember the stories. I should keep going, write whatever comes out and forget anyone is watching but it is so hard. I’m having a blogging (and AAARGH I HATE THE WORD BLOG AND I HATE THAT MY BLOG NAME HAS A VARIATION OF THE WORD BLOG IN IT AND WOULD RENAME IT IF I COULD THINK OF SOMETHING MORE CLEVER) existential crisis. I don’t know if the negatives are outweighing the positives enough to keep going but I’m trying.

I can never make anything easy so why should this be any different?

Shit- I think the baby boys just dumped the entire glass container of sugar on the floor. Not the sugar bowl, the thing that holds an entire bag of sugar. And I wonder why I don’t have more time to write. Ending writer mode, resuming maid mode.

I wrote an update and the internet ate it. I am at the hospital with the oldest as he recouperates from his third and hopefully final ear reconstruction surgery. We are watching Honey I Shrunk The Kids and I just remembered how big of a crush I had on “Russell” the older brother/neighbor.Wonder what ever happened to that guy.How sad that I now identify more with the tired, nagging moms frantically searching for their miniature progeny amongst blades of grass than the suddenly shrunken kids. So that is my life at the moment- aren’t you jealous?

we are settling in back home and the craziness continues. lily is feeling much better and back to bullying the boys. i’ll tell ya all about it. later.

i’m so not excited. lil and i have been at the hospital for a total of nine days (two day stretch + current week-long stay) and i am feeling institutionalized and bored. but! boredom is  good because it means the life threatening excitement of serious illness has decreased but boredom is bad because damn, i hate being bored. i have walked and studied every inch of the hospital and read every old magazine i could find. i’ve moved from my “parent room” back into lily’s room where i sleep on a fold out chair that i think is stuffed with cardboard and sheet rock.  the parent room was in an older section of the hospital and housed a bunk bed and a telephone. i imagined it looked similar to a jail cell but less gray and no roommate. the first night, i tried the lower bunk but tossed and turned all night on top of uncomfortable wires supporting a thin mattress. the second night, i took the lower mattress and stacked it on top of the top mattress and climbed aboard. my husband questioned this move, thinking i should have stacked both on the bottom but i explained i didn’t want to wake up and smack my head. he pointed out that falling eight feet to the floor would probably hurt more and i admit my logic was a teensy bit flawed. i didn’t fall but didn’t sleep well either. i felt like the princess sleeping on mattresses sandwiching a pea and had horrible nightmares all night long. 

i dreamt that my car blew up and i accidentally sank it into a lake behind a church. later, the congregation watched as my car floated to the top of the water and i realized in horror that my old roommate was bloated and blue, floating in the car. the cops took me away and asked me if i was a serial killer because there were other bodies in the lake. i told them i didn’t think i was but couldn’t explain why my ex roomie was had drown in my car. what? the? hell?

the rest of my dreams were no better (although the one where i found african tribesman with giant plates in their lips filling up their cars at the gas station by my house was amusing) and i woke up completely exhausted. everytime i walked down the hallway to my room, i felt like someone was watching me and i became increasingly uncomfortable. i decided the entire hallway and room were inhabited by some evil force and the undead were responsible for my bad dreams because it couldn’t possibly be the anxiety of my daughter’s ICU stay. it didn’t help that my cell phone battery inexplicably died which everyone who watches ghosthunters knows is a sure indication of the paranormal. if only i had a tape recorder, i could have asked who was there with me and what they wanted then analyzed the tape to find nothing.  the room was haunted or at least i convinced myself it was so i vacated and fled to lily’s bedside. i haven’t had a bad dream since.

I will try to post again from my new phone- not an iphone and one that has both appealing and annoying features- because my first two tries disappeared into the ether. Lily is out of ICU and back to the transitionary care unit. She seems to be slowly getting better *knock on wood* but is still weak and tired. she is one tough cookie* who needed massive sedation to keep her on the much needed vent. she kicked three IV’S out of her foot and once bit me out of frustration that I didn’t make it all go away and whisk her home. It has been a harrowing week. Thank you for all of your support and prayers- it means the world to us. I kiss you! *What a dumb phrase- cookies are not tough and if they are, the baker should be fired!