Why Howdy Neighbor.

Dravet Syndrome is going to make me lose my shit.

So, today has not been a good day.  We lost one of our kids today. 

And no, I have no hold on this child.  I don't know the parents or the kid.  But yes, it hurts me like a part of me is cut off because every day we all fight to not lose one of our own.  So she was one of mine. 

And THEN my neighbors threw a party and one of their guest parked in front of my driveway.  I swear, if Lulu had had a seizure I would have just rammed that damn Kia.  As it was, Travis had to just about restrain me from leaving a note with some thinly veiled sarcasm.

At my house, we call this a "subtle hint."

Think he'll get it?

Mom In Motion Study

So, people have been asking me how *I* have been doing.  And I'm fine, really, but I tell them I'm a little bored because I suspect that's what they want to hear.

Mostly I'm not terribly bored.  I mean, this isn't as intellectually stimulating as trying to get 26 adults to identify a thesis statement when they have no idea either what a thesis statement is or what it does despite their insistence that they have advanced high school diplomas, but I'm not horribly bored.  I've been able to write more, which is kind of awesome, and I'm getting a lot of good stuff done for Lulu, which is super-awesome.

Also, I've been able to clean out three closets. 

But since people wonder what I *do* all day, I thought I'd write it down.  Apparently, they think I simply wipe bottom, drool, and then sing ABCs.  It's close, but not quite. 

And so, I present to you, with only a little more ado, a Mom in Motion Study. 

To get you in the mood, you probably need to listen to this:



My day begins between 5 and 5:30am.  I wake up after some crazy-ass dream (last night, I dreamed we were living in a townhouse with a teeny-tiny yard, and we bought a horse) and check for breathing. 
   Me:  Check
   T:  Check.
   Lulu . . . . . . . . . come on kid, give me something . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . .Lulu? . . . . . Ok, Check.

Then I carefully get out of bed and head for the bathroom in the hall.  Then coffee.  And then?

IT'S MOMMY'S FREE TIME EVERYBODY'S ASLEEP HOORAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Some mornings (in fact, many mornings) MFTEAH doesn't happen.  Some mornings Lulu wakes up before I can even get out of bed, so we go right to:

 

EVERYBODY IN THE BIG BED SNUGGLE TIME AWESOME HAPPY.

 

This will last until I get kicked in the face, or someone looks at the clock and realizes that if both adults wish to be washed and dressed this morning that we need to get up, or my bladder is about to give out. 

 

Then we get up and I get Lucy her morning beverage and pull her hair into her ponytail in case she decides to fight the medicine and we commence the medicine taking.  Daddy is normally in charge of this, because she fights him less, and I am not going to take away a job he is clearly better at than me. 

 

And then I bathe and dress and dry my hair and then we switch and I try to entertain a toddler while making the beds and dressing her.  Then we attempt breakfast, though we're rarely successful, especially after we've just shoved 3 teaspoons of anti-epileptics into her.  And then Daddy goes to work, and we cry, and then it's time to try to watch the weather forecast and get a nebulizer treatment. 

 

You should probably picture an adult woman trying to herd kittens into a sack with one hand.  It's a little like that. 

 

And then we commence to working on our homework.  Lulu needs to learn to:

   1.  Stack

   2.  Scribble

   3.  Walk up the stairs

 

These are hard things.  The stacking is coming along nicely -- we're up to three blocks.  We like to make some dots on the paper and then try to gnaw on our crayon and we ARE SO MAD when Mommy takes them away. 

 

The stairs are HARD, you guys.  There is this shit called gravity and it is a bitch.  Lucy can make it up a step, but a lot of times she can then fall off of said step.  She never gets hurt (it's really just surprise) but she gets really scared.  However, it's good for her, because she needs to understand that there's a certain amount of danger and risk in going up the stairs.  I just hope I'm not creating too fearful a kid. 

 

Anyway, then it's 9:00 and it is naptime.  So we lay down and I get the computer and I check my work email and my regular email and then I get to write. 

 

Dudes, I have been so prolific in the past two months.  I write a humor column for an online magazine, and I wrote two in addition to all of my blogging.  And I started a book, but then again who isn't writing a book?  But anyway, I get some stuff DONE. And I also do the laundry and prep dinner and race around doing, well, stuff during naptime. 

 

Then she wakes up.  Back to homework. 

 

11:30am.  Lunch!  Throw raisins on the floor!  Throw cheese on the floor!  Throw crackers on the floor!  Eat some carrots! 

 

12noon:  While Mommy is cleaning up, eat raisins, cheese, and crackers off the floor.

 

12:05:  Daddy give Lucy her afternoon meds.  Tears. 

 

12:15.  Sesame Street is brought to you by the Letter C, the number 8, and some the highest people EVER.  I'm waiting for a segment called "Puff, Puff, Pass."

 

1:15:  Naptime.  Back to writing, emailing, blogging, hemming pants, cleaning out a closet, etc. 

 

2:00:  Tell Lucy that she has not had enough nap.  Nice try.

 

3:30:  Shit.  Is she ever going to wake up?

 

3:45:  Hi, Baby!  Let's play!

 

4:30:  Daddy comes home!  Time to make dinner.

 

5:00:  Dinner!  Throw raisins on the floor!  Throw crackers on the floor!  Eat some beans!  Chew up a roll and spit it in Mommy's hand! 

 

5:30:  Fussy time.  Tired again.  Daddy reads books.  Mommy tries to figure out what to defrost for tomorrow's dinner. 

 

6:00pm:  All the books go ON THE FLOOR. 

6:10:  Lucy wants to read Humpty Dumpty.  WHERE IS HUMPTY DUMPTY?

6:12:  Lucy is sitting on Humpty Dumpty.  I attempt to explain how she can't read the book that is under her bottom.  Fail.  Tears.  I pull her into my lap for soothing and rescue the damn book. 

6:20:  We read Humpty Dumpty.

6:21:  And again.

6:22:  And again.

6:23:  And again.

6:24:  And again.

6:25:  I put Humpty down and tell Lucy to find another book.  She chooses Little Pookie.

6:26: We read Little Pookie.

6:27: And again.

6:28: And again.

6:29: And again.

6:30: And again.

We repeat with other books until 7:00.  Then we take meds and a bath and go snuggle in front of Jeopardy with some milk. 

8:00pm:  Brush teeth, bedtime.  Also baby's bedtime.  Yaaaaaawn. 

8:30:  TV.  I normally watch about half of a show and then fall asleep, which leads to some wonky dreams. . . . .

Scenes From a Marriage, New Parent Edition

I'm nursing Baby Blue, and she makes about the cutest face ever -- while her right hand is clearly flashing the "East Coast" gang sign. I called in my husband, and we chuckled, and I said, "I wish I could get a picture of this."

In no more than THREE SECONDS FLAT, Superdad is standing in front of me with a camera.

And I said, "Um, you're not actually going to take this picture, are you?"

Studies in Gratitude

My friend the Kitchen Bitsch (or is it the Kitschenbitsch?) is vowing to post every day between now and the end of eternity January 1 about things she is grateful for.

I will try to join her, although let's face it -- I'm a slacker. Mostly I'm a slacker because this is some Deep Shit over here at The Door In the Page, and sometimes I just can't get into it.

Also, I'll be away from a computer (and also away from a Starbucks) for the next three days, during which time I will be holding on to my temper with both hands and praying that someone will walk in and say "Hey, I've got a venti nonfat Pumpkin Spice Latte with three extra shots and no whipped cream, and I don't even DRINK these. Anybody want it?"

It should go without saying that I would knock over my frail, nearly blind father-in-law to get to that lukewarm prize. Which I would be sooooooo grateful for. But at this point, it is only hypothetical. Do we count hypotheticals?

As you've no doubt figured out by now, I'm spending the holiday in the sixth circle of hell with my in-laws. One day, blogosphere, you and I will get into a contest over whose in-laws are worse, and I will win. I've only been taken down by a man whose mother-in-law went to prison for manslaughter. She killed her husband.

But I digress yet again. A thousand apologies. And now, in the spirit of the holiday, and recognizing that I would not survive this trip with my sanity and my relationships with my in-laws intact (and I only really care about maintaining one of those, but still) I give you five reasons I am grateful for the ways my husband tries to make these trips tolerable for me:

1. He checks the bed we sleep in for spiders for me. This is very important, because I am really afraid of spiders. Once, I went to bed before he did and there was a spider as big as my thumb under my pillow. I freaked out and sat on the floor and cried. And watched to make sure it wasn't coming for me. When Travis came in to bed, he killed it (and also its spouse) and removed all the covers to make sure they were all gone.

2. Speaking of bed, he encourages and enables me to bring my own bedding. I have a notoriously hard time sleeping anywhere but my bed. If I'm headed out to be a houseguest somewhere, I normally have to bring sleeping pills. Even if it's a hotel. The bedding in the guest room at my in-laws is a horrible synthetic that is supposed to look like silk but feels just gross and is hot as all hell. Travis and I sneak sheets and blankets and pillows in (we tell them I pack a lot) and remake the bed each night to sleep in it.

3. He takes me out for coffee every morning, under the guise that we need to check our email/call my mom to wish her a happy whatever-the-holiday-is/whoopsies I forgot my toothbrush so we're going to town to pick one up. And I get to go to the shell station, where the coffee is really good, and get a monster cup of java and some twizzlers, and the bathroom is gloriously clean and smells of pine-sol.

And speaking of food,
4. He manages to find a way that we can bring our own food. I know it seems weird to those who know me because I eat a lot, but I'm really picky. If it's gross, I won't eat it. After two visits in which I subsisted solely on driend fruit, granola bars, and pringles that I snuck, he hit on this idea and now we are a self-sustaining unit when we travel. (I'm drawing the line at a tent in the yard.) Every time we go we load up a cooler, and eat salads and sandwiches and homemade soup and fruit. They eat pork chops and the cheap version of velveeta. This time, I'm bringing Thanksgiving dinner, which we are looking forward to eating, and I suspect we'll all end up eating the same meal for once, instead of the awkward mealtimes that usually ensue. (Lest y'all try to report me to the Southern Council on Womanhood, I bring a gracious plenty of whatever it is I'm packing in the cooler -- enough for the entire family plus a few more. For reasons I don't understand, they opt for their own food. Whatever.)

5. He tries to keep me entertained. Here's what my in-laws do: 8 am breakfast. 8:30, TV. 11am, lunch. 11:30, tv. 4pm, dinner. 4:30pm, tv. 7:30pm, snack of dinner-like proportions. 8pm, tv.* Now, I'm not saying that I don't like to eat and watch tv as much as the next guy, but they prefer three kinds of programming, in order: Nancy Grace and her ilk, Game Show reruns, Country Music videos. Travis normally tries to find a way to get me out to go see a park or something around the time I get so restless I can't stand it.
*If my sister-in-law is there, we have to play a game of some sort that she has made up the rules to, and then have awkward conversations.

And that, my friends, is five reasons I am grateful for my husband. In the spirit of bird-killing that goes alongside Thanksgiving, I have successfully killed two birds with one stone -- I have made a list of five things about my husband for which I am grateful, and I have complained about my in-laws.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!