lets try this again

well, i am weary to even type it here, but we have planned another vacation. in the past, we have not had such wonderful luck when it comes to vacating annapolis. but we are going to keep trying until we get it right! saturday morning, we are headed to the quaint little beach town of onancock, va; where we have rented a house without an elevator. whats more, we don't plan to put any cargo carriers on the top of our minivan. fingers crossed, everyone is relatively healthy (with the exception of my back - which is again giving me a hassle). i am happy to still have some old c-section meds on hand and hope that by not lifting any of my angels for the next 24 hours i will be back in order to again stand upright without channeling joan cusack in sixteen candles. wish us luck - i have a feeling we might just need it!

passing them along

growing up i knew summer was coming to an end when we returned home from our week "downey oshin". i would spend the drive home in the back seat pouring over the back to school issue of "teen" magazine. when we got back to catonsville the temperature would have started to let up, and the humidity somehow wouldn't seem as bad as before we left for the vacation. there was only one thing left to do before school would start - go peach picking! my mom and a few of her close girlfriends would load their kids into the car and we would head up interstate 83 to a pick-your-own place near ms. pat's childhood house. it was a definite marker that summer was coming to a close. ms. pat would show us how to split a peach in half and eat it right there in the orchard, juice running down your arms. there was nothing as sweet as that! i have fond memories of those days spent in the orchard, filling bushel baskets full to the top of sweet, juicy, end of summer peaches. we would head back to the farmhouse and play with the animals including the beautiful husky they owned while the mom's would "put up" the peaches. like well honed machines, they would sit around the table, paring knives in hand and fill metal bowls with the sliced and peeled chunks of the days bounty. i can picture it now, like it was just yesterday. i hope that when my children get older they will recall memories like this and want to share them with their own children.

today, j. and i took the m. & k. peach picking on the eastern shore (f. was at camp - his last week). although, i dont remember eating peaches right out of the dirt as a child, it is ok with me that my boys are making their own memories. i just hope they had fun - i sure did!

m. is clearly missing his first love

when weeks had passed and it seemed like my children were ginormous compared to their suite-mates in the nicu i began hearing things like "he is too big to still be here" or "you are still here?" then k. decided to kick the nicu like a bad habit. we cranked up the heat to 85 degrees in our house and lived in a giant incubator for fear we would end up back in the hospital for low temperature issues.

but m. was stubborn, he couldn't kick the habit. we later learned that it was because he had a love affair going on with one of the amazing nicu nurses. she would visit him first thing each shift to talk to him and take him to rounds and just snuggle him. once i got wind of this affair, i had a little talk with m. told him i didnt approve of "that hussy" and that it was time to join his family at home.

lately it seems like he is conjuring memories of his long lost love and is trying anything and everything to land himself back in the hospital. today, for the second time in as many weeks - he split his bottom lip wide open. and boy was it bloody - the kind that makes you vomit a little in your mouth when you see the spurt of blood land on your own shirt, but then you swallow and forget all about that because its your little baby standing in front of you spewing blood out of his lip and screaming his head off. i am fairly certain if i could have translated the shrieks it would have been something like, "please mama, i love her, i just want to see her one more time!!"

controlled chaos

yesterday the masses descended and it was controlled chaos.

all day long i am at home with children, always outnumbered. yesterday, m & k had some friends over to play and for dinner. even though 5 adults (and one mothers helper) were in attendance, we were really outnumbered with 11 children. two siblings did not make it because of prior engagements - so it would have been 13 kids. i was a little stressed yesterday wondering what i was getting myself into. but i think it worked out great - controlled chaos sort of describes it to a T. the kids played their little hearts out in the heat and humidity, then we came inside for a little indoor picnic - which was surprisingly tame. see for yourself...
















j. came home from work and i think he expected to see kids swinging from ceiling fans and spilling out into the street. this was not the case - everyone was happily eating what was on their neighbors plate! however, j. is now convinced that our house is big enough to contain our own children. i have informed him that he is sadly mistaken and we will be putting our house back on the market come fall. i hope to be ringing the new year in under a new roof!

another first

motherhood is soo much fun - today i made my first call to poison control!

m. was playing with a bouncy ball that belonged* to his older brother (pictured below). it has a liquid inside and a "floating" pirate head. it used to light up when you bounced the ball. like most 19 month old boys, m. thought it a good idea to put this ball in his mouth and bite down. turns out that is all it took to spring a leak of a "kerosene-like substance" into his mouth (as confirmed by poison control, whose number is listed below). oh great - who on earth decided kerosene was an ideal substance with which to make a child's toy?!?!?! turns out since he only had a tiny amount in his mouth we were instructed to rinse out his mouth the best we could until we no longer detected the odor and then allow him to drink some milk. i dont even want to think about what would have happened if i had to answer "yes" to the question posed to me by the poison control expert of "do you think he ingested more than a few mouthfuls?"
















*note the past tense, as this ball now belongs to some proud landfill!

mars vs. venus

j. accepted a new position, with a new agency. as part of the hiring process he has to go through a background check, which included a screening for the use of illicit drugs. what i am about to share will clearly outline the difference between j. (a man) and myself (a mother of 3).

friday was j.'s regular day off. f. was off to camp early and the rest of us decided to accompany j. to the urgent care clinic so he could leave his pee for them to test. this should take what - 15 minutes?! being generous, lets say, i assumed it would take 35 minutes or so. not too outrageous of an outing, during which m. and k. would be strapped into their stroller. then we would be off to have some fun. so we packed up the car with the boys in tow and finally locate the place in one of the seedier neighborhoods outside of baltimore. when we got inside, i quickly realized my generous estimate was laughable. we were going to be here for at least an hour.

so i set out about entertaining the wee ones while we waited what seemed like a ridiculous amount of time. it quickly became clear that the only thing that urgently occurred in this facility were the smoke breaks that the staff took. so finally after an hour, j.'s name is called.

i was so excited i almost peed right there myself! mostly i was just glad because my arsenal of entertainment tricks had dwindled to letting the boys chew each of my credit cards to see which one they liked best and playing all the ring tones on my cell phone to let them stroller dance along to their favorite. clearly i was desperate! another 10 minutes or so pass and j. finally emerges.

i quickly exit my seat and exclaim "thank god!" i am swiftly defeated when j. says "i am not done, i couldn't go" to which i reply "what?!?!what do you mean you couldnt go?did you pee before we left the house?you drank a large iced mccoffee that has got to be at least worth one specimen full!!i am so going to be blogging about this!!!" and then he is all "why don't you take the boys outside and check back in about 15 minutes?" begrudgingly i exit the building into the nine-thousand degree heat with about twelve-thousand percent humidity and quickly exhaust the joys of the great outdoors. [this is when i discovered the favored smoke break area]

i finally decide to load the boys in the car, because, clearly it couldnt take him more than a few minutes to get up the urge to pee, right?! wrong!! 45 minutes later, i pull the car into the ambulance bay (because who are we kidding the last time an ambulance came here its patient was clearly being transported to the morgue and the driver was just stopping to ask directions) and began politely honking my horn. j. emerges and mutters something about how this is too much pressure and that i should just take the boys to lunch and come back. umm, hello - this is where i start to have issues. who goes to a pee test and cant pee? clearly not a women - and absolutely not a mother of three. a mother of three can pee at will - sometimes even against her own will (i'm just saying). filling a cup to a certain line has never been a problem for me!

after another 20 minutes, he finally emerges with a smile on his face, like he just accomplished the unthinkable and says "ready babe?" since it was now lunch time, we proceeded directly to the restaurant where he quietly left the table three times to pee. i guess the pressure was off!

remember me by lizzie palmer

my dad forwarded this to me. now normally, i delete all the gagillion forwards that my dad sends - (sorry dad - i still love you), but for some reason i opened this one. this was put together by a 15 year old - very insightful young woman.