The Story of My Coat Pockets

The rocketship Sam built that will carry them "really, super high into space!"

Here’s a little exercise for all you writers out there: Make a list. Any list. And you will find a story. Here is my story, told through a list of items currently in my coat pockets:

A clear plastic Nuk with an orange handle, thrown into my pocket months ago in the hopes that some day my daughter would keep it in her mouth rather than spitting it out at me. Last night at ten minutes to midnight I tried to convince her to take a similar one so that I could sleep without contorting my body and twisting my spine while she nursed. Not sure why I still carry this one in my pocket. Hope. I guess.

A folded up paper bookmark with a little man looking through a gigantic telescope at the words “One World, Many Stories” and a paper coupon from the library’s summer reading program for a free ice cream cone at McDonald’s. “It’s okay,” Sammy said to me when I picked him up from daycare and he handed it to me. “McDonald’s doesn’t have peanuts in the ice cream. We can go there, Mommy. We can. Really. We can go there.”

A little plastic pig that Sam picked up from the floor of the Subaru as we were heading in to the daycare last week. It is about the size of a quarter, and it has amazing detail, including perfectly formed hooves, a kinked tail and eight little teats that hang down from its underside.  Nobody seems to know where it came from and how it ended up in our car. Not even Sam.  Although when I ask Sam where anything (like the popsicle stick in the bathroom or the pile of spaghetti noodles in the living room) came from he usually says “I don’t know, Mommy.”

Kleenex.  Loads of wadded up Kleenex, some shredded from being in there for weeks, some brand new and neatly folded.  I grab some every time I leave the house because there have been more than a few occasions in which one or both of my children have sneezed or spit up or drooled or picked things out of their noses just as we were entering the real world where people don’t look too kindly on goop glistening your upper lip.

My circa 2007 Verizon Wireless Motorola Razor.  The paint is peeling on one side and the back is rubbed down to reveal the white plastic underneath on the other side.  It is worn and used, just like the pants I wear that are too long so that the edges have started to fray or my nursing bras which are so stretched that their elastic no longer really functions and I wonder why I even bother.  No money for new clothes.  No time or money for one of those fancy phones with all the apps.  I barely know what an app is.  When I’m with my kids, I’m with my kids, without all my facebook friends tagging along.

And yet I seem to be bringing all of you.

And despite having what was, I think, my first major hot flash after calling what I thought was a credit card customer service line only to later realize I had read an 8 where it was a 6 because I didn’t use my newly-acquired reading glasses when I looked up the number, I am NOT as old and worn out as all this sounds.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

(This story originally appeared here.)

And here are some completely unrelated photos from the last few weeks...

Eva and her friend Stella

Sam and his friend Hamilton

Eva loves Sammy's legos

Sam does some art at Bea's 1st birthday party

Eva's beautiful friend Tara

The pool on the deck

Cracking Open

The weather around here is the same weather that drives us all crazy every year. Sunshine and melting snow and mild temperatures that make it okay to leave your coat in the car one day. Freezing drizzle and fog and big fat snowflakes mashing into a mess on the streets the next day. Every morning when I walk into work someone comments in the parking lot. "Not going to be too bad today" or "I thought winter was over" or "I see spring coming" or "Is Summer ever going to come?" The ice has started melting on the river, large areas of open water growing bigger every day, the bald eagles perched on the edge fishing. Sammy has started looking for barges as we cross the bridge into Minnesota every morning, and some days he whines that he can't see anything, that it's too "froggy." March in the upper midwest. Manic depression.

I just told someone the other day that I was beginning to feel myself coming out of the newborn, 24/7-breastfeeding-can't-be-put-down baby fog. I could almost physically feel the world and our lives cracking open in the same way the early ice does, pieces moving and sliding against each other, trying to find the position that will relieve the stress and allow it all to settle into place and melt comfortably.

Muscles!

The kids love Brooklynn

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind, and we've gone back and forth between constant motion and complete standstills, between days in which Mommy needs to get away and days in which the kids need more of me. Mommy the introvert who has never had much of a social life has been out visiting friends, reconnecting with the world, going to readings and meeting friends for lunch and getting back to the gym. Eva is cooing and babbling and figuring out that those are her hands out in front of her and she can use them to put just about anything into her mouth. Sammy has been enjoying tumbling classes and playdates and evenings with Mommy's friends. And we've all survived the inevitable meltdowns of a 3-year-old who is upset when tumbling class is over or the play-doh has to be put away or Mommy's friend gets in a different car and doesn't come home with us after a lunch date at Culver's.

Sam enjoys wrestling with Tara's fiancee Robb

Every morning before the children wake up, I look out the window and try to prepare for what the weather will bring today. Will Sam need his winter coat and his snowpants? Will Eva need her brown fuzzy snowsuit? Will Sam's boots end up slapped into puddles and soaked or will they slip and slide along the ice patches in the driveway? Last week we turned a corner in town and did a slow 360 in the car ("Mommy, look, it's like hockey!") but by the end of the day Sam's boots and pants were soaked to his knees from playing in puddles. With all the ups and downs and turmoil and transition, I look out the window every morning and try to prepare my children for the day... one day at a time.

See more pictures of Brooklynn's visit here.

Sam helps paint the bathroom

Blowing out the candles on the birthday cupcakes
Sam and TT made while I was in Iowa visiting a friend

My New Best Friend

"Make the pump your best friend," Carol said.

We were sitting in a quiet exam room in the Gunderson Lutheran Pediatrics Clinic, and Carol was the lactation nurse who had just weighed Sam before and after I nursed him. Despite me stripping him down to just a diaper and flicking the bottoms of his feet and blowing on his face, he had slept through most of the 45 minute nursing session and only gained an ounce.

If you skip the pre-natal breastfeeding classes (as many of my friends had told me to) you miss the important fact that babies lose weight before they leave the hospital. And if you're breastfeeding and waiting for your milk to come in, newborns can lose a lot of weight that first week. Sam had been 8 pounds 6 ounces at birth, and by the time we left the hospital 4 days after my c-section, he weighed only 7 pounds 3 ounces. His significant weight loss had triggered the need for daily and then weekly weight checks at the clinic.

"He's not going to do the work, so you're going to have to," Carol said.

Sam was 4 weeks old and he still wasn't up to his birth weight. He was what they call a "sleepy, lazy nurser." He was more interested in sleep than eating. And at that point, quite frankly, so was his Mommy. He was gaining weight, but it was slow, and I was tiring of the amount of work that each feeding required because he just wouldn't stay awake. I was on the verge of giving up and switching to formula.

A friend had told me that breastfeeding was like marriage. It required commitment to stick with it when it was hard because it would be hard at some point. Amen.

I have been thinking about those frequent visits with Carol a lot lately since Eva seems to take after her big brother. She too lost a lot of weight before we left the hospital. She too would rather sleep than eat.

When we walked into the clinic for Eva's first weight check and lactation consultation 3 weeks ago, Carol greeted me in the lobby and smiled and said "How are you?! You look fantastic." It had been almost 3 years since she'd seen me, but she had been a frequent source of support for many weeks. She said it seemed like just yesterday since I'd been there with Sam. We reminisced about those early days, talked about Sam's good-natured temperament, and developed an action plan to get Eva gaining weight more quickly than her big brother had.

"I'm making the pump my best friend already," I told Carol, and she laughed.

We've been in for weight checks several times over the 4 and 1/2 weeks since Eva was born. Every few days Carol and I have discussed the issues and reassessed and adjusted the plan, and every week we have once again reminisced about the early weeks with my other sleepy lazy nurser. Last week Eva's weight had gone up an entire pound from the previous week, but that was because I was doing the work... a lot of pumping and bottle feeding. This week was the first real weight check of just nursing, no bottles. I am thrilled to know that she's up another 11 ounces since last week, and she's now almost 11 pounds. Great news. But I have to admit I was a little disappointed that Carol had the day off today. She wasn't there to once again gush with support and encouragement and assure me that my commitment had paid off, that we were going to make breastfeeding work again, that the pump doesn't have to be my best friend any more, and that my sleepy, lazy nurser has definitely woken up.