Dear World,

(I think this should be a new series of blog posts. Dear World being posts aimed at 'them'...the anonymous random people you see day to day but do not know and cannot personally address.)

That thing you're driving? It's still a mini van no matter how ridiculous and boxy you try to make the front end look. Accept that you drive a mini van. Own it. Stop trying to fool yourself and those stuck at the red light with you that what you are driving is anything BUT a family-friendly, kid-toting, "The stroller, cooler, and folding chairs are in the back, now let's hurry so we're not late to soccer!", semi-nerdy but completely functional MINI VAN.



6/30

This Whole Time I Thought Someone In England Loved Me.

And then I saw a comment in my inbox today:

*Note: I deleted this comment because after I posted this the spam traffic to my comments increased a LOT. Let's just say it was an offer for a medication for men starting with V.*

DO I have real readers in England? A real reader in England? Or has my pitiful little ego been fed false dreams this whole time by the no prescription uk alternative V that has apparently been following my blog?

Either way...

I didn't keep up with my 30 in 30 promise mostly because I fell asleep on the recliner last night rocking Rohan to sleep. I finally dragged myself up the stairs like a drunken old woman at 9:45, deposited Rohan in his crib, and stumbled into bed. Without even brushing my teeth.

OH, Friday nights! How exciting are thee now that I am mom to 2?

The funny part was that I awoke some time later to my husband, standing over me silhoutted in the bathroom light, saying something I couldn't quite wrap my sleep-fogged mind around. He mumbles, too, so it's not ALL my fault. Finally, I realized he was asking me to move Miss Piggy, whose butt was planted firmly atop his pillow. I can't be certain whether or not she responded to my half-asleep plea to "Get your butthole off the pillows!" or not.

5/30

Mama Love.

These two...they are the light in my days. It doesn't hurt that they both look so much like their Daddy. Looking at them my heart swells, and I feel so fortunate.





4/30

"Can you have a baby in your belly?"

Tonight, Luca and I were sitting on the floor together when she came over, put her hand on my belly, and said, "Can you have a baby in your belly?"

I looked at Darrick. He looked at me. "Did you tell her to say that?" I asked him. The look of abject terror at the thought of another baby gave me my answer.

And then I realized: sometimes Luca mixes up 'can' and 'do', and she very well may be confusing too much chocolate with a baby. So rather than broach the topic of how mommy and daddy are undecided about whether there will be another baby in our family one day, I deflected.

"Mommy used to have a baby in her belly, but not anymore. Remember when Rohan was in my belly?" She nodded and smiled. And then I realized that I've talked about his birth with so many people, but never with one of the most important people in my life: Luca. She was thisclose to being here for the birth, and had my mom not been at my house when I shot into labor at the speed of the Shinkansen she would have either napped through it or awoken just in time to hear me grunting out "Fuuuuuuuck" as I worked to push Rohan out. And yet, we'd just never talked to her about it.

So tonight, I took some time with Luca to talk about Rohan's birth. I kept it simple and asked her what she remembered, and to my surprise she remembered just enough. "Grandma took Luca to the park." she told me, which was true.

"That's right," I filled in the blanks for her, "We went to the store with Grandma, and then we ate lunch..."
"And I could watch the kids play?"
"Yes, the kids at the lunch place were playing. And we ate chicken and fruit."
"Yeah. Probly (probably is her new favorite word...it starts and ends almost every sentence it seems...) I ate Mama's chicken."
"You did, Luca. We had a good time. And then we came home. Do you remember?" She nods. "And you took a nap?"
"Probly Luca did."
"And then you woke up and Grandma took you to the park. And when she brought you home, Rohan wasn't in Mama's tummy anymore. He had been born."
"Probly I saw him in Dada's bed?" (Also true...she came home after we'd all gone upstairs and were snuggled in our bed, which she for some reason calls 'Dada's bed'.)
"Rohan was born right here," I pointed to the general area of the house where he'd been born.
"Oh. Yeah."

It was kind of cool to be able to tell Luca that story. Not that she completely got it...not this time. But I felt a little connection being able to tell her about the day her brother was born. It's such a great memory for me, and kind of cool that I can sit on the floor in my house and point to one spot and say, "He was born there." and gesture to another spot and say, "You met him right here." I look forward to telling Rohan that same story some day. And who knows? Maybe we'll decide to expand the family again someday and Luca will have the chance to be present for it, and then she can point to the place where baby is born and say, "Remember when you were born there? And when I met you here?"

3/30

Halloween

November is National Blog Posting Month (or some such variation of that official title), where bloggers are supposed to do 30 posts in 30 days.

This is supposed to mean 1 post per day for 30 days, no doubt. But I am cheating and taking on the challenge but just doing 30 posts overall, since I just found out about this today, the 3rd of November.

Here are some pictures of the little sprouts on Halloween. My mom offered to make Luca's costume this year, and so I asked her what she wanted to be. "A rainbow!" she answered. Alas, here it is:



A yelling rainbow at that.



THIS smile will ensure she gets everything she wants from every male relative in her world for the rest of childhood (at a minimum). And I DO realize the outfit is reminiscent of a gay pride flag. Did my mom, who's 66, realize that? It's unlikely. Furthermore, I figured worst case scenario people would think we supported gay rights or something, which we DO, so...eh. I was ok with it.

My husband and the dad (Matt) of Luca's buddy who we trick or treated with pulled the toddler girls around in a wagon while the moms hung back a little pushing the babies in the strollers and gossiping. About 2 streets into it, Darrick suddenly decided that he and Matt probably looked like the gay couple taking the kids out for the night, and suggested one of the moms might want to start accompanying them to the door. We got a good laugh out of it, and Darrick suggested a 2 year old dressed as a pride flag may be the scariest costume some of the conservatives in the neighborhood would see all night.

I digress.

Rohan, in all his chubby cuteness, was a tiger. Man, I could just nibble those cheeks all day:





The two of them together really hammed it up for the camera:





2/30

Beg. Borrow. Deal.

October is over, and quite honestly it's a relief. I love October...usually. But this October chewed us up, spit us out, then picked up our slobbered remains and shook them to and fro. In summary, October went: bad colds for everyone, travel for work, shit we're overdrawn!, get reimbursed by work and feel like it'll be ok, Luca and Rohan get puking sick, travel again for work (MISS MY KIDS), work 2 Saturdays, get sick again (3 colds in as many months...), unexpected car payment issues, overdrawn again, swallow pride, cry.

I debated whether to blog this, but this is life. And this evening, as my mom handed me a pile of twenty dollar bills folded in half and I sat next to her on the front porch bench unable to look her in the eyes, I didn't want it to be MY life. I was ashamed, having called her in a tear-soaked sobbing panic an hour earlier to ask if she could help us out. And when I went to collect that pile of bills, I gave her a half-hearted attempt at optimism, cloaked in shame and embarassment.

She looked at me, my mom who gives us so much and asks for nothing but our time, and told me to stop. Stop worrying. Stop feeling ashamed.

These things happen. SHIT happens, she reminded me. And then she told me something I did not know. When I was a kid, every once in awhile, she would call my Grandma in California. "Mom, the car needs new tires. I don't know how we'll manage." she'd say. And then, a few days later, a check in her mailbox. Tires purchased. Attempts to thank and repay rebuffed and shrugged off with a, "We've all been there. Take care of my Grandbabies."

The least she could do, my mom assured me, was give me that same kind of support. The least she could do was to help us now that she can.

I've worked since I was 16. I have never asked to borrow a dime. A bad decision made when we bought our car a little over a year ago dropped us into a financial sinkhole. There we were, excited to buy a brand new car we'd saved for. We knew our budget. We talked them down. We were signing the papers when they offered the alternate payments. Pay twice a month, half payments, and save big on interest in the long run. "Sounds good!" we said. "Sign us up!" we grinned.

Fine print and me...we're not always the best of friends. Twice a month payments were actually every 2 week payments. Some months have 5 weeks, you know. And in those months there are 3 payments. Three payments each equal to half a regular payment. For you math impaired readers (which I seem to be), that means every time a month has 5 weeks, we pay 1.5 times the monthly payment. Several hundred dollars a year MORE than expected going to pay our car really screwed us over. Add to that an unexpected medical bill (I won't go into it, but suffice it to say I won't be having another kid for at least a few more years so as to get my money's worth...) and a 10 pm A/C repair on a Sunday night in September, and you've got the makings of the humbling situation explained above.

I have serious pride. My husband does too. But greater than our pride is our love for our kids. So I begged. We borrowed. We'll deal. Tomorrow I get a reimbursement for my trip to DC. Friday we both get paid. We'll be out of the red, into the black, and repaying my mom her donated cash by Saturday.

And someday, when my kids have kids and they call me worried and disbelieving that their hard work hasn't saved them from this kind of situation pulling them under, I'll repay my mom and her mom before in spirit.

November, please be kind to us!

1/30