Big I. and Toddler N. make wishes

Toddler N. and her princess cupcakes

Big I. and his Transformer Bumblebee cake

"Isn't seven the most powerfully magical number?"

Soon we can watch Tom Riddle turn from boy to monster on the big screen.

Woooo-hooooo!

More pics of the kids!

Even more pics. Can you believe how big they are now? And don't you love Toddler N.'s hair? Our nanny M. did it!

Finally, pics of the kids!

Here are some recent shots.

Check it out! My wordle

Megan over at Reflections in the Snowcovered Hills has been playing with Wordles, which are pictures made from words used on an Internet site.

Here's the one she made for Ready Aye Ready.

Toddler N. and self-expression

Toddler N. is turning two next month, and while I find it impossible to believe she is no longer a baby, I am enjoying the discovery of her true personality.

She is will on legs. She wants her way, right away. Who cares if running away from Mama means a car might hit her? She wants to run, so run she does. Fie to other's need to sleep or eat or sit on the toilet. Diva's wants are much more important.

Although I've raised two toddlers before her, this fierce will always takes me by surprise. The boys were easy-going at this age. Not N. She truly takes after her namesakes, my mother and great aunt. They both have a fierce will.

But she's more than a walking, talking ego. She has a great sense of humour and enjoys practical jokes. She loves to pretend to be a cat or dog, and laughs uproariously after licking your leg and barking.

She has a sweet little voice and lilting diction. She recently learned to say, "yes" instead of "yeah", and my heart melts everytime she says, "Yes, Ma-ma." (She also like the word "nope" a lot, especially when said with a certain insouciance.)

I often look at her and wonder what her life will be like, in a way I just don't with the boys. Of course I am eager to see what they all choose to do with their lives. But my only daughter makes me wonder what her life will be like compared to mine. Will she makes the same decisions, the same mistakes? Will she do something completely different with her life?

She just woke from her nap, warm and sleepy, asking to nurse. She is patting me right now, giving me that look that means, "I know you want to wean me, but that ain't happening. Diva needs her baba."

Lucy has arrived

Lucy Parker J. arrived Sunday evening. The proud mommy and daddy are recovering nicely, and Lucy is trying her very best to learn the art of breastfeeding. Her mother is doing an awesome job teaching herself and her little one this new skill.

S. would like to be able to do her own announcing of the details, so I will leave it at that. S, feel free to use my comments box!

I must say I am immeasurably proud of S. and her husband T. They are doing a wonderful job, and both of them were troopers during a long labour and delivery.

I could use some oft-repeated verse here, but instead I'll say this: I never knew who I truly was, my true strengths, talents and abilities, until I became a mother. This is not true for many people, but it has been for me. I have grown into my authentic self through parenting my small brood. And though self-discovery is exhausting when changing diapers, breastfeeding and trying to run the older kids to pre-school, I wish the same self-revelation for you.

God bless you over and over, my dear friend.

Baby Watch

For those that know my friend S., a brief update: today may be the day.

DO NOT CALL S! Megan, if you call her I will have to kill you.

If you are desperate for updates, call my cell phone.

On crises and desert times

When the Hubby and I planned our escape from the Great White North, we expected life to change, and change a great deal. What we didn't expect from our first year of southern living was a year full of illness, intense stress, disillusionment and crises of faith. But that's what we got.

The kids were hospitalized twice.

I couldn't get a job in journalism to save my life, despite eight years with the Mother Corp. and the statue in the living room.

My grandmother almost died, and I had to take a trip home I couldn't afford, at Christmastime, paid for by my mother-in-law (bless you, N.) so I could say good-bye. Thank God she lived.

I took a job doing something I always said I'd never do, simply to pay our student loans. We went through three sitters in five months. We are still waiting for our permanent nanny, five months later. (For new readers: a live-in nanny is a lot cheaper than day care when you have three kids.)

I had the worst Valentines Day, birthday, Easter and Mother's Day of my life.

As a family, we have struggled to attend Mass, and I have struggled with my prayer life and my faith. I feel very far from God lately, and I know I'm the one who put the distance there.

As a consequence of all this, my marriage has suffered. Nothing terribly serious, but something we need to work on.

There are many bright spots in all this.

A. has learned to ride a bike with no training wheels. His four front teeth have all fallen out, and his adult teeth are coming in nicely. He can read, which forever amazes me.

Big I. is no longer Little. He is a brown, sturdy, upright little man who has an incredible imagination and a lively wit.

Toddler N. is almost two, has about 150 words and is the most stubborn child on the planet. Her head is a mass of strawberry blonde curls. She loves to sing.

The Hubby 's training is going well and he is enjoying life in the military. He still has that zany sense of humour, and is well-liked at his latest assignment.

I like my co-workers very much and can live with the work I'm doing, but I know I am not doing what I am meant to do in life. To quote Stevie Cameron: "All I have ever been, all I have ever wanted to be, is a reporter." So I continue with this work because it pays the bills, and dream of a time when I might steal a few hours here and there to sell the odd article, to build my reputation here and get away from the Dark Side.

I have also been thinking about my other passion, health, and wondering if I have a future there, wondering how old is too old for medical school. I can't even think of going until the kids are all in high school or beyond, so perhaps it will never be anything more than a dream. But I know I could do it; I was always a straight-A student, and nothing can gross me out too much anymore, not after all the IV needles and vomit I've endured. I might puke, but I wouldn't pass out.

My parents are coming to visit this week. My dad hasn't seen the boys since Isaac was a baby. He and the kids have been plotting days filled with ice cream and beaches and parks.

So I sit, halfway through 2008, and ask myself to consider my blessings rather than dwelling on all these hard times. This is what I come up with:

1. The kids are healthy and whole.
2. My husband loves me and I love him.
3. My parents, in-laws and grandparents are well.
4. My friend E. had her first son (yaaaayyy) and my friend S. is expecting her first daughter any day.
5. I've only gained back 10 pounds of the 30 I'd lost since I switched from stroller-pushing to a desk job, and I've maintained that weight for five very hard months. (Hey, you can't know how incredibly happy I am to still be in single digit sizes!)
6. My faith is based on logic rather than feelings (or I don't think I'd have any left!)
7. A house, food, clothing and beer in the fridge.

Rusty blogger

Sorry, life kind of got away from me there, and so did my blog.

Abortion as art

Warning to HGers: please do not read if sensitive to discussion of abortion. I'm about to lambaste someone.

My girlfriend Megan recently blogged about a woman at Yale who claimed to self-induce abortions as an art project.

This is what I wrote in her comments box.

As someone who volunteers with pregnant women whose pregnancies are life-threatening, many of whom contemplate aborting much-wanted babies and some of whom do abort against their true wills in order to stay alive, this makes me want to vomit.

I'm going to be blunt: I know what an abortion looks like, a real one at a Morgentaler clinic. It is NOT art. If you're pro-choice, it's a nasty surgical procedure. If you're pro-life, it's homicide (note I use the word "homicide," which means the killing of another human being, and not "murder", which has a different legal definition.)

If you haven't guessed, I consider abortion homicide. Full disclosure: For a full week (week 18 of gestation, to be exact) I considered killing my youngest child in the womb due to a terrifying and life-threatening pregnancy disease called hyperemesis gravidarum (for more info check out www.helpher.org). I'm holding that sleeping child, alive and well and 20 months old, in my arms right now as I type this.

I cannot stress how deeply I feel abortion is a subject where brutal honesty is necessary, no matter what you believe about it. And this kind of artsy-fartsy nonsense is nothing but pretense and lies.

An embryo or fetus is not menstrual blood and semen, but a living human organism with a system that is dependent yet distinct from its mother. Any scientist will tell you human life begins at conception, duh. So we need to cut the bullshit about this and be honest. We need to say: when is it OK to kill a defenceless human being? Is it ever OK?

My eventual decision was the disease which threatened my life may take both of us, but it wasn't taking just my daughter. It was the hardest decision of my life, choosing death or life together. I never got to a place where I had to reconsider; I found a treatment regimen that relieved most of the disease's effects. I won't judge a woman who chose to abort in order to live. I often spend my spare time mourning with her over the Internet.

But people like this woman, who has taken that week I spent on my bathroom floor wishing my daughter dead and made it into some kind of game, some school art project to cause scandal and attention? Yeah, I'm going to judge her. What a f*cking bitch.

*With apologies to those with sensitive ears, and to my Lord for my judgemental attitude. But I have to be honest, Lord, and I am very angry at this woman and her flippant nonsense. Trying to pray for her and failing utterly.*

For Ron Crawley

I don't remember the first time I met Ron, since I was a small child, but I certainly remember the first time we "re-met." I was 18 years old and in Ottawa for my first year of journalism school at Carleton University. My dad had called ahead to let Ron and his wife Col know I was moving to Ottawa.

Ron called my small residence room and invited me out to supper."We'll have Thai food," he said; you could hear his smile down the phone line. I was a picky eater as a child, but when he explained there was peanut sauce in most of the dishes, I was game.

From that first supper on, Ron and Col took me under their wings and showed me the wonders of a medium-sized yet fairly diverse Canadian city. I ate my first Indian and Vietnamese with them; I visited museums alongside them. I learned more about the labour movement and unionism and philosophy at their dinner table than I learned even in my parent's home, where union was a common and friendly word.

Ron and Col gave me my first computer; they lent me books and taught me words and talked endlessly with me about the press and its role in a free and democratic society.

Ron always believed in the goodness of people and in the power of thought, speech and writing. He reinforced my upbringing of looking at the positive side of things. He always made me feel what I had to say was important, even when he was correcting a false assumption or a hyperbolic idea.

And he always had a quick and ready smile.

My life would be a poorer and less interesting one without having known him, and I think of him almost every time I see a picket sign or pick up a set of chopsticks.

The world is a little less bright now that he is no longer in it. I'm so sorry, Col, for your loss. And Dad: I know you loved him and I'm so sorry your good friend is gone. But the people we love never truly die if we continue to remember them.

Music for Good Friday

Thank you, Lord. Blessed Triduum, everyone.

HT to Megan.

Agony in the Garden

I share last year's post with you all, and a happy update: My friend gave birth to her second son, and now is the happy mother of a healthy and growing baby. Please remember all mothers suffering hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) in your Easter prayers, especially those who are considering abortion or who have aborted due to this terrible disease.

I love Easter, and that love has very little to do with all the chocolate (yes, I adore the chocolate, too -- especially the Lindt bunnies Mom sends. Thanks, Mom!)

Easter is the time of year when I get to take the time to really, really think about my faith, the central core of what I believe about Jesus and why I believe it. I believe He died for our sins. I believe He rose from the dead. I believe He was and is God, never created and always begotten.

Most of all, though, I believe in Gethsemane. What he did in Gethsemane.

Jesus went to the gardens of Gethsemane the night before the Crucifixion. He wept and prayed and begged the Father to change his mind, to stop the Crucifixion, to protect His Son. He was frightened. He was weak. He was trembling.Then He got up and faced his captors and accusers calmly and peacefully, accepting what was going to happen.

I spent months in Gethsemane. And the only reason I came out of the Garden was that Jesus was there, and He walked out with me.

My illness during my last pregnancy started in my second trimester. It was at its very worst during weeks 16 to 18. No eating or drinking without violent vomiting. Vomiting bile and blood. Dehydration. Drugs and IV fluids and more drugs.

I used to drag myself into the bathroom, lie on the floor with my head on the toilet seat, and beg God to let me die. Or to take the baby. Or both of us. Just take this cup. Take it, take it.

There was one day when I thought about aborting my baby all day and night, incessantly. My 16-week old baby who was kicking me so hard The Hubby could feel it when he touched my belly.

I was thinking of this time during Mass on Palm Sunday, holding Baby N. in my arms, my reward for enduring The Agony in the Garden. And all I could do was thank Jesus for having gone to Gethsemane first, for truly understanding.

Jesus in the Garden tells us pain and fear and suffering are real. They are terrible. But they are temporary and surmountable.

I have a good, in real life friend who is enduring the Agony in the Garden right now. She is a private person, so all I will say is please pray for her and her baby, as well as the rest of her family.

"There can be no greater love, than to lay down your life for a friend." -- John 15:13

May you soon pick it back up again, my friend, with your child in your arms.

Have a blessed Holy Week, everyone.

Quick recap

The children were hospitalized again last week. The boys this time. They were in the hospital at night, Hubby was at sea and I was at home with Toddler N.

I looked into their empty room with its empty beds. I thought about my brave little men, alone except for each other. I couldn't enter that empty room.

I sobbed for hours. I wanted my boys safe at home.

I raced into the hospital the next day, running through the halls to get to their room.

My boys were sitting up in their beds, groggy from sleep but looking much better than the night before.

"Wook, Mommy!" I. said. "There's bunnies out the window!"

Sure enough, two black bunnies were hopping about.

I never expected their first night outside the family would be in hospital beds.

They are fully recovered, but I just keep waiting for the next illness to hit. What a winter.

Day One: A new solo adventure

The Hubby left this morning for his first sail, a ten-day trip around Vancouver Island. He packed yesterday afternoon, alternately excited and worried, while I desperately tried to get the house in some kind of order. I won't have his help for the next two weeks, so I can't just leave supper and clean up to him in the late afternoons.

The fact he'll be gone for awhile made me think about how far we've come in a month on the whole division of labour in the home front. My husband is not a sexist, but he does hate housework, and he will take whatever action necessary to only do what absolutely must be done around here. What ends up happening is I pick up the slack, so he has had a false impression of how much must be done to keep a place borderline clean.

But now I am working, and he is the first adult in the door most evenings. He is learning dishes left in the sink or crumbs left on the floor in the morning metastasize into a full-out disaster in the eight hours we're away from the house each day.

"Can you believe the mess on the floor?" he'll grumble, fetching the broom. "That was never there before!"

No, honey, it wasn't. That's because I was here cleaning it up.

He cleaned the bathroom this weekend without reminding (i.e. nagging.) He just did it!

I am appreciative to him learning to haul his own weight. But now I am hauling it myself for a little while, plus working full-time.

I know I can handle the time with the kids, no sweat. Ten days is nothing compared to five months. But can I handle the housework and the job? We'll see.

As for the rest of life, things are still a bit insane here. A. is struggling with day care. He is angry a lot of the time, has developed a saucy mouth and has hit other children from time to time. All of this leads to time-outs and groundings, of course, but also lots of time with my big boy just sitting in my lap. He often says he wishes I wasn't working. It breaks my heart, but I need to work, both for the money and for my sanity.

Little I. is a bit clingy but is adjusting well to the new sitter. Toddler N. is very happy at K.'s place. That's great, but the child should have been named Typhoid Mary, because this is the third time she's been sick this month. First the hospitalization, then a head cold, then she got food poisoning this weekend from a supper out. At the hospital, the doctor discovered she also has an ear infection. We two are home today so she can start recovering.

The boys also caught that cold, and Little I. just finished a round of antibiotics for an ear infection. Since I started my new job six weeks ago, I have missed 4.5 days due to child illness. I'm starting to understand why some bosses are reluctant to hire mothers of young children. My boss has been great, but I still worry about the impression I'm making.

Off to catch a quick nap with the girlie.

The job and the babysitter

The job is great. I enjoy it. I like my co-workers. I like my boss. It's awesome to be working again.

I do miss the children, but not in the way I did when I returned to work before. I think about them often during the day, but I no longer feel like running out the office door to the day care centre and scooping them up at 11 in the morning.

I'm glad to be away from them for awhile each day. I'm even happier to see them when I get home.

There is one enormous wrinkle though, so enormous it qualifies as a fold. I am having massive problems with my child care.

Our live-in nanny is coming sometime in late April through May. She is currently working in Hong Kong, and that's just how long it takes to get the immigration paperwork done through the Live-in Caregiver Program.

I had one week to find temporary child care. I thought I found it another military mom here in the PMQs.

The kids were there less than two weeks when she quit. I'm trying very hard not to take it personally, since she is pregnant and bailed because she is concerned about her health. Her baby comes first. I support that. But she's left me in a terrible situation.

She quit on Thursday. Tomorrow is her last day with the kids. I had 4 days to find child care.

Hubby and I managed to do it. Toddler N. is going to be cared for by my best PMQ friend who runs a day home. The boys are going to another day home in the Qs, at least for now. We may move them to a day care centre and the day home is cool with that.

If this doesn't work out, I will lose my job. I'm freaking.

Plus, all these changes are very hard on my kids, especially A. He has been moody and lashing out at Little I. I. is a terrible tease and A. just can't handle that this week.

There really is no winning. I stay home and go batty. I go to work and worry about the kids' child care.

There is no perfect way to mother, it seems. I'm screwing up both choices.

The story of the stomach bug

About three and a half weeks ago, Little I. started complaining his tummy hurt. He started eating less and less. Then he had the diarrhea. Then he started puking.

On the Saturday, five days before I started my new job, we took him to the ER. We were there 12 hours for IV rehydration. I took him in again on Sunday. He seemed to perk up and got over the illness.

Toddler N. had mild diarrhea this whole time.

On Wednesday night, Super A. started throwing up. He seemed better Thursday, but by Friday, my first day of work, he was very ill.

Hubby stayed home with him Friday so I could start my new job. On Friday night, N. started puking too.

By Sunday my oldest and youngest were so dehydrated the nurse who lives next door said they needed the ER right away.

It took five sticks to get an IV needle into A., his veins were so small from dehydration. He was listless, vomiting bile and passing out between vomits.

They had to put N.'s IV into her external jugular vein. She was poked six times before that. Her kidneys stopped working properly and she didn't pee in three days.

They were in the hospital four days. They were the worst four days of my life, camped out on a cot, praying their organs wouldn't shut down.

The kids were released a week ago. They looked terribly thin. Hubby has been feeding them up ever since.

I've been watching them sleep at night this week, looking at the bloom of health on their cheeks again and thanking God I didn't lose them.

And I've been thinking about the mothers who do. Mothers in the Third World who lose children to vomiting and diarrhea.

There are millions of them every year, dead for the want of IV fluids and simple medications.

Even in my children's illness and suffering, I am blessed and fortunate. It's not fair and I am not deserving.