Happy Birthday, Rose!

Today Rose turned four years old. Normally I’d insert a sniff right about here, but Jeff and I agreed that out of all eight birthdays we’ve celebrated between Jay and Rose, this one was the least surprising/sad/how’d-that-happen-ish. Rose just seems older than she is because she’s so tall and smart and opinionated. That plus my lingering sinus infection and sleep deprivation (aka dulled senses) made it so my motherly emotions were hardly triggered at all on this birthday. Callous as that sounds, I have to say it was kind of nice to just celebrate Rose and not sniffle over the passing time for once.

We had the usual birthday festivities: presents, birthday dinner, birthday cake, and the birthday interview. Rose also went shopping with Grama Leslie last night to pick out some birthday clothes. During the day today, Rose played with Jay, colored in her new coloring books, dressed up, and watched some cartoons with Jeff and Jay. She also took one of her impromptu naps on the couch this afternoon. It was a relaxing, easy-going birthday.

I didn’t even have a major birthday cake debacle for once! After epic failures over the past few years, I was overjoyed when Rose requested not cake, but “chocolate chip yummy bars,” a childhood favorite of mine. It is one of the few desserts I can bake without explosions, crashes, or excessive crumbs. Rose wanted sprinkles on top, so I suggested we use whipped cream to hold the sprinkles. NO FROSTING= automatic success. Jeff made the whipped cream (since he’s really good at it) and I got Rose a bottle of assorted sparkly sprinkles. Easy-peasy! Happy-snappy! We had the nearby family folks over for cake after dinner. Rose specifically requested “macaroni and cheese and lettuce with salad dressing for my healthy thing” at her birthday dinner, so we had homemade macaroni and cheese and lettuce for dinner and yummy bars for dessert. That’s about as easy as it gets!

Normally I like to do birthday candles and cake at lunch and dinner so we can celebrate a little extra and so I can adequately document the event with both a picture and a video. The cake wasn’t even finished until this evening, however, so we only got one quick video of Rose blowing out her candles and zero pictures. GASP. The photo-hungry mama in me is still reeling a little. But you can only do so much.

The birthday interview. Rose was positively glowing with pleasure when I asked her all these questions the day before her birthday. I could tell she felt so special. Jay and Rose love the birthday interview. Some of her responses were interesting and maybe not 100% accurate but she stuck to them with her strong will and that was that.

The birthday girl in one of her new birthday outfits she picked out with Grama Leslie.

Present time! FOUR dollars!

We gave Rose Anna and Elsa dresses, a ream of paper, and two coloring books. Jay gave her a purple watch. Amber gave her some drool and a grin. The sizing charts for the dresses on Amazon were slightly misleading and the Elsa dress turned out to be rather large—but Rose did NOT want me to pin it down a little for her. So I present to you an extra-flowy snow queen. Let it go!

Queen Elsa-Rose coloring. I found the cutest simple princess coloring book and Rose meticulously colored in one of the princesses with carefully chosen markers:

None of those busty toothpick-waisted Disney girls in this book!

Rose: “It’s the birthday girl and Amber.” Rose RELISHED every minute of being The Birthday Girl.

Birthday nap.

Birthday mac.

 

 
Birthday cake.

Sprinkles and whipped cream.

A semi-accurate height comparison: two talls and one small. Don’t worry, Amber, with your genes you’ll catch up in no time.

Now four of us have been four. Little Jeff and little Shaina…no wonder our kids are cute.

annnnnnd…

0

1

2

3

4 years old!

That’s something to twirl about.

3 months old

Amber turned 3 months old this week. That’s a quarter of a year old! Nice work, Amber.

Amber loves her family, the Wub binky, milk, and SMILING. She stares adoringly at her big brother and big sister. She’s never had a bottle (I’m blessed with milk-a-plenty). She usually wakes up once each night for milk. Her longest streak of no-night-wake-ups so far is 4 nights I think. She wears cloth diapers most of the time. She is such a happy little camper.

And how about some sibling facial comparisons?? My favorite!

Tummy-faces

Serious faces

Smiley faces

I LOVE MY BABIES!!!!!!!!!

Who am I?

[as I type this, I’m listening to a mental recording of a certain Les Miserables song]

I’m feeling reflective. Introspective. I should be in bed, but I just had to figure all of this out.

Or at least try.

Sometimes I look back at old journal entries and blog posts and wonder where that old version of myself went. Who am I now? When did I change? What made me change? Would my old self be friends with my current self? I was looking back at Rose's baby pictures yesterday and it kind of made me long for those simpler days. I feel like it's been way more than 4 years since Rose was a baby--I feel much older than that 4 years. Weird, but true. So much has happened and changed.

I know:
-That this time right now of post-pregnancy physical recovery and low-sleep babyhood is just a short phase of my life.
-That I should appreciate the sweet parts happening right now (I think I am) and be patient with the hard parts (trying).
-That I'll get back and find mySELF again soon enough.

And yet:
-It's so easy to feel pressured to do more than I need to right now (exercise, having meaningful scripture study each day, etc). Pressured by myself, mostly, like I shouldn't be lazy and I should get moving, etc.
-I don't know when to start expecting more from myself exactly. It's just tricky to find a good balance because life with a small baby is so inconsistent.
-After the trial of that hard pregnancy I feel like a different person in lots of ways, so whenever I do get back to normal, my new normal is going to be different from my old self anyways.
-I can't help but wonder who my new self IS, you know? What will new-Shaina do well? What will she like and dislike?

It feels like I climbed over a fence with that Amber-pregnancy, and now that I’m on the other side of it I can peek through the cracks in the fence and see glimpses of the old-Shaina. When I turn around and look ahead, though, all I see is a sort of foggy uncertainty. I can’t go back, but who am I now? A transitioning, in-between, kind-of-loopy mama.

Sigh. Figuring out life is tricky because life likes to change. Life changes and I change as I continually "grow up." My experiences change me too. Remembering my pre-Amber self is almost intimidating and kind of overwhelming! I did so much! It seems like I was so clever and on top of things. I have come a long way in my physical and mental recovery but I still have a ways to go. Some things (consistent brainpower being a major one) won't return until I have a regular sleep schedule again. Other things (like habits) will return in a different form. I have felt like a different person after each pregnancy. Trials and BIG experiences (like pregnancy) CHANGE us. I am changed—for the better, I think—it’s just interesting getting to know the new bits of mySELF. 

I like dependability and consistency, but right now I'm in such flux-mode that I hardly know even myself! It's strange. Of course the essentials to Shaina are there. I know who I am. I’m not questioning my family or faith or anything crazy like that. It's just the details that are all mixed up right now. I spent 9 months with survival being my main goal, so the details of mySELF—habits, methods, desires, etc—kind of faded, and I’m still rediscovering them. It’s slow going these days. I just kind of roll with the punches and take what comes right now. I rarely plan very far ahead because I don't know how I'll be feeling sleep-wise. It makes me feel so disorganized and scatterbrained! Does that make any sense? It's how I feel right now. 

It's the dichotomy of ideals vs reality. My ideal says “GO! Do it all! Now!” My reality says “Feed the baby. Do the laundry. Cook the dinner. Do other things only if time, energy, and baby permit.” I’m doing my best to "choose the better part" and allow myself plenty of time to make my comeback. Because I know it will happen. I will return! Isn’t it silly how hard it can be to give our own selves permission? Permission to take time. Permission to recover. Permission to believe that I really AM doing my very best. 

Every day I get to start fresh and keep on trying. Yay!

Eventually I will have everything figured out again.

And then it will change.

And that will be ok.

Mostly Amber pictures

Sunday night seems like a good bloggy-woggy posty-wosty timey-wimey. It’s probably a bad practice to sit down to write a blog post without knowing what it’s going to be about, but…welcome to the world of blogs. I got about 2+3+.5+.25+.75 hours of sleep last night starting just after midnight (the + symbols indicating interruptions), so a cohesive planned-out kind of post doesn’t seem to be in the cards. But I still feel posty (plus I have a backlog of pictures), so I shall post nonetheless. With that stellar introduction, here’s what I’ve got:

First of all, we finally have last week’s sickness on the run. Antibiotics and movies to the rescue! All five of us went to church today together for the first time in 3 weeks. Amber and I were feeling a little crazy after so much time cooped up with sick people. In fact, one day this week I seriously considered starting a “my husband is sick” support group. It was a low point. Ugh, sickness, STAY AWAY from now on, please? I hope I don’t jinx it, but Amber has pulled through healthy and strong, thanks to mountains of motherly prayers and a large bottle of hand sanitizer.

Jay ended up missing 8 days of school for The Sickness. He zigzagged between healthy and not the whole 8 days. So I kept him home. Minus the sick part, it was wonderful to have my sweet boy home for all that time. In spite of their health, Jay and Rose played and played, with plenty of breaks to rest on the couch and watch movies. I loved having the freedom of no-school-no-schedule while we were all sick. Of course we were all ready to be done by the end of it, but the middle was cozy in its way.

Watching Frozen.

Playing and resting. I try to get Jay to dump his Legos onto a sheet so they’re easier to pick up—just pick up the sheet and dump it into the box instead of lacerating our hands trying to scoop up millions of tiny razor-sharp Lego bits. He remembers the sheet about 50% of the time so far.

Jay and Rose are both wearing size SEVEN in this picture—my tall kids. And Jay likes taking pictures of his Lego creations. In this one, he’s taking a picture of a Lego cat he made.

Every night last week after Jay and Rose were in bed, Jeff retreated to recuperate in the basement while Amber and I snuggled up on the couch to watch a few episodes of Gilmore Girls on Netflix. It was a fun mother-daughter chick flicky time, and afforded multiple low-light pictures of the Ambaby:

Strrrrretch! I love it when she folds her little legs up, reaches her arms up, squinches her cheeks, and puckers her lips in a luxurious stretch.

Those Gilmore girls are crazy! What’s going to happen next?

And here are a few [ahem, a LOT] more Amberfaces:

Thus ended our January.