Happy 4th Birthday Sunshine Girl

My radiant, beautiful Sophia

I struggle to write this because I can hardly think of the right words to describe what a blessing having you in my life these four years has been. Sadly I lack the talents and the vocabulary for this, so here I sit an hour into starting and the sole phrase that keeps swirling around in my mind is How wonderful life is, now you're in the world. One day you'll be old enough to be embarrassed that the best your Mom could do is a line from an Elton John song but truth be told, from the day you were born I could not sing that song to you without my throat locking up from emotion. 

Sophia, the world is a brighter, richer and more beautiful place now that you're in it. 

There will be times when you are older that you will doubt that. Doubt yourself. Doubt what an extraordinary gift you have been to your Daddy and me. And in those moments I hope that you'll remember the brave, determined, confident, spunky little four year old that you are now. Remember that little girl that puts on her parade of princess dresses and when facing the mirror always sees herself for the beautiful person she is. The little girl that never doubts her intelligence, her talents or her ability to succeed. The four year old Sophia with such a passion and excitement for learning that she can barely contain her boundless questions and vast curiosity with the world. Remember the natural born leader who faces down any challenge with nothing but sheer will, unwavering determination and razor sharp wit. Remember back to the little girl who intuitively knows just how very much her Mommy and Daddy love her.  

And when looking back I hope you realize that whether you are four or seventy four all of those things will always be true. 

You are our shining, brilliant, radiant gift. We love you.  From age four until forever.

Happy Birthday Sophia Elena,

Mommy and Daddy 

The Case for Health Care Reform Common Sense

I'm not going to get into the whole public option vs. free market argument here (and for the record I think Obama should have gone straight to single payer using the French/Japanese model and skipped the watered down, arguably less impactful public option but that's another post altogether.) 

But back to that fun little topic of reforming health care and more importantly the way it's practiced in a smallish, but not exactly rural community in the southwest. Today I called my family practitioners office to set up appointments for the kids to get "established" as patients. They had previously been seen at a pediatric practice but the waits are typically two to three hours long (even for prescheduled wellness visits that must be made months in advance) and the last time I called for a sick visit I was told that they wouldn't be able to get the kids in for several days. Not exactly the ideal situation so I figured it was time to move on. 

Anyways I start the conversation with the scheduling receptionist by explaining that I want to get the kids established as patients (because if they're not "established"  and they get sick the wait time to be seen is as ridiculous as two weeks) and that my daughter is coming up on her four year wellness visit so can we just schedule her for that (which with my insurance means no copay) and I'll bring boys to the same appointment pay the office copay for their visits so that it will count when in actuality they won't need anything done to them as they're up to date on wellness visits.  Simple enough, right?

The scheduling clerk immediately balks at my plan and informs me that even though she understands that the boys won't actually need to have anything done I will have to bring my daughter in for her wellness visit at 10am, Alex in at 1pm and Max in at 2pm because that's the way the scheduling blocks for new patients are set up.

Maintaining my calm, I reiterate to her that A)The boys aren't sick, don't need a wellness visit and wouldn't even need to see an actual doctor but just need to be considered established so blocking out a sixty minute window of time for each of them seems a little excessive B) I'm willing to pay the copay for it to "count" as an establishing visit and will even keep them sitting in the lobby if having them in the room during Sophia's wellness visit is a problem C)I am trying to minimize the amount of time that I expose three small children to a germ covered, virus polluted waiting room so that I won't need to bring them all in again in a few days for a real illness D) the hours between 1pm to about 4pm are prime naptime in our home and there is NO WAY I'm going to drag three healthy children to the Dr's office during those hours so they can wait around to have nothing done to them!!! 

Understanding my hesitation she offers me three individual hour long visits on three separate days... all  of them between the hours of 1 to 4pm. 

So best case scenario is I get to take my three healthy children in for three separate faux office visits on three separate days so that the doctor's office can bill my insurance company for no less than $350 a visit and THEN we'll be established should they ever really need to see the doctor. 

That makes perfect sense!

And critics of health care reform argue that inefficiencies in the current system will be hashed out by the market. 

Right.

I guess they've never had the privilege of establishing themselves as patients.

Ha! Ha! God, You are just hilarious!!

Remember how I said I wished we would get swine flu to avoid yoga and that my next post would be just that and blah blah blah?

Of course I would be writing this less than a week later to report that one of us did in fact contract H1N1 BUT ironically enough it was the one person whose illness would not impact class attendance.... Patrick! 

So just to recap one of us did get the flu, but because it wasn't me or one of the kids we'll still have to go to the final yoga class on Tuesday. How's that for divinely inspired humor?

Not convinced that God often finds little ways to turn my assertions into punch lines? 

Here's a couple more examples.

Once is said that I never wanted kids and despite my intentions (and the use of Ortho Tri Cyclen) we got little Miss Sophia.  (Don't get me wrong.. Having Sophia has turned into a total blessing but definitely not in my plans!)

Another time, after Sophia was born,  I saw an episode of  "Baby, Baby" or some other nonsense on TLC and said that I NEVER wanted twins because that would be just terrible... and Ta Dah... They are currently tearing apart the kitchen. (And I stand corrected. Having twins is actually quite wonderful.)

And I seem to remember a time that I vowed to never drive a Minivan.  So yea.  Not only do I drive a total Mommobile  bluegreen minivan (it's not as cool Honda Odyssey or Toyota Sienna either) but it's also our only vehicle and I for one would love it if we could score another. 

Just going off my prior track record perhaps it would be better if I said I am planning on having ten more kids and then procuring a decommissioned bus to get around town. And on top of that I am planning on never hiring anyone to clean the house, not ever getting a vacation away from the kids and under no circumstances do I ever want to win the lottery. 

God, are you listening?

Shhhhhh It's actually Yoga

The boys have been attending a baby Yoga class for a little over a month.

There I said it. Not out loud mind you but that is as loud as that little declaration is getting.

When asked by friends what I'm up to on Tuesday mornings I have taken creative license with the name of the class "Yoga Babies" and relabel it as "Mommy and Me " class.

Which is even more lame.

The saddest part is that if this was a class in the traditional pass/fail context my boys would be dropouts. The actual purpose for taking the class is so the boys can meet with their speech therapist (yes, they have a speech therapist thank you very much) to learn words like "Reach", "Bend", and "Namaste" but as of this week the only words the boys regularly use are "Choo Choo" and "Stuck".

The yoga instructor starts out each class by asking us all to "engage in a moment of peace to declutter our minds from all the external pressures and worries of the world". She then proceeds to close her eyes and  takes deep cleansing breaths.. for a very,very long time.  Which is just darling for her and all the other mommies with sweet, purring newborns in their arms. Not so much for the sole person in the class with two children in her lap who currently weigh in at a combined 55 lbs and have no desire to close their eyes, breath deeply or sit quietly for more than 11 seconds. This alone should have sent my mental red flags ablazin' but like any good, overachieving parent I was determined to stick it out and make sure my boys got the most out of this experience dammit!

In response to such a sluggish start to the class I started coming a few minutes late to avoid all the breathing and closing of eyes however that tactic only earned me more than just a few disapproving looks further reinforcing our resident flunky status.

After we are all properly cleansed the instructor leads the class in a series of stretches designed to warm up the body. She encourages us to follow your child's lead and listen to their individual body rhythms.  So I do. I run after Alex as he does circles around the room and nearly tramples the other posing babies. I listen to Max as he shrieks and claws his way out of my lap and tears towards the trash bin to pull out yet another crumpled water cooler cup.

At this point the serene smile on the yoga instructor's face pulls just tight and wide enough to imply GET A GRIP OF YOUR LITTLE MONSTERS NOW but the zen voice that flows out of her mouth encourages me to try and recenter in order to bring down the boy's energy level a bit.  

Right.

And perhaps she could suggest a pharmaceutical that will bring down the energy level of a twenty month year old boy to a point that is more in line with meditation?

So it goes on for the rest of the hour. Yup, the hour. The instructor doles out helpful suggestions on how to achieve "Tree pose" and "Modified Downward Dog" with our children while my boys, who seem to be under the impression that they are being scouted for the junior Olympics at these sessions, give it all they've got. They spare no kick, leap, scream or catapult in this class. If it wasn't so terrible I'd actually be proud of the little guys.

Then finally after enduring the hour with as much grace as I can muster we sit in a circle and go around proclaiming our child's Celebrations! i.e. a mandatory, barf inducing brag-fest. And the worst part is that I can never think of a single thing to say about either boy. Not a single new word, fun trick or cutesy moment to drool over. Once in an effort to appear like a halfway decent Mom I bragged about how the boys had improved in the area of "impluse control". Judging by the expressions around the room "impulse control" is not really up to snuff in the Celebrations! circle.

The good news is that next week is our last week. The bad news is that I will be taking Sophia with us to class because our grandmasitter will be unavailable. The first and only time I took her she left the class sobbing and screaming that she HATED YOGA AND WOULD NOT COME BACK! NOT EVER AGAIN!! Good times.

Maybe we'll all come down with swine flu and will have a good excuse to ditch the final class.

Stay Tuned for my next post entitled "Are you kidding me? We actually got the *!&@$ swine flu!"

There has got to be a drug for this...

Ever seen the movie "Misery" staring Cathy Bates? If you haven't then just skip ahead but if so, remember the scene where she walks into her house and notices that a certain figurine on display has been shifted ever so slightly and can deduce that her captive has been up and  moving about her house just by this subtle little detail? 

(If this is your favorite movie and that is not exactly what happened in the scene please excuse my error. I've only seen the flick a couple of times, years ago and didn't want to scour the internet looking for the exact rundown. Anyways the point isn't the entire scene just Bates' seemingly compulsive attention to detail. But I digress.)

Confession Time: I am THAT compulsive. If a detail, like the direction a photo frame is facing, which I so painstakingly placed in just the right place, is altered in the slightest I notice. I not only notice but the change strikes me immediately upon entering the room. It's like I do an internal scan of the room every time I walk in and all the sirens in my brain go off if everything isn't just so.

This is a problem.

Not so when I lived alone and didn't have to worry about anyone but myself.  Life was so orderly then. I rarely had to clean because no one ever messed things up.  There was no clutter. Everything was in it's proper place. I had my closet coordinated by color, season, and occasion. My shoes organized by type and season. I would wash my dish and cup immediately after eating. In fact I wouldn't even start eating until everything I had used to make my meal was put away and the tables and counters were neatly cleaned.  I would wake up each morning, jump out of the tiny side of the bed I had occupied for the night and pull the covers neatly down.  There wasn't a day that I didn't make my bed. If on some rare occasion I didn't,  I could not get into bed that night without first "making it" so that the every was nice and neat again. 

I would turn off the lights at night and breath a sigh of relief. Everything was right in my crazy OCD tinged little world.  Every detail was perfect. I felt in control of my life. 

I    AM    NOT     EVEN     KIDDING. 

As you would expect that is not the case today.

There are stacks. There is clutter. There are toys, toy pieces and miscellaneous scraps of construction paper scattered from room to room.  I'm lucky if the beds are made two days out of the week. The kitchen floor is sticky. The broken crayon pieces tucked into every random corner and opening number into the hundreds. The sticky baby fingerprints on the glass door have been there since the days the boys could actually be called babies. We currently do not park in the garage because it overflowing with boxes filled with things that do not currently have a home or a purpose.  We didn't wash our car the first year we owned it. All five of the closets in our house are a health hazard. My current method of dealing with them is to open the door just the slightest bit then quickly fling things in before everything comes tumbling out. There are dozens of shoes missing their partners. I currently own only one pair of socks as the rest have mysteriously disappeared. I can go months before discovering a shirt or jeans in my closet that is crammed full of clothing . I own at least three hundred pens most of which have so little ink left I could barely eek out my first name. 

Every night I go to bed and every object that is not in it's proper place screams out at me to come and make things right again. 

So I do. I  clean, pick up, tidy, straighten, declutter, organize and shine.

 

I get back into bed and feel slightly uneasy but at least I can sleep knowing that I've made some progress towards making things better.

The next morning the small children, whose sole purpose in life is to see me committed, literally hit the ground running towards everything that I worked so hard to make beautiful and destroy it in less than three minutes. They are little, smart, fast and they outnumber me. 

Max alone does the work of five toddlers. He pulls out every car, train, and truck in our home and scatters them from room to room like a damn bread crumb trail. Our budding artist, Sophia, cranks out at least twenty new pictures per day all of which end up piled on the refrigerator, stacked on the counter or crumpled on the floor. Sweet little Alex insists on pulling out every book from the shelves and baskets which are designed to neatly contain them and if that's not enough, he occasionally will like a particular page so much that he'll tear it out of the book and scatter tiny pieces of ripped paper everywhere .  I will spare my husband and not mention the wet towels, dirty socks, and sporadically placed spare coins that have more than once sent me over the edge. 

The sirens in my OCD brain are deafening. 

I realize I have options. I could stop caring. Let it overtake us and then just move to a new house, start over again.  Or we could live like the hoarders I see on TLC until someone finally sends in a camera crew, semi trailer and professional organizer.  I could get into my minivan (that perpetually reeks of crushed goldfish crackers and stale graham crackers), drive around until I find a car that is shiny, neat and smells good, break into that car and drive away.  Or I could throw the little ones out and get a new husband. One that is sterile. 

Okay, okay. So I exaggerate. There will be no homeless children, new husbands or grand theft auto charges in my future. Just lots of deep breathing, praying for patience, and perhaps a well deserved glass of wine at the end of my day. 

That and the singular thought that one day my babies will be grown. My house will once again grow quiet, orderly and clean. I will feel in control again . And I will without a doubt be willing to give up all that serene perfection to regain a home full of the loud, crazy, disorderly people who I love.