the v word

this was always the plan...

 one girl...

one boy...

we'd always planned to have two, to replace ourselves in the world and then call it quits. there were a few moments there when finn was very small when we thought maybe it would just be one, but as time went on, our feelings changed and along came lorelei.

so here we are, a family of four. we're quickly approaching the end of the year, a year wherein "voluntary sterilization" is covered by our insurance company.

that's right, folks.

the v word...

vasectomy.

i'm writing because i'm shocked - SHOCKED - by the reaction i've been getting to my sharing this information.

"ooh, TMI!"

"doesn't chad care that you're telling me this?"

"my husband refuses - he wants me to do it instead"

ok, people. first of all, no. chad does not care that i'm talking about this on the interweb. in fact, he doesn't care that i talk about it with anyone. neither of us can figure out what the big deal is. 

I PUSHED TWO PEOPLE OUT OF MY VAGINA, but we can't talk about an in-office appointment that takes 30 mintues and allows me to experience what it's like to be a single parent for 48 hours while my husband sits in bed, reading and watching the final battle scenes for every action movie from the last two decades (no, seriously, that's what he did).

WHAT is the big deal? are we really a society so attached to manhood that we can't talk about a simple procedure that puts men in a mild amount of discomfort (3 out of 10 at its words, according to chad) for a few days? compared to 18 months of pregnancy, not to mention two births and the battle to "get our bodies back", it seems like a small price to pay (and pay back your wife/partner!) to prevent further pregnancies.

funnily enough, we didn't get the "what if your kids die and you get divorced" talk - the only legitimate reason i could think of to pause in our decision to get done making babies. what IF? but neither of us is getting any younger and - much as we loooooooove them - babyhood is just something we'd like to put behind us. lorelei, at 5 months, is just getting super fun - those belly laughs are so addictive! 

but let's not sugar coat this - this parenting gig is HARD. really, really, really HARD. like, i've started going to therapy hard. 

we got what we wanted - who could ask for more than that?

holy woah

OK, so I'm totally outing myself here - I said I wasn't going on Facebook for a week to get some stuff done around the house (you know, stuff I should totally be doing right...now...whoopsie). But then I saw this and reeeeaaaally wanted to share it (I'm a 5 by the way), so I logged in...what could ONE LITTLE SHARE do?
Well, then I realized I had a whole ton of notifications (what could it hurt to check my notifications???) and lo and behold, this popped up - time and time again on friends news feeds! Woah! Cool beans!
So then I started feeling guilty about not being here in a while...so here you go - some cute pics of my kids. I've got a few posts started but not finished yet, so stay tuned and thanks for stopping by!

 sleeping angel...no really, this kid is an angel.

 a meeting of the minds at the candy store.

 SUCH a delightful, smiley girl.

my favorite new face.

halloween 2013

better late than never, right?
behold, the results of a year of pinterest lurking and a few late nights in the studio for mama drinking red wine and listening to good music. i could get used to this!
a terrifying finn-o-saurus

 and a dinosaur egg ;)

it was such a wild and windy night here that we only hit a few houses on our mad dash around this island trying to avoid rain drops, but finn had a great time and keeps talking about how he's going to "knock doors, TRICK OR TREAT!!!" again next year ;)
i was pleasantly surprised by the number of houses that had mom-approved offerings for this little lad - fruit gummy snacks, crackers and peanut butter, freshly baked cookies, and chocolate covered pretzels. daddy happily took care of all the hard core candy, but finn did get one lindt truffle to indulge in from go fish, our local toy/penny candy store where rachel was giving kiddos their choice of halloween goodies from her shop - quite the treat indeed.
i'm thinking the whole family might get themed up next year - but what costumes to choose? happy decisions i can spend all night contemplating.
hoping you had a scream of a time, too!  ;)

my son is a coaster thief.

Finn has some pretty weird habits.  

Fist of all, he steals things, most often coasters. Why coasters, you ask? Me, too.

He also steals other random, small things he has easy access to...

Actually, not always easy access. True story:

The other day, I brought in groceries from the car, as well as Lorelei in her car seat. I unbuckled Finn and left the door open for him so he could get out and come in by himself. I live on a dead end road and he is used to this little ritual. He even gets his door shut on the first try most of the time. 

This time, however, was different. 

Instead of exiting the car like a good little boy, Finn instead decided to close his door, climb into the front seat and push the "lock" button on the door, thus locking all the doors in the vehicle. 

Clever boy.

No big deal, I'll just go get my spare key from the basket in the mud room.

Yep, you guessed it. No key. 

I guess at this point, I should mention that, as I live on a small island and on a dead end road, I leave my keys in the car.

Yep, the car that is now locked with my son inside it. Super.

This wound up being much more of an emergency in my head than in reality, as it so happens that Finn is quite adept at understanding and following direction, so he was able to unlock the car without any trouble when I told him which button to press.

The question remains, though: where the h-e-double hockeysticks is my key (which it would cost several hundred dollars to replace, I might add).

Where, indeed?

Another case-in-point:

Finn loves to play behind the rack that holds all of my pots/pans/dry goods. Why? WHY? WHYYYY?

I guess I can kind of "get" this one - it's a space only he can fit into and it requires climbing, which is ever so fun and entertaining. But he gets stuck or "hurt" almost ever day - you'd think that would be a deterrent, but no. 

It seems Miss Lorelei is taking on her brothers strange self-harm habits and is currently sticking her fingers so far down her throat that she's gagging and choking herself.

I swear, if these kids outlive their toddler years, they definitely have some guardian angels on their sides.

balance

I feel like this photo of Finn does well to illustrate how fast time is now going by - ZOOM. The first few months, heck YEAR of Finn's life certainly took its time, but now that he's 2, and with Lorelei such an easy baby, WOAH...day follows day follows day and sometimes I just want to hit a pause button.

PAUSE, baby girl! PAUSE! I just want to snuggle these little faces, but I also can't wait to see who they become.
There are days (like today) when I go from 8am to 7pm without snuggling them - it's crunch time around here, trying to get everything that can get done done before the snow starts flying (as it's already started to do in areas in Maine). I know it's not going to happen every day or every week. I just need to remember to make the most of the time I DO have with them now, because I'll never have these moments again.
Everything I do, I do for them...but a lot of the time, everything I do takes me away from them for longer than I'd like. It's a tricky balance, but balance it is.

the "g" word

guilt, guilt, guilt.

i guess a lot of parenting is about uncertainty and guilt. will i ever really believe that i'm doing the best job i can? won't i always be second guessing myself?

i feel like the biggest challenge i've had in parenting - in LIFE, really - is living in the moment. my brain is always calling me somewhere else - other (better?) options, other activities...it's something i'd like to avoid passing on to my kids, so i try really, really hard to BE THERE for them. i don't always think i succeed, but at least i try.

and so it's been for the last few weeks that i've been making a concerted effort to live in the moment, trying to put down my camera and experience the day to day, trying to take quiet moments and soak it in. oh, who am i kidding? the only quiet moments are when finn is asleep.

ah, those precious nap times...you know, the ones where they tell you to sleep while they sleep? yeah, i never got the hang of that with finn...it's a good thing, i guess, because these two almost never sleep at the same time. lorelei sleeps until he goes down, then wakes up and is a chortling, gorgeous, smily girl for a couple of hours, until she drifts away, and he wakes up. it's tough sometimes, thinking of all the things i used to get done during finn's nap  time (like making dinner, baking, sewing, knitting, BLOGGING ;) but MAN, it's so nice to get to spend that one-on-one time with her, soaking her up - can you believe she's THREE MONTHS OLD? i swear, at this point with finn, we were just surviving....getting through each day. but with her, the time is literally flying. lorelei is SUCH an easy baby. last night, she didn't wake up to eat until about 4:30, and even then, she just sort of gurgled happily in her crib until i came to get her, as opposed to the straight out screaming finn did multiple times a night at her age.

i try really hard not to call lorelei a "good" baby and finn a "bad" baby - i'm super grateful for each of them just the way they are...and their babyhoods tell me so much about who they'll be when they "grow up". not that i even want to  THINK about them ever, ever growing up. we live in never-neverland, right?

i've already resigned myself to the fact that lorelei is going to be horrified by how much more i wrote about finn when he was wee. it's not that i don't have anything to say about her - i think about possible blog posts all the time, but by the time i have a chance to get it down on the screen, it's gone. my memory (almost wrote "momery" there - fitting, no?) is a total sieve. i hope, though, that she knows how much i love her - that she remembers these moments when i'm trying to be present, to spend time, to get to know her a little bit more every day...and hopefully the number of words will be eclipsed by the moments of attention and time.

or maybe she'll need therapy for her mommy issues and none if it will ever matter. i guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it ;)

where we are.

Can we just talk about poop for a minute?

Yes, I realize that's not the way to start a conversation after an 8 week hiatus, but it's what's on my mind right now.

It's 5am and I'm googling "infant constipation", my 8 week old grunting noisily in the background, having not had a significant bowel movement since Saturday. I'm pretty sure she's going to explode. Welcome to my world.

I look back at how much time and energy I had to write about my experiences with Finn, at how religiously I updated his baby book, how dang many pictures and videos I have of him, and I get concerned about Lorelei seeing all of this as she grows up as a sign that we love Finn more. I can certainly see how that might be the case and how a second child could be sad about it. This whole sibling thing is new to me, having grown up primarily as an only child with a single mom and I just want to make sure they're treated equitably. I guess the number of photos I've taken or the completion of a baby book doesn't necessarily indicate the level of love we have for a chile, though, huh? I would like to write a bit more about her, though, because I know that these days are short and that I will look back on them and wonder whether they were a dream.

Let me tell you a bit about my girl, Lorelei.

She's a little dream. She's just got this fantastic, chill disposition and can sleep through anything (actually seems to sleep better when her brother is screaming inches from her face and I'm running the vacuum). She's beginning to smile now, and quite obviously adores the men in her life, giving them these enormous, toothless grins, and saving the little milk drunk smirks for me. Her big eyes are taking it all in, and she's generally quietly observing (well, to be honest, she hasn't got much choice with her extrovert brother around), but can certainly make herself heard and her needs known when she wants to.
Her eyelashes are coming in - every day, they seem to grow another inch, and I'm nearly convinced that she and Finn are going to have matching fans. I wonder and wonder whether her eyes will stay blue. She's such a little mystery to me, this dark haired, olive complexioned beauty who is somehow mine.
She seems kind. And happy. And patient. Other things I can teach her, but these things are harder, and I'm glad they seem a part of her nature.
Everyone is surprised by how strong my girl is. I hope her physical strength is an indication of her emotional fortitude ans her strength of character.
She is a surprise, a gift, a blessing, and a miracle. I love her so.

And Finn? Well, Finn is just blowing my mind every day. He's talking up a storm, really communicating now (and imitating, and repeating - oh dear...need to censor ourselves sometimes!) We're just starting to see the beginnings of imaginative play - you know, when they start talking to themselves, making up stories? Oh man, it kills me. We were at the beach with the dog yesterday, and he was just having such a great time in his little world, picking up rocks and throwing them, narrating in this running babble the whole time.

The "terrible" parts of his "two" come and go, but are eclipsed by his obviously loving nature and sweet demeanor. These few weeks have been an adjustment for us all, but he's taken it all in stride, handling this new babe like a champ. Luckily, she's easy to love.

And me? Well, I'm tired. I've been giving massages since L was a few weeks old, but I started waitressing again last week and have been helping Chad on a roof a bit this week. It's all good, but taking its toll, and it's hard to get to sleep early - always something to be done, you know?  I've got a great, supportive partner - once we all get back in the swing of things, it'll just be a matter of staying balanced. Oh, and I signed up for a half marathon in April. Because I'm insane.

Family photo session on Saturday and apple picking with some of our favorite people on Sunday - working, playing, loving, living - and on and on we spin on this little blue planet.