Inhale, Exhale, Rinse, Repeat

I am so glad that tomorrow begins a new week.  A week of first soccer practices, back to school nights, planning meetings, play dates, homework and trips to the grocery store.  Those are good.  In the meantime, here are some good recent pictures of our happy little troop of troublemakers.

Gus' first day of Jr K - Ruby trying to go with him.

Walking in the woods.

Playing peek-a-boo!

Finn tried to teach Ruby & Gus how to play War, but they didn't exactly get it!

Warning: this blog is not even mildly humorous

It's almost midnight, Thursday night, and since it's almost over I can definitely say that today has been the worst, but also one of the best, days of my life.  I don't really even know how to write about this day quite yet, because so much is still zinging around in my head and I keep having little mini panic attacks, but I'll just give the facts now and then maybe once I've processed it I can write a little more later.

So, this morning after we dropped Finn off at school, Gus, Ruby and I came back home to take care of a few things before heading back out to do some errands.  While I cleaned up from breakfast and paid a few bills online, Gus was watching cartoons, and Ruby was sort of milling around in the room with him playing with her toys, or coming in to visit with me, or chasing the cats.  Basically, just being her little whirlwind self.  At some point as I was finishing up, she came in and I detected that she needed a diaper change, so I followed her into the next room, where she had gotten up on the couch with Gus to watch a little TV.  I sort of teasingly told her that I was coming to get her to change her diaper, and she gave me an equally funny look that said "not if you can't catch me!"  She then proceeded to get off the couch going head-first.  The couch is only about two feet off the carpeted floor and she moves pretty slowly, so even as I went to grab her, I wasn't really concerned.  However, at some point in her descent, but before I caught her, her center of gravity must have changed and her butt and legs flipped over her head, causing her neck to bend backwards in a very unnatural-looking way.  It looked pretty scary, and I swooped down to pick her up and comfort her and make sure she was alright.  She cried for a second and then started inhaling before letting out "The Big Cry."  You know the cry where they don't make any sound for a minute and then all hell breaks loose and you have never heard someone cry so loud right in your ear?  That's what I was waiting for.  Except she passed out from holding her breath.

Earlier this summer she had fallen off of a chair, bumped her head and passed out from holding her breath. That time, I remember that she all of the sudden she just went totally limp in my arms, and I was so stunned that I just stood there for a minute, looking at my aunt who was standing with me at the moment.  We could each see in the other person's eye the rising panic and the thought that maybe we should be calling 911, but before either one of us could voice it, Ruby opened her eyes and started crying.  We were scared, and worried for a while, but then she seemed fine and happy and was eating and playing, and I remembered that I had heard of children holding their breath until they pass out, so I moved on to worrying about other things.

So today when Ruby started her crazy inhale before the big howl, I sort of knew she was going to pass out.  I stood there for a minute, waiting for her to open her eyes again and start crying.  But then it seemed like a long time had gone by, and she wasn't waking up.  I started trying to wake her up, pinching her and calling her name, running to the kitchen to run her hands under the faucet, increasingly frantic.  And then her eyelids came up a little, and I could see that her eyes were rolling around all over the place, going all different directions.  And then her arms and legs started jerking and her little body became rigid in my arms.  At that point, I totally lost it.  I was screaming her name at the top of my lungs, grabbing the phone to dial 911 and, for some reason, running into the front yard screaming for help.  I have never in my life been so terrified.  I knew in my heart that it was too late, that she had broken her neck in the fall and was now going to die in my arms.  My mind was doing 100 things at one time - figuring out how to get help, trying to remember any medical information I might use to save her life, imagining the future where I would always look back at that very moment where I watched my child die, simultaneously rejecting that it could actually be happening, blaming myself, imagining having done this to Matt and the boys, disbelieving that I could have let a child die when only 6 months ago we brought her home from Ethiopia in the hope of providing a better life for her.  I also sorted out other possibilities, like total paralysis, and had a vision of her as a teen, living in a wheelchair, hating me.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gus on the couch, watching without comprehension as his mother was transformed from a familiar part of his world to an unrecognizable wild animal, even as Scooby Doo sleuthed on in the background.  My body was just acting on its own, with my feet carrying us out the front door to scream for help.  Without deciding to do so, I laid Ruby down on the ground and stuck my fingers in her mouth to make sure her airway wasn't blocked (some vestige of CPR training), but I had to wedge her mouth open since her jaw was clamped shut.  At this point, neighbors began descending on our yard, and our giant, ex-hockey player neighbor scooped her up in his enormous arms and put her on his shoulder.  I was screaming into the phone at the 911 operator, watching her, when I saw her body finally relax, saw her take a breath, felt my own body and mind rejoin one another.  The whole thing probably only lasted 3 minutes.

After that, the ambulance came and took us to the hospital since Ruby was still very disoriented and dazed.  In my arms, her body kept flopping over to the side, like limp rag.  But thank God, slowly, slowly we both came back from the edge.  After three hours of being poked and prodded at the hospital, she was back to herself, doing laps around the ER, looking for stickers from the nurses, playing hide and seek with anyone who would take the bait.  Unlike Ruby, after three hours at the hospital I felt like an empty IV bag and probably looked like one too.  We left around 1, picked up Gus from the neighbor's house where he had been enjoying cookies and more TV, and went home to collapse.  Medically, the bottom line was that she has an iron deficiency, making her more susceptible to fainting, which then brought on the seizure.  Apparently it's not uncommon, and it does not mean she will have a seizure disorder, but I really, really hope that's the end of it.  Also, Matt was involved during this, even though I have left his part out, and he was wonderful and calm and did all of the right things (of course), but he wasn't there for the scariest part, so I don't think he shared my abject terror.

So now here I am, and Ruby is sleeping peacefully in the next room (I just checked), so that's the best thing that's ever happened to me.  Obviously, if I had known that she was going to be fine, I wouldn't have been so terrified.  But for a little while I really believed and knew in my heart that she was not going to be fine, so I feel like I just got a hideous glimpse of what my life might have been if things had been different.  I keep seeing little things around the house - Ruby's referral picture still taped onto the fridge, the poem and picture I posted last night, sippy cups, her favorite little shoes, dolls, thank-you notes with Ruby's name on them, and I can't stop myself from the morbid thought that if something much worse had happened today, seeing each of those little things would bring on a new nightmare.

I once read a quote that having a child is like going around with your heart on the outside of your body.  It's true.  They take it around with them, when they run away from you at the playground and for a minute you can't see them, when they eat something you didn't know they were allergic to, when they go to a friend's house or when they get on the bus and go to school.  They take it when they are 16 and start driving around town with all of their friends, when they go off to college and drink too much and don't realize that people don't always just sleep if off.  It's enough to make you not want to have them in the first place, but by the time you realize what they have done to you, it's too late.  And then today I was thinking that it's not just your heart they have, it's your entire self.  I guess I would go on living, but I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't be all there anymore, and what was left of me would be a weepy mess.  Generally, when I hear a truly tragic story about a child, I say things like "I can't even imagine," and I really mean that I am not even going to let myself imagine because even thinking that something like that could happen to me is too painful.  And then today I felt like someone was holding my head in a bucket of water, making me go to that terrible place.  

But nothing terrible did happen, and we were very lucky, like we have been every single day since our first child was born.  But it's not every day that you realize how lucky you are, or how close to the other side of the coin you are at any given moment, and then all you can do is be so, so thankful for the blessing.    

Laugh at myself

Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and think that you have just discovered the secret to life?  Or maybe not quite so dramatic, but you have a great idea and you think that you had better write it down so that you won't have forgotten it by the morning?  Sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of a dream and think that it was such an awesome and interesting dream, that it would make a great novel.  But then when I wake Matt up to try to tell him about it, it just sounds like garbage.  "... then I was in this room, and there were like, chairs everywhere, and yet there wasn't anywhere to sit down, and then ..."

Anyway, I woke up one night while we were at Clear Lake, and I couldn't go back to sleep because my mind was racing with all of these great ideas for blog posts.  And, of course, we had no computer or internet connection, so I was really frustrated at 3 am thinking that my amazing ideas might just go back into the void of my brain never to see the light of the blog.  So, uncharacteristically, I got up to write down all of these fabulous ideas with the plan of writing about one idea every week or so, sort of dispensing my little pearls of wisdom about little by little, so as not to overwhelm anyone with my genius.  Well, just looking over this list here makes me cringe even though no one else can see it.

Let's just say that it appears that my best ideas do not come to me in the middle of the night.  I have one idea here that just says "John Calvin."  That would be the man who started the religious movement that would eventually lead the Puritans to come to the New World, thereby leading to the life we know today.  I am related to him, albeit distantly, but I'm not quite sure what my plan was for the blog.  Maybe an interesting discourse on the Puritan work ethic?  Maybe a history lesson?  No idea.  Another entry on my list just says "blogging:  throwing food at dinner guests."  That seems like one of those logic games where you have to figure out how the two are related - blogging is to throwing food at dinner guests as _________ is to painting your toenails.

So, sorry that my blogs will continue to be silly stories and pictures of my kids rather than life-altering gems of enlightenment.  I did, however, write down one thing that I thought was nice, but it was just a poem that was framed on the wall of the house we were sleeping in, so I can't even take credit.  It's an adoption poem,  but it was uncredited, so I'm not sure if it's some famous poem that I've never seen before or just something that someone made up and put on their wall.  It's at least better to share than my midnight flashes of craziness.

Not flesh of my flesh

nor bone of my bone,

But nevertheless, 

Still my own.

Never forget

for a single minute

You weren't born under my heart

but in it.    

End of summer, happy & sad

Okay, so I am going to admit that I lied in my last blog.  Actually, I think it was more of an attempt to remain positive and optimistic, but the events of the week unfolded in such a way that it was pretty much a big, fat lie.  Here's the real story.

Every summer we go up to the Catskills to stay in the cottage that Matt's parents have had since before Matt was even born.  It's a total of about 300 square feet, and it is adorable and tiny and perfect for sunny, summer days when you can swim and run around outdoors all day, grill out for dinner and then collapse in bed at night after a serious round of Go Fish or a stab at the Sunday Times crossword puzzle.  We were at the lake, and we were having fun.  After a rainy first weekend (but still fun as we were hanging out with Matt's sister, her boyfriend, and Grandma and Grandpa), the sun came out on Monday and we were excited to get down to business fishing, swimming, hiking around and the like.  Sadly, by Monday evening Matt's dad was in the local hospital with what we thought were kidney stones.  On Tuesday, he was diagnosed with Pancreatitis, but then on Wednesday, it turned out that they had given him the diagnosis of another patient in the hospital, and he did not in fact have Pancreatitis, but they didn't know what was wrong.  I wrote that last blog on Wednesday, I think, and I was hoping that things were about to turn around for Grandpa and we would all be back to relaxing at the lake, with Grandpa on grill duty and Matt catching frogs with the boys.

On Thursday, they decided to move Matt's dad to another hospital that was outfitted with actual medical doctors and machines of modern medicine in an effort to figure out the problem.  There, he was told that the back pain that was making it unable for him to walk was a spasm, but, also, he had diabetes.  The next day, however, it turned out that the diabetes also belonged to another patient, so we were happy that he had beaten two diseases in the course of the week.  Hello?  Is it so hard to match the patient with the piece of paper that says what is wrong with him?  And did I mention that there were only 8 patients in the first hospital?

Anyway, by Saturday his back was feeling better, but he still couldn't go home as they were waiting on some blood tests to rule out an infection that could potentially be dangerous.  We left to drive home on Saturday, feeling terrible about leaving Matt's parents marooned in Cooperstown, NY (a beautiful, amazing town, by the way - highly recommend as a summer family vacation).  Today is Tuesday, and they are still at the hospital.  It turns out that he may have the infection - which has nothing to do with his back pain, which is what brought him into the hospital in the first place, so he has to stay a little longer.  The moral of the story?  I have no idea, but suffice it to say that we were all exhausted by our lake getaway.  Matt spent much of the week in the hospital with his parents, while I spend much of the week at the lake trying to keep up with the three kids, or driving back and forth to visit Matt and his parents.  The kids actually had a great week, and we all had some fun together in between hospital visits.  Everybody except for Grandpa, of course.

Now we're back at home and trying to get ready for school and Fall and putting the house back together.  Whenever I go away for a while, I come back home wanting to reorganize the whole house.  Why is this?  It's such a bad habit, as I get halfway into it and then loose interest in the project.  But I still have taken everything out of drawers and off of shelves and have pieces of furniture floating around the house, inconvenient islands that everyone has to wedge themselves around to move from one room to another.  So that's what we're up to.  Just life, but after the last week, I'm actually really happy to be back to it.  

What day is it?

You know that great thing that happens when you are totally in vacation mode? Where you have no idea what day of the week it even is? That is where we are right now. We are in the catskill mountains, staying in matt's family cottage on a tiny lake where there is nothing to do but read, swim, eat, do crossword puzzles and look for little critters. The boys are in heaven and ruby is loving her first Clear Lake summer, even though - to be totally honest - keeping up with her busy body is putting a dent in my reading & relaxation time. Every summer when we are here, I vow to try to bring a little bit of the serenity and quiet of the lake home with me. It doesn't work for long, but it's such good medicine for the spirit.
Anyway, with no phone or Internet connection, I'm writing this while in town for provisions on my phone - not too convenient, so I'll write more when we are back home next week. Plus, the boys go back to school three days after we get home! Not that I'm counting...

I'm typing this on my phone, lying in the bed of a comfort suites hotel in Stratford Connecticut, trying to be quiet and not wake the three kids sharing this little home away from home. We are, once again, on the road. Our trip certainly involves fewer episodes of drug-induced psychedelic mayhem and more juice boxes than the book of the same name, so it probably wont be quite so fun to read.

Anyway, we left home on Friday and drove to Baltimore to visit my college roommate aerie & her two (almost three) boys who are exactly the same ages as Finn and Gus. It's perfect since we can sit and visit while the boys run wild. Ruby also loved aerie. Whenever I take ruby somewhere new, I always wonder if she's worried that the new place is where I'll be leaving her. After so much of that.transition in her life, it must at least cross her mind. Sometimes I can tell that she's not down with it, but at aerie's house, she was all "it's cool with me if you've gotta head out, mom." oddly, that makes me happy as I see how she also knows a kindred spirit when she meets one.

The next morning, we drove down to DC where matt "surprised" us by driving up while I was showing the kids the house I lived in during my awesome three years in that great town. The kids were excited to see him, of course, and we spent the next 24 hours seeing everything possible - the Air & Space museum, the zoo, the monents, etc. It was fun and brought back so many memories ( not that I did so much sight-seeing while living there, as I was too busy running around town having fun). I am really glad we enjoyed our visit to dc, because we paid for it when we left there at 2 pm, heading north on I-95 toward New Hampshire. But of course, to get to New Hampshire, you have to get through New York city. Unwisely, I left DC just in time to be driving through NYC at the same time every new yorker is trying to het back into the city after spending the weeking elsewhere. Which is how a four join drive from DC to new york turned into a 7+ hour tour of duty in highway hell. I had hoped to make it all the way to new Hampshire in one day, but we were done in ny the george Washington bridge and stopped at this motel in Connecticut. Love getting the kids out of the car late at night, rifling through oir junk in the dark to find the absolute essentials, checking in while pointlessly trying to keep the baby sleepy (never works), setting up the pack & play and then laying in a pitch black hotel room with three kids listening to the muffled tv show coming from the next room (and wishing I could hear it better or not at all).
So thats how it went, more to come as we quest on to the North!
(I wrote this Sunday morning on my iPhone & I'm posting it Tuesday night without correction the million typos - sorry! We made it to MH and when matt fets here torrow we're off again, so more from the road, hopefully.)

If You Give a Mouse a Battery ...

Well, I sat down at the computer a few minutes an hour ago to engage in a little mindless blogging, but it turned out that the wireless mouse's batteries had died (One of the many reasons that I objected to the wireless mouse and voted for the wired version, but I was overruled.  Another is that the children - particularly Ruby - make off with the mouse from time to time, rendering the computer useless until the house has been turned upside down to find it.  Another is that it was $50, where the normal one was free.).  Anyway, after cursing Matt for a few seconds for buying said mouse, I had to fix the problem.

Of course, the batteries are in the kitchen, so I went the long way from the computer room into the kitchen, hoping to avoid detection, but nonetheless, I popped up on the children's radar.  They had all three been happily coloring in the boys' room, but as I made my way into the kitchen, they suddenly all realized they were hungry.  So I set about making snacks.

Of course, each child wanted something different.  Finn wanted a peanut butter & jelly, but I realized that the peanut butter was empty, so I had to go downstairs to the other kitchen to get a new jar.

While I was down there, I remembered that I needed to switch the laundry into the dryer, so I went into the laundry room.  Once in there, I realized that I had left the laundry in the washer for so long that it needed to be washed over again (I only do this for Matt's benefit - he recently complained that his clothes all smelled funny, but he didn't know why.  I did know why, but it hadn't seem to bother anyone, so I had just been letting it go).  So I started the wash again, after making a mental note to go back to scented detergent which does a better job of covering up that left-in-the-machine-too-long smell.  But then I noticed that the cats did not have any food in their bowls, so I thought I would just put a little in.  Unfortunately, there was no food in the bin, and I remembered that the new bag of cat food is currently sitting in the back of my car, which is sitting in the parking lot of the repair shop, waiting to be repaired.  Another mental note to self to go get cat food, but in the meantime, I decided I would give them some tuna fish.  So back upstairs to where the tuna fish is, but then I realized I hadn't brought up the peanut butter.  As it turned out, however, once the children saw the tuna fish, they all wanted some of that, so I had to make a little tuna salad for everyone.

After snack time, I had to clean up the kitchen a little bit, when the phone rang.  Seeing the Baltimore area code, I thought it was my college roommate, so I picked up, excited for a good chat.  Unfortunately, it was Arbitron Ratings.  Unfortunately they were calling to remind me that today is the last day for the radio listening journal that I've been supposedly keeping for the last week (sort of like Nielson ratings for radio).  I have no idea why I agreed to do this, but I knew that I had and in fact had agreed for every person over 12 in our house to keep a journal.  I also knew that I had already put the $4 they sent as a guilt-inducing incentive to compliance into my wallet and had used them to buy a latte the day before.  So I told the guy on the phone that I absolutely had been keeping the journal, as had my husband, and we would be dropping them in the mail tomorrow.  Hanging up the phone, I began hunting around the house for the journals, disorganizing all of my ordered chaos in the process.  I finally found them back in the computer room, where I also discovered that I still had not gotten the two AA batteries needed to cause the computer to function so that I could sit down and write a little bit while the house was nice and quiet and the children were otherwise occupied.

So now, obviously, I have replaced the batteries.  But of course, the quiet art project is long-forgotten and the boys are jumping from the couch to the ottoman waiting for me to come play Apples to Apples Jr., which will be a total nightmare with Ruby trying to eat the cards, Gus (who can't read and doesn't like games anyway) not playing after five minutes, and Finn taking everything too seriously and yelling at Gus to keep playing.

Damn wireless mouse!!!

Building Blocks for a Perfect Life

Okay, here we go:  my patented, million-dollar technique for keeping your life manageable, stress-free and successful in the face of children, parents, husbands, dogs, jobs, that extra 15 lbs, or anything else life may throw at you.  Believe me, I think it would really work if I actually would do it!

A few months ago, after we had been home with Ruby for a few months and were settling into a little routine with her, I realized that I had not fully carved out a place for her in my life.  That's not to say that there was not a place for her in my heart, or a place for her in the house, we had taken care of all of that stuff.  No, it was more like I just really didn't have time for anything any more.  Surprise, surprise, Ruby was taking up all of my time.  Aren't babies so fun like that?!  Between diaper changing, rocking it to sleep multiple times a day, washing its clothes (and yours more often that you could imagine, since there is always something gross on them), washing the actual baby, taking it to the doctor, taking things out of its mouth that shouldn't be there and trying to get things in that should be, playing a little bit with it, researching baby products and buying said products, cleaning up spilled milk, water, cheerios, legos, cat food, pans, folded laundry, etc, a little package of baby cuteness can really eat into a person's day.  And that's not even getting into breastfeeding, being up all night, ear infections, worrying that it might be allergic or autistic or too short or too tall.  Frankly, it's just a lot of work.

"But wait," you might be thinking, "she knew all of that already!"  I already had two kids and was doing all of that stuff already, so what's the big deal?  Plus, Ruby was already 16 months old when she came home, so some of the biggest life sucking elements (breast feeding, all night wailing parties, making your own baby food until you realize what a giant waste of time and energy it is) were not even applicable to our situation.  And to tell you the truth, not having to do all of that stuff again is one of the many reasons we went the whole adoption route.  When we first considered adding a third child to our lives, Gus was already 3 and Finn was 5, and I finally felt that I had clawed my way back from the brink of something very ugly.  Five years of sleep deprivation and no exercise and always finding things mashed beneath my toes if I couldn't find my slippers was five years too much.  An orphan, I wisely concluded, will not cause me these problems.  By the time we bring this hypothetical orphan home, I thought (ever the unrealistic dreamer), she'll be sleeping, eating normal food, close to being potty trained, and walking.  This would be good, I thought, because having a newborn or young baby would really put a wrench in my life.  I had finally started a fitness regimen that I really enjoyed, I was working on my house and was happy with the progress, Matt and I had more time together to talk and enjoy just hanging out, I was gardening and beginning to think about a future where I might do something creative and productive outside of my sphere as a mother (which I actually find very creative and productive, but in a different way).  I had some idea that a new baby would come on the scene and just fit into that picture quite nicely, without jostling all the other pieces around too much.  (Note to reader who may be horrified that I would feel this way about an orphan:  I also believed that Finn and Gus would just come on board as accessories to my life without causing much of a bump, but, of course, I was wrong.  You know how they say that some people never learn?)

Anyway, as it turned out, little Ruby wasn't as much like a goldfish as she was a real person.  She actually needed things and attention and nurturing and holding, and, like all little people, she left a wake of destruction in her path that required time and energy (always in short supply) to remedy.  But oddly enough, it took me a little while to realize all of that.  I persisted in the idea that it was so "easy" even while I kept banging my head against the fact that everything was not going according to my plan.  I kept going for runs most mornings, but felt frustrated that I couldn't go very far while pushing the jogging stroller and stopping every few yards to recover the cheerio case or the sippy.  I didn't step down from any of my volunteer obligations at the kids' schools and in the community, but I felt guilty every night as I went to bed for things I hadn't done yet that others were counting on me to do.  I felt guilty about what I was feeding the kids, how messy the house was, about not reciprocating dinner invitations because the idea of having people over to the house seemed so overwhelming, about how long it would take me to return phone calls, even how infrequently I was sending out updates and blog postings for all of the friends and family who had supported us so much along the way.  Basically, everything was coming a little unraveled, but I kept ignoring all of that and trying to do everything I had been doing as well as I had been doing it before Ruby came home.

So, as you might imagine, that didn't really work out.  I realized I was sucking at almost everything and that fact was really bothering me, so I started thinking about how I might change things up.  I thought about friends of mine who seem to be less scattered than I am, or more content in a way that I never seem to be.  I know people who don't seem to feel as much of a tension between how their lives actually are and how they think their lives should be.  So I thought to myself, what's the deal?  What's their secret?

Anyway, over the course of a few months of reflection, I think I have come up with the perfect formula for a happy life.  I will share it here with you, and if you end up using it and having a happy life, I just ask that you mention me on your tombstone, or in some other public forum.  I don't really want too much glory, but a little would be okay.  So here it is.  Imagine that your life is made up of blocks.  One block is your job, if you have one, or personal ambition, if you don't.  In my case, I was a lawyer before I had kids, but I've been "retired" for a while now, so that doesn't count as a job.  I do, however, have personal ambition to start a business (see previous blog post about dinners on the porch).  Another block is your marriage or significant relationship.  Another is spending time with your children and providing for them emotionally, educationally, etc.  Another is feeding said children healthy meals and ensuring that they are generally clean, etc.  Another is keeping yourself in reasonable shape by exercise, which seems to become more time-consuming with each passing year.  Another is personal appearance, meaning regular haircuts/highlights, clean and attractive, if not necessarily fashionable, clothing, wearing make-up at least some of the time, etc.  Another is friendships, which can take time and effort to keep up because, when you think about it, they involve nights out with the girls, a visit and a casserole to a bereaved friend, mailing a package to your best friend's child on his or her birthday, and so on and so forth.  One's social life can also fall into the friendship category, although I do know people who would need to devote a separate block to socializing as they are more "on the scene" than yours truly.  If you live near parents or in-laws, you know you have to dedicate a block to them because even if they are helping you out all the time, it's a two-way street.  General maintenance of the house, laundry, yard will be a block, unless you are someone with live-in help, and in that case I don't want to know about it, so keep it to yourself.  If you are active in your church or other volunteer activities, that could be a block.

The point being, you have your own assortment of things that make up your life, different from mine, but, I would argue, similar in the broad outlines.  And you build up this Jenga-like tower of your life with all of these different blocks nicely balanced in a way that pleases you, or at least in a way that you can manage, and you think you're doing alright.  And then you go and have a baby.  Or adopt one, but either way, you add a big, big block onto the stack.  But at first, if you're like me, you think that baby block will just sit on top, maybe rocking the tower for a little while, but ultimately the structure will hold.  In my experience, however, that is not how it works.  You keep trying for a while, pretending that it is working, and then the whole thing falls apart, or you fall apart, consumed with guilt and feelings of inadequacy over all of the things in each of the different areas of your life that you couldn't do well anymore.  Basically, you feel like an all-around failure.  I always seem to hit that wall after about three months with a new baby, and it's not pretty.

So my theory (untested by actual experience because I seem to be incapable of learning lessons) is that you have to completely get rid of at least one block with the addition of a new baby.  (Therefore, if you have twins, you will need to get rid of at least two blocks, and so on.)  Baby needs its own block folks, and there's no way around it.  But here's why it's so hard:  you can't get rid of very many of those blocks.  It really is like Jenga, because your choices are pretty limited if you don't want to topple the whole structure.  You can hardly argue that getting rid of your marriage or your parents will improve your life (at least I hope you can't).  And you can't stop feeding your family or doing laundry or working (unless you choose to stay home, in which case you have a new full-time job) or ditch all of your friends.  So that leaves you to choose between things like exercise, personal appearance, having a nice house, socializing, and volunteer activities.  All of the things that make life a little more fun.  So do you have to go around being an out-of-shape, frumpily dressed, reclusive outcast living in a pig-sty?  No, because don't forget, you only have to get rid of one (maybe two) blocks.  And not forever, just for a little while (like maybe a year, unless you do too much in the area of maintaining your marriage and end up pregnant again before you've gotten into a new groove).

The key is to eliminate whole areas from your consciousness, so that you no longer feel the pressure of them and therefore don't feel badly that you aren't able to keep up anymore.  People always urge new mothers to get more help.  What they mean is that you should somehow get enough help - housekeepers and babysitters - that you can keep on doing everything you have been doing up to that point.  Like you can have a babysitter come while you go get your hair done, because it's so important that your roots don't show when you're sitting home nursing a two month old baby or tearing up and down the aisles of Target with the rest of high society.  But that's just more pressure to keep up.  Instead, people should urge new mothers to be realistic and face the fact that you can't keep up anymore.  Trying to do so will only result in trouble, because no matter how many babysitters you have, there's just not enough time in the day for a new child and everything else.  You've got to just do major surgery on your life.

You won't feel guilty about things you aren't even trying to accomplish.  For example, it is a relief to me that I don't have to feel guilty that I've let my piano playing skills go down, because I never had them to begin with.  Likewise, I don't feel badly about not taking the children to bring meals to shut-ins, because, no matter how nice that would be, that was never one of my blocks.  You could just agree with yourself that you will not go to the gym for one whole year, no matter what.  And then, if you did take a nice brisk walk one day, you would just feel like a big winner for having exercised so much rather than like a loser who hasn't been to the gym in a month.  Or, you might rather give up trying to keep up with the house and just let people who come by to visit know that you have done so.  Maybe you would choose to completely quit your volunteer activities - it's the only time you can do it without looking like a flake, and they will always be happy to have you back later.

Whatever you choose is your choice, obviously, but I think it might really be the key.  A friend (mother to several, including a new baby) recently told me that she doesn't "do dinner."  It was a great lightbulb moment because I realized that you can just decide not to "do" certain things and no one can make you feel bad about it if you don't do it to yourself.  How much better to just give yourself a pass until things calm down.  Once the dust settles and you start having bits of time on your hands here and there, you'll know it's time to think about adding something back in - maybe one of the things you had to give up or maybe something totally new, like writing a blog.

Okay, enough already, you are welcome.  I give you my theory and hope that, unlike me, you will heed it.  I think I'm out of the baby business (having or adopting), so hopefully I'll not have to go around this particular merry-go-round again, but if I had thrown out some of those blocks, it might have made the ride a little less bumpy.