A Random Rant

This morning, as I was driving my mini-van to Daycare and listening to JoyFM, the local Christian radio station,* I heard a song that said “I don’t want to live one more moment without your all-consuming passion inside of me.” And maybe it’s just because I’m excessively tired these days but that just sounds terrible. Call me a heathen, but I don’t want anything else eating up my energy.

Our God is a consuming fire.

 We say that so blithely, just as if we have no experience with fire. You know what an all-consuming anything leaves in its wake?

Nothing! 

It leaves total devastation. 

The Bible talks about God in this way in the context of wrath and terror. Why do we sing happy songs about it as if God were a scented candle?

So I’m filing that particular song under I for Irritating, along with the one where Jesus suffers and dies a gruesome death in order that the singer might enjoy a middle-class lifestyle and the one where the singer’s biggest problem is that she lost her keys (but through horrible trials such as these, God is teaching her). And lest you think it’s only religious music that causes me to violently change the station; I’d also like to give a shout out to Katy Perry’s new song that bravely (har!) rhymes “fire” with “fire.” Boo!

If you feel similarly annoyed with any particular song, drop me a line. I’d love to mock them with you.

*And otherwise turning into a walking cliché! The alternate title for this blog was “0 to Soccer Mom.”

A Booby Story

I am convinced that once you have a baby, your breasts become capable of independent thought.

Independent, I said, not intelligent.

The other day I was waiting at a stoplight and the alarm of a car in the gas station to my left was blaring into the street. My boobs responded exactly the same way they would to a crying infant - with sudden swelling, tingling and leaking all over the place.

Ummmmm, crazy tatas? Yes. Uh, milk is not going to solve that car's problem. It's a car. Thanks.

The books I read during pregnancy did warn me that my fun bags would detonate every time I heard my (or anyone else's for that matter) baby cry. They also included a little throwaway line that I paid no attention to at the time: "or when you think about your baby." What?! Seriously, when he's not even with me and there is no pump actually on and working - there is no need for fountains of milk!

Speaking of pumping, everyone from the writers of baby books to Troy's pediatrician to the internet pajama-people seem to regard breastfeeding while working as the most difficult thing in the world. Maybe the future will prove them right but for now, I find it pretty simple. Of course, I also have a really sweet set up, so maybe I'm just incredibly blessed. My office has great facilities I can use to pump thrice daily and none of my five bosses have any problem with my taking two extra fifteen minute breaks or letting my pump pieces air-dry in the cabinet. Actually, the extra breaks often make me more productive as I come back with fresh eyes and ideas.

The only time pumping at work has ever been a ridiculous pain in the tush was during our company (indoor) picnic. They hosted the event offsite in a place with no private areas. I ended up sitting on the sink in the bustling ladies room trying to keep a jacket over me. Cause really, ain't nobody need to see THAT! It would have been so much easier if I'd sprouted another pair of hands.

I have heard that the greatest indicator of breastfeeding success is spousal support. Since my baby is happy, healthy, and rapidly becoming a "lift-with-your-legs" sort of butter tub, clearly I need to give credit where credit is due. My husband is amazing! He gets up at 4:30 every day to go work a 10 (or more) hour day but during the night he always gets up and hands me my cute little milk tank and then changes Troy's diaper after he's finished eating. Eli is a loving, supportive, adorable, father and the best guy I know. Thanks for marrying me amorcito!

Chunk baby cuteness

Oh the Guilt

There is so much information out there on how to have a perfect baby: books, magazines, internet articles, unsolicited advice givers.

I don’t mean that as a good thing.

It is all just too much and much too confusing. No one source seems to agree with anyone else. Never pick up a crying baby, one source says, they must learn to calm themselves or they will never sleep. Always pick up a crying baby, says the next source, what are you? Heartless?

At this point in my mom career, I feel as though everyone else is an expert and I am woefully unprepared to be in charge of a tiny human. But honestly! All you professional baby people – pull yourselves together! Why the conflicting advice?

I could just trust my motherly instincts but I do not seem to have a significant amount. If I just knew, deep in my soul, what makes babies happy, would I be reading your thoughts?? No! I would be napping! But the more I read the more I have this vague sense of guilt every time I do absolutely anything because according to somebody, I am doing it wrong.

Guilt is a huge part of my life right now. There’s a lot riding on my ability to parent well. I feel an acute sense of responsibility for three kids to achieve all they possibly can and I so often fail to be helpful in any regard. I should be spending more time helping Gabriel with his math and English. But 7^th grade math is beyond my skill set and the baby is fussy; it’s so hard to concentrate on common verbs and their pronunciation.

Guilt.

I should be spending more quality girl time with Juli. She has no mother and needs to learn about womanhood with all its challenges and joys. But I am exhausted and I would so prefer to spend any spare time I happen to rummage up in the bath tub.

Guilt.

Everyone tells me how hard it is to leave my sweet little baby in daycare but the truth is, sometimes it’s downright easy – particularly after he has done a giant poop in my arms as we’re walking to the car.

Guilt.

I really like my job. I don’t want to stay home. I tried being a stay-at-homer in Nicaragua for nearly a year and sure, I didn’t have any kids at the time, but I really hated it. Yet none of the mothers I know that I think are exceptionally great at mom-ing work significant amounts of time outside the home. They seem so fulfilled; their children look so happy. Why does it sound so horribly boring to me? Seriously, what is wrong with me? Do I love my kids less?

Crushing guilt.

So I may not be an awesome mother or even a good one but I do know that I am not a terrible mom either because all my kids continue to be alive and no one’s in rehab or on the pole. And I get up early on the weekends to make tortillas for breakfast. Also, I’m getting pretty darn good at calming Captain Colic, which makes me feel like a rock star.  

And for the record, I always pick him up when he cries. He really just has no capacity to calm himself. And despite my fears that the book might be right and I’m spoiling him into terrorizing our nights for months to come, he slept for six straight hours last night. Thank you very much. 

A happy little burrito

By Way of Introduction...

Hello, my name is Elizabeth and I have no idea what I’m doing.

Way back in early spring, when my pregnant brain was just pulling out of the nauseous fog of first trimester, my husband, Eli, and I decided to see if we could bring his two youngest siblings to the US from Nicaragua (his home country) to attend school here.

The situation in Nicaragua for Gabriel, age 14, and Juli, age 12, looked pretty bleak. They lived with their aging father in a tiny house with no floors and no indoor plumbing and - even more distressing – often no food. The neighborhood, one of the poorest in Managua, consisted mainly of delinquents and unemployed alcoholics. The graduation rate for the local school hovered in the low percentages as most of the boys dropped out early to work dead end jobs or do drugs and the girls because of unplanned pregnancies.

The second chapter of James says: Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?

It seemed like a no-brainer. This wasn’t some metaphorical situation or rhetorical supposition. These were our actual flesh-and-blood brother and sister. Eli alone, of all his siblings, was in a position to give these kids an opportunity at a better life. Americans sadly take their country for granted all too often and forget that for most of the world’s materially poor, this is the land flowing with milk and honey.

We started the process of applying for two student visas. The website made it sound so simple: get accepted to an approved school, file a couple forms and snicker-snack: visa.

Nothing but nothing is ever easy.

It took several months of aggravation and a few greased palms to even get the kids’ passports. Finally, we had all their documentation in order and I was able to apply for their visas. The first visa application was rejected because the kids didn’t speak any English. We had to get a new round of forms from the school and re-apply for the visas. 

I should mention that I completed those applications sitting on a labor ball having contractions five minutes apart!

Seriously.

We made their embassy appointment from the hospital recovery room while our firstborn son snoozed in the bassinet and found out the visas had been granted in another hospital room a few days later when I had to be re-hospitalized for a terrible infection.

By the second week of August we all of a sudden had a two week old baby, a fourteen year old step(ish) son and a twelve year old step(ish) daughter.

There is really just no training manual for this kind of situation. We are a family navigating different generations, cultures and languages. We are the mango smoothie of blended families! Although I often feel the need to make pronouncements as if I know things (“It’s a school night, go to bed” or “the baby is not hungry, he is just tired”); in reality I am bumbly-fumbling my way through each day. Eli and I, with as much love as we posses, are completely making it up as we go along (These words were actually said in my house the other day: “eat your vegetables; we don’t want you to be a whale.”).

So this is me: a wife and brand-new mommy of three with a full-time job.

Oh James, what did you get me into?!