Roads Less Traveled...

I've many pictures to post, as promised, but now is one of those "blog-as-journal" moments. Maybe someone out there will read it and hopefully find a brief moment to relate to, or maybe even find help in my struggles, but right now they are my own.

One of the hardest lessons of adulthood (for me, at least) is the realization that your life is your own to live. Everyone has challenges, and it can be helpful to run ideas off of others - to share some hot chocolate with a girlfriend and brainstorm, to cry to our mothers, to have heart-to-hearts with our spouses in bed.  However, ultimately, at the end of the day, my path is my own.  And sometimes, I'm forging new ground, and there are no answers that others can provide.

It's been one of those weeks.  A week full of challenges, unanswered questions, and lots and lots of prayers.  And there is not a single person I can call for advice who will know what to do (no, not you. Or you. Or you. Thanks anyways).

I was going to blog about Alinea and her nevus, because it's been on our minds a lot lately - we are going to a medical conference in Dallas in July to hopefully gain some insight - but that really isn't what's bothering me tonight.

Lately, I've been more and more sure that I need to be home with my children.  I need to be a mom.  I already am a full-time mom, of course, but I work full-time, too, out of necessity (trulytrulytruly out of necessity).  With Lumpkin it was hard to go back - and we definitely had some "oh crap!" moments - but she was in good hands, and while it wasn't ideal, it all worked out just fine.  

But now... three kids in and with life so much busier... there has just been sign after glaring sign. My kids need me.  For a long time, I prayed to have the desire to be home, because I'd always had lofty career goals, and I thrived on that.  Well, now that prayer has been answered and I don't know what the next step is.  Even worse, my kids need me more than I can give, and I don't know what to do about it.  

This is where the road untraveled begins.  Although I guess I've been living it, ever since Dumplin was born. I keep trying and trying to compare our experience to those of others, to find someone who's made it work, and I just can't.  

Nearly every single person I know who has more than two kids is a stay-at-home mom (not us).  Every full-time working mom I know has a mother/mother-in-law either live with them or watch the kids full time (not us).  And not one of those people has the additional scheduling challenge of one of their kids only living with them half time (as is our oldest - week on, week off).  

While I can handle any one of those challenges quite comfortably, all together they just seem insurmountable from week to week.  We've had so much help through friends from church (bless all of you), but you can only ask so much of people.  I can only ask so much. It's a terrible feeling to have to call someone for the fourth or fifth time and say "Sooo... would you be able to...".  I feel the favors I can ask of others have simply run out.

Often these days I find myself playing the "if only..." game, which I know is silly and unproductive.  THIS is our life, as it is, and I need to find the joy in it from day to day.  But when the day to day is praying I can juggle my work and home responsibilities, trying desperately not to forget something for the zillionth time, wishing I could be more involved at Pumpkin's school, that I had more than an hour of playtime with Dumplin' on the weekdays, that I could get the kids on a schedule, that my weekends were more than cleaning and shopping and catch-up time, that I could have a date night with husband more than twice a year, and all the while feeling like our lives are one big Jenga puzzle waiting to crash down if one block is out of place... well, it's exhausting and stressful and not so joyous.  

Which brings us to today.  And the fact that I need to be able to work from home, or work part time.  That I need to be home with the kids.  That I need all of the above while paying the bills and having food to eat and utilities turned on and having adequate health insurance.  And I don't have the first clue how to go about it.  I feel like all the puzzle pieces are out there, floating in the air, and I'm just not smart enough to put them all together.  That I'm just doing everything wrong.

I know that one day, I will look back on my current trials, and know that all these things will give me experience, and be for my own good, but it's so hard to see the end of the road from here.  Right now it feels like life shouldn't be this hard, and it's my own fault that it is.  

Hopefully one day I can look back and say:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

But for now, I need a genius.  And a cheerleader. And a maid. :) 

Any ideas?

I Need This.

The below print entitled "Hipster's Kiss" is SO needed.  Not so much because I fancy myself a "hipster," but this is SO me and Chris:

I think I will buy it for Chris. For us.  Hope he doesn't read this soon (ha).

PS: It's from artist Nan Lawson on Etsy.

PPS:  I have LOT of pics of the family to post, which I will do this weekend. :)

The Amelie Effect

So I've been recently playing around in Photoshop to try and enhance some of my photos (especially since I still have a Canon Powershot A630, not some fancy schmancy digital DSR...). One of the best effects I've found replicates the enhanced colors from the movie Amelie, which is one of my absolute favorite (FAVORITE) movies.

Cool trick: if you have Photoshop, you can download free "actions" that will enhance the color of your pics for you! Then you can look at the actions step by step and see exactly how it was done.

Check out the Amelie-ization of Lumpkin:

Before...

After....

And now for a close up shot!



Before...

After...

Pretty sweet, huh?

It makes me want to go take shots of downtown Pleasanton and Livermore just to Amelie-ize them. :) 

If you'd like to Amelie-ize your shots (I know, I'll stop saying it now), you can download the Photoshop action here.  To play with how dramatic the effect is, you just adjust how opaque you want the effect by adjusting the opacity % of the top layer (the one with the effect).

You can also find the actions step by step here.

There you go. Amelie-ize (sorry) away!

Update:  I played around with the first photo and upped the Vibrancy. I think it makes it much more Amelie.  What do you think...?

Nature Walk

We went on a nature walk at Sycamore Grove last month, during a rare slew of sunny days. I took a ton of pics of Lumpkin, including some really cute ones with her daddy. Plus one good shot of the Dumplin' when he was awake.

It was a great day.

You should click on this pic just to see the look on her face.

Poppy.

Hello blue eyes.

Yes, I'm taking your picture.

No, my shadow is not usually that lumpy. Lumpiness = Will + Bjorn

Lovely Linny Lumpkin.

The way she runs cracks me up.

Mr Beetle

Strolling with Daddy.

Exploring Nature

This one is my favorite.

Sigh.

Working opposite schedules from your husband who works a zillion hours and using every single favor you've ever earned/not earned from friends for child care every single week of your life and thus leaving you with ZERO possibility of date night, ever... well, it stinks.

It's no one's fault; it's just life in general. And as we all know, sometimes life can be tough.

I love my children. I don't get to see them enough as it is. It's another one of those no-win situations of being a working mom. And I'm forever grateful to the friends and family who help us out so I can work, so we're not in the poorhouse, who I can trust with my children. I'm grateful to have a good job with benefits, which is scarce these days.

So I don't wish to be ungrateful - I know it's selfish to ask for more - but the occasional night out (ie: more than once every 6 months - and that's not an exaggeration)... well, it would be nice. Especially when my husband had to work Mother's Day for the fourth year in a row.

I'm done. Sorry for the woe-is-me post... I feel better now. :)

PS. If you are one of those aforementioned friends with kids who have helped me out a zillion times and never let me reciprocate... CALL ME. I'm home almost every night and weekend as it is, and my kids are better behaved when they friends over. Truly.

April 2010

Some happenings of weekend domesticity around the house this Spring...

Hurrah for Mother's Day... and pictures!

Happy Mother's Day to all those wonderful mothers out there! I would list you all but then I would forget someone important and feel bad. So, I will only mention my own mom, who I adore. She's rad. We were supposed to see her later, but the poor Lumpkin has a fever, so instead I brought her some homemade coffee cake and strawberries this morning.

I wish my hubby was here - busiest day of the year for a chef - but I'm happy to lounge around with the kiddos all day and watch movies. In a (pretty) clean house. :)

And I'm looking forward to our makeup-date night and dinner this week. Date night! As two working parents who work opposite schedules, date night is a rare treat. I'm excited.

In other good news, I finally - finally! - was able to get my camera to download pictures properly. So I have a whole slew of pictures to share. Considering I was MIA on here for most of 2009, I'll post some oldies but goodies, along with current stuff, over the next few days.

For now, here's a picture of the kiddos that I love. It's SO their personalities. Pumpkin's looking silly with no teeth, Lumpkin looks so excited she may eat you, and the Dumplin' is just sitting there like, "Why you makin' me take a picture with these fools?"

Happy Mother's Day!

And, might I add, Happy Mother's Day to all those mothers who are raising children they did not birth - whether through adoption, marriage, or other circumstances, they are no less our children than the ones we popped out. We are all mothers, and we. are. awesome.

Respect.

PS: In case you think I am doing nothing for Mother's Day at all, I failed to mention that tonight's post-bedtimes plans include Mommy's (solo) date with a book and a bath. For real.

I'm In Love...

...with my beautiful baby boy. He's so lovely and healthy and fun.

Of course I have always loved him, but the first few months of motherhood are hard for me. I'll be honest - Dumplin, as with my other baby Lumpkin, was not really that much fun at first. Of course, we had our moments - the first smiles and coos, those "quiet alert" moments of staring and loving and learning. But spectacular as those moments are, and well worth the rest of it, they are few and far between. My babies are not good sleepers, good eaters, good anything the first few months.

Well, besides cute. I'm lucky to be blessed with gorgeous babies that get compliments left and right. Which is good, because I'm prideful when it comes to my family and would have hated to have one of those "Ohlookyourbabyisso... little!" kinda babies.

But I digress. The point is, both with Mr Dumplin and Ms Lumpkin, I spent the first 4 or so months extremely sleep deprived and depressed over breastfeeding problems. (I have strong feelings about that, but I'll save those for another post). Combine that with the challenges of going back to work during that same time period, and it's a rough ride.

But once they get past that stage, start sleeping better, start developing their personality, things are magical. And with Dumplin fast approaching 6 months old, that magical time is now. And, oh, how I'm enjoying it.

There are so many things I love about him:

• The fact that I his legs are so thick I can only fit my fingers around half of one.
• The fact that he wears the same size diaper as his 2 1/2 year old sister, due to said chubby legs
• The way he clings to me like a baby monkey
• The way his baby fine hair sticking straight up outta his head only adds to the monkey effect
• The way he laughs in that deep boy voice that sounds a bit like Butthead crossed with wee gasps of excitement (huh-huh-eee! huh-huh-eee!)
• The way he is SO eager to grow up - to move, to walk, to crawl, to partake. He wants it so so badly.
• The way he explodes into a smile when we look in a mirror, only to get shy and bury himself in my shoulder
• The way he buries himself in my shoulder, with his whole body and soul and trust
• The way his whole face lights up when he sees me, especially when I come home from work
• The way his eyes crinkle up when he's really excited
• The big pouty lip he gets when he is sad, and how I can make it go away

The list grows with each passing day. Last night I woke to his cries at 4am, only to find him half hanging off the swing (he's officially too big for the swing). When I got him out to change his diaper, he was in a rare quiet alert mood. He just stared at me, oh so peacefully, with those big blue eyes, a slight smile on his face. And stared. We just looked at each other for a few minutes, just staring and taking each other in, and I remember clearly thinking how I wanted to remember this moment. How I knew how fast it would be gone, how hard I would try to remember this moment a year or two from then, and how hard it would be to recall the details and the feelings. I know because I do it with Lumpkin now, and already it seems a lifetime ago. It's bittersweet... ultimately, it makes me more determined to blog more regularly because I want these moments to be recorded, to be shared, to be remembered.

All in all, that moment of connection just made me grateful for this wonderful spirit who has joined our family, and for the privilege of watching him grow and become even more wonderful.

Which is an attitude I will need to remember two years from now when he's running around screaming and destroying my house. Trust me, I know from experience.

Weirdest Celebrity Baby Names

ParentDish just put out a list of the top 100 Weirdest Celebrity Names. At first I thought I disagreed with the order they put them (Anais is wierder than Banjo or Audio Science???)... but then I realized they were just in alphabetical order.

Doh.

Check the list out here.

The good, the bad, and the sleepless.

As I write this, I'm listening to Will cry upstairs. Poor kid is already teething, and he sucks at getting himself to sleep anyways. And there goes Alinea...

Ok, I'm back. Whew. Success.

Having Will and Linny share a room is rough. As I said, he cannot get himself to sleep, plus he still wakes up a few times a night. Every night. A good night is 3-4 times. A bad night is 5 or more. And if it's before Linny is asleep, like tonight, he wakes her up. Sometimes it's vice versa. Yeah, my kids don't sleep. I'm getting desperate. I might have to go spend the night at a hotel or something and let Chris sleep train Will one night.

It's been one of those days. Today was Chris' first Sunday having to work again, which meant wrangling the kids at church alone. I'm grateful Chris is back at work again, but I miss him a lot. Especially on Sundays. Handing the kids at church by myself can be a challenge, but usually I do pretty good.

Unless, like today, it's just in the air.

You know what I'm talking about? Whether it's your kids, or a bunch of kids at daycare or at church, they all just have the willies, and one or five of them start crying, and then they all start feeding off it and they ALL just decide to misbehave? Well, it was in the air today. Not only were the Primary kids a bunch of monkeys, but Will would not sleep at all at church. Usually he'll pass out for a nap at some point, but not today. He was fussy even when I held him (that's the other thing - neither of my kids will fall asleep in my arms. Never have, never will). Plus, Alinea was in Dr Jekyll mode, running down the pews at church, making loud noises on purpose, screaming when you tried to settle her down. Sigh.

It wasn't really a terrible day, just exhausting. To the point that I'm going to wrap up this post in a minute, have some wonton soup, and fall into the welcoming arms of the pillows on my bed.

I want to end it on a positive note though. I was fortunate enough to attend the baptism of a new family tonight. Lara, and her daughter Chenoa, have been attending our ward for awhile now. Chenoa just turned 8 and I've been fortunate to get to know her in our Primary classes. Baptisms are always cool experiences, but tonight was just special. There were so many people in attendance that we had to move rooms, and cheesy as it sounds, there was a lotta love in that room. I just think about this new family and the journey they have been to get to this place, and hope they feel all that love.

It was hard to concentrate on the experience itself, having all three kids in tow at 7:30 at night (eek!), but I was fortunate enough to sit by a dear friend and her family who are always so amazingly helpful with the kids, especially Alinea. If they hadn't been sitting by me and helping, I don't know if we would have made it through the evening.

I know not everyone always understands my religious views and why I have them, but experiences like tonight have a lot to do with them. Obviously it was important enough that I hauled my three kids out to see it. But even with all that was going on, I felt really upbeat and happy afterward. I was glad they got to see the joy of this family, and share in that.

And really, isn't joy what it's all about?

And on that note, I bid you goodnight. My soup is calling my name...

Annnnnd we're back.

Soooo... I know. It's been awhile. But in my defense, was a rough year. A fantastic year, in many ways, but a rough year. Long story short, I was hugely pregnant juggling work and a toddler most of the year, my husband lost his job, and my car DIED on the side of the freeway in the worst part of Oakland when I was 9 months pregnant. We were fortunate to have a lot of friends and family to help, but there were a lot of depressing moments. And really, who wants to read about that?

BUT, as I said, 2009 was also fantastic in many ways.

By far the most important piece of news was that we had an addition to our family! So, without further ado, may I present William Emmett Walter Paquette, aka "the Dumplin'":

hello world!

So admittedly, this is a not a newborn pic. I will post those soon (along with a birth story). This was taken about a month ago, when Will was 3 months old, and it's one of my faves. Like all our kids, Will is all head! :)

Will has been such a blessing. I'll admit that having a third kid was really, really hard for the first month. Like all our kids, Will entered the world dramatically, doesn't sleep much at night, and, to my despair, absolutely would not get the hang of breastfeeding (not even after multiple lactation consultants). But he's such a sweet boy. I love how much of his personality has emerged already.

It never fails to amaze me how two kids birthed of the same parents, same genes, can be so entirely different. Linny Lumpkin is our wild thing, our hurricane, our Dr Jekyll and Ms Hyde. She's extremely intelligent - she knows all her colors, can count to 20, and knows more songs than Aden. And extremely verbal - she talks in paragraphs. And extremely cute - you should hear her say "I love you SOOO much!" It could stop wars.

And then, at a moment's notice, she's the devil child, screaming at the top of her lungs while hitting you, throwing things, slapping her brother for fun, throwing poop around her room (oh yes, she's a poop thrower!), and DESTROYING the house. At one point, I believe I had crayons on her closet, colored pencils on the dresser, markers on the table, and pen all over the couches.

(FYI, vinegar does wonders on microfiber).

And that's not even counting the numerous pieces of ruined clothing, or the fact that we chopped off her thick hair because it was constantly covered in dirt and snot and she would not, would not, let us even touch it, let alone put it in pigtails, or the Code-10 emergency that is Alinea when she wants an apple. Or Cheerios. Or Chocolate. ("Choc-o-late? Choc-o-late peeees? I need Chocolate! I need Choc-o-late right. Now! Chocolate! CHOCOLATE!!!!!")

In contrast, I can already tell Will is going to be our sensitive, thoughtful one. He spent the first 3 months of life staring at his siblings with a look that said, "this is my family?" The older he gets, though, the more he smiles - a huge, dimpled, fat-cheeked, Cabbage Patch smile! He's already my little lovebug. I absolutely love his smile when I hold him tight and we look in the mirror cheek to cheek.

He's going to be as active as his brother, too. We can't keep blankets in his crib at all - he either kicks them off entirely or grabs them and pulls them over his face in his sleep! He already tries to crawl when you put him on your tummy and since he was a month old, he's been happiest standing. He even starts putting one foot in front of the other when you hold him up by his arms.

It's amazing to watch them grow and see their personalities emerge. Even as exasperated as we get, I know Alinea's willpower will come in handy for her one day when she's facing peer pressure at school. And even when I'm exhausted from waking up with Will, my huge butterball baby that can't stop eating, I'm grateful for all the cuddles and smiles, and how his little fat hand wrapped around my finger calms him like nothing else can.

I think it's going to be a fun year. :) And I'm going to keep this blog much more up-to-date with our adventures in 2010.

Promise.