Yearly Archives

2014

getting ready for baby

Too many tiny humans

I’m 16 weeks out from THE ARRIVAL of one baby Theo and it still feels a little bit surreal. I’m mostly a picture of calm but I get these “WHAT HAVE I DONE??!!” moments where I start to panic a little about having 4 kids and it’s been happening with increased frequency as the EDD draws nearer.

That’s normal right, moms with 4 kids?

It took me a while to get used to having 3 and for the most part, it already feels like we’re getting overrun by an army of tiny humans.

I still remember what it was like when Truett was born and we were reeling from the shock of having ONE teensy weensy little baby. That first day we brought him home from the hospital, he screamed all night in my arms and we felt like our entire universe was falling apart it was all WOE IS ME please make him STOP CRYING ouchies MY BOOBS ARE FILLED WITH ROCKS and THIS IS THE HARDEST THING I’VE EVER HAD TO DO.

And then there were two and everything got…so much worse. Post natal depression? It hit me so hard that there as a time I thought I’d never walk out of it. I had 2 babies to feed, twice the amount of diapers, and what seemed like 20 times the amount of shrieking going on at any given moment.

2 years later, we were crazy enough to go for a third and now, we’re a couple of months away from welcoming a fourth. I suppose you could say that things escalated quickly.

Am I ready for 4? Between you and me, I feel like I’m way out of my depth. But looking back at every point of having (more) babies, I never really felt like I was ready until it happened and I found out that I was in fact, as ready as I could ever be. Ok, so there were (too many) moments where I could barely keep my head above water and I ended up drinking in more water than I would have liked to but that’s how we level up our kungfu skillz.

Besides, I have these adorable tiny humans to make up for it.

kids

picture perfect

Just a shy guy

just a shy guy

One, the husband is going to slaughter me for posting this picture on the blog because deep down inside, he’s just a shy guy who doesn’t like the spotlight (we’ll get to that in a minute) but it’s too good not to share so in the spirit of compromise, I’m (reluctantly) cropping out most of his gorgeous face and delicious muscles.

Two, artistically speaking, the focus and aperture and composition for this photo ain’t great but it’s one of my all-time favourites because…

Three, I look at this and I get a glimpse of my two favourite shy boys. Recently, baby Finn has taken to burying his head in his father’s chest whenever he meets new people, it’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. And I know exactly where he got that from because that is the same look his daddy had when we first started dating. He’d be all confident and suave in a large group but when it was just him and me, he’d look at his shoes nervously and I’d see those same eyes.

Four, that chest sure looks comfy.

And five, smooth-talking casanovas are overrated. If you ask me, shy guys are the very best kind there is.

side effects of motherhood

Always baby burritos.

“Mom! Can we build a fort, please please please?”

I made a quick mental calculation: set up time – 20 minutes, dismantling time – another 20 minutes, effort required – in the region of far too much. I glanced at my to-do list and nuh-uh, fort building was out of the question today.

“Um, how about another time? Hey let’s do some colouring instead. Here’s a bunch of crayons, knock yourselves out guys.”

***

“Can I play dress up with my princess Belle dress?”

This particular dress was a colossal pain to wash by hand and the odds of her spilling chocolate milk on it or getting ink stains on it or getting it ripped while tearing up and down the house were a gazillion to one.

“We should keep it for special occasions, sweetheart. If not, it’ll get destroyed and you won’t be able to wear it anymore.”

***

“I’m bored. Shall we go to the playground?” Truett asked.

Out of nowhere, his sister’s voice replied, “I don’t think so, kor kor…mommy’s busy. Maybe another time, ok?”

OUCH. In the scheme of awful mom moments, that was one of my worst.

Right then, I realised that I was turning into one of those parents who said no all the time. In my head, I had super important valid reasons for the each no and I even tried to disguise them as maybe laters but they were really just a whole bunch of big fat NOs. I was busy and anything that was too messy or time consuming or required too much effort had a default NO attached to it. Worst of all, the kids were catching on.

There’s value to kids learning that they can’t get what they want all the time but it’s like moms are given a bag of NOs at the start of the day and these should be used wisely and sparingly.

Me, I was blazing through my bag of NOs faster than I knew how to replenish them. And since they weren’t the sort to throw a hissy fit when they didn’t get what they wanted, most of the time, they’d just walk away with disappointment all over their little faces. At the rate I was doling out NOs, it was probably a matter of time before they knew to stop asking for my attention and company completely.

I needed to start turning my NOs into YESs. Yeses? Yesses? Whatever the plural of yes is.

I looked at my laptop and then I looked at the kids who had turned their attention to making a human burrito out of a very bewildered baby Finn and it was suddenly clear which one of those things was more important.

Burritos. Always baby burritos. And then we would play dress up and build a fort and maybe even squeeze in some time for the playground.

baby burrito

side effects of motherhood

My baby’s home!

Airports are just about the happiest places in the world.

Because this.

i've missed you so much

Tonight’s the night Tru comes home and we’ve been counting the hours since we got up this morning.

Then we got to the airport and it was all so dramatic – Kirsten saw them walking from afar and started jumping and waving and yelling “KOR KOR!! CAN YOU SEE ME?? KOR KORRRRRRRR I’M HERE!!!” Finally, he did see her and there was some running and lots of hugs and too many kisses and happy faces all round.

kids

My world is complete again.

Finn

Puzzle time with Finn

This is baby Finn, my nerdiest baby by far. In his free time, he likes to read books and fix puzzles and build abstract lego structures.

puzzle time

And it’s not like we don’t give him non-nerdy toys either. Truett has a formidable stash of toy cars and trains which he used to spend hours playing with but Finn doesn’t quite get what to do with them. He’ll roll them around for like all of 3 seconds and then he’ll be like “pffft…this is so lame. WHERE ARE MY PUZZLES???”

I get such a kick out of watching this geeky baby work on baby puzzles over and over. Moms are totally allowed to do that.

So I’ve got these boxy shelves from Ikea and yesterday, I heard baby Finn yelling STUCK! STUCK! from the vicinity of my Ikea shelves. I ran in to discover this.

finn

Clearly, he’s taking the whole puzzle thing a bit too far. He managed to fit himself into one of the cubes and didn’t know how to get out so I did my mom thing and rushed to um, grab my phone for a photo.

PS. He’s since figured out how to get himself unstuck.

PPS. This is his new favourite hiding place. By hiding place, I mean super obvious spot where everyone pretends not to see him.

 

Kidspeak

6 days is too long

Truett is off for a 6-day adventure in Taiwan with my mom and I’m already missing him to bits.

But based on a a little conversation I overheard last night, it seems like the one who misses him the most is his best friend/baby sister.

bffs

Kirsten: Kor kor, when you go to Taiwan, will you forget me?

Truett: Of course not! How can I ever forget about you? Anyway, it’s just 6 days, not forever.

Kirsten: 6 days is SO LONG! And you’ll be too busy having so much fun…and eating ice cream…and going playgrounds. I’ll be so bored when you’re not here, y’know!

Truett: Don’t worry, I’ll think of you all the time, that way I won’t forget you ok.

Kirsten: Ok, I hope you’ll come back soon, like tomorrow.

Truett: What? Tomorrow is too short! I’ll be in Taiwan until next week but I’ll bring back something super special for you, you like Frozen right? I’ll ask grandma to find an Elsa dress or something.

Kirsten: *squeals and goes in for a giant hug* I’m going to hug you all night and never let you go!

***

This morning, she woke up all teary-eyed and her first words were “IS KOR KOR GONE? I DIDN’T GET A CHANCE TO SAY GOODBYE TO HIM!”

To cheer her up, I brought her out for a surprise outing to watch Mr Peabody and Sherman after school and when we were done, she said “That was great! Promise me you’ll bring kor kor to watch this when he comes back, he will love it so much.”

I’m so glad they have each other.

pregnancy

Things to be enjoyed about being pregnant

I’ve made it past the halfway mark for this pregnancy (hello, second trimester!) and I think for the first time since November, I’m starting to have a bit of fun with the pregnancy (as much as one can enjoy being pregnant, I suppose).

Maybe it’s because I know that this will be the last time I’m ever going to feel the tiny flutter of a baby’s little dance in my uterus and I’m feeling a bit sentimental. *The husband says there’s no need to be sentimental because hey, maybe #5 will be a girl and we should consider maybe going for it but… 1. looking at our track record, it’s far more likely #5 will be a boy and 2. until he grows a uterus, there will be no #5.

I’m still mildly nauseous and the heartburn is setting in plus I’m starting to look/feel like a whale but there are things to be enjoyed about being pregnant and these are some of my favourites.

1. Feeling the baby move. 

Biological? Maybe. For me, it’s possibly the best part about being pregnant. Usually, I’m going about my day and it’s turning out to be all kinds of stressful and then I feel the baby do a little somersault inside and it always makes me smile.

2. One word: BOOBS. 

Pregnancy boobs is like God’s way of making up for the year or so of trauma that follows after the baby is born, no question about it. Besides, this is the biggest they’ll ever be so I say milk it (sorry, that was impossible to resist).

3. Happy hormones.

Mood swings kind of go both ways. There’s having to learn how to manage the downs, which can be a bummer but there’s also the happy hormones that are just so full of happy. I guess the one good thing about a fourth pregnancy is being better equipped to bask in the happy hormones.

4. Nice hair.

Not really a big deal for some but I’ve had to deal with crazy hair all my life so in the 9 months that it stops and listens to reason, I’m going to throw a party and celebrate.

5. #WIN

Being pregnant is like having an all-access automatic win card. These days, I don’t even have to think of logical ways to explain why my argument is better. I simply point to my stomach like it’s a magical orb of awesomeness and the husband has to make nice.

###

On a semi related note, the husband was applying anti-stretch marks oil on my bump (I have a thing about oily textures on my hands) and the whole stomach rubbing episode must have seemed really weird to Truett, who was watching intently and finally, he was like “what’s that for?”

Kirsten immediately said “SO THAT MOMMY’S STOMACH WON’T GET SO SUPER FAT, JUST A LITTLE BIT FAT.”

There has to be a universe where that’s a compliment so I’m going with it.