Important Lessons

I read things all the time that I think about sharing, I really should just start of runner of article links in my sidebar (which I now have).  But this was too good (and hit way too close to home) not to share (original source).  It wasn't until I dealt with infertility (and loss) that I realized how my life up to that point had prepared me for the strength that I needed to get through it, and I wish there was a way for everyone to have the strength and wisdom that comes from a life of struggles, you know without all the struggles, but that is not how life works. 

Embrace the hard stuff that finds you, it is what makes you stronger and better than you were before.

#6: Everything is a MIRACLE

When a Dream becomes a Nightmare

Will you be my neighbor?

My older sister Emily and her husband Joe are currently battling frac(k) sand mining companies from turning their dream house into a nightmare, by becoming a neighbor and beginning to mine, process and haul the sand used for natural gas fracturing.  When they first moved back to Wisconsin 14 years ago after three years together in central Illinois, they moved in with my parents, found and bought their 40 acres in the country, and started building their "forever house".

This began a very long journey, since they did much of the work themselves.  My sister had helped work her way through grad school in IL, where she'd followed husband #1, by designing kitchens at a big box store.  She designed the entire house herself, w/no professional plans, her blueprints were reviewed by an architect who apparently had no changes.  In the early years, when I'd visit from Chicago, I'd do fun things like stain miles of woodwork.  It's an open-floor plan green and ADA walk-out ranch with clever features like radiant heating in their hardwood floors and a playhouse connecting their kids' Jack and Jill bedrooms.

It was six whole years after they started, after I got engaged, that they would finally decide they were done enough to get pregnant.  The fact that their marriage has survived is some kind of miracle, though her relationship with my dad, who helped them on the house in the early days, unfortunately did not.  She's been estranged from him for a dozen years now.  Ironically, her plans were/are to live like him, off the land (w/an enormous garden, chickens, etc.), and to some extent off the grid.  This part of the state actually looks like Kentucky (since it was missed by the glaciers), lots of rolling hills (great for sledding) and lovely curving country roads.

We have a bit of an odd relationship Emily and me.  We are very different, I can't even list all the ways.  We really have little in common other than that we are family.  She was particularly awful to me when we were trying to have our family, and not because she was building hers, it was just a continuation of much of my interactions w/her, and all I can do is shrug at her intentionally getting pregnant with her #4 the week immediately following my news that our twins had stuck, and that she chose the day my grandma died (when we all returned home from the hospital) the next month to announce that she was expecting again.  For someone surrounded by people who avoid the spotlight, she sure does fight (god knows who) for it. 

So when she called me recently and we got to talking, it was actually the first time she'd told me herself about what was happening to her life as she knew it.  DH had heard about the mines via family at Christmas, but only through the grapevine and we didn't know the status of what was happening.

Coincidentally, what they needed in their fight to keep the mines and the sand processing from filling their (and their children's) air with carcinogens, their dark country sky with 24 hour lights and noise, and narrow roads with sand trucks was my dear husband.  They had been unable to secure a transportation engineer anywhere in the state (or even nearby MN) to analyze the situation and testify to the impact the mines and the transport would have on their little rural Amish buggy community because the industry had tied them all up (w/retainers and conflicts), so that they would not have any opposition to their plans.  The proposed mines, processing, and conveyors are directly next to and across from their home, land owned by people who obviously don't live on the land.

Tonight they and DH are all up in the north woods fighting "big oil" (her words, so who knows she may someday go back to progressive from ultra-conservative...), and their bid for a permit to proceed with the mines.  My mother not so secretly hopes they end up just cutting their losses, as they would have/choose to if the mines break ground, and move to the city.  With frac sand mining in full force, the sandy soil in that area of the state now makes any undeveloped area at very high risk to being converted to a mine.  Crazy stuff, stay tuned...

 

Update:  Well, the news is good!  They are another one of those very rare red dots above.  Hopefully the county will stick to their guns... :)

Accidental decor project

A few weeks ago while the kids were at school, I went to our local Goodwill store to raid their kids' shoes.  A colleague of DH's is traveling to Honduras for Engineers without Borders (yes, that's a thing) and she said the kids there are always in need of shoes, and I found exactly what I was looking for.  Coincidentally the kids' shoes were right next to the athletic equipment, and some vintage wooden tennis racquets caught my eye. 

I had previous pinned this pic (from Lonny, design by J+G Design) as a cute, but not a planned, idea for a kid's room (though this is a SoHo "bachelor pad").

So I decided to pick up the racquets ($10 for all four, which is nuts given what I've found they go for on CL and eBay) and did a mini 1/4 installation in Alistair's room.  Mine is offset to accommodate the top one with a shorter handle.  He walked in the first time he saw them he said "WOW!".  I guess that is all you can ask for, right? ;)

Last week was spring break and as it goes around here, the kids both fell sick.  Some weird on again off again week long puking virus, that hopefully has left for good.  My kids are awesome in their own bed sleepers, but somehow the floor looked better to him last week.  Poor little guy.

We went to Lake Geneva last weekend and upon leaving the Grand Geneva, Marielle threw what amounts to a tantrum for her.  She wouldn't get off the lobby floor.  Might as well take a pic then.

Work is underway on their big kid rooms, I can't believe how big they are getting.  I'm buying 3Ts (to wear now!?), they are all signed up for summer camp, preschools for fall, and we're already looking at three year old programs.  Slow down kiddos...

The Fear of Autism

So if you are anything like me, you read a lot about Autism lately.  Diagnoses are up and it seems to be parents' greatest fear, at least among those afflictions that can't (yet) be found before birth (Did you know that over 90% of Downs babies are never born?).

I found the latest article about the real risk factors they have found (that likely interact with genetic predisposition) to be very interesting.  From The NYT...  

It makes me so angry (and that is putting it mildly) when I hear about people (especially celebrities, who have a dangerous combination of undue influence over the uninformed and being so themselves) touting that they've decided not to vaccinate their children due to their fear of autism.  You may have heard that a particular Chicago athlete and his ex-reality show wife went public recently with their decision not to vaccinate their infant son (and presumably his younger brother, yet to be born) because they are "afraid of autism."  They'd be better off focusing on pregnancy spacing...

 

Now besides the fact that there are no credible studies that vaccines cause autism, there are many that show vaccination can prevent contraction, transmission, and therefore the side effects (including disability, disfigurement, sterility, etc.) and death by preventable diseases.  I'm not here to promote autism as a fabulous thing, I have a sister with intellectual and physically disabilities (caused by Williams Syndrome, a spontaneous gene deletion, which coincidentally is sometimes described at the "opposite of autism" because of extreme sociability) who lives w/my mother at 44, but it doesn't seem to me to be worse than death by preventable disease.  But it seems like there are people who think and therefore act like it is, which makes me sad.  

Part of life and becoming/being a parent is dealing with challenges that you may not have foreseen and wouldn't necessarily choose for yourself/your child.  It also makes me sad that people make choices for their children (or themselves for that matter) that at made from a place of fear, rather than knowledge.

Spring is Coming

It's been awhile, but thankfully the weather has finally turned and we've been enjoying spending more time outside.  Unfortunately, Alistair took a spill on the sidewalk and scraped up his nose, but it's almost completely healed now.

We made our annual trip to the Sugar Bush Fair, which thankfully was notably warmer than last year.  We all had a great time, and we are looking forward to making a tradition of it.

Checking out the teepees...

Shoveling the last bits of snow...

Happy Spring and St. Pattie's Day! :)

What do you watch?

Have you fallen into the House of Cards rabbit hole?  I've never done drugs, but that show is like (what I'd imagine) crack (to be like).  It probably doesn't help that it is so easy to binge, since Netflix releases the whole season at once.  And I'm a political junkie, though after working in a Senate office, I decided it wasn't the life for me.  I'm merely a spectator now.

We are also looking forward to the return of Newsroom and Vice (both HBO), and the final season of Mad Men (over the next two years on AMC).  We're also fans of Big Bang Theory (ABC), Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown (CNN), and Downton Abbey (PBS-hello shortest season ever).  That sounds like a lot, but we don't watch them all and we're often doing other things.

Unlike just about everyone my age and younger, I can't stand reality shows, though I would probably watch Idol tryouts if they brought those back.  Way too funny.  I started watching Girls (HBO), but it got to be so annoying, I just couldn't.  Probably a sign I'm getting old.  DH also likes True Detective (HBO).  Our DVR works overtime, as you can see.  We put our kids to bed at 7 (and they sleep 12 hrs.), so it gives us a few hrs. to unwind...

A Cape Nanny Diary (and more parenting lessons)

A big shout out to the twins who are 26 months old today! :)

When the winter gets way too long, I can't help but think about summer, and often that leads to the three summers in the late 90s I spent living and working as a nanny on Cape Cod while I was in college, as they were pretty formative for me.  I did keep diaries, but I didn't write a best selling book. ;)  But I probably learned more there that has been useful in life than in any other time/place (and not just how to sail and eat a lobster).  It was more of an education than a job really, thanks to the many people I met there.  The job broadly was carting kids to golf, tennis, sailing and swimming lessons and then laying on the beach, enjoying Nantucket Sound.  Rough, I know.  And now that I'm a mom, I look back at all of it in even a new light...

The first summer, I moved there to work for/live with a family (I'll call them the Potters), who lived in Wellesley Hills (near where I was going to college) but "summered" in Hyannis Port, a summer haven to the Kennedys for nearly a century, while the husband stayed back home and worked during the week.  They were my age now, with a daughter and son, who were seven and four the first summer I spent with them.

Lori had listed their position with the college, and I answered it when I determined I didn't have the resources, easy connections, or honestly the burning desire (can you say burnout?), to support a high powered professional internship all summer, but I would need to work, as I always had, to come up with my required contribution to my second year's college expenses, which were substantial.  I had no desire to go back home to WI to work for the summer, as I had before, so I figured a job that included room and board out East would be a good idea, and I had years of babysitting experience and awesome references.

Plus, I thought it sounded fun to spend the summer on the Cape, which I'd only visited once, and a welcome respite from my very busy schedule at school.  I was then in my first year attempting (to varying levels of success) to balance being a lab science major, with rowing crew competitively for the first time, working on campus (and in the '96 NH primary) and trying to have some sort of social life at a women's college.  Don't laugh.

 Rowing on the Charles

Lori and I hit it off right away when I went to their cozy white colonial near campus to meet for the first time.  They'd just bought their sprawling Cape home two years before (after she'd nearly died of meningitis) and their much loved previous summer nanny had apparently moved on.  Her husband, Ron, who was as big and blond as she was petite and brunette (she's a doppelganger for Jenny Sanford, he for a sober Ron White), and as being a hockey player would suggest, and since he worked very successfully in medical equipment sales around Boston, she left her "good job" and focused on being a traditional SAHW/M to their two adorable kids.  They'd originally planned a large family, she was the youngest (and a twin) of six, but she'd had difficult sickly pregnancies, so they'd packed it in after two.

Allie is now a BC grad, and works at an ad agency in Boston (sound familiar?).  Corey is finishing up at St. Lawrence...

Where does the time go...

Lori cooked and cleaned and sewed liked a fiend (I don't think she had help other than a summer nanny, which for her was as much about status as anything, and why she didn't have an au pair like nearly every other family there) and loved to throw herself into photography, decorating, and her extended daily work outs, even more than parenting really (the kids often complained about how little time they got to spend with both their parents).  They were basically right out of central casting and The Preppy Handbook (a copy of which she kept in my room).

  

The very first day I spent on the Cape, after driving down with the three of them (and their yellow lab) in their old school/woody Jeep Grand Wagoneer (above from TH), included lunch at "the golf club" (where JFK and Jackie had their engagement party) and a stop at "the beach club", where that day I met the scion (and Potter friend) who would later become my first serious boyfriend, and first proposal. 

HP harbor from his porch

Early during that first summer, I also met the Croydens (also not their real name) at "the yacht club", which is really just the simple town pier (above) that you see in just about every Kennedy picture ever taken in HP (this is where the razis would hang out every weekend, all summer to get a glimpse of someone, back in that day usually JFK Jr. (may he RIP) or the Arnold, going sailing).

Forget Taylor Swift, '96-'98 were the Carolyn years, here w/Friday the dog

Shannon "Croyden" had gone to Smith (so we were both of the seven sisters) and met her husband, Drew, a Stanford swimmer, when they were at BC Law.  Shannon was a few years younger than Lori, and unlike her had grown up summering in HP, like many, if not most, families there.  Shannon's family started and runs a MA based food company, which started to sell salad dressing from the family's steak house in Framingham, to now bottling for Newman's Own and having a huge retail and food service business.  There's a lot of money in salad dressing apparently.

She and Lori weren't good friends, but the story goes she'd called Lori to get my number after the first summer, and I started babysitting for her growing brood in their Newton house during the school year.  This apparently really annoyed Lori, though of course it was her doing and she didn't use me during the school year anyway.  Though apparently it was not enough to not have me come back for a second summer (after I'd gone home for the summer, I then drove all the way from WI to HP to rescue her and her kids from my apparently mentally unstable and brief replacement).

***

I loved the Potters (even w/all her neuroses), and they were all big fans of mine, so I probably would have gone back to live with them for a third summer, but by then I'd transferred to BC, was taking summer school courses in Boston (to graduate on time due to said transfer), and had an apt., job, and BF in Boston.  Not exactly condusive to a full time/live in arrangement.  But I was working for the Croydens during the year a lot, she was not shy with help, and from the first summer she'd gone from one baby to three.  She'd left her big firm job to stay home, had a young Mexican au pair live in to help, and whenever she went out, which was often and even sometimes when she didn't, I would help with her brood of tinies as the second sitter.

The third summer I actually ended up working/pinch hit parenting for the youngest of her four brothers, whose newly ex-wife had apparently had a life crisis and left their children to move to LA to find herself as an actress or something.  Like many men in HP, her brother worked out of town during the week and wasn't exactly a hands-on parent.  Their daughters were four and seven, and as I'm sure you can imagine, we're not in a great place emotionally after being "abandoned" by their SAHM.

"If you bungle raising your children, nothing else you do well matters very much..." -JBKO

Sailing off of HP

It was all very sad actually, I guess that is why I wanted to try to help them for as much of every week as I could get down to the Cape, usually at least 4-day weekends, while they had local girls fill in when I was back in the city.  And Shannon thought I'd have extra insight since my parents were divorced when I was about their age, but there are some problems no amount of insight, help (and money) can solve.  We all lived in her parents' summer house on the harbor in HP, until she bought the place across the street late that summer.

That was by far the most challenging summer, and by the end I'd lost a bunch of weight I really didn't need to, had come down with mono (the after effects still w/me 15 years later), had a cancer scare, and was growing tired of the Croyden clan.  The last weekend of the summer, the extended family were all off to Nantucket for Doug Kennedy's wedding and Shannon left her au pair (who was soon returning home) with no money, no formula for the newest baby, and no way to get any (since she didn't drive).  I, of course, helped her out with the money and a ride and then when I moved to a new place in Brighton at the end of the summer, I never looked back.  Some people just have their priorities too messed up for me to deal with constructively...

Doug and Molly Kennedy getting married in Nantucket

 (and not a hungry baby in sight...)

So sometimes I worry about becoming these kind of mothers.  Not that I think I am now, but I don't ever want to ever be.  So detached or otherwise consumed not even by work, but obsessed with what I consider nonsense (social climbing, your appearance, etc), as to forget that children are more than an accessory to some kind of greeting card life.  Anyone else ever feel like this?

And having been a beloved nanny, it sets the bar really high for what I'd look for in someone for our family.  Oh and there's the whole "I might be a little over-protective because I can't successfully conceive, carry, or birth my children without extreme measures and them nearly dying."  Oh yeah, there might be that...

We've been through a lot together, the kids and me, that I'm having a hard time bringing an outside person into our little circle as much as I know I need to.  I know I need to work (even more) on this, and I know they are only two, but I've given up most of my life (willingly) for them, and I think I want/need to try to reclaim a bit more of it.  Finally.  

But that means giving up some of the control that I lost in those three years waiting for them, that I've been reclaiming the last three in my complete undivided devotion to them.  But the reality is, I don't know if they need me to be there as much I need/ed them to be.  Know what I mean?  Any tips on getting past the dread of dealing with help?  I met a mom of triplets (plus one) recently who I could relate to when she said she skipped help so she wouldn't have another person to look after.

We've booked our Cape vacation and in looking for houses to rent, found that my friend (Australian au pair) Annette's cottage, well actually Lori's friend Julie's rented place, around the corner from her is for rent.  Ah, the cape life...

HP/1996