Ruby is cute

Man oh man, is she cute.

Just this bubble.
She feels deep. And mostly she feels happy.
She can get disappointed. And that makes her throw the stereotyped head thrown back, body on floor tantrum.
But that usually just happens a couple times a day when she gets told she can't eat my phone (or something like that.)

She's learning SO much right now.
She seems so much older to me right now, than I remember thinking Jasmine was at this age.
Probably because I'm more willing to admit she is as old as she is. But also probably also is kinda older because she has an older sister to teach her all sorts of stuff I didn't think Jasmine was ready for (being a first time mom, not knowing how smart kids are.)

She is definitely more into talking than Jasmine was.
She knows SO many words already.

I can't even think of them all.
And she tries to say so many more words than she actually has. Sometimes she gets time. Sometimes I can just guess them.
Here's a list of the ones I can think of off hand:

• Ni' ni'
• Mom & Momma
• Dada
• Nanana (Banana)
• Nanananaana (Granana-- My mom)
• She calls her pacifier "Dat"
• Ball
• Duice (Juice)
• Byebye
• Up (Which is said on repeat very vigorously)
• She says her name -- for the sake of this blog I'll pretend her Name is Ruby Gem, so she would say something like "Ra Ba Ja"
• Hot
• Boomboom
• uhhohh
• braba (Brown Bear -- the current fav toy)
• eee--ee (eat-eat)
• I think she's been trying to say Jasmine, but I'm not sure

At night time she loves to talk to me.  I take her in her room and sit in the rocking chair and nurse her. Then I sing Jesus loves me on repeat while she gets sleepy. (She knows the song from me signing it to Jasmine while I was pregnant. She doesn't like me to sing other songs, they make her wake up instead of get sleepy.) But lately she's been trying to chat with me. I think its because its really her only one on one time with me. She likes to just start saying ANY word she can think of and see if she gets a response from me. At first I usually try to ignore her so I can get her to sleep. But she always breaks me. I end up laughing and laughing with her. She LOVES to laugh. She loves to laugh with me. And I can't help myself. I totally see her getting away with stuff once she's older because she figures out how to make me laugh. (I'm gonna have to watch myself.) She loves me to give her kisses and nosey nuzzies. We have a good time together in the near dark before bed. Some of that time is me spending wishing I could get her down faster, because soon after I need to get her sister down, and I so would like some of my own time. But then she goes and makes me laugh again, and I forget that for a few more minutes.

She is obsessed with Baths and just seeing the bathtub, or hearing the water running, she starts trying to pull her shirt off. (Which is just her yanking on it and yelling "eeehhhhh aahhhheehh.")

She loves Jasmine.

Jasmine usually sleeps in til 8 or 8:30. Ruby likes to wake up around 6:30. Usually around 7:00 I have to start keeping her from knocking (aka pounding) on Jasmines door and yelling.

Jasmine is kinda hard for Ruby to play with right now because they aren't at the same stage and Jasmine just thinks Ruby is stealing everything (cause well, she kinda is.) But all that doesn't stop Ruby from really just cheering Jasmine up sometimes.

There will be moments where they will both just start cracking each other up. That might just be my favorite thing in the world. Especially when they do that in the car. 

She LOVES her daddy. She is such a daddy's girl. Jasmine still was sort of ambivalent towards Blake at this stage. But Ruby has been obsessed with her daddy from day one. 

I remember one night I was trying to get her to sleep and he got home from work late. She was almost alseep in my arms, but she heard his voice as he greeted Jasmine and Ruby sat straight up in my arms and yelled at the top of her lungs "DAAAAAAAA---DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA." I just laughed and set her down -- there was no sleeping at that moment. And she RAN down the hallway to him.

She is just so much cuteness. She's easy to get along with.

Dear Lydia,

When your kids are grown up and you are sitting on Facebook (or whatever there is in the future) or talking in person, to a stressed out new mom. Please remember this letter to yourself (written by you, currently a stressed out new mom.)

Dear Lydia,
DO NOT be the lady who says: "It goes by so fast." "I miss those days." "They grow up and leave you." "Just wait until they are teenagers." "If you think this is hard..."

Just say something nice.
Like "It gets easier."
"You will sleep someday, I promise."
"Its amazing to watch them grow up."


If you absolutely cannot help yourself from getting nostalgic, try to say it without the bittersweet edge of pain.
Something like, "I know its hard now, but I look back on those days with such joy. You'll get through them and they will so deeply enrich you."


I find nothing encouraging in hearing "It goes by so fast." "They grow up and leave you." bla bla bla.
It just piles HEAPS of guilty on top of my-haven't-slept-well-in years-(literally-years) head. It sounds like "Suck it up because this is as good as it gets. And you are missing it."


Also, on a related note:

Dear me right now,
I'm going to pretend I can look back in time and talk to you from a place where I actually get sleep without worrying I'll just get reawakened, and I can get some alone time, where I can spend 10 mins without people crawling on my body. I'm going to pretend that I actually know what I think I might just know.
Here goes:

Dear 30 year old Lydia,
I think you are doing great.
And you are right. You are not a small-person person. (We both know you love your own small-people to the ends of the universe despite the facts. But we also know that's not what I'm talking about.) You like babies. And you really like bigger kids who have logical means to converse with. But small people are definitely not your cup of tea.
And that's ok.
You are your kids cup of tea. And so even on the days where you are just pressing through with only the steam of your coffee in your way to hungry breastfeeding gut, they think you are going on so much more.  (Thats why they ask so much of you. They have no idea you are struggling. To them you are championing.)
You are doing fine.
When you get through this, you are gonna wish you didn't worry so much about if they watched too much TV, or didn't round out their diet enough, or had enough specified learning time with you. You are gonna wish you took more pictures. And wrote more poems. You are gonna wish pressed the baby's breath with the ways you like to remember. You are gonna wish you really lived.
You aren't gonna be mad if really living didn't look the same for you as it did for your peers. (When have you ever really been like your peers, anyway?) You are gonna be pleased that you made it work.
And oh how you made it work. Despite all the things you never saw coming, you just rolled with the punches. Yeah you whined sometimes. Yeah you cried. Yeah you ached. But you rolled all the same. And I am impressed. Standing back here and seeing where you were and where you go. You did good, kid.

Gown women with grown children can look back on their babies as babies with such love because they can see the grown up in the baby. And they just want to be able to hug their kids all day long again. But They really don't want to stay up all night. Just ask women who see movies about grandmas having kids the same time as their daughter (Father of the Bride the sequel) most moms will say, "I just wanna be a grandma right now. I want to send them home with mom at the end of the day." Its hard work momming small people. I think that's part of why God lets them grow up. So moms don't just burn right out of existence.
Its ok if you like that your kids grow -- guess what -- they will if you like it or not -- so you might as well like it! :)

Thats all for now --
because, actually, its still really 30 year old me writing -- and my girls are literally running around naked.

So hey -- older me -- just remember -- spread happy thoughts, not wistful ones. Wistful ones don't help anyone be happy, just worried. Happy thoughts help make happy thoughts!

Lydia out.

Jasmine is Cute

Jasmine has asked us if our next house can be blue.
I told her, "we'll see! We'll see what house God has for us." (I don't actually like most blue for houses, so I have my fingers crossed for no blue, but...we'll see!)
She's taken that as a yes.
So yesterday she was telling me about how she sneezed alot and had so much kleenex garbage. Then she looked up at me in all seriousness and said, "Mom...at our blue house, can I have a garabage in my room?...A real garbage? So I can throw things away."
Somehow I found this the cutest thing in the world. And I told her yes.
She responded with a deeply grateful, "THANK YOU, Mommy."


We are finally working on potty training.
She's been into Strawberry Shortcake.
She peed in the potty, just this little bit. It was making a triangle shape, so she yelled in sheer delight, "MOM! It's a strawberry shape!!"
Then every time after that, when she peed, she would pout that it wasn't a strawberry anymore.

{She's doing very good with potty training by the way. She was doing horrible, until I removed her diaper, panties, and pants. To which is responded by crying for a half hour about how she wants her diaper or panties, because now poop is just going to fall on the floor. Eventually after this cry fest (which she spent running up and down our hallway) I got her to sit on the potty and she peed in it for the first time. After that she's peed every time in the potty. We haven't gotten to poop yet because of poor timing for what we have going on in our schedule. But I think we'll get it soon. I'm stickin with the no pants thing until she gets a poop in there. Then we might go into big girl panties -- If she can assure me she doesn't think they are for going potty in anymore.}

Thank you God, for Blake.

I need your help to say it better to him more often.
But he is so perfect for me it is ridiculous.
I don't know another person who could listen to me explode in pain, rabbit running every which way, tripping back over the same roots in that forest, just to make sure they really got said, then run another trail -- wait, wait and wait on me. And then, Bam. Just karate chop the best wisdom I could never come up with (or believe without his voice behind it) right smack dab into the heart of where I really am without that silly rabbit.
In the past couple weeks, he has nailed it, like nailed it more directly than I've ever had anyone nail anything, in such a surpassing way I just have nothing more than to stop and say, "yeah." (And I don't like to just stop and agree. I like to argue it out.)
He has impressed me with those moments more than I know how to say.

And he is so good with the girls.
I never imagined a dad who loves so freely, so quickly, so unprompted, so untethered to his own self. He is both an amazing father, but also such a beautiful picture of you to me through his actions.

And he puts a purposed effort into saying good things to me.
I need your help to return that back to him.
My eyes roam for "more" and for "make it better" -- I forget to find the beauty where its at.
Help me, I want to love him better, like he loves me better.

I knew when we were dating, that I could trust him. I felt it.
But I had no idea just how deeply that would run.
To what extent he would stand steady and support me in my weaknesses. The ones I'd rather hide. The ones I'd keep from him if I could, but I get too weary too -- those ones are the ones where he shows me how fantastically beautiful his heart is. He never flinches. He just smooths warm salve on, and helps hold me so you can heal me.

I am a train

I am a train. Chugging along with the momentum I have. But not much more. The wheels being push-pulled by that fact I'm heavy with life already in motion. But I have no fuel.
I started putting Ruby to bed at 6pm and kept right on at it until 3 or 4 am. So many close calls, seeming like I might sleep too, but no. And Jasmine and her ears need to be calmed by his voice since my arms are full all night long.
And with those 4 hours of very broken up sleep I carry on. (Thank God they didn't think 6am was morning this morning.)
I wake up and feel hung over. The small voices hammering on my dizzy head.
But we keep going.

We are out of milk.
Milk is such a strange thing anymore. Cow milk, rice milk, mom milk (and a couple other's Jasmine doesn't care for like coconut) and all the roles they play. But we are out of cow milk. And despite the fact our girls can't have it, Blake and I still use it. And today when we are out of it I wonder about how that might seem to them -- buying a food that hurts them. But I think, "It's part of life, I will buy it."

I decide on a few other items we could get to make it worth our time. One being some special chocolate Jasmine can eat (Enjoy Life) because what is a life without chocolate? We are almost out of our stock. (She's so sweet, one bag has lasted what seems like a year, she hardly eats sweets.)

I put on some makeup, try out my new purchase, just to feel a little bit like I do have things together. But I wear clothes that feel like pajamas and I don't bother to wear something better than the nursing sleep bra I have on. Because, you know, it just doesn't matter.

We get to the store with some whinnying but less that I might expect on a day with so much exhaustion mixed with extreme heat outside. And we pick out a pink car-cart. (Those grocery carts that look like cars with two steering wheels are the coolest things -- I just always end up wondering, what if we have three?) And we get our stuff. Things are going so smooth despite the dark circles under my eyes, that kinda feel like back holes sucking my vision back in.

We get to the grocery line. There aren't many isles open. Three. One is express. I could qualify, but I don't feel like I should. Nothing is express with two small kids. I stay behind the upper-middle-age lady who's things on the conveyer look like a mess and it seems like I'll be in line too long. I don't even know why. I just resign, peacefully.
Ruby has had her fill of the cart just in time for me to load the conveyer, so I'll be doing it mom-muscle-multitask style. I get everything, including one of my pop (flavored seltzer water) packs. And before I can get the second one, an old man comes up from behind and reaches for it and says, "I didn't know you had something like that to pick up" and places it on the belt for me. I'm touched to my core.
And my wheels chug.

I wait my turn.
The cashier says to the women in front of me as she scans three boxes of butter, "This butter is such a great deal, are you making something?"
She replies, "Oh yes, lots of things."
There is a pause that makes me think, she's done talking.
But then she finishes, "My trees are producing so much."
The cashier asks, "Apples?"
"Oh yes, and pears. The apples are good. But the pears are fantastic."
"Oh I love pears."
I stop hearing them because those boxes of butter and me are already in her kitchen. I have no idea what she's really making. But I am in her cozy kitchen sitting on a stool next to a counter that is covered in pies and pastries. And I smell jam and butter cooking.
Its like a cup of coffee for my soul.
I see the sun streaming in her windows, and just a glimpse of the leaves on her wonderful trees just to the side of my view.
My heart heart feels it. My wheels chug again. Some day I might be her. Some day I may just take what's there with confidence and make it lovelier than it already was. An effortless effort that blesses someone else.

She stops.
She looks at me, and my baby in my arms, and my daughter squirming in the cart. Takes my eyes with hers, and says, "You have a good life."

One fourth of my right ear hears, "She doesn't know that you haven't slept in a month." But the entire rest of me is washed in warmth, love, peace, hope and gratitude. I smile. Unsure which voice my eyes agreed with. But my heart says, "You know it's true."

She turns to the cashier and talks about her two year old granddaughter.
I still battle inside myself to keep the truth. To keep the hope.
With each blessing she states, part of me is screaming out why she has it better than I do. And another part of me is dying to cling on tighter than life to the gratitude, and I pull it together enough to stay quite and listen. And get renewed.

The cashier asks how old they are. And tell her one and three. And she says, "Oh, so you are busy" with a gentle heart. I say yes, and "we haven't really slept in a while. She's getting four molars." And both women say things. Kind things. Things I don't remember. Because I was in a haze. But they gave me hugs with their presence. And I was just so grateful. I didn't feel like I was complaining, and they didn't feel like they were patronizing. It felt like this beautiful affirmation. It felt like this God-hug-blessing.
My wheels chug stronger and warmer.

As this wraps up,
the man who had lifted my pop, and had moved (reluctantly, as the cashier across the isle called him) to the express lane, came back. Spoke and moved in close, but it felt just right because I was still so hazy, it was like he fit into my tunnel so I could hear.
His eyes were light. Light blue, and light with joy.
And he said, "My son, that I acquired when I got married, and his wife just adopted four siblings." I stop his sentence with a "wow" that I mean with all my heart. People who do that are my heroes. I can't fathom going from zero to more than one at once. Especially when they aren't babies, because you don't have time to figure out who they are, they already are.
And he continues, "And as soon as the paperwork went through they found out they were pregnant! So now they have five."
His eyes are on fire with joy.
I shake my head with amazement.
I don't even know what that fully means to me. Because its just so much good.
My wheels chug.
The question I face whenever I get the two seater grocery carts, "What if we have three?" feels so soothed.
The fact that I don't sleep feels so trivial.
I suddenly know life is fantastic.
I suddenly know life means so much.
I suddenly know I'm doing something so much bigger than I can comprehend.
I suddenly know I have more in me.
And I suddenly know that when I don't, God will carry me through.

His eyes and her heart might just say in the front of my mind forever.
The gift of a strangers love.
All because I needed milk, and she needed butter. Foods they don't touch. But God moves bigger than that.

I moved so much freer the rest of the day.
And even in my moments of rocking Ruby to sleep while I couldn't help Jasmine to bed like usual. (Blake did and it was fine.) I found this place of peace despite my circumstances. (And what's more than my circumstances, was despite the sounds around me. I found some quite in my heart.)

It was so beautiful.

And just as I was laying back in the peace of that.

I hear Blake on the phone with our realtor.
And I can't exactly tell what's being shared. But it sounds good.
I just beam.
There is one one like our God.

Sleep Books...are not real life

I worried a lot about the "right" way to sleep a baby with my first born. I really wanted to get it right. Do it well.
And the funny part is, it wasn't for a sane reason. It wasn't so I could get sleep. It was so I wouldn't ruin her.
By the time I had my second, I could care less what the sleep theories said, I didn't believe in them anymore. And I didn't think I could ruin my kids as people because they didn't sleep a certain way.
And for the first 6 months of my mothering two, I didn't feel an ounce of mommy doubt on the matter.

That said, Ruby was born a fantastic sleeper. And Jasmine was feeling good and sleeping well at that stage.

Then....
Ruby learned to stand up in the crib, and there was no sleep theory to fit that.
She had already learned to go to sleep by then. And I mean like a major champion. Easy peasy. Nurse, lay her down awake, and out by herself. Didn't wake many times til morning. And none of that was forced. She just nailed it. But anyway, she had the "skills" to sleep.
But once she learned to stand, she was too busy to sleep.
And well, no solutions from any camp worked. She doesn't cry it out. I didn't believe moms who said that before. Because Jasmine would cry it out. I hated doing it, but we got to a point where we needed it and it took about 3 days (like books say) and then she was better.
But Ruby? Ruby can cry for a whole night -- and not once waver. And she doesn't seem to be more tired later to make the next night easier.
(Also, sleep books tend to operate outside the realm of what crying it out can do to a sleeping sibling -- read: wake them up too and get you a real mess on your hands!)
Ruby also didn't sleep in our bed after she learned to stand up. Too busy laughing and playing all night long. She doesn't sleep in a pack and play near us. She doesn't want to be bothered with this business of sleep. She's a smarty pants who wants to keep at all she is learning. And the only way to get her to sleep was by shear force of straight-jacket-arms in a rocking chair for a long stinking time, multiple times a night (because once she woke up again, she was back to standing.)
Eventually standing stopped being the marvel that it once was and things got easier again.

But sleep books never concede to teething. They always act like its all just pretend, they will still sleep if you do it right. That's the lamest thing I've ever heard. And I don't know why doctors and books say crap like that. Teething is like having the flu. And I know. I went to the doctor with a mystery illness when I was getting my wisdom teeth in high school, and they thought I had Mono. (Until the test came back negative and a wisdom tooth popped out.) They saw I was sick. It hurt so bad and messed me up so much I almost passed out at one point. Teeth pressing their way out of gums is rough stuff.
And Ruby isn't an easy teether. Teething is the only time she isn't happy. And She's very UNhappy when teething. And her mouth likes to try and get it all done at once. She tends to work on four teeth at a time. (Which may be why she's such a terrible teether.)

And...
another thing.
Sleep books just talk about babies.
And so you start thinking, well, if I just make it past that stage, I'll sleep again.
Sleep books don't talk about the time your two year old gets RSV and wakes up not able to breath in the middle of the night and how you will need to take her to the hospital.
And how that means for a year or more they won't have great lungs, so they will wake up wheezy for what seems like forever. (You can't sleep train that away.)
They don't address bloody noses in the middle of the night. You can't leave them alone with those.

And sleep books can have all the theories they like about when preschool kids get scared in the middle of the night, or just don't feel sleepy anymore at 4am, or worry about their teething sister at 3am, but none of those theories actually get me any sleep. Sleep training doesn't cure that. And family bed doesn't make it work. And nothing in the undefined in-between has really helped me.

My solution has been to tell Blake, "Once our kids are in school...our house will still look this messy, and I will still barely cook dinner, because I will be asleep all day, every day, while they are in class to make up for this madness."


Ruby is getting four molars right now.

I'm reading "Life of Pi", in the van on the way to Papa & Granny's house, the boat is sinking, he is losing everything, my heart has started to race. I hear Jasmine asleep but stirring in her carseat. I don't know how I heard it, over the disney movie in the back, the grown up music in the front, and my own imagination running away with the story, but I did. I turned around. She's asleep but her nose is bleeding. That first bead gathering, her head turning restlessly back and forth. The sight of blood in the midst of my story-driven adrenaline, sets me into hyper drive. I set the book down and try to unbuckle my seat belt, but in my furious state I cannot press the button long enough to release it. I slam the button. Over and over. Finally I am freed. I grab the nearest McDonalds nakpin strewn in the floor and press it to my target.
She cries so much when her nose bleeds. She gets so emotional. It happens so often. (I always wonder why, with that mom-love-fear-driven tense passion.)
She fights me of course. Pulling her just now woken up nose away from me. "Ow. Ow. Ow." (She says this every time I wipe her nose.)
Thankfully it stops bleeding fast.

Her face, and my hand, are smeared with blood.

I try to feel a deepness about that. Wrap my mind around love and life. But its really just messy. I really just need a sink.

She's awake now.
And happy.
So happy.
So so happy.

We are on our way to Papa & Granny and COUSINS.
She's been dancing in her car seat the whole day.
She's back at it.
Telling me how she is happy.
And why.
And that she "can't sleep in the car."
All these words, smiles and joy, with a face smeared in blood.
Such a strange sight to me.
I try to feel a deepness about it. Wrap my mind around joy and pain.
But again,
its really just messy.
I really just need a sink.
And I wonder, if we were to stop for gas if someone might think we hurt her.
But she isn't thinking anything but "hurray for this trip." Not a single solitary thought towards her state. And I like that. And I wish something more from that.
And I try to take some strength from that for me.