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.