To Be or Not To Be... Frustrated, That Is

So I did post something for today, but a) I didn't write anything besides the title... and b) I set it up yesterday to post today. Does that count? Hmmmmm.... Maybe not. So I'm going to actually write something.

Today Adelyn turns four weeks old. The past couple days I've been hovering between getting frustrated and willfully ignoring that temptation. With that four week birthday I've been hoping for a return to a routine/normalcy, but I have to keep telling myself that normalcy has changed... if not forever, for a VERY long time. (Recite to self: "It is normal to not get things done with a newborn. It is normal to have a messy house.") Part of me tells myself to just relax and let go. The other part says, "Why are you blogging while she is asleep right now? You should be folding laundry. Or at least getting out of your pajamas."

I've had enough experience having kids that it's not like I expect myself to be going full throttle and have a perfect house and a routine organized life with a four-week-old baby. By this point in my parenting experience I am actually very well-adapted to adjusting my life to a child's pace: taking advantage of little openings to get things done when they come and accepting interruptions the rest of the time. But I often lose my calm and get frustrated when things get to the point that it seems like my life is one continuous interruption: interrupted sleep, interrupted meal, interrupted phone call, interrupted thought, interrupted sentence, interrupted feeding.... It seems like my daily life comes down to a balancing dance going between interruptions from Jackson and Addy: feed Addy while trying to verbally coax Jackson into his high chair; try to quickly get Jackson to bed before Addy wakes up and starts crying (or end up trying to rock/read story/nurse all at the same time); fold laundry before Jackson can dump the folded piles; change Addy's umpteenth diaper then run to pull raisins out of Jackson ears; blog until Jackson starts pressing the delete button and trying to close my laptop (happening as I type now...).

I understand that this is part of life -- no, this IS life-- at my current stage and I am willing to accept that. Jackson is at a stage where the daily endangerment of his person (and our household electronic equipment) is a simple unpleasant fact of life. I just do my best to rescue him or at least mitigate the risk from him standing on the oven door, destroying the DVD player, turning on the garbage disposal, walking on the counter, climbing into Addy's baby swing and so forth. (Did I mention that he got out one of my crystal goblets from the china cupboard up high the other day? That kid...) Adelyn is at the stage where she pretty much needs to be held or nursed most of the time-- and if she doesn't, she needs to be protected from Jackson's attention and love. But what if you are a person that craves order and control and completion? What if having a clean and orderly home makes you feel peaceful and happy? What if you would like to have an uninterrupted moment sometime before 2015? How do you avoid going crazy?

In a slightly different vein, yesterday I was actually feeling quite skinny. My stomach felt downright flat. I was so excited about this new development that I made the mistake of actually measuring it. Don't ever do that four weeks post-baby. (In case you were wondering, my waist was 1 inch smaller than my chest used to be in my post-Camryn skinny days. Whether that says worse things about my waist now or my chest then I will decline to comment on.)

Which brings me to the post-baby weight frustration... between Jared and Camryn (and Dave =]) I put on quite a bit of weight, so after Camryn really worked hard and lost it all, getting down to skinnier than I was in college. I eventually leveled out a few pounds higher, but it was still a really good, healthy weight for me. Then I had Jackson and never lost the last 10 lbs. with him. Now, having had another baby to add to it, I am much closer to where I was when I started losing weight after Camryn than where I was when I finished. That is really frustrating. I know I'm not even to the six-week point yet, but it still pretty much stinks. Don't you think you should get some kind of heavenly weight-loss reward for having babies? Too bad it doesn't work out that way. I'm eating healthy and having lots of vegetables, but getting it off is so much slower than putting it on.

So I'm at that lovely stage where almost none of my clothes fit: maternity tops are way too big, regular jeans are way too small... regular tops will be WAY too small for as long as I am nursing. But of course, I spent almost all of my weekly budget on Monday... buying vegetables so I can eat healthy and fit into my clothes again. GRRRRRR!!!

Now, of course I can just choose not to be frustrated. Weight gain is part of childbirth and with time and patience I can lose it. Looking fabulous doesn't need to be the focus of my life right now. Having a clean house doesn't either. Jackson will outgrow this stage eventually (right????) and Addy will outgrow the newborn stage faster than I want her to.

My phone just rang and I could not find the phone because Jackson had been playing with it. I could hear it ringing, not more than 5 feet away, but I could not find it. Finally after it stopped ringing I used the handset finder to locate the phone. I finally found it only 2 feet away from me... inside the Raisin Bran box, of course. (Of course!) That just kind of summarizes my life right now. But I can choose not to be frustrated. After all, a Raisin Bran box is a perfectly logical place for a phone to go... at least to a two-year-old.

Mystery and Mayhem

I am back at the library checking my email with Jackson pulling my hair, trying to escape the observation of the mean library lady that Suzie Petunia encountered. No, my computer did not die again. My laptop was stolen yesterday. Yes, stolen. From the office inside the master bedroom. You might think that I misplaced or lost it, but I use this laptop like a desktop-- it always sits in the exact same spot in the office off the master bedroom. The wireless is spotty, so I leave it plugged in to the ethernet. So no, I did not misplace it. It is officially stolen.

In good news, for those of you who haven't heard, our house finally sold and we close tomorrow. Yesterday movers came to move the remaining furniture that we used to stage our house to the new house. So after a 5 month dearth of places to sit, I have furniture again!!!

The movers were supposed to come about 11:00 am. So at 10:30, you would think that I would be madly picking up the house or clearing space in the garage, right? Well you might think that, but I was on my laptop in the upstairs office, checking facebook and tweaking with my blog (this is why I remember that, yes, it was in the same spot it always is). The movers called and said they were going to be late, so at 11:00 I left and took the kids to a friend's house to be babysat and headed to the old house to supervise the operation. They got there, without tools to disassemble the bunk beds or play structure, but despite my slight irritation, a trip to the garage at the new house fixed that problem. Taking apart the play structure took forever, but at about 2:30 we took over the truck and started unloading, leaving a few outdoor things to take in a second load.

After giving the movers the quick home tour (there's the kids room where the bunk beds go, that's the master bedroom- we aren't moving anything in there) and pointing out where things should go, I went to the kitchen to make chocolate frosting for Jared's birthday cake. You see, I in my infinite foresight and scheduling capability, set Jared's birthday party for the night on the same day that the movers were coming to transport our furniture to the new house. Yes, I am a bright one.

So they went about their business and I went about making chocolate frosting (incidentally, I accidentally doubled the cocoa and discovered that this improves the quality of the frosting immensely). When they were done, we went back to the other house, they loaded the outdoor stuff while I got the kids from their friend's house and we came back home. I paid the movers and then commenced to clean like a maniac to get ready for Jared's party. I bribed Jared and Camryn to play with Jackson and keep him entertained while I removed enough Cheerios to feed a 3rd world country from our kitchen floor. Connie came over a few minutes early and at 5:55 we were running out the door to Safari Sams.

For Jared's party, I had him invite a handful of friends to Safari Sams for 1/2 off night. We were not an "official" party, because I am too cheap for that. So we went "unofficially" to 1/2 off night, got 1/2 off admission, 1/2 off pizza and a bunch of tokens and then went back to our house at 8:00 for cake, ice cream and presents. I noticed that the front door was unlocked-- not too surprising considering that we were running out the door so we wouldn't be late for our own party. At about 8:30 everyone left our house, so I sent the kids upstairs to get ready for bed and went to the office in the master bedroom to nurse Jackson and check my email. I walked in and there was a noticeable bare spot in the 2-foot deep mess on my desk. "Wait a second, my laptop isn't here." I looked around, but didn't see it anywhere. Then I started to panic. I quizzed the kids: "Did you touch my laptop?" before it occurred to me that they had been gone all day and when they were home they were playing with Jackson or at the party. While I quizzed the older kids I realized that I had left Jackson- who now crawls- in my room with the door open. I ran back as fast as I could, but got back just in time to see him rolling down thae stairs screaming. Luckily we have carpeted stairs and the stairs have a landing 1/2 way, so he didn't roll that far and he was OK. But, I was traumatized by it, as if I wasn't traumatized enough by my laptop being stolen out of my master bedroom. Where was my husband? Why did we not install the gate at the top of the stairs when we knew Jackson could crawl and he loves to go for the stairs whenever he gets a chance? Oh yeah, Dave is in Austin, Texas on a business trip. At least that rules him out as a laptop-taking suspect.

After recovering from Jackson's fall, I tried to recall the events again. Nobody at the party went upstairs. I ran around to check the house, but nothing else was missing or appeared to even be touched: the plasma TV, the Wii, the DVR. My wedding ring-- I had taken it off because of a rash so it had been sitting in the jewelry drawer of my dresser. I ran to check, but it was there, untouched. There was no sign of anyone breaking and entering. The only thing gone was my laptop.

I called the moving company and the supervisor told me that all his guys are clean, have worked for him forever, etc. but that I should call the police and have them check it out. So I called the police and sent someone over. It turned out to be our old home teacher, who is a police officer. He checked it out and filed a report. I called Dave to see if he had the serial number for the laptop, but we had it kept on the computer (yep, we're smart). We should have it on our backup hardrive (which incidentally was sitting next to the computer but they didn't take), but I can't get into that without a computer.

So here I am, back at the library, getting mauled by Jackson on my lap while I sit here to vent. I think one of the movers took it: they had access to the upstairs for at least an hour, I was in another room busy with something else. Sure, someone could have broken in and left by the front door, but why did they only take the laptop? I can see not taking the TV because that is big and hard to move, but why not the Wii? (Maybe because the Wii was in the same room that I was in the entire time.) I just think it is weird that there were no dumped drawers, nothing disturbed or missing, except for my laptop (which, incidentally, is three years old and not worth all that much anyway--- except to me!!!). Grrr.