Real talk time.

I’ve spent the past month or so doing some big time soul searching. I can’t be the first one who works in healthcare to experience a “caring fatigue” of sorts where sometimes just giving so much of your time and energy to a stranger begins to wear on you to the point where it feels like you have nothing more to give to the people in your life outside of work. Adding on a little sprinkle of pandemic into my work environment has seemed to amplify the stress that often bubbles under my surface during a shift because all of a sudden not only am I worried about caring enough for my patients and still having some leftover for my family and friends, but now there is this concern of increased risk of exposure to an illness that could hurt myself or someone that I love. Then there have also recently been some extraneous to work factors in my life that have been causing me a great deal of anxiety – to the point where my normal (terrible) coping mechanism (ignoring the problem) failed – for the first time ever. After one too many nights with no sleep caused by my own brain and not screaming babies a realization bomb detonated inside of me – this is MY life. What am I doing wasting time and energy on things that are causing me pain and anxiousness? I’m a people pleaser at my core, and really do get enormous joy from helping others, and accommodating others – usually even at the cost of my own comfort or time – because of how great it feels to be someone that people can count on. But the downside of this is that I’ve found that sometimes chronic acquiescence results in chronic demands without consideration of my own needs or wants. I know I’m not alone in the feeling that sometimes I am getting pulled in so many directions I don’t have any time to consider what is best for myself… Something needs to change and I am done making excuses for things, situations, and people. I am here to tell you that I am no longer in the business of making excuses for, or accepting the same excuses from anyone or anything. My new mantra is “boundaries” and it’s gonna be a steep learning curve for me but there’s no student loans needed for learning how to stand up for myself so I guess I just became an eternal scholar.

Ok, enough about that! I’ve reached out to a number of people and resources for helping me get my mental health in check and things are on the up and up. Plus pumpkin beer is back in season, so nearly all is right with the world again. Besides all the problems in the world right now.

Despite our best efforts to remain “safer at home” we have found ourselves insanely busy this summer. We’ve been some of the lucky ones that have had good timing and quick results getting Covid tested which has alleviated a little bit of the worries I have about leaving a trail of nurse germs behind us whenever we go anywhere but we’ve largely avoided anything that isn’t outside/only with family and gently declined invitations to do many things with friends that normally would be events we looked forward to. Thankfully, many people are very understanding about our cautiousness, and frankly for anyone who isn’t – that speaks  more to their callousness regarding the health and safety of others and has nothing to do with us. This strange year has been such a good opportunity to examine and evaluate components of our life, and we’ve found that we are pretty blissfully happy with nothing other than time spent with our kids and each other. What a wonderful thing to realize. Hoping that when we look back at pictures of us during our year #5 of marriage and see all the ones of us “smiling” with our masks on we feel grateful for what this year helped us see. And more than that I really hope that we can look back on this time without sorrow and loss, as this crazy virus continues creating absolute devastation for so many people across our country and globe. Take care of each other. Wear your mask. Don’t look back on this year with regret. Oh and while I’ve got you here, black lives matter. 

Moving on:

The babies’ babbling has been turning into more and more actually decipherable words and phrases. Just the other day I sneezed and Sasha clear as day sang out “Bless you”! She is definitely the chattier of the two and will straight up hold conversations with us talking in full sentences of gibberish. Spencer still mostly prefers to grunt and whine but when bribed with treats and trinkets will parrot back plenty. His main objective in life is to crawl onto anything he can find and has been getting stuck in their toy shelf in baby jail daily. I am shocked he hasn’t crawled out of his crib yet. Probably just jinxed that OOPS! He seems to still be as clumsy as ever and is usually sporting some kind of facial injury. And bite marks, as Sasha sinks her little baby rat teeth into him whenever she isn’t getting her way.

Olivia has discovered that the babies will basically do whatever she instructs them to which has been fun to watch. They absolutely listen to her better than they do me so it is hilarious to hear her boss them around and them sitting and staying to commands like properly trained dogs. Unlike our actual dog who continues to torment me daily. It was like a little light-bulb lit up one day for Olivia realizing that Sasha and Spencer are also people and not just hunks of moist play-doh covered in drool and cracker crumbs that distract Mom and Dad from her constantly. In the car she will inform them of things and plans and schedules and sometimes I’ll respond to her thinking she is talking to me and she will immediately snap, “I’m not talking to YOU, MOM”! She tries desperately to get them to “play” the way she would like them to – favorite games being “check them up” with her “doctor ship”, “reading” to them/being teacher, and playing with dolls but she is the one who gets to hold all the dolls and they are supposed to just watch her… that one doesn’t usually last long and often ends in Spencer pulling her hair trying to get his hands on “his” doll. They are all obsessed with their baby doll’s diapers and like to wave their dolls up in the air saying “poop” so I can change the diaper and they can all crouch around me watching intently to see if poop did actually come out of the doll for once. Same goes for actual child diaper changes which is absolutely a spectator sport and the rapt audience will comment “poop” or “just potty” depending on what is discovered. Also getting a peak at Spencer’s “peanuts” is always a crowd pleaser. Despite our attempts to get Olivia to sleep in the other bedroom upstairs so that she could get some of the extra sleep she desperately needs more of in the mornings vs the early wake up calls delivered by the twins, she loves sharing a room with them and refuses to sleep elsewhere. One weekend morning we snuck the twins downstairs when they were up early as usual so Olivia could sleep in and when she woke up she panicked and called us upstairs wondering where the twins were crying – “I couldn’t see their little heads!” So sweet. But the result of this is that she is exceptionally crabby most mornings being woken up so early. Oh well. I’m sure some day she will be stomping around like a tiny blonde dinosaur demanding her own room and space. 

Olivia is curious about everything, as is demonstrated by her commitment to offer nonstop commentary or pose questions on every aspect of every part of every day. We are constantly in awe of her impressive and relentless vocal chords. Wish I could  channel one little bitty iota of that energy into like 5 minutes of my day. By the time we get them all to pass out at the end of the day I usually manage about 7 minutes of a halfhearted attempt to wipe up the destruction left after their group feeding before I collapse face first into the couch, not even bothered by the dog hair that poofs up like a cloud around me as I make contact with the cushion. Seriously where do they get their energy? It’s certainly not from a nutritional diet. Mad props. Olivia recently discovered that people in her life have names other than “mama”, “dada”, “nana”, etc and likes to run through a list of her favorite people’s “other names” daily because she is seriously tickled by this. She was just getting used to the idea that my names were “mama”, “mom”, “mother”, and “Rosie” when one day Gates called me “babe” and she stared at him wide eyed: “What did you say?! Why did you call my Mama ‘babe’?!” And then days later she crawled on my lap and asked if she could call me “babe” lol she is a hoot. 

 

We’ve been trying to make the most of the good weather on my days home with them exploring parks, zoos, trails, beaches – basically anything that gets us outdoors but keeps them contained in their wagon. I’ve only attempted one off leash experiment solo once – inside the goat pen at the Racine Zoo where I knew they would be fenced in. Immediately upon their liberation, all 3 shot off in different directions with Sasha instantly headed towards the nearest animal she could put into a loving chokehold and screech into its face at, Spencer off to try to climb up onto a goat, and Olivia desperate to get near the other children also in the enclosure because “those are my friends”. (They weren’t). I kept a maniacal smile plastered on my face during the entire situation as not one but two separate zookeepers gently scolded me about not letting the children abuse the animals as I sweatily tried unsuccessfully to keep them corralled. I plan to keep them contained in public for a little while longer after that super FUN time. 

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This summer was exceptionally good to our garden and we had an abundance of tomatoes and cucumbers especially. The tomato plants even kept growing and producing after a particularly strong wind storm tipped half of them over, bending their cages. I’ve got tomatoes roasted, pureed, and frozen taking up about half of our deep freezer just itching to be made into chili and sauce. I haven’t quite gotten up the courage to attempt to can anything yet but I started experimenting with refrigerator pickles and found the perfect and easy recipe. Pickles and pickles rained into the arms of unsuspecting friends and family for most of the months of July and August as I desperately tried to make use of all the cucumbers. I also was able to donate garden vegetables to the community fridge that opened in Milwaukee which was super cool. The corn is all harvested, the herbs are done, and the peppers are just about finished too but we’ve still got tomatoes upon tomatoes ripening every day I can’t pick fast enough. What an awesome problem to have. Already planning the garden for next summer!

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My mom gave me one of my favorite books from childhood recently – Rosie’s Babies and I had to laugh about how true that story came for me.

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Little boy/girl rodents who run out to the garden alone and make me angry? Check.

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Constantly eating apples? Check. Although Spencer does tend to eat the core, seeds included.

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to read this delightful and whimsical tale to the apple eating children yet because it is a real book with paper pages and they are on a bit of a book ban due to some very violent ripping incident that resulted in one very distressed Olivia and now an entire page of Corduroy that we have to make up the words for. Naughty bunnies.

It’s been months since my last blog post yet I can’t think of really any more updates… I guess that’s 2020 for you – time passing eternally slowly yet flying by, while nothing seems to be happening yet everything must be. Missing friends and family, wishing upon stars for vaccines, waiting for whatever’s next, and hoping for something big in November. Stay safe and well, friends!

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And finally,