When A tree falls in the Forest.........

You know the rest of that one, right? The whole does it make a noise thing? Personally, I believe that of course it does.

I can also state with 100% certainty that when a tree falls in your living room, it makes a sound also. When it falls twice in your living room, it makes even more noise, and actual curse words too.

Friday we decided to get our Christmas tree. We had grand aspirations ~ we set off to go to the cut your own Christmas tree farm about 40 minutes from our house. Visions of kids prancing around a field of happy trees and picking one out to bring home danced in our heads. Only thing is, Julia can't prance, she can't even walk. And my back was hurting terribly for some unknown reason, which meant that I couldn't carry her in the sling. And Luke has no idea what a Christmas tree even is. And with the whole "fun" ride out to the fields on a wagon/tractor thing thing we couldn't bring the stroller. So.

About 5 minutes into our ride to the farm we passed a tree lot ~ you know the sort that pops up on every corner this time of year selling cut trees? Nate and I both turned to one another at the exact same moment and said "What the heck are we doing?". We turned the car around and let Luke prance around the cut tree laden lot and happily picked out a tree. We can save the whole "cut your own" experience till later. We are getting so practical these days with two young kids. Most days are about survival, not hallmark postcard moments and sugar plum fairies.

That evening Nate put up the tree while I picked up pizza. We got the kids to bed and then proceeded to wrap the tree liberally with lights, and put on the ornaments. I admit that I am a terribly sentimental and sappy person ~ almost every ornament that we have has a story behind it, and the simple act of pulling them out of the boxes usually makes me teary at one point or another. Especially the special, hand painted ones that were made for us by my sister, or the ones that we handpicked for our kids, or the ones from the year that we got married, or that we made ourselves as young children. You get the idea.

We finished. I proudly took a pic or two of our lovely tree (above) while Nate carried popcorn and water's up to our bedroom. We were exhausted. I went to unplug the tree, and it fell over. Crashed over. I screamed. It's a big, 8.5 foot tree. Water, needles, and ornaments went splashing and shattering all over our carpet. Nate came running downstairs sure that I was being attacked by a person, never suspecting that it might be a tree that attacked me. I started crying, and explaining how I didn't do anything, I didn't knock it over or anything, it just fell. I admit, the fact that I was unplugging it did seem to have to have had something to do with it.........but I swear I didn't knock into it or anything that would warrant it falling over. I don't think that Nate entirely believed me (I admit, it didn't look good ~ circumstantial evidence would certainly seem to indicate that I did do something terribly wrong) but Nate was kind, and didn't get angry, or bother assigning blame, and we simply got to work. It was probably a good 45 minutes of cleaning up, and me crying as I found broken ornaments, and getting up the water, and needles, and glass, and the like. We passed out in bed much too late, and were up again much too early the next morning.

Nate was gone playing golf most of the day yesterday, so we decided to wait and address the tree issue until last night. Sure that the problem was the old, small-ish tree stand that we had Nate went and bought a new one. Worried about some of the large, low branches, Nate cut them off. We had to pick the tree up (laden with lights and ornaments) and get it out of the first stand and into the second. Fun work, really fun. Stressful and pokey branches and sloshing water and heavy lifting sort of fun, you know?

We got it done. We noticed that the tree was leaning some, but blamed that on the much accursed stump. We rehung the 30 or so ornaments that had fallen off in the first crash. We vacuumed yet AGAIN. We sighed. We went to bed, again, exhausted. At some point, not long after we had fallen asleep, Nate heard a noise. Nate left the bedroom. I heard lots of cursing and shouting. I jumped up out of bed and started running down the steps ~ Nate hovered over the tree, which was again laying on the floor ~ shouting "don't even come in here!" to me as though he stood over a dead body and was trying to protect me from seeing it. A couple of my most precious ornaments were shattered. I have to tell you ~ at that point I had visions of gasoline and bonfires and crazed tired parents dancing around the blazing tree in some sort of foaming at the mouth insane victory dance. The tree felt like the enemy. I mean, WHO does that happen to? WHO can't get a freaking Christmas tree to stand up?

Us. That's who. Bah freaking humbug, you accursed Christmas Tree.

A feast

This is the face of a well sated baby.

A small gathering this year, just 11 including our kids.

Jules, going to town on her very first Thanksgiving day meal.

So Julia has her first Thanksgiving feast under her belt. She was the first to the table and the last to leave, believe it or not. She housed some turkey, sweet and mashed potatoes, beets, green beans, corn pudding and more. My girl loves her some food, and ate with a gusto. Luke was weird ~ he was just off all day ~ no nap as we were at Mom Mom and Pop Pop's and he apparently felt totally put out at the thought of being upstairs all alone sleeping while the rest of us made merry a floor below. So that was fun for Nate and I. It was a long day, but a joy to be surrounded by family, and fantastic food. Luke and Julia are about to welcome their first cousin on the DiLullo side ~ and we can't wait to meet the little surprise who is due in just a few short weeks.

Turkey Turkey on the wall

I was thinking about gratitude last night. I was thinking about listing out all of the things that I am grateful for.

I started to wonder how to do it without being terribly off putting. I started to think how in this age where 'everyone' blogs or emails or message boards or whatever, the whole "gratitude list" thing has perhaps begun to replace the socially scorned Christmas Brag Letter. So I decided to skip raving about all that is good in my life. I talk about my life, and my gratitude all the time.

Instead here are things that I am grateful for that are much bigger than me and my little niche in the world.

*I am grateful for our Country, imperfect as it is. I am grateful to have a place where I can worship as I please, raise my children as I please, and say what I please.
*I am grateful for our soldiers ~ and I have an entirely new found gratitude and respect and appreciation for the women who are married to those soldiers, and raising children and maintaining homes, and missing their husbands through long deployments, ~ their role is just as important as that of the soldiers themselves. The sacrifice that both make for our country is great, and appreciated.
*I am grateful that (some) race and gender barriers have been shattered this past year. While we are still a country and a world where true equality does not exist, huge steps have been made this year to move towards a more equal and just world.
*I am grateful for those who give generously of their time and/or money to help others. Our country is suffering right now, and more than ever it is a time to reach out to others. I am grateful that Americans do that, and only hope that we as a nation and as a people continue to do more of it.


I'm also grateful for the silly glue-stick-construction-paper-and-crayon-turkey that adorns my fridge, courtesy of Luke. I was thinking about how this Thanksgiving, no faces will be missing from the table of our family ~ immediate or extended. We actually have added one face courtesy of the arrival of sweet Julia. That is what I am most grateful for this year. Another year surrounded by the people that we love, a year free of the loss of loved ones.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my friends and family ~ I love you all.

Thanks

This morning I was thinking back to Thanksgiving a year ago. I was 6 or 7 months pregnant, with a 9 month old baby, and in the midst of selling two homes, buying a new one, and moving just 10 days before Christmas. It was a little hectic.

This year we have a son and a daughter, are all settled into our home, and are enjoying having no major life changes going on at the moment. I have a lot to be grateful for.

Would love to fill you in more, but there are pies to be made. My little gratitude list will have to wait till morning. In the meantime, the above pics illustrate how much fun little girls clothes are. I didn't know what I was missing shopping for boys clothes. Happy Thanksgiving eve all, may you savor all of the blessings in your life.

Snow Day

We awoke on Friday morning to a world awash in white. Now, I freely admit to being probably the least aware person in the world of what the weather forecast is supposed to be (I mean, who cares when you are a stay at home Mom with a roof over her head and infinitely flexible plans?), but I was totally shocked to see that it had snowed, and was snowing. Hard.

The storm seemed to be centered directly over our house. Literally. The roads in our immediate environs were insane, with accidents closing the road at both ends of our street, as well as the main roads near our house. It was nuts. We ended up with almost 5 inches of shocking, beautiful, lovely bright snow. I can't remember the last time that it snowed before Thanksgiving in this part of PA.

Luke was utterly enthralled with the sight of the falling snow, and kept pointing to the doors and windows yelling ~ "Know!!!!". When asked what color the snow was, he proudly proclaimed, "GEEN"! To me, it looked white, but whatever. Maybe he is artistic :) Jules didn't really seem to care about the snow, other than to love the way that it made the windows that much colder for her gnawing, gummy pleasure.

We bundled them up and took them outside to play all afternoon. Luke just laughed, laughed a lot. He also ate copious amounts of snow, proclaiming it " ooold".

Jules was so bundled in her snowsuit that I sat her down on the snow, she went to crawl, and fell face first into the snow as her straight jacket like snowsuit so encumbered her movement. Not kidding. The horror that I felt for her as I snatched her up was somewhat mitigated by the fact that I was laughing so hard, and so was she. Jules is one tough cookie.

I freely admit to being like a child when it comes to the glee I feel when I see snow. It just brings me joy. I loved sharing it with my kids. Apres snow play we came in for some hot chocolate and snacks, and then Nate and I went to the gym for some sauna/Jacuzzi/recovery from snow much fun time. When I had to pick up a wet Luke and a wet Julia I was holding well over 50 lbs. of squirmy child. Who needs to work out at the gym when you have two young babies? Having fun is fun, but having fun is really exhausting too!

Julia, Child

The world upright

So Nate is home from his trip to Europe. I survived a week alone with sick kids while sick myself, and Nate seems to have survived a grueling week of work.

All sarcasm aside:

Luke is officially 21 months old and Jules will be 8 months old tomorrow! Now that Nate is home life seems relatively easy (relatively). 21 months of age is like a cyclone ~ always moving, always touching, always climbing, always testing. When we have man to man on the two of them, life is good. When its me and the two of them I can say with confidence that this is the hardest stage for me yet in the whole "mother of two" gig.

Jules has gone through an identity shift. She is no longer "she who crawls on all fours", but "She who stands on two legs". It's a huge change. People make such a big deal out of crawling.....worrying about when their baby is going to crawl and comparing them to others, but I can say that for me, the biggest shift is the whole standing and cruising thing. It's not so much that MY life changes, her mobility/crawling changed MY life. But this whole standing and cruising thing changes HER life a lot. It's amazing to watch a child who three weeks ago had no concept of "the life upright" suddenly scorn the life of all fours. Anywhere she goes, she looks up. Anything she encounters, she tries to climb. Seeing her standing at the kitchen chairs/table/coffee table/couch/toys/steps/my leg etc with this look of utter joy and pride upon her face makes me happy. I can say that she entered this stage much differently than Luke did. For Luke, he crashed into this phase crazy early, and crazy hard. It was like his body was mandating that he do things that his brain was not yet capable of comprehending. It was bruise-a-poluzza 2007 last fall for Luke. Not so with Jules. She is careful, she has foresight, she has yet to go face first into anything. I am grateful for that. I try not to gender stereotype my kids. However.....if I was to dip my toes into the world of gender stereotyping, I would tell you without doubt that Luke did things bravely at this age, and Jules does them wisely. Interpret that as you will.

Luke is hilarious right now (except for the few moments every day where he is flat out gouge-my-eyeballs-with-a-fork-annoying, that is). Language has suddenly come alive to him in a new way. He is stringing words together in ever growing combinations and variety. I'm loving that, and shamelessly say that I enjoy the parroting thing for two reasons,

1. It reminds me to mind my language, which does not always come naturally to me.

2. It enables me to shamelessly enjoy teaching him new phrases. Right now the ones at the

top of the list are "Ma Ma's COOOOOOL", (yes, I taught him that!) "Heeeeeeeeeeey

Jules!" "Mom Mom and Pop Pop" "Ma Ma Da Da Jules" and Cock-a-doodle-doo just

makes me laugh every single time he says it.

He has also learned to cover his mouth when he coughs (and he is so proud of this new found skill that he often fake coughs just to show it off), and to blow his nose. Boy genius he is not, but only a mother can appreciate the singular joy of a child who actually stands still for and actively participates in the act of snot-clearing-out. I can also say without a moment of hesitation that Luke is exceedingly kind to his little sister. He kisses her all day long. He shares with her (Frequently to the point of annoyance ~ Jules and the dog flank the highchair these days with equal fervor ~ staring up at King Luke begging and pleading for him to bestow his sweet scraps upon them). He will go over to her and make her laugh many, many times a day. When he is tired he puts his thumb in his mouth and cuddles up next to her. Those moments melt me.

Tomorrow is playgroup at our house again, and luckily all of the sick seems to have cleared out of our home over the weekend. Winter is also upon us, it seems, as it actually snowed today in PA for all of 10 minutes. Dork that I am I made the kids go outside and I got excited enough for all three of us. Jules just drooled and Luke just was focused on pushing his Kettrike down the hill and belly laughing as it crashed topsy turvy into the blackberry bushes.

Not a good night.

Need I say more?

It is 12.30, AM. Luke has been awake since 10.30, after his usual 7.15 bedtime.

Luke woke up, crying hard, which he never does. I went and got him. He is suffering from the runny nose/cough/general malaise that is running rampant amongst the members of our home who are present in it at this time. We have managed to deal with it with lots of fluids and cuddles, and no medicine, until now. I gave him the appropriate dose of children's Motrin, assuming that the illness must be affecting his sleep. Brought Luke into bed with me. Now, we have a king bed, with no rails, as I am blessed (generally) with children who sleep through the night, every night, in their own cribs. Luke and I cuddled up, he, thumb in mouth, me, Luke in arms.

I was worried about falling asleep in the awkward position, but sure that Luke was moments away from rest-of-night-bliss.

I awoke to a funny noise.

I jumped out of bed, ninja style (of course), fully prepared to deal with whatever tragedy was befalling us.

The tragedy was Luke, awake, playing "Gasoline fight a'la Zoolander" with the bottle of Children's Motrin.

My carpet and bed are covered in Children's Motrin. The overwhelming stench of overripe sugar laden cherries permeates my bedroom. My fault? Yes. But I went to sleep at 10 pm. If I neglected to put the cap correctly back upon the bottle of Motrin on my bedside table in my shocked-to-be-awake-at-10.30 state, well, another motherly failing to check off.

My son is crying, and in his crib. Surely my daughter is soon to wake.

I could be in bed. But it stinks. And Luke is crying. And I can't help him. So I am down here, typing, where it will take longer to realize that it's not just Luke crying, its both kids. And I am trying to come up with a plan ~ Cause if I don't know how to contain a middle of the night awake Luke, I surely have no idea how to contain a middle of the night awake Luke and Jules.

So I sit, in fear.

It's going to be/already is a long night for me. I'm trying not to feel sorry for myself. I'm trying.

(Edited to add ~ It's now 1.20. Luke did wake up Julia. I first went and comforted Luke, yet again. I then nursed and rocked Jules, and she went back to sleep. Luke is finally quiet, presumably sleeping soundly, possibly running around the attic or basement or somewhere in his new, freakish, party in the middle of the night vampire persona. I am now so stressed out (and smelling that freaking horrid cherry medicine smell everywhere) that I am wide awake. Huzzah.)

Those Dreams

I had one of "those dreams" overnight. I awoke at 4:10 am sweating and trembling with my heart pounding and literal waves of nausea washing over me. In my dream, something that I dare not go into happened to Luke. Like most of them, it all happened in slow motion, and it was much too vivid. I don't have them frequently, but when I do, it usually leaves me rather shaken and emotional for days. I'm guessing all mothers have these? Anyone? The above picture is of me pregnant with Luke, blissfully unaware of the double edged sword that the love that you have for your child actually is.

My absolute definite for-sure most hated part of motherhood is the fact that my heart is no longer housed within my body. My heart walks or crawls around within the little growing bodies of the two creatures that I call my children. I admit to hating that. I hate the fact that I love my children so much that I am not only vulnerable, but fall-on-my-face-praying-to-God aware of the fact that I.Am. Not. In. Control. every single day. I used to love and crave the illusion of control. I needed it, and went to rather extreme measures to get it. Since having my children I am uncomfortably and permanently perched on the precipice of parenthood ~ the exposed and vulnerable and painful place of loving someone so much that when you really think about something terrible happening to them, you lose your breath. I can't dwell in that place. I can't. But, dreams like those serve a purpose, I suppose. Are they from God? Reminding me of how grateful I should be? Are they simple evolutionary tools to remind us to be careful? To pay attention? Are they rooted in evil, trying to make me afraid?

Whatever they are, and whatever purpose they serve, they scare me. They hurt me. They remind me with startling clarity just how tenuous this whole game is. I wake up every morning with the assumption that nothing bad will happen today. I pray that nothing bad will happen today. And when I end my day, in my exhausted daze, I all too frequently forget to be grateful that nothing bad happened today.

Today I read Luke extra books. I nuzzled Julia's big fat cheeks more. Today, at the end of the day, I am fall-on-my-face grateful that we are all happy and healthy and tucked safely in our beds, with nary a scratch.

Snuggle your kids harder.

(and to all of my friends who called or came by or posted after my last blog entry~ thank you. I need your friendship and I treasure it!)

A week!

This may well be the longest I have gone without writing in my blog since its inception.

Last week was a long week. The weather was horrible, the time change had me getting up with the kids between 5 and 6 most days, Nate was out of town for 3 days, and Julia got sick for the first time. Good times. My poor baby girl was so congested that nursing became an Olympic event of "suck suck suck GASP!" as she tried to figure out how to nurse and breath with her nose out of commission. She was frustrated, and so was I.

She is better now, and the wake ups are slowly creeping back towards where I need them to be in order to not be a miserable person.

Nate left today to go to Germany for a week. I already miss him terribly, and I have to say that I have some anxiety about the week ahead. We play great man to man in our house.........but long days with just me get tough, and tiring.

When I used to work for Citi there were oftentimes days where I felt lazy, or tired, or grumpy. Days where I wanted to email with my friends and ignore clients, and responsibilities, and meetings, and memos. There were days where I stretched my lunch to a healthy 2 hours, or skittered out the door early. I could always compensate on other days.

Motherhood offers no such luxury. It does not matter if I am tired, or grumpy, or lazy. My kids are always the same. They are very young, and need a ton of direction and attention and love every minute of every day. On days where I feel on top of my game, happy, energetic, my kids are easy. On days when I don't, they are really hard. Last week I had a lot of those days in a row. I hate going to bed at night and feeling as though I wasn't the best Mom that I could have been some days. It breaks my heart. I think that we all struggle with the idea of "Perfect Mom", even though we all may have different definitions of just who or what "Perfect Mom" is. I hate that I get down on myself for things that simply are out of my control at times. There simply WILL be food on my floor. There simply WILL be moments where I lose my temper. There WILL be spills, and stains, and crashes and bangs. There will be some tears, from the kids, and from me. And there will be days where I know that I wasn't necessarily the best Mom that I can be. Its hard for me to accept. I am okay with failing myself at times, but failing my kids on occasion simply breaks my heart. There are moments when I am trying to change Luke's diaper and Julia keeps crawling into it and Luke is wiggling around and the wipes are on the other side of the room and I'm suddenly sweaty and stressed and can't place Julia far enough away so that she can't crawl back to me while holding Luke in place and I simply want to scream. There are days where I run upstairs to put wash into the dryer, and come back down all of two minutes later and find my kids gleefully splashing in the dogs water bowl, and all of the dogs food soggy and swollen and grotesque floating around in the water dish. There are days where Luke decides that he needs to pee on the potty right NOW and the teakettle is hollering at me and Julia is eating discarded graham cracker she found on the floor and the phone is ringing and any shard of inner zen I like to think that I have is long gone.

A couple of good things did happen today. I started my day utterly devastated when I realized that my cell phone had fallen out of my pocket at the Eagles game last night. It sent me into panic mode, ~ with Nate going away I simply could not afford to not have a means of communication. Plus, my blackberry was almost brand new, and I would have to pay for a new one as insurance does not cover lost phones. I cried a lot this morning. Around 1:00 our house phone rang, and a man said that he had found my phone on the sidewalk last night. He said that he would overnight it to me. I cried with relief. Thank you, random kind South Jersey stranger man. Also, I got my new issue of Wondertime magazine today.....so I'm off to soak in the jacuzzi and read all about how I can be closer to "Perfect Mom" tomorrow.

Nate took the camera to Germany with him, so in lieu of new pictures, enjoy some baby feet.

Baby feet make everything better.

Halloween, ignored.

My naked baby and little lion nuzzling before bed.

The family M in front of a beautiful specially trained 1000 blossom chrysanthemum

Luke loved LOVED the train. Check out that face!

Luke, scaling Mt. Pumpkin

Yesterday was an amazingly beautiful fall day in PA. We headed out to Longwood Gardens to spend the afternoon outside. I have not seen Luke as excited about anything since the sand/water table at Meredith and Kevin's house as he was about the awesome outdoor train exhibit.

In case you are wondering where the token "Halloween pics" of the kids are.....we did a non traditional Halloween this year. We hosted the Halloween playgroup at our house last Wednesday, which Julia slept through most of and Luke ran around in his Lion costume for. After getting back from a LONG day of parading on Friday, I would have rather eaten glass than forced the kids into costumes to get outside for trick or treating. So, we bailed. Luke ran around for a while in his Lion costume, while Julia enjoyed some prolonged naked time (hey, its the last time Julia can simply have a "naked" costume for Halloween.....God willing, anyway) and I snapped a few pics before whisking my tired kids off to bed at 7 pm. We all were the better for it. Next year, kiddos.

Julia has given up her cruel and unusual 5.30 wake up stint and is now sleeping from about 7 pm till 7 am. Occasionally waking up once to nurse, but most nights sleeping through. I am loving my new found sleep schedule. Today was Daylight Savings Time, but the kids clearly forgot to set THEIR clocks back, so we were up at 5.30 for the day. Thanks a lot, Daylight Savings Time.

Parading Around

We did it.

We went downtown on Thursday night and stayed at the Marriott. Great decision, in retrospect. I have many friends who tried to take the train down on Friday morning, but got stuck standing on the platform as train after train passed them by, already filled to capacity. The paper estimated the crowd at 2 million people. It was insane.

The city was alive with a sort of optimism and cheerfulness that I don't remember ever seeing before in Philadelphia. We had a giant breakfast and hit the street at about 9.30. We had the double stroller. Jules fell asleep immediately, as per the plan. We tried to come up with a strategy about staking out a spot to watch the parade from. 2 Million people in the streets is a bit insane. We headed to City Hall, and staked out a spot right at the top of Broad Street. We essentially got trapped there at 10 AM. The parade was slated to start at 12. I felt a moment of sheer panic. A "What the hell are we doing" moment. A "oh crap I didn't think this through" sort of feeling. There was no going anywhere.....had we needed to get out for any sort of kid spaz out or emergency issue we simply could not. I remembered a couple of key things about myself that I never took into consideration in my desire to go to the parade.

1. I don't honestly like people all that much. Especially drunk crowds of shoving people.

2. I have the Mama Bear instinct ~ A LOT of Mama Bear instinct. I am the "mother most likely to get in a fist fight if I feel that my child is threatened". Not proud of that, but its true.

Anyway. Some deep breathing got me through a wave or two of anxiety, and the clock started ticking towards 12:00. There were one or two moments of shoving or pushing as people tried to get through, and I felt tense, but they quickly passed as it soon became impossible for anyone to get into or out of the area where we were standing. When Julia woke up I put her in the sling, and she was in heaven grabbing at strangers hair and pulling off their hats. Luke was a champ, he had one or two moments of outrage at the fact that he could not run around, but got over it pretty quickly. The people around us represented both the best and the worst our city had to offer (we had a Dr. from Penn behind us drinking beers after her 18 hour shift had just ended, and a whole contingent of Kensington folks lighting up blunts and chugging beer right next to us.........and I am thrilled to say that everyone got along splendidly. Everyone was happy. Everyone was kind. Everyone was family, yesterday.)

The parade got a late start..........but our spot was fantastic. We got to see the Philly Phanatic, all of the players, and the view down Broad St was something that I will never forget. Julia was actually nursing AS the parade went by (My babyhawk is the coolest invention EVER for allowing me to do this in a gigundous crowd of people without a single person noticing). People were hanging out of their office windows, waving signs, throwing ticker tape. It was a beautiful, cloudless warm fall day in PA, and Broad St. was simply a sea of red, a giant ocean of humanity. It was awesome. Luke watched the parade, laughing and clapping from atop Nate's shoulders, Julia nursed and slept through most of it, and we felt a rush of euphoria for being there, for doing it, and for enjoying it along with our kids. So many things aren't necessarily "easy" to do with children. But I want my kids to be adaptable, I want them to experience life, even when it isn't necessarily easy. I want adventurous and brave and spontaneous kids.

Yesterday was a great adventure.