I really and truly probably reflect on this at least once a day. Sometimes before bed when things are finally quiet (and I can actually hear myself think) and sometimes right smack in the middle of a toddler tantrum during the day. In that moment, I'll think about taking a step back, trying to slow myself down, hell -- slow everyone down around me because let's face it -- in just a couple short months my youngest will turn one and as each day passes I am that much closer to having THREE toddlers on my hands. So the word SLOW doesn't exactly describe the current activity level in my household. I try to slow everyone down, including myself, but it's impossible. It's just freakin' impossible.
February 11th. My last blog post. The last time I was able to find the time I needed to sit down and unload an emotional dump onto the internet (which is such a weird thing to do in the first place but hey you gotta do what you gotta do to keep yourself sane, I guess). I mean seriously? It's June for christ sake. But then I got to thinking about what it is about my life currently that makes everything so crazy, such a blur, so hard to stay on top of or feel any sense of "sit back and smell the roses" kinda feelings.
And then the amount of shit that has happened in addition to the daily grind since February all started to come into view:
Heart Awareness Week ended on Valentines Day -- a week long reflection on my daughter's CHD, her best little heart buddy's CHD, all the things we've been through to safely get her to being four years old and going to preschool. And all the other heart warriors who continue to fight for their lives, struggle through surgery after surgery or are born every single day and start this journey from the beginning all over again.
Valentines Day also marked the day my brother and his fiancé closed on their new home together. They are starting a brand new life together with a limitless future ahead of them with all the ups and downs I am now looking back at. I never want to be that older sister who is so frayed at the seems that it's hard for me to even remember let alone acknowledge that sense of amazement when you first start out and that undeniable feeling that this is the beginning of the rest of your life and you are so in love and excited for all the things to come that you sincerely feel a sense of magic. Because it is. It is magic. And kind of that circle of life stuff. You get me.
Our six year anniversary was Saturday, February 22. And leading up to this day a very close friend of the family was dying of cancer. Amidst the craziness of my husband gearing up for his busiest time of year (tax season) and the day-to-day insanity that the three kids bring - we ignored the horrible New England weather and made any adjustment necessary in our schedules so we could be with this family (who is quite literally a part of our own family). We wanted to be with them and there for them as often as we could. When she was taken to hospice on Friday, we made sure we had a sitter on Saturday so we could head up to see her. We held her hand and told her stories that made us all laugh, we told her how much we loved her, impressed upon her the impact she made on each of us (not to mention all of our children), how much we were going to miss her and just how hard it was going to be for us to let her go. Unbeknownst to any of us that afternoon, she passed away with her family and us at her bedside. We weren't just worried about how we were going to let her go. We literally witnessed and experienced the very act of seeing her leave. When you watch someone you love who has given you countless amounts of advice about how to live, how to be, and how to get by in the world -- because she's been there -- because she knows & has that kind of life experience -- when you watch them go right before your eyes and in an instant you realize you are left behind to keep forging ahead without their priceless advice and counsel -- and when you painstakingly watch your closest friends lose their mother right in front of you and there is nothing you can do to fix it for them....in that moment, I was in awe of just how complicated and just how simple this whole thing really is. You come into this world in a split second and you leave in one too. It's all the stuff in between that's as amazing as it is awful.
Digging out from the emotional wrecking ball that was Anne Marie's passing was hard. It was hard to watch the people closest to you in pain knowing there is nothing you can do to make things right. It was heartbreaking to see the grandkids suffer the loss of their grandmother and all the missed moments and memories that still could have been if it weren't for the cancer. It was harder than I expected to let go of our youth and our memories together and to watch sons and daughters have to grieve the loss of their mother while still having to be mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and spouses all at the same time. Everyone is wearing multiple hats during this phase of our lives. When we suffer our own losses we have the added responsibility now of navigating that loss with our children. We are moving into that time of our lives where we are losing our parents and our bond with our friends and their kids becomes even stronger as we become surrogate families to one another. This next stage of our lives will undoubtedly be filled with stronger bonds with our friends than we ever could have imagined at one point -- and yet the loss that has to be suffered by all of us before we get there is great. It sucks. And once again, it's as amazing as it is awful.
March 4. Haven's 4th Birthday. Another reflection of how life goes on. And when it comes to Haven -- each year in the life-goes-on category is huge. If we being reminded daily of how just how lucky we are isn't enough -- you can imagine her birthday is a full-on-blow-your-mind event when as we are singing Happy Birthday together all those original fears and worries that we would never have our little girl make it out of infancy and then there she is, sassy as hell, blowing out her candles with all 88% of the saturated oxygen her body as to offer. Pretty awesome. Totally incredible. Unbelievably humbling.
Tax time. March and April continue to be such hard times given that I'm a stay at home mom and my husband has five mouths to feed. I think deep down we both want to find a better balance between making enough money to sustain us and having more time together as a family -- especially in light of Anne Marie's passing not to mention the constant awareness of life is too short that Haven's CHD brings. But it's hard. It's damn hard. Brian works his ass off and feels guilty he's not more available. And I work my ass off and feel guilty I'm not more "pleasant" at the end of every day at home with the kids. We keep telling each other that this is temporary, that things will get easier as the kids get older. But we know we are kinda lying to ourselves. It likely will get easier once everyone is out of diapers and can at least pretend to be feeding themselves. But for the most part, I really and honestly feel like we have to find some serenity amidst the madness. If this is as good as it gets then we need to enjoy it more! I feel like so many people I know with small families struggle with trying to ENJOY the young ages of our kids and all the memory making that goes on at this stage while not totally burning the candle so hard at both ends you can't even remember which kid it was that made you smile today.
Dog gets cancer. Yup. Bella has the big C. She's a bulldog and they are pretty much born into the hot mess category as far as dogs go. But she's a part of our family, pretty much our first kid, and she's been a major rock for both Brian and I through a lot of crazy shit that we've suffered through so it was definitely a blow to both mine and Brian's knees when we found out. We had to decide whether or not to spend an ungodly amount of money on having the tumor removed. It wasn't an easy decision. Brian is about to go out 100% on his own with his own practice and roll the dice with being self-employed with three young kids none of which are even school age (Hmmmmm.....THAT must be why he's not sleeping at night!) He's a financial planner by trade so he's conservative and has a extremely well thought out plan on how to sustain the family with his own business -- but it's things like "Your dog has cancer and needs surgery" that puts your panties in a wad no matter how planful or financially savvy you are. So we went forward with the surgery with the thinking that this will give her a better quality of life for her last few years since she's on the back 9 nine anyway. She got through the surgery ok (although she literally looked like she'd been run over with a lawn mower, I'm not gonna lie, not a pretty sight. AT ALL) and then I slept downstairs in the basement with her until we could tell she was on the mend. Ya, you heard that right. I slept downstairs. With my dog. And let her out every couple hours. Just like the good ol days of having a newborn. Seriously, when is this shit gonna end?
Toddler insanity. One of the biggest reasons I can never get on my computer to write is because holy shit do I have my hands full. As I mentioned before, Haven's oxygen saturation is somewhere around 88%. I have been joking recently that thank god it is because I can't even imagine what it would be like at 100%. This little lady has some sass with a side of attitude. Even though she's my sweet little girl with her adorable little voice and pigtails and just general overall cuteness....this is what I really see when she's talking AT me:
She's a bad ass. And anyone who knows me just looks at me and says, "Really, Molly? You are kidding me, right? You aren't seriously questioning where she gets it from are you?" And I'm not. I completely and fully understand that every ounce of shit I dished out to my own parents (and oh lord, there were pounds of it) will now come back at me threefold. But holy mother load am I ill prepared for the mind boggling task of discipling a toddler or helping her navigate the ins and outs of her new found bad ass self who likes to lie, talk back, and spit. That last one still irks me to no end. Spitting? What the hell is THAT about?
This is all happening while my almost three year old, Ronan has become this guy:
I have to assume it's because Tommy is now crawling and Haven is so overbearing with her verbally advanced badd ass self that he's decided to go gladiator on everyone and become a physical threat to all of us just to assert himself given his shitty status as the middle child. He is hitting. He is pushing. He is smothering the baby. Literally. Just pressing his body weight onto Tommy somehow in the split second it takes me to go to the bathroom. I'm thinking of wearing diapers myself just to get through this stage with Ronan because I feel like I can't leave him alone for a second without him concocting some plan to avenge his right to the throne by taking out his big, black, bad-ass older sister, while squashing the uprising of his teeny tiny leprechaun brother.
Which brings us to Tommy. I'm not kidding about the leprechaun comparison. I brought him out to see the St. Paddy's Day parade here in Southie and he downright looked like he should have been in the parade. You easily could place him on the shelf of one of these Irish type stores on Broadway and someone would buy him thinking he's one of those chotchkie type porcelain pieces you put in your curio next to the waterford crystal from Ireland. Here he is in all is Irish glory:
He also looks a lot like Robin Williams....
...but that's beside the point.
The reality is -- the blessings of having three kids close together comes with a lot of its own problems too. Some stupid parenting book somewhere said, "Try to stop and think which of their needs isn't being met when the talking back/tantrum/crying happens -- so you can identify the need and then try to meet it before things get out of hand." Which of their needs? Which of their needs? Are you kidding me? They are 4, 3, and 1. A LOT OF THEIR NEEDS AREN'T BEING MET. All these parenting books or online advice just makes me feel like more of a shit than I already am. I have to just think of mother's like Anne Marie who oftentimes had a hell of a lot more kids with much fewer resources and remind myself that they got through this somehow and not a single one of their kids is an axe murderer. See? I had to go online to get a picture of a gladiator-- it's not like I had a photo on hand from my Instagram account of Ronan actually wielding a weapon and attacking one of the kids. That's a good sign, right?
April came and went with good stuff and not so good stuff. My entire family travelled to Bermuda to celebrate my Dad's 70th Birthday. People have asked me what I thought of Bermuda and how beautiful it is and I had to tell them that in all honesty -- the limited amount of time I had my head raised from looking down at a double stroller or picking up melted granola bars off the ground --from what I did see... damn! it looked really really nice! Traveling with three kids is never AWESOME. If anyone tells you they were just on vacation with their three little kids and how awesome it was then they were blackout drunk the entire time. But it wasn't bad either. Over the past year, my father has been diagnosed with the early stages of Luis Bodies Dementia. Very early. But still. In an effort to Carpe Diem things as a result of my Dad's recent diagnosis -- my mother planned this fabulous birthday in a rented house Bermuda and some amazing memories were made with my family:
April also came with the news that our fellow heart buddy and Haven's closest friend, Ella would be put on the transplant list. Once again the wind was taken out of our sails in that no two kids are the same fighting this heart defect stuff. And in a world where there is literally NO REASON for why Haven's three surgeries worked and Ella's did not -- it has been a scary realization for our two families that this battle is far from over for sweet Ella. I can easily say that through all of this Ella's mother Kate has become one of my best friends on the planet. Nothing forms a solid friend for life like having to navigate the life and death ins and outs of those first three surgeries together. And there's nothing more important than having this friendship to lean on for this major hurdle that lies ahead for Miss Ella. Ella deserves to get better just like Haven deserved to get better. This heart stuff is hard. And for their family -- I feel like they have already run three marathons and are still running, and running, and running. I want them to have a picture of their family in Bermuda. I want Ella to safely get a new heart and to start her life again. I want Kate to finally get some rest and to have one worry free night to herself. I want Logan to play and learn and laugh like a seven year old should without the constant worry I know he has for his parents and his little sister. I want Chad to not have to fill the gap for little Logan trying to make things and normal for him as possible when Kate and Ella are admitted to the hospital. I want them all to be together and not have to do this anymore. I want it to stop for them. So we wait. We wait for it to stop. Please god, let Ella get a new heart so this family that we love so much can begin to live again.
Well, Jesus...I guess that's why so much time went by between February and June. I guess that's why it's sometimes hard to be more present, more appreciative, happier, and less frazzled. To try to eat better, not drink so much, find time to relax, and sit back and relish all the things that I am so fortunate to have. I know that I'm fortunate. Believe me, I do. It's just I don't have the bandwidth to feel as good about it all as I'd like to. And as I'm learning from Anne Marie, my Dad, Kate and even my developing little toddlers -- this is just the way it is. This is a good as it gets. So I better keep trying to find ways to enjoy it more when I can. Because as fast as things come into the world and into your life they can just as quickly leave. I may not be able to slow life down but I will desperately try to unblurry the picture no matter how fast I'm going.
