A Few Days in August

November 19, 2019November 18, 2019 / Julie / 3 Comments

I am not pregnant, but for a few days in August, I thought I probably was. We were away on vacation for the first time in five years – for the first time in three of our children’s lives.

We’d had a rough beginning to the trip: my husband had come down with pneumonia and my son with bronchitis. (“Can’t we weave wiffout Daddy?” the little stinker had asked an hour before his own symptoms arose.) So I’d done all the packing and loading and driving and unloading and unpacking by myself.

It was a lot.

But there we were, two parents and five kids finally lodged in our rented condo in the Blue Ridge Mountains and I was feeling grateful.

Grateful – and nervous that I might be pregnant.

Two days into the trip, I stole away from my crew for a little time to myself. I pulled out my laptop and sat on the rooftop balcony and wrote up my feelings. I hadn’t thought of publishing them, but re-reading them now, I recognize that they sum up much of my thinking lately.

I get asked all the time whether we’re “done.” (Having babies, that is.) I wonder whether the questioners think about the emotional conflict their curiosity can trigger.

For the first time, we’re about to celebrate a toddler’s second birthday without having another babe in arms or in utero. And for the first time, we’re aiming to be “done.” The idea of another pregnancy is overwhelming, even scary (mostly for medical reasons). Yet the idea of another baby, should one ever come our way, is wonderful.

~~~

8.20.19

I sit here on this balcony, listening to the cars whoosh past and the oak branches rustle in the breeze. (The maple stands mostly still. Why does one tree rustle while its neighbor does not?) I sit on a simple old patio rocker, roofing beneath my feet in this forgotten space. Who will notice this balcony, the owners must wonder, when the view is from the other? But this one is partly shaded at 11am; the other bakes. I lean back in the chair and look up at the swirling clouds, water vapor shifting around, trading places in 3D. A passenger jet soars past. We aren’t that remote.

I sit here, not knowing whether I might be pregnant, but suspecting I am. I am grateful that it’s too soon to take the test. Next week, if contradictory proof doesn’t appear on its own, I will have to get up the nerve to know the truth.

I have been fearful. I have been anxious about the physical repercussions of another pregnancy. I have been feeling greedy about my time. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel: three children in all-day school within days, five children within a few years.

But just now I read a line from Anthony Doerr. “They are miracles,” Doerr writes of his twin boys. “Born from cells much smaller than the period at the end of this sentence – much smaller than that period – the boys are suddenly big and loud and soak the fronts of their shirts with drool.”

I read that line and I look down at my abdomen and I think with wonder on those cells (now perhaps bigger than a period?) that may lie hidden there. I think with wonder on the child who may soon be staining shirts with drool. So many people would think on the logistics we’ve had to go through this week: packing, fevers, bottles, stroller and child wrangling, and think that another child would never be worth it. I know exactly how hard it would be; part of me resists mightily against it. But the rest of me knows that each of my children have been the most incredible gifts life could possibly offer. And that this one, if he’s there, would be too.

* The line is from Doerr’s beautiful 2007 memoir, Four Seasons in Rome. I highly recommend it.

A New(ish) Addition

January 22, 2018 / Julie / 10 Comments

Happy New Year! It’s been forever and I have a long-overdue update for you, and it’s the best kind:

The baby’s here.

She’s been here for some time, actually – Baby Girl was two months old yesterday! I wasn’t blogging when children numbers one and two were born, but I think it took me one day to blog a birth announcement for my third child and about two weeks to blog child number four’s birth. If we ever have another, I expect I’ll tell you about it around the kid’s first birthday.

Anyway! Here we go: On Tuesday, November 21 Brennan and I welcomed baby #5 and girl #2, our biggest newborn (9 pounds, 9 ounces!), who was delivered after my longest labor (15 hours).

Introducing: Ilsa Genevieve Walsh.

Yes, that’s “Ilsa,” like “Elsa” but with an “I”. Poor kid – we’re always going to have to be clarifying that.

Because I rarely name them on the blog and because I’d like to demonstrate how (I think) Baby Ilsa’s name rounds out the others’ so nicely, here’s a full list of our crew:

John Breckenridge – Called “Breck,” he’s named for my great-uncle and great-great-uncle, both of whom were John Breckenridge and called Breck.
Anthony Jude – He’s named for Brennan’s late father, but we preferred his middle name, so our boy goes by Jude.
Isaac Charles – He’s Isaac because we liked it, Charles for my grandfather. He’s our first child to actually go by his first name.
Josephine Marie – Called “Josie,” she’s Josephine for my great-grandmother, Marie for my mother and myself. (For our middle names, that is.)
Ilsa Genevieve – She’s Ilsa because we liked it, Genevieve for Brennan’s grandmother.

In all, we are now Brennan, Julie, Breck, Jude, Isaac, Josie, and Ilsa. B-J-B-J-I-J-I (I am a person who likes lists, and I like that list in particular.)

I think I’m glad that we’ve hit the two-month mark. While part of me is a little sad that my baby’s gotten so big (I think she’s around 12 pounds now?) so fast, most of me is relieved to have gotten through the newborn haze. I always feel a little more ‘with it’ once we’ve gotten to two months. That’s when things seem a little more normal, a little more doable to me.

My recovery this time was pretty good, I guess. At least it wasn’t very painful; the most bothersome thing was just an extended period (two to three weeks?) of feeling weak and woozy. I always forget how long that can last.

I wasn’t thrilled with how the birth went, though. Like all the others, I was induced. But unlike the others, this time it took what felt to me like foreeever. With each of the other four, I delivered within 7 to 8 hours of getting my Pitocin. This time it took twice that. It also took me longer to push with Ilsa than it took with the previous two. (Thanks, nurse who suggested I up my epidural dosage.)

Maybe because of the birthing situation, but probably mostly because of whatever weird things hormones do, I’ve had my longest-ever period of the Baby Blues this time. With two of my other babies it lasted about three weeks. With the other two I didn’t have it at all. This time I’ve just been very gradually improving for months. It’s been mild, but still – I’m ready to feel like myself again.

Everyone else is doing great. The kids absolutely love her. They coo at her and say how cute she is and clamor to hold her as often as we’ll let them. (Which hasn’t been as much as anyone would have liked. It’s hard to have a baby in cold and flu season!)

It’s hard for me to say what ‘kind’ of a baby she is. So far Ilsa is pretty easy during the day and difficult in the evening. Then she’ll sleep from midnight to three or five in the morning and I’ll nurse her in bed or in the rocker until it’s time to get up. If I were someone who loved co-sleeping this would be fine. But I’m not. I just don’t sleep well with a baby next to me; I seem to hold perfectly still for fear of hurting her, and then I wake with aches and pains from my efforts.

Oh, well! Do you want to see some more baby pictures?

Isn’t she lovely?

Welcome to our world, Ilsa Genevieve. We’re so glad you’re here. All the Baby Blues and aches and pains and evasive actions to protect you from your germy siblings are so totally worth it. We love you.

Flowers For My Boys (A Gender Reveal)

July 25, 2017July 25, 2017 / Julie / 1 Comment

It’s been something like two weeks since I posted my little pregnancy announcement and told you that I was soon to have my 20(ish) week sono, so I feel like this post should be preceded by a looong drumroll.

Here we go.

. . .

Wait for it . . .

. . .

(I am so excited to get to use that graphic again.)

It’s a girl and she looks to be healthy, so I have no deeper, more interesting reason (thank goodness) for the delay in telling you other than the fact that I’ve been busy. (I’m always busy. Everyone’s busy. What a boring excuse. Let’s get back to the baby.)

It’s a girl – she’s a girl, and we’re so excited. The boys wanted another sister. Josie will, at some point I’m sure, be glad to have a sister. And as a sister-less woman myself, I feel so grateful for the opportunity to witness a sisterly relationship up close.

As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to have at least four kids: two boys and two girls. That way each child would know what it’s like to have a brother and a sister. As annoying as my brother was to me while we were growing up, and as much as we fought like cats and dogs, I am honestly so glad I have a brother. I am glad I have him. (Love you, Eric.)

But I would have loved to have had had a sister too. With this baby’s arrival, we will have hit my little daydream of a goal, and indeed done one better: three boys and two girls.

To be honest, I can’t begin to express to you just how grateful I am to have “hit that goal.” (And yes, I know that’s a terrible way to put it). After a lifetime of hoping to be a mother, I can still hardly believe that I’ve gotten to be one. And after a motherhood spent focusing on boys, I can still hardly believe that I’ve now been given daughters too. Truly, I feel the weight of these blessings.

Now that we know the baby’s gender, I’m eager to get our household – and our things – ready for New Baby Girl’s arrival. I want to switch the kids’ bedrooms around. I want to buy them a few new pieces of furniture. We might need to replace some random pieces of baby gear. We’ll definitely need to get a couple of new car seats and I really want to buy a new stroller. (I think it’s funny how we could coast so long on all our original baby gear and now everything seems to be giving out or wearing down at once. Four kids might be the limit for baby gear produced in 2010.)

Conveniently (HA!), everything else in our house seems to be giving out too. Air conditioning, refrigerator, dishwasher, random parts of our van . . . so I think this summer might go down as That One in Which We Spent All The Money.

Ah, well.

C’est la vie.

Not much more to say here, except to report that the morning of the sono, the boys wanted to know what color flowers we would bring home to them afterwards. “So is that what you want us to do? Bring home flowers, just like last time?”

That’s what they wanted.

So we obliged.

(Don’t you love pink?)

~~~

Baby Steps

July 10, 2017July 10, 2017 / Julie / 8 Comments

Here I am after months of not writing, with too much to explain, too many ideas to number, too many things to catch you up on – and I have no idea where to start. So this will probably be a stumbling, disjointed post.

Baby steps.

I’ve been pondering how to jump back into blogging and the only thing that seems doable is for me to pop on here (with hopefully increasing regularity) with short, random thoughts. Like this one:

Back in December, I was waxing downright sentimental about a new “thing” in my life – a laptop. A brand-new laptop, one that wouldn’t be glitchy, one whose battery would hold a charge, one that wouldn’t shut off when you shifted its position, one that wasn’t so heavy and unwieldy it served more as desktop than laptop.

The month before, we’d bought me a newer, smaller, lighter, more versatile machine. And I was in computer heaven. Like, “La dee da, look at me: I’m a cute, modern lady with a cute, modern laptop. I love this thing and I will carry it around with me wherever I go. I will sit on the sofa with it because I can. I will tote it to the coffee shop because I can. I will carry it up to the bedroom because I… BANG.”

Foolish me dropped my beautiful new laptop.

It kind of limped on for a while, but now the thing issues a death siren every time I turn it on. So it sits in a drawer, waiting for me to get up the guts to see about getting it fixed. Because that’s how I go about my life: When I screw up, I shove whateveritis in a drawer and try not to think about it for a while. This is a very mature approach to life.

Ah, well… like I said, I’ve got too much to explain, too many ideas to number, too many things to catch you up on. And this sad new-computer story, written on my stupid old-computer, is but just one of them.

Baby steps.

But really, I have something so much better to tell you about. Something so much more important, so much more Catholic-mom-blog-ish:

We’re expecting baby #5.

Unusually for me, I’ve waited quite a long time to make this pregnancy blog official. I’m already more than 20 weeks along. (More than half-way! That’s nuts!) We told our family at Easter, when I was, what, maybe 10 weeks? Then I took that pic and shared it on Facebook and Instagram around 14 weeks. But the neglected blog has remained neglected. Until now.

Baby steps.

Thanks be to God, all seems to be going well, pregnancy-wise. And THANKS be to God, I’m now feeling like a normal, functioning person again. My first-trimester-and-change was rough. (Maybe the roughest of all my pregnancies? It’s hard to gauge.) I’m just so relieved to be on the other side of it.

Anyway… due date! This little turkey is due on November 22, 2017 – just one day before Thanksgiving.

The kids are super excited – well, the ones who understand what’s going on are excited. Son #2, who is the most enthusiastically (read: aggressively) loving member of our family, promises that he’ll be a better brother to this baby than he is to his little sister. He’s been kissing my belly obsessively, saying ‘good morning’ and ‘good night’ to it, and the other day he told me, “I just can’t stop wuvin’ diss new baby!”

Brennan and I are happy too. Happy and more relaxed than with my previous pregnancies, I think. Because when you’ve already had four? You kind of know how to deal with the pregnancy and new-baby things. Not that they don’t bring hardships! (See: morning sickness.) But pregnancy and infancy have long since ceased to be strange concepts around here, and that counts for a lot in my book.

Alright, I think that’s enough for my first little baby step back toward blogging. But I’ll be back soon! I’ve got a certain, always-interesting sonogram scheduled for Wednesday and you know what that means… (hopefully) we’ll have a gender reveal to share with you soon!

(In all seriousness, we’re well aware that the 20ish-week sono will tell us so much more about our baby than whether s/he’s a she or he. If you could spare a couple of prayers that baby proves to be healthy, we’d appreciate it.)

Thank you! May you all be well, as well.

Babies Are Blessings (And Other Lessons I Learned in 2016)

January 18, 2017 / Julie / 5 Comments

Alright! Here we are for the second round of “Lessons I Learned in 2016.” If you missed the first, which includes lesson numbers one and two, here it is. Now for number three:

3) Babies are blessings.

I mostly knew this one, in the sense that I’ve always loved babies, I’ve always wanted lots of them, and I’ve always fallen in love with the ones I’ve been given. But since becoming a mother, I’ve often felt unequal to the job. (Shocker, right?) And so I’ve often sunk into the gloom of thinking that I wasn’t cut out for this life, or that my kids were too much for me, or that I was foolish to think I could handle so many.

Fear. Underlying it all – especially during my pregnancy with my fourth child – was fear. Fear that I wasn’t enough, fear that we couldn’t handle the pressures that additional children would put on us, fear that another child would be bad for our family. Fear.

But something about baby #4 just broke through that fear. She’s a doll, to be sure. She’s adorable and sweet and easy to love. But beyond this individual baby’s attributes, there’s been something about having our fourth child that has made me realize how incredibly worth it babies really are.

Maybe I feel like I’m not enough. Oh well. Maybe I’m tired, overwhelmed, overworked, overstimulated. Oh well. Maybe my kids don’t get enough attention from me. Oh well. Maybe our family doesn’t get to do what other, smaller, more-easily-managed families do. Oh well!

At the end of the day, none of us are enough. All of us are tired. We’re all sometimes overwhelmed, overworked, overstimulated. We’re never able to devote as much attention as we’d like to all of the people and things we care about. That’s part of what it is to be human, to be in community, to be part of a family, to have a role in this world.

That’s life.

But this – this bright, beautiful, soft little pink thing who goes through about a million diapers and bottles a month? This is life too. This is the kind of life you can scoop up in your arms and squeeze and laugh with. None of those fears can compare to the joy we experience from having this life in ours.

If we ever have another child, I’m sure I’ll worry about logistics. I’m sure I’ll be concerned about my health and I’ll be fearful of childbirth. Who knows – I might be worried about something that I can’t yet anticipate. But I hope I’ll never fear bringing another baby into our family. I hope I’ll remember that more than anything else, babies are blessings.

4) I don’t care much about becoming thin.

Maybe this isn’t the most obvious follow-on to that sappy start. (And maybe this isn’t so much a lesson as a realization.) But here I am, eleven months post-partum, many pounds overweight, only recently out of maternity clothing and I . . . don’t care.

I don’t care.

I used to care. I used to walk through a shopping mall and see shame reflected back at me from all the pretty storefronts. I used to fantasize about how it would feel to wear fashionable clothing. I used to embark on unpleasant and inconvenient weight-loss schemes and feel like a fat, sloppy, loser-sloth for failing at them.

But somewhere along the way – the way of motherhood and friendship and pursuing my creative interests and realizing that my husband is still attracted to me – I stopped caring.

I still want to be healthy. I still know that I should adjust my diet somewhat and up my physical activity a little. I want to be energetic enough to chase around my kids and I want to feel comfortable in my clothing (goal: public presentability with a touch of elegance). But I just have no interest in pursuing any dramatic changes. No Whole 30 could be worth the joy that peanut-butter ice cream brings to my life. No 5am workout could compensate for the anger I’d feel at rousing at such an hour.

More walks, a little time on the treadmill? Yes, I should do that. Cut back on the desserts? Okay, I can deal. More vegetables, less cheese? Sure.

But I’m done pining for a body that I’ll never have. Unless you’re lucky enough to have inherited those precious stay-thin-no-matter-what genes, you generally have to really, really want that trim, lithe, slender, shimmery mirage to suffer through everythingitwouldtake to get it. And I . . . don’t.

Okay. I’ll be back soon for at least one more of these “Lessons” posts. And I still owe you all a good photo dump. (Baby steps back to regular blogging.)

The Kids Are Alright (And the Parents Are Too)

October 3, 2016October 7, 2016 / Julie / 2 Comments

(Everyday Bravery, Day 3)

In the years since I became a parent, there have been a series of signs I’ve wanted to hang on my person/child/stroller/grocery cart while my children and I roam in public. They include:

And of course:

But lately the one I’ve wanted to plaster all over everything (to be brave enough to shout to a world that often views children as burdens) is:

Because the general public? They tend to see us at our worst.

They see me carrying a hefty two-year-old across the parking lot, his flailing body tucked under my arm. They see him screaming his way through the grocery store because that blasted place puts a blasted balloon every five freaking feet. They see me balancing a baby carrier, a massive mom purse, and a cup of coffee on one arm while dragging the two-year-old with the other. They see me shooing and barking the two older boys in the right direction like some sort of frizzy, frazzled herding dog.

They see us running late. They see us overwhelmed. They see us hushing little ones who are accustomed to yelling and singing and roaring as loud as they like. They see a toddler who is frustrated to have been put on a short leash and boys to whom tact is a foreign concept.

They don’t get to see us at home, at peace, actually enjoying one another.

(Not that home is always peaceful. I am thankful every day that the general public doesn’t get to see my sons flipping out because I’ve told them to pick up their toys or me shouting a crazed, wild-eyed JUST EAT YOUR FOOD, ALREADY.)

Ours is a happy home. It may be chaotic and disorganized and screamy, but it’s also full of love and imagination and wonder.

Those strangers don’t get to see my husband hoisting the boys up to the refrigerator door to see if they’ve become magnetic. They don’t get to hear me reading The Story of Ferdinand to that two-year-old at naptime. (“His mother saw that he was not lonesome, and because she was an understanding mother, even though she was a cow, she let him just sit there and be happy.”) They don’t get to brush the curls off his forehead or kiss his great, big, squishy cheeks.

They don’t get to watch these boys build museums and castles and railways together. They don’t get to see them chase each other in their Star Wars fantasies. They don’t get to eat Brennan’s Saturday morning French toast or my killer chicken pot pie. They don’t get to see our baby girl kick and jump and squeal with glee when her brothers approach.

Brennan and I are almost always tired. We’re often worn thin, overwhelmed, frustrated with our kids – but in them we also find our greatest joy.

We delight in these children, and they delight in us and in each other.

So when you see us out and about, wrestling with a stroller or a car seat or a child, don’t pity us too much. Don’t think those brief moments of struggle or stress or embarrassment are accurate representations of our lives. The kids are alright. (And the parents are too.)

~~~

This post is the third in a series called Everyday Bravery: A Write 31 Days Challenge. Every day this month I’m publishing a blog post on Everyday bravery – not the heroic kind, not the kind that involves running into a burning building or overcoming some incredible hardship. Rather, the kinds of bravery that you and I can undertake in our real, regular lives. To see the full list of posts in the series, please check out its introduction.

I’m also linking this post to Bobbi’s (of Revolution of Love) Weekly Writing in October link-up. Check it out to find other bloggers who are trying to get back into the writing groove this month.

~~~

Interested in coming along with me as I share stories about my family and chew on the topics of motherhood, politics, and society? Like These Walls on Facebook or follow the blog via email. (Click the link on the sidebar to the right.) You can also follow me on Twitter and Instagram and you can find me at my politics blog at the Catholic Review, called The Space Between.

Catching Up (7 Quick Takes Friday, Vol. 41)

September 2, 2016September 2, 2016 / Julie / 13 Comments

—1—

Tap, tap, tap.

Is anyone there?

I’ve enjoyed writing at the Catholic Review for the past almost-two-months, but I’m afraid I’ve killed my (this) blog! The thought makes me so sad.

How can I find the right balance to it all? Between writing and everything else I’m responsible for, between this blog and the other, between political writing and more personal writing? I have no idea.

No idea.

I guess I’m just going to keep plugging away at it and hope it works out somehow?

—2—

My six-year-old boy started 1^st grade this week. I’m currently a tad sappy about the passage of time and all that, but mostly just very proud of my boy.

He’s been really interested in being helpful lately, so we’ve found some small jobs around the house he can do. He’s taking out the recycling and putting away the flatware and even making some sandwiches.

Best of all, when it’s time for my crew to load into the van, he puts on the two-year-old’s shoes, ushers his little brothers outside, and then HE BUCKLES THEM INTO THEIR CAR SEATS. Truly, this is a life-changing level of helpfulness for me. I always thank him with something like, “Thank you so much! That is so helpful and it makes things so much easier for me!” He responds with a sweet little “No problem, Mommy! I like helping.”

I think I like six.

One more thing about my boy, which I already blogged about over on my Catholic Review version of 7 Quick Takes:

I had a sad but beautiful little exchange with my six-year-old son the other evening, courtesy of my almost-all-day-every-day NPR listening habit. While I was driving, my boy spotted a bug in the car and I told him that I’d seen a mosquito. “Is that mosquito virus here yet?” he asked.

“Mosquito virus? Do you mean Zika?”

He did.

“Well, it’s here in the United States,” I told him. “But it’s not here in our area. It’s in Florida.”

“Oh, that’s too bad for the babies there. There will be a lot of babies dying in their mommies’ tummies.”

Most people would probably be appalled to know that my six-year-old was thinking of such things. I’ll admit to feeling a little guilty about it. But mostly, I just felt proud. My boy is paying attention. He’s understanding. He’s asking questions. He’s caring. And he wrapped up our conversation by suggesting that we pray for the babies.

“God, please take care of the babies in their mommies’ tummies. Please keep them from getting the mosquito virus. That’s all.”

—3—

My four-year-old boy is a funny kid. He’s been telling me he loves me for a long time now – like, laying it on thick: “Mommy, I wuuuuv you, Mommy. You’re da best Mommy in da whole world. You’re boodiful. I JUST WUV YOU SO MUCH. I wuv you more den Jesus wuvs you.”

I’m not complaining.

But I am noticing that he tends to say these things when (1) he wants something from me, (2) I’m already helping him with something, or (3) he’s been naughty or annoying.

Clever kid, that one.

Lately he’s been adding the following into the mix: “Mommy, you’re da gweatest Mommy of aw time. You’re da gweatest PERSON of aw time! You’re MINE. You’re my mommy and no one else’s!”

This morning when I asked him why he was doing this fake crying thing, he answered: “Sometimes people just cwy because you’re so boodiful.”

Whoah. Slow down there, kiddo.

It’s gotten to the point where every time I become visibly annoyed with him he grins at me and raises his eyebrows and whispers, “You’re mine. You’re MINE.”

And I crack up. This kid! This manipulative, clever little bugger. I think we’re going to be in real trouble when he becomes a teenager.

—4—

Boy number three has been less charming lately. He is two. He is very, very much two. A couple of Sundays ago when our priest asked (playfully) why our boy had been screaming so loudly that we removed him from Mass, we explained that he has a major case of the TWO’s.

He is a screamer and though we are working on the screaming (i.e. lots of consequences for screaming), I will admit that the screaming is kind of driving me nutty. I do not like this phase.

I’m hopeful (though I may be deluding myself) that the screaming has something to do with the fact that our almost two-and-a-half-year-old is not yet talking. He says twenty or so fairly indistinguishable words, but he doesn’t yet put them together and he hardly ever uses them. He mostly just grunts. And screams.

We have a speech evaluation scheduled for the end of this month. If they deem him to be more than 25% behind, he’ll qualify for free in-home speech therapy. I’ve never before thought much of looking into such services, but now I’m all, “SIGN HIM UP.”

—5—

Our sweet baby girl, on the other hand, continues to be as sweet as she can possibly be. She’s still happy and laid-back and easy to handle. (Maybe she’s aware of our household’s overabundance of screaming?)

She’s feeling very well and eating and growing like a champ, but she still has salmonella in her system. We’re waiting on the results of the latest stool test. The last one (in late July) was positive and they need two consecutive negatives before they’ll consider her clear. Fingers crossed that the latest (taken in mid-August) is negative; then we’ll just need to do one more.

Little girl is now sitting up fairly well (though she still falls over) and is just beginning to become really, actually mobile via that rolling and scooting thing that babies do. Yesterday I put her down on a quilt in the family room, walked into the kitchen, and returned to find her missing. It took a few moments of looking around and listening for her cries before I located her.

I think she enjoys her new skill.

—6—

Apropos of nothing, I have recently been reminded of a few blogs I used to read. As in used to. As in no longer read. It’s been interesting to remember those blogs and what my life was like back when I was reading them and to realize that me no longer reading them actually has nothing to do with them.

It’s not you, old favorites – it’s me.

I’ve changed. I’ve moved, in some ways, into a new season of my life. What I needed then in terms of encouragement, inspiration, and commiseration, I no longer need. At least not right now.

I read different things these days, things that meet my current needs. Who knows where I’ll be looking for inspiration tomorrow.

The realization has helped me to calm down a bit re: my woe in Take #1. My readership isn’t what it used to be and there are probably a number of reasons for that. But one reason might just be that people move on and change and need things one day that they didn’t need the day before.

It’s a big ol’ lesson to me to just chill out and not worry too much about things you can’t control.

—7—

Can I tell you how excited I am about this weekend? I honestly can’t remember when I’ve had so many fun plans jammed into such a short span of time. Here’s the run-down:

Friday afternoon: Get my hair done! I plan to sit in that salon with a glass of wine and a good book and let everything having to do with Take number four just roll… off…. my… back.

Friday evening: Join one of my girlfriends and several of her girlfriends for a little mommies-only birthday party. We’re going to sit on her front porch in the cool evening air and drink cocktails and eat hors d’oeuvres and just enjoy being in each other’s company. I can hardly wait.

Saturday: Head to Virginia for this year’s Mid-Atlantic conference of the Catholic Women Bloggers Network. It’s being hosted by Rosie Hill of A Blog For My Mom and will feature Kelly Mantoan of This Ain’t the Lyceum and Mary Lenaburg of Passionate Perseverance and lots of other amazing ladies too. I’ll try to write about it when I get back. (I wrote about last year’s conference, which I hosted, here.)

Sunday: Drive to Annapolis with my husband for Mass at beautiful St. Mary’s Church (where we were married – see gratuitous wedding photo below), followed by a dedication and reception at the Charles Carroll House. Which was the Annapolis home of Charles Carroll of Carrolton, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. And on whose board of trustees I used to serve. (And, for those of you who keep up with the Catholic mommy blog world, where I once arranged a tour for Catholic All Year’s Tierney family.)

Whew! That’s a busy Labor Day weekend before even getting to Labor Day itself. I am so excited! Now let’s just pray that the hurricane/tropical storm working its way up the East Coast doesn’t dash our plans.

(I’m linking up with Kelly of This Ain’t The Lyceum for this week’s 7 Quick Takes. Be sure to stop by her place to see what she and the other 7-Quick-Taking crowd have been up to!)

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Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Touch My Baby (An Update on Our Girl)

July 10, 2016 / Julie / 8 Comments

Last you heard from me I was writing to you from the hospital, where Baby Girl was being treated for pneumonia and some unknown stomach-something, which was suspected to be a bacterial infection. Three days into her hospital stay (she ended up being there for four days) we had our answer: salmonella poisoning.

Yes. Seriously. Our four-month-old infant who eats no food somehow got food poisoning.

We don’t know how it happened. It’s possible she picked it up from her brothers, who had played with some turtles in a nearby pond a couple of weeks earlier. (Apparently turtles are a common carrier of salmonella – who knew?) It’s also possible (probably more possible than not) that I gave it to her, that I contracted it by handling raw food or – ahem – eating raw brownie batter or something, and then touched her bottle or pacifier and passed it on to her. (You have no idea how guilty this possibility makes me feel.)

We’ve learned that it’s not uncommon for a healthy person to carry salmonella without experiencing symptoms of it. Which normally isn’t a big deal – not unless that person is in close contact with someone with an immature or compromised immune system. Like an infant.

Ugh.

Hence the title of this post. Not that I (at all!) blame Baby Girl’s illness on contact with random strangers, but I’ve always been something of a germophobe and those tendencies have been amplified by this experience. With any contact our baby has with another person, I worry that a new bacteria will get her sick.

I’ve been reverting to new-momma protective, squirming when strangers approach us in public and barking “DON’T TOUCH THE BABY” at her brothers. I’m sure we’ll mellow at some point, but right now it’s just all so fresh.

But seriously – do you know how often people walk up to babies and grab their tiny hands? All the time. (Don’t they know that babies stick their hands in their mouths?) When it’s a child, I usually feel comfortable enough to chirp, “You can touch her feet, but please don’t touch her hands!” But I’ll admit I have a harder time correcting an adult. Adults should know better.

Mamas, don’t let your babies touch my baby. (Or at least not her face and hands.) And don’t you do it either.

Sigh.

Babies are so vulnerable and fragile. And this whole thing has been such a tremendous bother.

Baby Girl is mostly recovered now, but she was in pretty rough shape for her first couple of days at the hospital. She felt horrible, she wouldn’t eat, she was poked with needles again and again. She fussed with her IV. She slept or cried or just looked thoroughly pathetic.

Once home we had follow-up appointments and phone calls to manage, prescriptions to fill, more and more diarrhea to deal with (it can take two weeks to clear up), and (I hate to even write this) stool samples to collect from her big brothers.

Did I mention that this whole thing has been a bother? What a pain.

And we’re not done. Though (thankfully!) the first round of stool samples came back negative, we’ve got to do another round to be sure. And after a couple of days of normality, Baby Girl’s diarrhea returned, so now she’s been put on another round of antibiotics.

Gosh, she’s just the sweetest little thing.

She’s so sweet and she’s been such a champ through all of this. I sure hope we’re about done with it.

Wait. Was That Supposed to be Father’s Day?

June 20, 2016 / Julie / 9 Comments

Meet my husband, Brennan — the man who is completely, totally fine with our Father’s Day weekend not being being focused on him in the slightest.

I guess it started last week, actually, when he took a day off work and was therefore standing in the driveway for a midday delivery from the UPS guy. I saw him collect the package with its contents advertised in a big! clear! photo! and stare at it in a confused sort of way. “Happy Father’s Day,” I yelled dully through the window.

Then Saturday we hosted a 6th birthday party for our oldest son. A Star Wars party. The kids wore little Jedi costumes, they played some poorly-thought-out games, we ate some carryout fried chicken and a cake that I didn’t have time to finish decorating.

But the little Jedis-in-training got to attack Darth Vader with silly string, so it was allllll good.

You know this is what treadmills are for, right?

Success on that front.

However, just as the party was beginning, our little peanut started to become sick. She spiked a fever, she had some diarrhea, and she was really, really not her usual smiley self.

We pushed through the party, Baby Girl was happy to be held by her grandma and great-grandmom, and we thought it was just a little passing thing due to her shots earlier in the week. But as the evening wore on, her diapers increased in frequency. By the morning, we knew we needed to take her to the ER.

Her bloodwork came back a little worrisome and her chest x-ray showed some pneumonia, so they decided to admit her. Good thing, too: her fever was creeping up and she’d stopped eating.

So Brennan’s Father’s Day consisted mostly of wrangling our boys while he worried about our girl. But he did stop by the hospital for a visit in the evening. And Sweetie Pie rewarded him with her first smile of the day.

We (she and I) are here still. (So forgive this smartphone-published blog post for any editing errors.) They’re keeping her another night, which is both sad and a relief. They think the diarrhea is caused by a bacterial infection, so she’ll get her second round of IV antibiotics sometime today.

Hopefully tomorrow she’ll be feeling a great deal better, and they’ll have all her test results back, and she’ll be eating enough to stay hydrated. Hopefully.

Because we need to get this girl home to her Daddy and brothers. I’d like us to finally get a chance to celebrate Brennan, even if just a little bit. And I want to see this happy face again.

Always Starting, Never Ending: Monday Morning Miscellany (Vol. 11)

June 6, 2016 / Julie / 7 Comments

—1—

I think you should know that I’m really, really good at starting blog posts. Like, you would be amazed at the quality of writing I can pour into three opening paragraphs on any given subject. Especially Donald Trump.

I’m about 15% tempted to start publishing blog posts akin to those group story-telling games we used to play at sleepovers. I’ll write the first three paragraphs, then another blogger can take the next three, and so on and so forth until we have some wacky, meandering, hilarious tale like nothing any of us could have created on our own.

—2—

This happened over the weekend:

That’s right folks – stare at it while you can! All of my dishes were clean at the same time. I washed the dirty dishes, cleaned the counters, bleached the sink, and then went to bed. Which means: I woke up to a clean kitchen. Just amazing.

—3—

This girl. She’s now four months old. I can hardly describe how smitten with her we are.

—4—

Oops – I didn’t post anything on the blog last week. See number 1.

—5—

Nearly six years into this stay-at-home-mom thing, I somehow still struggle with how relentless the work is. I spent this entire weekend waiting for a couple of hours to myself (To organize papers and clothing! Not even to do fun stuff!) and when those hours never appeared, I found myself on the brink of tears. Not because anything was really wrong, not because the weekend had really been bad, not because I was overly tired – just because my days all look the same.

Monday through Friday, I’m in charge of four small children for something like 14 hours a day, I take care of all the cooking and dishes and laundry and cleaning and familial logistics, and I’m at the whim of ever-interrupting hands and mouths and diapers. Call me crazy, but I’d like the weekends to look a little different.

Sometimes they do, but lots of times my husband (who really is a very involved father) works on (necessary! good!) home stuff, so isn’t available to help with much other than breakfast. One part of me gets that. The other part stands at the end of a Sunday night and looks toward Monday morning with something like desperation. Because this work is constant. It is never-ending. And I still haven’t gotten used to that.

—6—

We had some storms Sunday evening and when they cleared, the sky was breathtaking. Though it wasn’t quite amazing enough to knock me out of the aforementioned funk, it sure did remind me that funks are temporary. Thank goodness for beautiful skies.

These Walls - Always Starting Never Ending - 4

Can you spot the beehives?

—7—

Thank goodness for breezes and low-humidity days too. We haven’t yet turned on the air conditioner, so lately I’ve felt like we lived in a jungle or a swamp, or on cooler days, England or Ireland. But today! Today is gorgeously clear, dry, and breezy. It’s just glorious. Hopefully this bodes well for the week!

Happy Monday!