10 Things I have learned so far....

In life...

1. Everything is earned. Maybe not upfront or beforehand. But eventually, everything is earned.

2. Love feels bigger going out than it does coming in. As in, a child cannot ever feel how much it is loved but one day if the child becomes a parent the child will have some idea of how much she has been loved.

3. To be well... Eat real sugar. Eat real butter. Eat real cheese. Eat real bread. Eat real food that you made or someone you know made. Just don't eat too much of anything. Drink water.

4. Without your health, life is hard. Ordinary things are hard.

5. Dogs are just dogs; they are not children. But usually they are more humane than humans.

6. Bearing grudges wastes energy. Holding onto pain saps you of the energy you need to find contentment and peace.

7. The gift of getting older is that so much of the crap falls away, so much gets left behind, you stop caring about and reacting to the little petty stuff. Hopefully.

8. The sad thing about getting older is that just about the time in life when you begin to accept how you look and realize that you really look perfectly fine... everything heads south and gets crepey, spotty and discolored.

9. People who are rich, famous, renowned... are just people. Food doesn`t taste better in their mouths. Love doesn`t feel better or deeper or more real for them. Nothing that really matters is any different if you are the Queen or if you wash floors. Maybe some things are easier for famous, wealthy people. Maybe their dreams are fulfilled and their bills are paid... but only maybe.

10. Being washed, groomed and neatly attired makes you feel better. So does having a clean and tidy house. I don`t know why but it does. Ask the bird with the tidy nest why she had to build it. She just did.

Sleep

Sleep is like gold around this place. Rare, malleable.... coveted. But it is unlike gold ultimately because we actually need it. Need it AND want it.

I have never been a good sleeper. Never. As a child I woke up every single night in the middle of the night. Awake and alone in my bed I left my room and climbed in bed beside my mother. My father hated this. He would carry on that my tiny toes pulled his leg hair. I remember them fighting about it in their room - he was angry, so angry and I remember him saying that we kids never wore our seat belts either. They even put a lock on their door and still I was able to get in through the bathroom. This lunacy went on until I was five and we moved and my brother and I had to share a room and then my bedmate was sometimes my brother and sometimes my parents.

When I was eleven we moved and then moved again in quick succession. I got a new bed and new bedding and my own room and I finally learned to fall back asleep on my own. ELEVEN years old. But it required I sleep with a giant brown teddy bear and have a selection of little quilts to cuddle as well. I got rid of the last of these quilts the month after I brought new baby Quinn home from the hospital... in autumn 2003.

So at 35 years old I am still not a great sleeper. I now have NO problem whatsoever with sleeping alone - as woman married to snorer/ loud breather / sleep talker - sleeping alone is a bit of a luxury. But I still wake up over and over again all night long every night. I can count on one had the number of nights I have slept a full eight hours straight. Generally, I wake up every 2-3 hours and a couple of times a week I struggle to get back to sleep at all.

In law school I suffered from full on insomnia. But who wouldn't - law school was hell on earth. No it wasn't - that was articling. But back to sleep. I crave it and love it and I am often so bad at it. My husband is great at sleeping - despite being so bloody noisy. I am rightfully jealous.

So you can imagine as I read books about sleep and sleep training as I deal with Miss Gracie and her brothers how I look back over my early life and wonder, wonder once again... why the hell didn't my parents take me to see a doctor. Or at the very least buy a book and work on teaching me how to sleep. Because everything I read says that childhood sleep sets you up for a life time of sleep habits. Anyhow, I wonder what it would feel like to sleep wonderfully and fully every night. I wonder if my mother ever complained to people about her daughter who wouldn't sleep, couldn't sleep and when people asked how old her baby was she would say.. umm.. ten.

All this said - the one positive - usually - about waking up a lot is that you remember your dreams. I do remember my dreams. Vividly. Clearly. Last night I dreamt I told off my annoying neighbor and I used horrible language and I also dreamt about strange restaurants and drinking dirty lake water. What is positive about this I wonder. Perhaps just the additional insight into the person you are when you are asleep... since you spend so much of your life asleep... or at least you are supposed to.

Ten Things about this Third Crack at Mothering

Because I don't have the time or interest in writing all that coherently lately, here is a list. A super fast list of ten things that have been different with parenting this third time around.

1. The baby is a girl. Yes, a girl. I was WRONG. So wrong. I have loved being wrong. But the big differences between boys and girls I have noted so far are very few 1) Girls really can't pee on you when you change their bottoms and 2) Girls clothes are more fun to shop for because there is more variety... dresses, pants, skirts, leggings, jumpers... boys wear pants.

2. It is hard to get a third baby on a schedule because now we have a Grade 1 hockey player's schedule and a pre-k cutie pie's schedule to also work around as well. Plus our own schedules. So finding a way to do things that works for everyone to eat and sleep and rest when they should is hard.

3. I am sick of baby toys. I am enjoying getting rid of baby stuff whenever I can. And I am loathe to buy baby stuff even if it is needed because I know it will be gotten rid of soon enough. Aside from clothes. I enjoy buying Gracie clothes.

4. I feel more than ever that I need to get back to normal again. It has felt harder to get back to normal. By normal I mean my normal body... my normal health... my normal life with the boys and Brett. It feel harder to add a baby to the mix and get back to normal.

5. Three year old boys will not necessarily express their feelings about becoming big brothers in obvious ways - they can get depressed. Not much is more depressing than a depressed three year old... except perhaps a constipated, depressed three year old.

6. Life is still going by very fast even though I am off on mat. leave and not working.

7. The struggle with feeling sad about my fertile, child-bearing days being behind me has not abated... despite being so busy and taxed and having three beautiful children who have made all my mothering dreams come true. It is weird. Weird to want something you don't want. I still think about having a fourth child even as I get rid of my maternity clothes and baby clothes that are outgrown. I still think about having a fourth child even though I have been feeling lousy since October with low thyroid, recurrent infections, digestive problems and a really sore back... my body would stage a mutiny if I had a fourth child. Perhaps it has already staged one because I had a third?

8. I will never tire of kissing babies. Chubby, roly-poly, smiling, drooling babies. I already look forward to kissing my grandchildren. God willing that day will one day come.

9. I think my husband and I have become much better at parenting together. It may be experience. It may also partly be because there are three of them and only two of us... neither Brett or I ever get off easy. It is always hard work for both of us... and the days of comparing who has it harder are past... it is all hard. We are both so busy.

10. I am so grateful to have had a third child. I do often wonder what Gracie's vanished twin would have been like. A girl as well maybe? Still I am so grateful. What a gift. What an amazing gift it is to have them and to love them.

I should know better

My eldest son started to sleep through the night around four months. He fell into a pattern of taking two naps a day on his own. My second son started sleeping through the nights at about seven months and also fell into the two naps a day pattern on his own. Neither kid was the kind who went to bed at 7pm and slept 12 hours but they were pretty solid.

This time it is not happening. Gracie sleeps 8-9 hours sometimes. She takes a morning nap now after me being very purposeful and intentional about getting her up in the morning and putting her back down two hours later. But no afternoon nap unless it is in my arms... except sometimes when I let her cry. Whenever, I put her in her crib for that afternoon nap no matter is she is drowsy or totally asleep her eyes spring open and she cries. I hate letting her cry. One time she cried for 53 minutes before I gave up. Who cries for 53 minutes. Gracie - that's who.

I have been reading Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. I have been trying so hard to get these kids to sleep... on time... for long enough. To be well-rested. To feel good. And it is biting me in the ass. Gracie isn't towing the line and that is making me crazy... crazy even though she is sleeping 8-9 hours sometimes and taking morning naps. And Evan just gets up earlier the earlier you put him to bed. This morning he was up at 5:30am.... and woke up Quinn.

I should know better. I don't usually read ANYTHING and buy into it fully. I especially don't usually buy into anything parenting related full-stop.

So tonight after a bad-parenting today that left me eating brownies for lunch and a Big Mac for dinner - because I don't really drink - I am trying to remember what I know. That children get where they going in their own time... with our guidance but in their own time... But I can't. I try to find the words to bring myself peace and reassurance and I can't. I was clinging to this book like a life-preserver. I so need life to feel normal again and it all begins with sleep. Getting enough sleep.

A theme

I have written blog entries in my head, almost nightly, as I lay in bed waiting for sleep to catch up with me. Sleep catches up with me and yet I never seem to catch up with sleep.

After looking at pictures from my own Christmas and the Christmas photos of friends and bloggers I have noticed a theme. This is the theme... beautiful houses... beautiful children... sometimes even beautiful husbands... and EXHAUSTED looking mothers.

Even when these mothers aren't complaining about exhaustion... even when they are roaring full speed ahead in their lives... they look more exhausted than anything else in their lives.

Anyway, my thyroid is low... so that would explain why I felt totally wiped out and like crap since the middle of October. So many naggy illnesses overtook this family in the last three months.

One day I will have the energy to write again and also, not look like an exhausted martyr in my family photos. Perhaps that should be my only New Year's Resolution... to beat exhaustion and fatigue.

Happy New Year.

Where am I? What AM I doing?

I am knee deep in laundry and toys and cooties. By cooties I mean whatever it is that gives little boys fevers and keeps them home from school.

I am trapped under a 15 pound baby girl who loves to cuddle.

I am wrapped up in her sweet, silly smile.

I am cheering on my husband who got a promotion to management.

I am staring at my post-baby belly and baby-like thighs that won't go away.

I am watching Glee and The Big Bang Theory.

I am listening to my sons talk about hockey.

I am talking to myself.

I am not blogging. Because I rarely have free hands... or free time.

To Quinn: What you did this summer

This summer did not turn out like I expected but what does. For better or worse things are rarely what I expect... oh, but before I get melancholy or philosophical... let me get back to my point.

I feel badly that we, as a family, did not do anything terribly exciting this summer. Having a new baby is kind of like having one of those ankle monitoring devices they give parolees... in that both keep you pretty close to home unless you don't mind a bit of trouble.

I feel badly mostly that Quinn's first real summer off from school wasn't all that exciting. Though I am pretty certain it was more exciting than all of my childhood summers combined and multiplied by ten. I know he won't remember this summer so I am going to make a list of what he did. Mostly to prove to him I wasn't that bad a parent when he is thirty and in therapy harping on about what a nag I was about the state of his bedroom and his disinterest in reading.

So my dear Quinn this is what you did this summer:
1) Two weeks of half day golf camp - one week with your friend Jack.
2) Many trips to the driving range to hit golf balls and you played your first ever round of golf.
3) A visit to Nascar Speedtrack where you rode a go cart with your Auntie Katherine who visited for 2 weeks from Montreal.
4) A mini-holiday to Kingston where you stayed at a hotel that had a waterslide - you went on your first real waterslide.
5) A mini-holiday to Niagara on the Lake where you stayed at a fancy hotel and had room service.
6)Many trips to the zoo with your paternal grandparents.
7) T-ball... all summer. Your team was the cup finalist. You hit your first grand slam homerun.
8) A visit to CNE and saw the Air show.
9) Lots of expensive private swimming lessons that only marginally helped you deal with your fear of getting your face wet.
10) Many hours spent at home with your mother and baby sister. In the backyard... front yard...family room watching movies. We picked tomatoes from our veggie garden. We argued a lot - don't remember that please.

I hope next summer is more magical and that time passes less quickly... but I don't expect it will.