Quoted

Instead of bliss, I think ignorant people should feel a chronic burning sensation.

- Anonymous

Book Review

The Memory Keeper's Daughter




Ugh...

I just didn't like this book. I wanted to. Really.

The story revolves around a young doctor who delivers his wife's twins during a snowstorm in 1963. This was before ultrasound and epidural which proves to be a very important part of the story. The doctor, David Henry, and his wife, Norah, are not aware that she is carrying twins. When Norah goes into labor early, David barely makes it to his clinic in time for her to deliver. Their obstetrician is stuck in the storm and the only other person present is Dr Henry's nurse, Caroline. Guess what? Caroline is a little bit in love with Dr Henry which is also kinda important.

Norah is put under anesthesia for the actual delivery. The first baby, a boy they will name Paul, is delivered and is perfectly healthy. The second, unexpected baby is a girl who will be called Phoebe. Dr Henry realizes immediately that Phoebe has Down's Syndrome and with all the medical knowledge that he has acquired, decides that she will be a sickly child who will suffer from a heart condition and will die early.

The author spends a lot of time trying to make the reader understand David's reaction to this imperfect child. While Norah is still unconscious, David gives the baby to nurse Caroline to transport to a home for "special needs" children. When his wife awakens, he tells her that they had twins but their daughter had been stillborn.

Meanwhile, Caroline can't bring herself to leave the baby at the home so she takes Phoebe and moves out of state to raise her. She spends a long time believing that Dr Henry is going to realize his mistake and reclaim his daughter. He doesn't.

Then we get to suffer through about three hundred pages of seeing this family pay the price for the father's decision. The marriage crumbles. Norah goes temporarily nuts. And on and on.

Did I mention that Dr Henry becomes a famous photographer? Or that the son, Paul, becomes a famous guitarist? And Norah buys her own travel agency. This book is filled with the most random plot twists. That's not always a bad thing in a book. In fact, I love it when I can't anticipate every move in a novel. But this nonsense was just beyond me. There's also a subplot involving a pregnant, teenage, orphan but my head hurts just thinking about it so I won't elaborate.

I'm sure that somewhere in this book, there lies an important discussion about the differences between men and women and the ways in which they demonstrate love for their children and each other. But honestly, that discussion is buried under so much foolishness, I didn't have the energy to find it.

Easter

"Have you had more Good Fridays than Easter Sundays in your life?"

A benign question posed by the pastor at the very beginning of an Easter service. An overcrowded church. Music plays. A baby cries two rows back.

And inside me... joy and regret and love and pain and indescribable gratitude converge. And the tears that fell were so big that I could hear them splash onto my dress.

Katie and Ava go to Costco.

We took the girls to Costco (my new favorite place!)



Katie and Ava wanted to ride in the cart. (Can you believe they have carts big enough for a 6 and4 year old?) I know. She's a giant 4 year old. What's your point?



They got bored and moved to the back of the cart where they proceeded to rifle through my purse and giggle hysterically each time they found a feminine protection item.



Then they found the camera phone.


Boredom alleviated.

Quoted

This country does not have the luxury to entertain idiocy as if it is reasonable. --Digby

Happy Birthday Ava!

My baby is five years old. So much has changed in my life since she was born.

After Savannah and Kaylee were born so close together, most everyone (including Ryan) assumed that our family was complete. But I always wanted one more. I was so excited to be pregnant with Ava and I really enjoyed almost every minute of the experience. I finally had a really good OB/GYN and I wasn't as nervous about every aspect of the pregnancy like I had been with the older girls.

I was induced on Tuesday morning March 4,2003. I was disappointed to be induced again. I was convinced that out of three pregnancies, I would be able to go into labor on my own at least once. I was wrong. When I was induced with Kaylee, she was born within three hours so I expected Ava to arrive that day before lunch. She didn't.

My labor progressed slowly all day. I was seriously 42 weeks pregnant and she hadn't dropped at all. Friends and family drifted in and out for most of the day to witness my stunning lack of progress. Around 6:00PM, my cousin Mark stopped by. He and Ryan were involved in an animated conversation and were completely unaware of the change in my condition. I had begun to weep silently. I was completely freaking out. I just felt entirely out of control.

A few minutes after Mark left, just prior to the staff shift change, a nurse came in, took one look at me and said "Are you pushing?" I shook my head in denial but apparently she recognized the look. She pulled the sheet off my legs and screamed "Get the doctor. This baby is crowning!" At this point, Ryan still had no idea what was going on. The nurse basically held Ava's head in (sounds yucky, eh?) while my doctor ran in, reminiscent of a thousand sitcom birth scenes, and caught her just in time. It happened so fast, we never even got a chance to turn off the TV. Ava was born during American Idol and some redhead named Clay Aiken was performing.

We did not know Ava's sex prior to her birth. It was great fun not knowing and I wished I had done that with all the kids. I asked the doctor what it was and he said "I have no idea." This is not the answer most new mommies are looking for. She had come so fast he had basically handed her immediately over to the nurse as he tried to concentrate on fixing the damage I had inflicted on myself. It wasn't pretty. Let's leave it at that.

Ryan went over to the isolette and told me she was a girl. I sagged with relief. I had been so scared to have a boy. I know nothing of boys and frankly, they frighten me a little. She weighed 9 pounds and 6 ounces which was a little disappointing since I'd gained at least 50 pounds with the pregnancy.

She was simply the perfect baby. So easygoing and happy. She put up with smothering kisses from Savannah and Kaylee all day long and hardly ever fussed. It was so nice to feel like I knew what I was doing as a mom. I finally had a baby I could enjoy without obsessing over every diaper and feeding. I would change her clothes or diaper and kiss her little feet over and over. I am absolutely crazy for baby feet...so tiny and soft.

Now those tiny feet are much bigger and time seems to be passing so fast that it almost takes my breath away. My sweet little baby now weighs 53 pounds and is almost 4 feet tall. She hates to leave home for anything, comes up with creative excuses to skip preschool and insists on wearing pajamas just about everywhere we go.

Our family has gone through a lot of changes since she arrived and in some ways, we are unrecognizable from the family she was born into but I know for sure that we weren't complete without her.

The grass is greener...

My three month grand jury obligation is over and I'm sad. I have much to say about the jury experience in general that I plan to blog later if I ever catch up at work. But the highlight of these last few months has been the three weeks I got to be a stay at home mom again. The jury schedule allowed me to wake the kids at a reasonable hour, drop them off at school, pick them up in the afternoon and really spend some time with them. I even had time to make the beds, make dinner and actually exercise every day. (Can you imagine? :) )

There's no point in being melodramatic about it. My homemaker days are over and, grudgingly, the kids and I have come to accept this. But these few weeks have really shown me all that I have been missing.

The thing is...I was really good at being a housewife. I loved entertaining. Barbeques, birthday parties, holiday open house buffets. If it involved food, I could host it. I would spend weeks poring over cookbooks, planning shopping lists and trying every conceivable furniture arrangement that would allow me to fit a few more people in our tiny house. I would usually spend one full day on the couch afterward to recover but I loved the whole process nonetheless.

My house used to be really clean too. I washed baseboards...seriously. These days, I'm not even sure if this house still has any. I cleaned windows twice a year. And yeah, the house only has 9 windows but they haven't been touched since 2004 and I'm starting to feel guilty about it.

I used to cook...like every day...multiple times per day. I actually made my kids breakfast bars. The kind that had real ingredients and no corn syrup. I used to laugh at all the convenience foods available at the grocery store. "What kind of lazy mom can't make her kid a PB&J?" I wondered. These days, I throw that premade Uncrustable in the lunch box and wonder how I ever survived without those handy little bastards.

What I mourn most of all is the time I miss with my girls. I'm not romanticizing being a stay at home parent. I remember all too well the mind numbing boredom of having no one to talk to over the age of 4. I remember the cabin fever that would overwhelm me in the winter when we literally did not leave the house sometimes for DAYS. But all that, to me, was a small price to pay for the opportunity to raise my own children. I knew every minute detail of their lives. I do believe in the concept of "quality time" but "quantity time" has it's benefits too.

Whenever the kids get nostalgic about "the way things used to be", I remind them that families everywhere have working moms and that, like it or not, we have to play the cards we're dealt. That's probably a lesson I need to remember myself, I suppose, but when Kaylee said "Mom, I wish every day could be jury duty day." I just said, "Me too baby. Me too."