A Low Bar is Key

I'm kind of drunk* right now, but what the hell, I'll take a stab at this anyway.

(*Fatigue drunk, just to be clear, not alcohol drunk. Sadly.)
 
In the aeons since I last posted, we have produced a beautiful and beloved baby girl. We named her Emilia Mae, brought her home with pride and love, and then promptly proceeded to lose our minds over the next weeks. And I will very definitely post her birth story, hopefully soon, but for now, I can't even process anything more complicated than the alphabet. And I might miss some letters there, if given a pop quiz.

Baby love

So there's the usual newborn fatigue and sibling processing going on, but Emilia also has reflux and is possibly colicky, possibly just high maintenance, but either way is attached to me 24/7. Like for real, for real, I'm either nursing baby girl, wearing her, or sleeping with her.

Also it's finally spring in MN, which means it's time for the Ewalds to contract a killer death plague and disappear into the sick locker for a while. Which we have done, and 2014's plague consists of some sort of mild and yet still soul shrivelingly awful influenza complete with fevers, chills, and muscle aches that actually made me cry on Friday morning.

Sick Locker 2014: Fevers of 104, aka Life Sucks

Though to be fair, I was attempting to get three small children to the doctor's by 8 AM in order to start our medical clearance for the military, and that might have brought me to tears on a good morning. The fever and chills just made it more fun.

Allow me to share my life with you.

Scene 1: Hallmark Moment

Emi is crying, because I'm not holding her. Addie is crying because I gave her water in an orange cup instead of a blue one. Addie pushes her cup away in a tantrum, and of course, knocks it over. Water is everywhere. Graydon is crying because his hands are dirty. Wait, his hands really are dirty. Is that...yes. Yes, his hands are covered in poop. He has diarrhea, probably from "Advil tummy" and went excavating in his diaper. In his distress, he is trying to clean them on anything and everything he can reach. 

Scene 2: Motherhood: NAILING IT

My mom goes back to NC on a Tuesday, right as Emilia's colic is hitting full force. Emilia has a screaming fit that lasts for two hours. She cries. I cry because I can't soothe her and because my Mom left. Tim comes home and my eyes are swollen shut from sobbing, I'm topless because I accidentally soaked my shirt with breastmilk after forgetting breast pads, and my hair is matted with spit up from Emilia's reflux issues. 

Scene 3: Feel the Burn

I attempt to hustle the two bigger kids into the shower with me. Emi is grunting and working herself up into a crying fit in her bouncy chair. I have approximately 4 minutes to get myself and the bigs cleaned before she blows. I herd my two eldest into the spray and hurriedly rip off my own clothes. In my hurry, I accidentally also rip a dangling thread "down there" assuming it's part of a my admittedly crappy underwear. (I am not wasting good undies on post partum, y'all). It is not. It is my episiotomy stitches...which I have just ripped out.  That smarts.

Scene 4:  The Future

Tim comes home and all three kids are crying while I am swigging cooking sherry and singing "Jesus Take the Wheel" at the top of my lungs.


OK, #4 hasn't happened yet, but give it time.

 So all of that is hard and I've cried more in the last three weeks than I did in the last year, but it's totally worth it for this.

Gang of three

How did I get three beautiful, smart, healthy kids? We are truly blessed and it's that long term view that gets me through the short term chaos of transition. It's always hard to add a child to your family, even when everything is "perfect" and it hardly ever goes perfectly, am I right? Still, we have not yet visited Intensive Care so this worlds, galaxies, universes even, better than our transition with Graydon.

And during those moments that everyone is crying, I just try to find one grace note, and hang on to it for dear life. Like the following: it might be noon and Addie might not be dressed yet and Emi might need a diaper change and yet another feeding and the beds aren't made but just look at their darling faces and how much they already love each other.

Sister Love: this one melts me.

So while we've kind of lost the plot here, I know it will get better in the coming weeks. We don't have much to focus on besides our family. Just Tim finishing his thesis and defending it. And saying goodbye to our friends and family here. And moving out of our house. And moving to Tokyo. Total cakewalk.

It reminds me of something my friend Danielle says that always cracks me up: like the old MadTV skit, it's all about "Lowered Expectations" for the next few ...um....years?

Brother Love