A few of my favorite things...

It's hard to believe Christmas is tomorrow.

I'm usually giddy with excitement by now, but this year has been very hard.  Yesterday marked six months since our little Brigid died, and we're missing her so much.  I am so excited for Christmas, only because I love seeing the look on the boys' faces when they come down that morning.  But I'm just not feeling it so much on the inside.

Still, there are things around us that make me happy when I see them.  These are a few of them:

I'm pretty crazy about paper snowflakes.  Jack is, too.  He decided that he wanted to make one for Santa, since the big guy doesn't really get a lot of presents for Christmas besides the ones from the elves and Mrs. Claus.  So we folded the paper and he carefully cut out a snowflake for him to put on his Christmas tree, writing "To Santa from Jack" on the back.

I just love our Christmas stockings.  Five of them just fit onto our railing and I remember thinking that we needed a new house if we were to add one more.  Or two more.  But now there are still just five.  And that one paper one that Jack made at school and added on the end for Blarney.  But there, over the door.  See that?  That's something that Patrick and I got in Ireland when we got engaged.  That's St. Brigid's cross.  It's like she's in the stocking picture, but in a different way.  When I look down the hallway and see that, it makes me happy.

Sort of.

Finally, there is a house nearby that has several of these Moravian stars hanging outside.  Some of them are over eight feet tall.  They're just beautiful and ethereal.  I love getting the boys in their jammies after dinner one night, giving them some sippy cups of hot chocolate, and driving around to look at Christmas lights.  This house is my favorite.  

And, of course, it's hard not to smile when I look at these three, even if they have been in off-the-wall mode for the past few weeks because Christmas is coming.

For the first time in years, I've gotten all of my wrapping done before Christmas Eve, which means that we can have a relaxing day together today and possibly even get to bed at a decent hour.

And then, in the morning we get to tell the boys that we're going to see this guy:

I can't stinking wait!

photo source:  http://www.americanconsumernews.com/2009/01/disney-announces-military-travel-promotion-for-2009.html

Getting ready

We've been doing a lot of Christmas prep around here lately. There is so much to do, it's hard to juggle everything. It's also hard to balance the joy of the season with the grief that we're feeling. It was this time last year that we knew we were going to be having another little someone in our family, and we spent a lot of time thinking about what this Christmas would be like with another baby: another stocking to hang, another little someone to be in awe of the lights on the Christmas tree.

It was just two days after Christmas that we learned that little someone was going to be TWO little someones. How exciting that was! So this year, amid the hustle-bustle and the anticipation of the season, there is a sadness about what could have been. And there is so much to do that there are days when I wish I could just sit and cry. Or be bitchy and sad. Just one day when I didn't have to worry about taking care of the rest of the family and could just take care of myself...by just doing nothing. But that's not to be. I was reflecting on this as I was in the shower this morning. The shower is usually where I do my crying. It's the only time I have a few minutes to be alone with my thoughts, to be reminded, as I wash the scars on my belly, of what we went through. Of all that we did to try to make sure that at least Brigid came home safely.  But it still wasn't enough. It was so hard, and if she was here, it would have been more than worth it, but she's not. I realized the other day that I have cried every single day since March 9th. That's a lot of crying. My eyes burn constantly.

Anyway, this morning was a little different. This morning in the shower, I was laughing, remembering something funny that happened two years ago around this time. It was a little respite from the usual sadness I feel while showering, and it was like a gift for the day. Bear with me while I recount this gem of a story:

I was eight months pregnant with Thomas. Patrick had taken the two boys out for something - to Walmart, I think - and I was home alone and able to take a leisurely shower. Something I don't often do. We'd been having trouble with the toilet in our master bathroom - one of those jiggle-the-handle-or-else-it-just-keeps-running problems. Well, I used the toilet and then got in the shower. I was taking my good old time when I started thinking that the sound of the water echoing in the shower was something I hadn't noticed before. Probably because I'm usually thinking of other things and rushing to finish up. Gosh, I thought, it sounds like a babbling brook or something. Very relaxing. I finished my shower and turned off the water. Except the sound didn't stop. I opened the curtain and saw that there was two inches of water all over the bathroom floor. The toilet must have clogged and then continued running until it overflowed - a lot - and was still running.

Quickly, I jumped out of the shower (as much as an eight-month-pregnant woman can jump and be quick) and turned off the water supply to the toilet.  Think, think, think! I couldn't even think of where to start making this better.  I grabbed every towel out of the linen closet and started sopping it up, but there was still so much more.  And now the towels were so heavy and I could hardly bend down to grab them all off the floor. I threw them all, soaked, into the shower and saw that it had hardly made a dent in the mess. Then I remembered the shop vac.  I threw on a bathrobe that didn't even close around my pregnant belly and ran down to the garage to search for the shop vac, calling Patrick on the way down to ask if he knew where it was (our garage is crowded) to make the search easier.  As I got to the bottom of the steps, I could hear the water dripping down behind the walls of the foyer.  I had to be fast or else it would start soaking through the drywall.  We have a huge, industrial-sized shop vac, and I finally found it and dragged it upstairs, still dripping wet and half naked.  By now, the water is seeping out into the carpet of the bedroom as I frantically plug the shop vac in a couple feet outside the bathroom door and turn it on.  Thankfully, it served to eliminate the water in the bathroom quickly and effectively, and I started to calm down a little bit as I saw that I was making progress getting rid of it before it started draining down into the floor and through the ceiling of the main floor.  I took my time and made sure I was getting up as much of it as I could, knowing that there were no more towels to use to dry it up.  I sort of vacuumed myself out of the bathroom and as I got to the door, I started to feel some drops of water on my head.  It was only then that I looked behind myself and realized that the shop vac had merely been sucking the water out of the bathroom and then shooting it up in the air all over the bedroom!  Our entire bed was soaked, along with the floor, the dressers, and the walls and ceiling.  I just stood there and screamed.  I'm laughing hysterically as I type this, recalling the feeling of shock and horror I felt when I turned around.  I didn't have a single dry towel to use on it and I just started grabbing for sheets and blankets in an effort to dry everything.  And then I just started laughing.  I mean, honestly, it was one of those where's-the-hidden-camera moments, you know?  And I sort of just had to laugh or go crazy. 

I think that's really the key to survival.  Recognizing when you just need to laugh.  When everything is so far out of your control and you just can't believe that it could happen like that.  It's been my survival mechanism for most of my life - being able to find the humor in things.  This story sort of parallels our situation with the twins.  The blissful time in the shower is like that feeling of joy about adding twins to our family.  Opening the shower curtain and seeing the mess was like learning they had TTTS.  Working so hard to clean it up was like the surgery and months of bed rest and medications round-the-clock, and hospitalizations to make sure Brigid would be okay.  And then that shock of seeing the water all over the bedroom after I'd done all that work to clean it up was like the shock of Brigid's death. But the situation with the girls is just never going to get to the laughing stage.  And that's hard to accept.  Grief is exhausting, and I'm all kinds of tired.

Meanwhile, we're looking forward to Christmas with anticipation.  We'll be taking our boys to Walt Disney World in January.  It's a much-needed family fun time to help us reconnect and forget a little bit about what happened this year.  We're telling them Christmas morning, and I'm feeling like a kid just getting excited for both that morning and the trip itself.

Jack had his preschool Christmas program this morning and it was so fun to see him up there singing all his Christmas songs that he's worked so hard to memorize.  He only shared one of them with us beforehand and said he wanted to keep the others a surprise.  He's such a smart kid and it's amazing to see him learning new things and enjoying school.

I'll leave you with a few photos from this month.  I can't seem to get the video of the program uploaded to the blog right now, but when I'm able to do that, I'll post it.  It's so darn cute.

Thomas LOVES Santa, so it was funny to see him get shy as soon as he sat on his lap. He is rarely shy.  After a few moments of questioning from the Big Man and silence from Thomas, we said, "Okay Tommy, say bye-bye, Santa!"  Tommy said "NO!  See Santa more!"  He just liked being with him in silence, I guess, and the magic of knowing that the man in red knew his every unspoken Christmas wish.

Or something like that.

Catching up...

Su, this one's for you. xx

Things have been a bit busy in the T house since Jack's birthday. A few days before Thanksgiving, two big things happened:

(1) Thomas started walking.

He was just a few days shy of 10 months old, which is right around when his brothers started too. (This is fun when the first baby does it, but much more difficult when subsequent babies do as there are more little folks running in opposite directions to chase around.) This has been uniquely challenging with Thomas, also, because he is very very tall. Tall enough to reach items on the kitchen counter already, yet young enough not to understand danger or consequences. It's forced me to have to rethink what items I can just leave on the counter to go help someone with the potty, for example. Thank God he's never been hurt by anything, but I've seen his little fingers just about ready to grab some of my sharpest knives and it's very frightening.

(2) We found out we're expecting again.

This came as a complete and utter shock, as we were definitely not trying and instead working to give ourselves a little more time to decide when we might be ready to have another. Apparently, God made that decision for us and while it took a few days to sink in, we were both happy about the prospect of adding a new little somebody to our family.

We visited family for Thanksgiving and even got a little snow that day. It was such a nice holiday.

Christmastime had me really feeling nauseous and tired. Exhausted, actually, and really nauseous too, I guess, since we all got a stomach virus the week before Christmas. It just picked us off one by one, starting with Thomas, and ending with me. I'm pretty sure I spent all day Christmas eve in bed with a trash can. Not exactly a holiday to remember, but the boys got to play with their new toys all day, which they loved, and I just tried to get myself to keep down a few sips of apple juice. It was weird to wish I was only feeling the pregnancy nausea and not the virus nausea, but I was praying for that several times a day.





A few days after Christmas, I had my first ultrasound for this pregnancy because I was feeling a little bit bigger and the doctor thought perhaps my dates were off.

Wrong.

Here's what we saw.


I'm glad I had a little inkling (I knew I was feeling larger than usual, and I also knew that my dates were probably not wrong), otherwise I may have just rolled right off the ultrasound table. So, rather than adjusting to the idea of one new addition to our family, we're mentally preparing ourselves for TWO! And the idea of five children under the age of five. It's been scary and overwhelming and exhausting and daunting, but also exciting and amazing (and did I mention exhausting?) and leaving us feeling tremendously blessed. Five years ago, as blissful newlyweds, we could never have imagined that we'd have five children one day, and now, here we are. The doctor is pretty sure they're identical twins, and while we usually wait to find out the gender, we'll be finding out this time around. Our big ultrasound for that is on March 9.

January brought lots of snow


and Thomas's first birthday.



My, that year went quickly! He is the most happy, outgoing baby and it's hard to imagine life without him. He makes us laugh. He tells us knock knock jokes. (Really.) He keeps us on our toes. He says Mama, Dada, knock-knock, up, cracker, ba ba (bottle), ball, hi, and bye-bye. His smile is contagious. He's a dancing machine.

I also got to visit my sister in San Francisco in January and somehow managed not to take any pictures of our time together. We had a great time doing a few things for her wedding in March, walking around San Francisco, and playing Scrabble.

It's hard to believe it's the last day of February, and March and springtime are just around the corner. This year, I could not be more thankful. It's been a long winter cooped up in the house feeling tired and nauseous with three energetic little boys. We're all anxious to get outside and play!

Visiting Santa

I'd hoped to get a good picture of the boys with Santa for our Christmas card this year.

Then I remembered how fun they are to try to get to look at the camera and/or smile.

Don't we have the cutest Santa ever? I was only allowed to take two photos with my own camera before I'd have to purchase the Bleed-'Em-Dry photo package, so I decided a picture with Santa was not going to be on our Christmas card this year.

PJ's hair is looking rather "I want to be a dentist" that day, so I thought maybe a photo with Rudolph was more doable.


Um....maybe not.

This one could have been okay if I weren't a perfectionist. So close, but come on, Jack! Plus, there were easily ten up-and-downs for each of them between the first Rudolph picture and the second. I was kneeling on the ground saying loudly, "Boys! Look at Mommy!" a hundred times , my maternity jeans were slowly falling down (I think I had a whole underwear-hanging-out-the-top thing going on that is so much less cool on pregnant 30-somethings than high school boys), and this whole setup was right in the middle of the busiest part of the mall.

Okay, so Mommy can't be on the floor anymore. Let's just stand over by the Christmas trees and the two of them can just smile?

Maybe?

The dialogue went a little something like:

"How about if we just stand by the Christmas trees and you give PJ a hug, Jack? Over here. No, don't touch the lights. Don't pull on the beads. Boys turn this way. NO, the ornaments are NOT balls! Don't hit them! Don't hit HIM!...Look here! Look at Mommy. Wait - stand still! Don't knock PJ down! Don't squeeze his neck like that! Look! Look over here! PeeeJaaaaaay! Jack! Look! Okay now say, 'candy cane!' Wait, say it and LOOK! Look at Mommy! Oh sh*t. Forget it."


And there was no photo for the Christmas card that day.

Christmas morning 2009

I'm pretty sure this was my most exciting Christmas ever. Jack was old enough to anticipate what was going to happen, and we counted down the days until Santa would come with our paper chain advent calendar.

Christmas morning, I was awake before the boys, making monkey bread and lighting the tree. When I first heard them stirring at around 6 a.m., I went into Jack's room and he said excitedly, "Mommy, I heard Santa!"

I remember getting a few notes from Santa when I was little, so I thought I'd leave a little note and some gumdrops (thanks to Patrick's mom) for the boys from the man in red.

Jack had asked Santa for "Mowwy and some tracks that change wines."

(I just realized I never posted pictures of their visit with Santa...that will be coming next.)

Fortunately, when Santa looked at me curiously, I just nodded and winked knowingly. I knew exactly what that meant, and quietly thanked God that he wasn't asking for something totally new since I'd already finished my Christmas shopping.

So he got lots of tracks that change wines...er, lines. And his beloved yellow engine, Molly...who has gone virtually untouched since Christmas morn, but whatever.

PJ hadn't really asked for anything because, well, he had no idea what was going on, but he got a tricycle that he loves and had to be coaxed off of in order to open the rest of his gifts.

I thought it might be nice to get a picture of each of the boys in his Christmas jammies.

Then I remembered that Jack smiles like this whenever the camera comes out. You'd think the jammies were made of burlap and barbed wire.

PJ spent much of the morning with his tongue between his teeth, exclaiming "Thhhhmmmewwy Christmas!"

Don't ask me why.

He seemed to think it was the funniest thing ever.

We were supposed to have Aunt Devon, Nana and Pop-Pop come for Christmas dinner, but they weren't feeling great and it was freezing rain, so we stayed in our pajamas all day and the boys got to play with their toys. It was the most relaxing holiday ever.

Later, the boys sat on the couch together looking at some of their new (ahem, Usborne) books. Jack is fascinated with telling the time right now, so this one was just perfect for him. It has a little clock with moving hands and he was showing PJ how they go around.

I love moments like these.

I hope everyone had a blessed Christmas and a very happy New Year!

I missed it!

Well, yesterday was my one year blogiversary ... and I missed it.

Nausea and fatigue have settled in like unwanted house guests and the new focus of my days has been trying to stave them off.

It's a good sign, I know, and I'm glad I decided to enjoy the nausea-free weeks of early pregnancy instead of worrying that something was wrong, like I did with the first two. Unfortunately, though, if I thought it was hard keeping up with Jack when I felt nauseous with PJ, keeping up with both of them is even harder. I have no tolerance for two-year-old tantrums - even when they're as few and far between as Jack's are. I'm ready for bed by 7 p.m.

We had a relatively low-key holiday season, which was perfect. Family came here on Christmas day, and then Patrick had the whole week off between Christmas and New Year's day. We did next to nothing, which I know bummed him out a little bit (his to-do list was posted on our blackboard weeks before vacation started and I think he got...let me see...NONE of the things on it done). But I know he was going fast and furious to meet his year end deadlines for work and he really needed the down time. We vegged out, we spent way too much time online, and we played with our boys. It was just perfect.

Oh, we also moved Jack into a toddler bed! He's so tall that he's been easily able to swing one leg up and over the side of his crib for a while now, and we wanted to avoid the eventual fall. My brother and sister-in-law gave us a toddler bed that their little ones had grown out of and we painted it black to match the furniture in Jack's room. Eventually, Jack, his toddler bed, and his furniture will be moved into PJ's room, the boys will share a room, and Jack's room will become the nursery.

Jack is very excited about this, and PJ, who adores his big brother, is going to be thrilled, I'm sure. I just hope they will actually sleep in there together.

We could never have known, when we moved into this house in August of 2006, that just three years later the bedrooms would be filled with three little children! It's unreal.

And finally, just to continue the whole lack-of-rhyme-or-reason theme of this post, following is a conversation that just took place:

Me: Jack, I think you're cute.

Jack: No, my not cute.

Me: Yes you are cute!

Jack: No, no my not cute.

Me: Okay, then I think Daddy's cute.

Jack: No, Daddy not cute. My cute.

Me: You're cute?

Jack: Yeah. Mommy cute and my cute.

Merry Christmas!