white privilege

The other day I was walking with my kids downtown when we saw a police car drive by. My oldest laughed and waived, the officers smiled and waived back.
I teach my kids to trust the police, to go to them for help. I obviously have white kids. We also don’t live in the US.
I cannot even begin to imagine what it must feel like to have to teach your children that the people whose job it is to protect you, are actually not to be trusted. Because of the way you look.

220 mutual friends

I watched Marriage Story on Netflix the other night. It's been on my watch list for a while but since watching a whole movie takes so much longer than, say, watching five 30-minute episodes of any random show.... I haven't gotten around to it.
Until now.
It was good. Sad. As I expected it to be. That's another reason I have been putting off watching it. You're not always in the mood to be sad.

I'm not getting a divorce. (that is what the movie is about, fyi)
Dylan and I had a coworker once who said "Divorce sucks. Never get a divorce. Just don't."
She had done it twice. So either the second one sucked way more, or she didn't follow her own advice. I don't know.

Facebook just told me we have 220 mutual friends, my husband and I. That and so much more. You can't just divorce a person, you have to divorce a whole family, a whole life. 220 mutual friends.

I'm not getting a divorce. I think everyone who has ever been married for more than 10 minutes has contemplated divorce. Doesn't mean you want one. But whenever there is a door marked EXIT, you're bound to be curious of what is on the other side. And sometimes think that whatever it is, it has to better. But I don't. Think it has to better, that is.

Marriage Story was beautiful and sad. And in the end it made me feel better.

Friends

I live far away from most of my good friends. I go through long stretches of time where I don't communicate with them at all. Then spurts of several long messages back and forth. I know of course that were we to live closer, I still wouldn't see them all the time. I have some friends that live close and it's amazing how you can promise each other to get together again soon and then suddenly realize it's been four months.... but the difference there is you know you could get together, if you really wanted to, or needed to. They are within reach.

But they friends that are out of reach... It warms my soul to read their messages and the see the heart emojis and xoxo's. But it saddens me immensely that that's all we can do.

Oh Sh*t

The second I step inside this morning (just got back from the gym) Lou goes:
Mooooom, can you wipe Ellie's butt?!? She has poop in her pants, I can smell the poop in the my nose!

So could I, and quickly proceeded to change the diaper. Lou was watching over my shoulder, equally disgusted and intrigued.

"She always takes poops in the morning.... So much shit!"

This was true, and I didn't reprimand her language.
There was a lot of shit.

BK - This is the difference

I have to go to Italy in a few weeks to attend a training and couple of meetings. Right now we're trying to nail down some kind of schedule and arrange for when we all need to fly in and out. I am looking a draft agenda that would make me busy Wednesday and Friday. Which sucks. My immediate reaction is, of course "so what am I supposed to do all day Thursday, just hang out in Rome!?!"
This is life after kids.
Before kids, I would have been like, I get to go to Italy for work! And, best part is I don't even have to attend a meeting one of the days so I can just hang out and see Rome. Lucky me!

Ah how life changes.

I spy with my little eye....

... a working mother on the loose.
I had an appointment downtown and figured it made no sense to ride all the way back to campus for another couple of hours work.
So I brought the laptop and now I'm working from the coffee shop right around the corner from our house. I happened to sit right in front of the window and the way the sun was shining I put my sunglasses on.
Also handy should a family member walk by and realize I'm enjoying hot coffee and a scone. 

Happy 4th of July

The smallest American gets to wear a red shirt with white starts and blue shorts to match.
The toddler American gets to wear whatever the hell she wants because I'm not taking that fight. The party is at our house so whatever... she's cold, hot, uncomfortable, she can change.
Mom American ordered a red and white dress which turned out to be much too small, so she's going to wear something else.
Dad American is like toddler American, responsible for his own outfit.
So yeah.... I think Ellie is going to be the only one in red, white and blue.
Oh well.

New rule

If you insist on letting a 3 year old wait up till 8:30pm to have dessert (only because company is coming over) then you are also putting said 3 year old (now sugar high but also tired monster) to bed.
That's only fair.
Last night was not fair.

Life downtown

I enjoy living downtown. It's only been a few weeks, and summer is probably going to be the time of year I enjoy the least. It's not like we have Lake Coeur d'Alene outside our bedroom window, so to enjoy grass, parks and such... we have to travel a little. But another apartment complex probably wouldn't have been that different. And summers can be short.

It's good. It's ours. Not to own, but the contract is ours. We decide when we move out.

There's a lot of relief in that.

Last night after dinner I put Ellie in the umbrella stroller and let Lou ride her little bike to the main square where the city has put up a little portable pop-up playground. The sun was out and people too. Even though I'm a worn out mom of two with no other plans for the late evening than maybe Netflix unless I fall asleep first, it feels good to be among the city life for a bit. I think. I like it.

Fresh take on things

I just had lunch with my cousin. I have a lot of cousins and don't really hang out with many of them, much. As we're sitting there one of our other cousins actually walked by and stopped to chitchat for just a second. With the other cousin, that is. I don't even think she realized who I was. Anyway.

This cousin who does know who I am is such a great conversation partner. We have so many similarities with where we are in life, what we want, what we don't want. What we're willing to compromise.
Whenever I talk to her I feel refueled afterwards. Like she just made me take a step back and see that the spots I've been starring at are really just part of something bigger.
She is wise.
And I don't think I throw that word around too much.

Snow

We got at least 4 inches over night. Wet and heavy. I told Lou go look out the window and was like "so it's going to take us longer than usual to get to school today so we have to hurry"
She looked at our completely buried bikes and said "Mom, I don't think we should bike, let's walk to school"
Which would have maybe been the safest and smartest way to get there. But we would also have been lucky to get there by lunch time. So I complemented her for thinking about safety first, then assured her biking on unplowed roads was perfectly fine, and took off on my frozen bike. 

Bassinet booked, baby!

You've ever seen those little flower basket looking things that you can put your infant in on long flights? They're called carrier cots, or in-flight bassinets.
I just reserved one for Ellie.
Disco!
I'm so excited for me and my arms.
Also, person sitting next to us... you are welcome.

We're doing crafts dammit!

I just googled ideas for paper turkey crafts stuff... Since we're hosing Thanksgiving I'd like to decorate just a little, but since Thanksgiving is not a thing here (the pilgrims never went to Sweden) it's not like the kid who is officially old enough to bring home crappy crafts from preschool will contribute to this holiday.

So, we're on our own. After I pick her up from preschool in exactly 1,5 hours we are going to buy orange, brown and yellow paper, little eyes, a glue stick, and then it's on. I hope she'll be into it.

It's very obvious, and toddlers are like bloodhounds, when it comes to faking excitedness. Like if I tell her Hey! we're doing a fun project with thread and needles and yarn.... she's bored after two seconds, because I am. On the other hand she knows like five different yoga poses and can spontaneously drop down and do push-ups in the middle of dinner.

So crafts isn't exactly something we do regularly, kind of like eating fish.... I just tell myself she gets that taken care of at school. But today we're doing it, dammit! 

One month till departure

We leave for Idaho in one month. Dylan and I both feel pretty stressed out about it, considering what all we have to get done before we leave. Move, finish classes, work, etc.
Louisa on the other hand packs her bags for Idaho every morning and then cries about not being able to go today either.
Could be a long month.

Next Saturday we are doing Friendsgiving at our place, back by popular demand. Same crew as last year, mostly. Plus kids. Last year we got rid of them and had fun. This year there's just too many of them so we'll let them in on the festivities and it will be a different kind of fun.

We haven't found a turkey yet. Also our freezer is too small to hold one so we either have to get a real small one, like chicken size, or buy it like the day of.... I'll let Dylan worry about that. All I really care about is the green bean casserole. 

Because real life just makes for such shitty Instagram posts

You know?
I propped my piping hot coffee up on the window sill to get a shot of hot coffee, frosty grass outside and was going to caption that with something about fall and temperatures dropping and whatever... but the guy blowing leaves outside the window kept ruining the shot and our window sills are kinda dirty, so never mind.

Besides, I already feel like there's been enough false advertising. Yesterday I posted pics from our scenic walk home. And we did have a very nice 30 minutes along the river. But only after being 86d from the library, dealing with meltdowns in the coatroom and arguing about whether or not to use gloves all afternoon. Oh, and baby puke. Of course.

But who wants to see that?

Maybe I should take a picture of our overflowing sink, the nasty kitchen floor, or the pile of trash bags on the back patio we haven't taken to the garbage room yet...

No props or backdrops needed. Can't ruin that shot.

Seriously....

You know what's fun about moving every six months or so?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
The people we are currently subletting from told us yesterday that they'd be willing to sublet for another six months and we could start the paper work.
Today they said they decided to terminate their lease instead. So we're out.
Fun.

Lou has an eye infection
Ellie produces buggers the size of rat turds (it's an estimation but they're big)
Dylan, who is no germophobe and usually not amazing at washing his hands and such, treats both kids and what yellowy guck come out of their faces like it's a new extra dangerous strand of Ebola.

It's amazing

How quickly the days to by and how busy I feel even though I rarely have to do much more than keep two kids alive, fed, somewhat clean and take the older one to preschool three days a week for 5 hours each day.
Ellie has started to smile. Not just the inward smile with eyes closed, but she actually looks at you, and if you poke her in the dimple, she smiles. It's kind of fun. Other than that.... babies don't provide too much in terms of interaction. But you still love 'em a whole lot.
Lou is still adjusting and gets really pouty and frustrated when we tell her NO! and You can't poke/pull/grab/lift you sister that way! but I think it's getting a little better.
I'm glad I don't have to go back to work in 5 weeks. But I'm also really glad I have a job to go back to. The stay at home mom thingy isn't a career meant for me. 

And then there was 4

She didn't look like a Joline, whatever they look like.... eyes of emerald green and auburn hair apparently, so we named her Elenore.
It's been the name we've kept coming back to, over and over, and so finally it was like... why are we trying so hard to think of something else? We all like Elenore, we already call her Ellie... so there it is.
She's not even three weeks old and I can hardly remember what it was like before.

It's so different the second time around. Lou made me a mother. I was all hers and she was all I cared about. Ellie was born to a toddler mom.

But luckily I am the second daughter too. I grew up with my "Baby's first year" album still in its plastic case next to my sister's all filled in album, complete with foot prints and hair locks. Who has time for that stuff when you got to keep a toddler from climbing on the stove, explain why we can't ride our bikes to Pennsylvania, and cut the potato patties into exactly six pieces?

And I turned out fine. So Ellie Belly, Smelly Ellie, little sister, you will too. You'll find your way out of your sister's shadow and we will be there for you every step of the way.

Joline

Lou is obsessed with the song Joline. Dylan recently bought a record that has it on it, and it's been going on repeat.

It started with a girl at her preschool named Joline, then she named one of her dolls Joline. It's not her favorite doll, I mean Joline is no Irma Gerd.... Irma Gerd sleeps in her bed and goes in the car and gets her pants changed every day. But baby Joline is all plastic and can take a bath and go in the shower, unlike IG who has a soft body with cotton stuffing and can't participate in bath time.

Anyways, she loves loves loves the song and wants to hear it always. And even though I'm getting a little sick of Dolly Parton begging not to take her man, the name Joline is really starting to grow on me...