Around the House | Marriage Confessions Around the House

Tomorrow morning at the butt-crack of dawn, we’re going to be heading to the hospital so that Gracie can get tubes in her ears. I feel really good about it. Gracie hasn’t had a doctors appointment since Thanksgiving when she hasn’t either had an ear infection, a double ear infection, or fluid in her ears. I am so happy that she will have some relief from the constant ear aches, and that we might have some relief from the constantly missed work.

This afternoon, I had a voice mail from the doctor’s office asking me to call them back to answer a health questionnaire for Gracie. Since I teach, it is really hard for me to step out and take a personal phone call, so I sent Chris a quick email and asked him to call the doctor’s office for me. He emailed me back an hour later and all his email said was, “That was hard.” When he got home from work, he once again told me how hard the questionnaire had been. Finally, when he said it again over dinner, I asked him straight out, “What exactly did they ask you?”

Following is the question and answer session Chris told me he had with the nurse. I dare you to read it and not wet your pants.

Nurse: How old is Gracie?
(Correct answer: thirteen months)
Chris: She’s still a baby.

Nurse: How much did Gracie weigh when she was born?
(Correct answer: 8lbs, 2oz)
Chris: She was medium sized.

Nurse: How much does Gracie weigh now?
(Correct answer: 21bs)
Chris: She’s about the weight of a watermelon.

Nurse: How tall is Gracie?
(Correct answer: 29in.)
Chris: She’s pretty short.

Seriously. These are the things my husband knows about our daughter. It’s frightening. I told him that we have to get there early tomorrow so that I can correct our paperwork so they don’t dispense the anesthesia for a short, medium-sized, watermelon weight baby.

46 comments | posted in Around the House, Dads, Fun Things, health, Husbands, Marriage, Marriage Confessions, Parenting | tags: dads, Family, humor

Late in my pregnancy with Bean, the advice changed from how to survive my pregnancy to how to survive the first few months as a new mom. Without a doubt, the most frequent advice I heard was, “Sleep when the baby sleeps!”

Hearing that before I had any children, it seemed a little silly. Of course I’d sleep when the baby slept! What else would I do? But within one day of having Bean finally in my arms, I realized how much there was to do!

For one thing, I’d had a c-section, and so I had to take care of my own healing body, but that would have to wait until he slept because I couldn’t change bandages with a newborn in my arms.

And there was the laundry. Oh, Lord! The laundry! Epic amounts of laundry because I insisted on changing Bean’s clothes every time he touched anything and because we went through so many blankets and burp cloths on a daily basis.

And there were other tasks, too, like sending thank you notes, cleaning up the house for the next round of visitors, and preparing meals. I started to understand very quickly why everyone gave that advice, but I still didn’t know how to follow it. With so much to be done, when would I ever sleep again?!

It really wasn’t until Gracie was born that I finally figured out how to sleep when the baby slept. The first thing I learned was to lower my expectations. I learned to accept that my house wasn’t going to be tidy and neat every day. Some days I managed it, but other days I didn’t. And on those days when the house looked like it had imploded, I just let it go. Because in the grand scheme of things, dishes in my sink or laundry piles on my floor weren’t the worst things to happen.

Another tip I learned was to get “close enough.” Gracie was a colicky baby, and on days when she cried for hours straight, I settled with getting the laundry “close enough” to the washer, and so I’d collect all the dirty laundry from around the house and throw it into piles on the floor of the laundry room. And then (this is my favorite part!) I’d shut the door and walk away. I did the same thing with dishes. We bottle-fed, so I had bottles everywhere. And we ate when and where we could in those first months, so that always left a trail of dishes.

Then there were the guests who were stopping in to visit, which meant there were coffee cups and snack trays sitting out. Dishes were everywhere, and when I had a few minutes free, I started getting them “close enough” to the dishwasher. I’d make a sweep through the house with Gracie in one arm, collecting all the dishes and throwing them into the sink with the other arm. I’d get to them later.

Getting “close enough” made my whole house feel neater and organized because at least the messes were contained in specific areas, and the rest of the house could be salvaged. That did wonders for my new-mom psyche.

In the evenings when Chris got home from work, he and I would work together to actually DO the laundry and WASH the dishes. Having that extra set of hands to help was such a blessing after long days at home with a newborn!

The last thing I learned was to let people help – and not just Chris. When my parents offered to come over and help for an afternoon, I asked them to do some laundry. When my Grandma asked if she could come bring us a meal, I said yes (and I even let her do the dishes!). Before I had kids, I would never have asked someone to do my chores for me, and even with my first I had a hard time. But by the time Gracie was born, I learned that that’s just what people DO. Anyone with kids knows what position you are in as a new mom, and it makes us feel useful if you let us help. We feel like we’re passing the torch, and what a heavy torch it can be!

Using these simple little tips throughout your busy days as a new parent will actually free up some time for you, and you’ll be surprised that by the time the baby is ready for a nap, so are you!

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16 comments | posted in Around the House, Flashbacks, Marriage Confessions, Parenting, pregnancy, Reviews | tags: new moms, parenting, pregnancy

This year I challenged each of my students to read 30 books this school year. It started as just a random, incredible high number that I didn’t expect them to reach. I set it purposefully high so that they would keep reaching for it all year. Well, turns out about 30 out of my 110 students actually DID read the full 30 books already – and we still have five weeks left! They have blown me away with their reading.

I have been inspired by them this year and have been working to keep up with their incredible reading pace. In the process, I’ve read a lot of books myself. Some have been better than others, but most of them I’ve really enjoyed. Here are the most recent books to find themselves on my bookshelf:

The Ballad of Tom Dooley by Sharyn McCrumb – This was a random book I found at the public library. To be honest, I was in a hurry that afternoon because I had both kids with me, and the only reason I grabbed this book was because it takes place in the rural mountains of Tennessee, which is where my Grandma was born and raised. That’s really the only reason I checked this one out. Turns out, it was a great find because the story is actually really interesting. It’s about this very rural community just after the Civil War. The main character is a poor, morally questionable young woman who goes to live her her even poorer cousin and her husband, and it’s about how their lives all cross paths with Tom Dooley, a young, drunk veteran of the war who manages to ruin everything around him. The characters are not lovable – they aren’t even really likeable – but the story is really well told and the plot keeps you interested.

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult – This could be the single-most important book I’ve read as a mother and as an educator. It is an incredibly disturbing, powerful, and moving story about a school shooting. I was hesitant to read it at first, being both a teacher and a parent. But what the book focuses on are the choices our children make and how we can help them make better choices. The boy who kills his classmates was viciously bullied for just about his entire life. It was heartbreaking to read for me because the bullying began when he was just a year or two older than Bean, and it touched such a raw nerve with me. It follows the shooter all the way up through school and shows how hurtful and heartbreaking being a teenager can be. As a teacher, it instantly changed the way I managed my classroom. I talked to all of my classes about the book. We had open discussions about bullying and pushing people beyond their limits. In my own home, it made me more aware of not just how my kids will be treated as they grow up, but also how they treat others. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has any kind of interaction with kids – their own, or otherwise.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller – I have explained this book to other people and they just didn’t seem to find it as interesting as I did, so this one might not be for the masses. A friend from church recommended this to me and then organized a group of people to meet for dinner to talk about it. Sort of like a one-book book club. I had to miss the dinner, but I was really bummed because of how much I loved the book. It’s an autobiography of an author who found his life at the center of a documentary. Film makers wanted to turn his life into a movie, but they basically told him that his real life wasn’t interesting enough, so they were going to have to “doctor up” the truth to make it more exciting. The book is about the process of writing that doctored up movie and how somewhere in the process of creating a fake exciting life, he decides to go out and make his actual life exciting. He begins to make better choices, like committing to ride his bike across the country for charity, even though he had never ridden before and was overweight. He also talks about incredibly inspiring people he’s met and why their lives were so powerfully significant. Basically, it’s about living a better, more full life. The guy is a Christian author, but the book isn’t a philosophical or Christian-based book, but he has a really great view of faith, if you ask me. I read this just after the first of the year, and I honestly think that reading this book was the first step towards me becoming a more active, more healthy, more fulfilled person this year. Months later, I still think about the principles of this book on a weekly basis.

11-22-63 by Stephen King – I read this one on my Kindle while Chris and I were in Costa Rica. It was my first Stephen King book, and I was a little nervous because I don’t like scary books. But some friends at work insisted that this was not a typical Stephen King book, and that it was actually an incredible story about what would happen if the JFK assassination were prevented. The book is about a time travel portal and the man who decides to go back into time to try to stop the JFK assassination. But it’s about so much more than that! He actually goes back and lives in the 1960′s for several years leading up to the assassination, and it’s about the life he builds there and the relationships he makes. I’m not into sci-fi or anything usually involving time travel, but this book was amazing. The plot took twists and turns that I never saw coming, and it’s told in such a masterful way. I am a Stephen King fan and I never even knew it.

The White Queen by Philippa Gregory – I read a couple of Philippa Gregory’s books in college and had mixed feelings about them. I love historical fiction, and it’s not something you find a lot of in mainstream books these days, but she took the sex part of the stories a little far after her first few books came out and when that happened, I quit reading her books because they became more trashy than historical and I lost interest. But I had heard that this book began a series of hers that was more along the lines of the original type of writing she did. I was so happy to find that was true! This book tells the story of King Edward of York and Queen Elizabeth in the 1400′s. I love the strong, female main character and it is just the right amount of historical fact to make it interesting, as well as entertaining. This is the first in a series of books she calls the Cousins’ War and I will definitely be reading the rest of the series.

Matched by Ally Condie – I started this book today at the recommendation of some of my students. Though it is a young adult novel, it is supposed to be pretty good. I started it this morning, and after sitting down with it a little tonight after dinner, I’m already half way through it, and it’s pretty good. It’s about this futuristic utopian society that matches you to your spouse. It follows the main character as she is matched to her best guy friend, but then discovers that she might have been mis-matched. It’s about her struggle between her assigned match and her desire to get to know the other boy she might have been matched with. It’s a social commentary on free will and what lengths we will go to to keep it. It seems like a great beach book because it’s easy to read and at the core is a love story. It’s the first in a series, and I think I might add the rest of the series to my summer reading list.

So, that’s what I’ve been reading lately. Next on my list at the library is Ken Follet’s “World Without End.” I read “Pillars of the Earth” and it was one of my favorite books ever, so I’ve been waiting for a chunk of time to read the second one. Summer kick off seems to be the perfect time! If you’re interested in seeing other books I’ve read, or following along with what I read this summer, be sure to follow me on Good Reads. My user name is KatieMC.

What about you? Have you read anything good lately?

40 comments | posted in Around the House, Fun Things, Just for Fun, Marriage Confessions | tags: books

I’m having one of those weeks where my brain seems to be switched off. I keep sitting down to blog, but nothing comes to me. I sit down to talk to the kids or Chris at the end of the day, and I can’t even think about what happened that day to tell them. At work, I go to say something to my students, and I can’t form the words. Yesterday I had a student take a calculator back to a math teacher that I borrowed one from, and I could not for the life of me think of the word “calculator.” I kept standing there holding it, trying to come up with the right word. Like a dope.

I’m not quite sure what has made my brain shut down this week. I have been doing an extra amount of writing lately for various things (check out my latest column for Southern Weddings!), and I’m sure that’s contributing to it. Every day I get up at 5:00am, teach all day, then write all night, sleep a couple hours, and do it all again.

Truthfully, I expected to run out of words and thoughts a LONG time ago.

So tonight, I’m going to distract you from the fact that I’m not really saying anything at all in this blog post (what’s new, right???) by posting pictures of me with the kids one night this week. On Tuesday, I took a mental day off when I got home from work. We had PB&J for dinner, we played out in the backyard, and after the kids went to bed, instead of writing or working, I just sat on the couch and read my book. I didn’t turn on my computer or check my phone. I just zoned out for a night. I think my mind needed it.

What’s been nice is that Chris has really stepped up this week and taken over to give me a little break. He’s come home from work a little earlier. He’s here to help give the kids dinner. He’s done all the cooking this week. He’s tucked Bean in every night. He’s just really given me a break when my brain needed it the most. And the crazy this is that I didn’t even have to ask. I love that we are to that point in our relationship when we just sort of instinctively know when the other needs a little extra support. I think that’s when marriage becomes almost like a dance, as you adjust and respond to your spouse.

Tonight I was a time keeper for my school’s track meet. I came home late, sweaty, and exhausted. But coming home to my hub-a-dubs who picked up the slack at home without missing a beat made me smile. I guess exhaustion is better survived with a good partner by your side.

9 comments | posted in Around the House, Husbands, Marriage, Marriage Confessions | tags: life, Marriage