Six Year Old Heartache

The following conversation just took place between me and my Kindergartener. This is only a small snippet of the two hour conversation, but a pretty fair representation.

Emilee: Mom, I don't think Theresa likes me.

Me: Why not?

Emilee: She just doesn't.

Me: Did she say that?

Emilee: No. But she says that I scare her.

Me: Why does she say that?

Emilee: I don't know...she says that I'm a good girl and I scare her. But I don't want to....I'm trying not to. I don't understand. She asked me to be her friend and now she doesn't want to. I just don't have any friends.

Me: What about MiKayla?

Emilee: Well, she likes me TOO much. She's always like "Emilee!!!" and hugging me and stuff.

Me: So you don't like it when they like you TOO much, but you don't like it when they don't like you enough?

Emilee: Yes. I want them to be medium....like Skyla.

Me: Well everyone is different Emilee. What about Casey?

Emilee: Well Theresa told Casey not to be my friend. But I was Friends with Casey for a long time. She was my first friend at school.

Me: Sometimes little girls aren't very nice Emilee. But you don't want them for friends if they are mean. You don't have to be friends with everyone.

Emilee: Theresa said she's going to invite me to her birthday party, but only if I don't bug her. *tears come to her eyes and she hangs her head* I just don't understand friends. I want friends who love me for who I am.
(does that sound like a 6 year old to you?)

Me: *tears in MY eyes now* Emilee, you will have many many friends who love you just the way you are. You are a very special girl and anyone who chooses not to be your friend is missing out on a very very special friend.

Emilee: Mom, why are you crying?

Me: Because I want to be able to protect you from all the mean girls you will meet in school.

Emilee: *eyes perking up* Well, you could go take over their moms!

Me: I don't think so. It doesn't work that way.

Emilee: *wistfully* I just don't understand why someone would ask to be my friend and then not want to be friends with me.


The conversation went on and on like this for quite a while. My heart breaks for my daughter. I remember what friendships were like in school. They sucked! Girls are mean, as a general rule. They are manipulative and did very little for my self-esteem growing up. I tried to share with Emilee that I have known many girls like that as well, but that she will get a few really good friends who will make her happy and be there for her. Emilee is so tenderhearted when it comes to relationships...and she's only 6! Her heart breaks at the thought that someone would not be included or loved. She once had a friend tell her that she would not come to her birthday party if she invited so-and-so. Her jaw literally fell to the ground. She could not imagine that someone would be unaccepting of a perfectly good "friend". In her own words, "Mom, I try really hard to be a really good friend to people...why wouldn't they like me?"

I don't know whose heart aches more.....hers, or mine because I know exactly what is in store for her as learns to grow up.

Let me tell you about my Pelvis

Because I know you are all dying to know!

I've always known I have a relatively easy time birthing babies. Don't get me wrong...I work at it, and I work hard. My labors are relatively "normal" in length. Nothing special there. But the actual get-this-big-thing-out-right-now decent, now that is where I really excel. With my first baby, they told me to start pushing when I was 10cm. Because I was a first time mom and I had an epidural, they laughed at me when I asked if they were calling my Dr. yet. They assured me that it would be a couple of hours. 10 minutes later they were yelling at me to stop pushing until they could get the stuff set up for baby. The on call Dr. came running in throwing her gown and booties on. Since I had an epidural, it was no big deal to stop pushing for 5 or 10 minutes...had I been natural, I'm sure that baby would have been born not 2 minutes after they told me to stop. Not bad for a first timer!

My second child was born after just a few contractions. My third took a little longer (maybe 15 minutes?) because I slowed things down and tried to just breathe so that I wouldn't tear. She also came out with a perfectly round head the minute she was born....no molding what-so-ever. I've included the picture as proof. This picture was taken as Melia was being lifted out of the water as I birthed her....so approximately 10 seconds old! Look at that round head!

Now I know why. I went to a Pelvic Mapping class the other night with a bunch of doulas. We got to map our own pelvises(is that plural of pelvis? Pelvi?). It was quite the site. Since everyone in that room has seen our share of women's most intimate parts, you would think it would have been normal...but it was not. 30 women sitting around, legs contorted as we became way to friendly with ourselves in an attempt to map our pelvic outlet.

Every woman has a different shape. Some women are long and thin, others have a wide and short pelvis. We mapped our pelvis and drew it on a piece of paper. My pelvis was HUGE! A woman's pelvis also has a lot of movement in it during birth so it can change shape and open for baby. In addition, the baby's head can mold and become quite a bit smaller in order to navigate through the pelvis. Let's just say that if both my pelvis and baby's fontenels (plates of the skull) were fused together, we would still have had no problem! Now I know why my babies come flying out at the end! I do have an incredibly curved tailbone, however, which could possibly help account for my intense back labor despite baby's good position.

Lest you get jealous of my cavernous pelvis, and think that all things childbirth related come easy to me, please note that I am in search of some decent boobs, because mine suck (no pun intended) at breastfeeding.

Birthdays Birthdays Everywhere....

Megan's Pirate Ship cake. She helped frost this herself! Emilee did about 1/3 of the red stripes herself and a good portion of the blue area! I weas pretty impressed since it is pretty tedious work doing all of those frosting stars. And yes, this flag has 50 stars!

I'm pretty sure my children think Birthdays are actually Birthweeks. Megan's birthday is on January 12th, and Emilee's birthday is on the 16th. So we tell them happy birthday and mildly celebrate on their actual birthdays and then again with their party. All in all, we end up telling them Happy Birthday all week long! This year we did separate kid parties (neither of which landed on their actual birthdays) and a family dinner out to Azteca as well. So all in all we celebrated birthdays from the 12th until the 21st, and several times in between!

In the past, we've always had their parties together, since they shared a lot of the same friends (or their friends were siblings, etc). Since Emilee started school this year, she has some of her "own" friends so we did separate parties for the first time. Megan's party was first and was a total blast! She combined parties with a good friend that is only 12 hours older than she is (but different birthdays). The girls had a pirate party! It was so fun! They walked the plank, fished for pretzels with their "hooks", made spyglasses, played pin the patch on the pirate, sink the ship and pop the cannonball. Oh, and lets not forget the treasure hunt with a treasure chest pinata at the end! Tons of fun!

Emilee's party as the next weekend. I let her invite 12 of her friends, figuring that probably about half would show up. In fact, 10 showed up and that was only because one child was sick, and the other's parents had written the wrong day on the calendar! So it was crazy at my house, with 11 six year olds running around the house and boy are they loud! Emilee wanted an "American Flag" birthday so that's what we did. It was very unstructured, but that seemed to work best for those kids. They would have had fun just running around on their own for the entire time if I had let them! We had USA rhinestone tatoos, did an art project and played a couple of games. One game went well and one sank like a rock. The art project was great though! With how flighty the kids were during the second game I was worried they would be wandering, but every single one sat at the table for a good 20 minutes completely entertained. They also cracked jokes. "Hey, I'm a kid....so I'm in KIDnergarten" and then the entire table would erupt into shrieks...and I truly mean shrieks...of laughter. Then the next child would carry the joke on from there. "I'm a girl, so I'm in GIRLgarten" *more shrieks of laughter*. They continued with this until they had gone around the table about 3 times, each joke making less and less sense. "Hey, I'm American Flag, so I'm in American Flag garten." *more endless shrieks of laughter*.

Emilee made out with presents this year. Her oddest gift? She recieved a Bratz doll. You know how Barbies come with extra shoes sometimes? Well this Bratz doll came with extra feet!!!!! An extra pair of feet in different sandles came in the box. You just pop her old feet off and pop the new ones on. That's a little disturbing in my opinion.

One room down...

5 more to go....plus a few other areas! I have been bitten by the Spring Cleaning Bug! My house has slowly spiraled out of control over the last few months. It's gotten so out of control, that I gave up a few weeks ago and just quite worrying about it, which only increased my stress level as I can't stand living in filth! There are piles upon piles upon piles of things that need to be dealth with. Part of my problem is organization; many of the things simply have no place to go. Our lives are so hectic, all I have time to do is fret about what I don't have time to do. BUT, I have a relatively slow week so I have begun to plug away!

Another reason, aside from just wanting an organized home, is that our kids have been sick....alot! I think they have spent as much time WITH coughs and colds as they have without. It's been mostly this past year, which happens to coincide with moving to this new house. We both feel this has something to do with it. One thing we have noticed is that this house creates dust like you would not believe! I have never had dust like this. Melia dropped her binky under her crib the other night and as I crawled underneath to get it, I saw literally 2 inches (I am NOT exaggerating) of dust under there. It hasn't been THAT long since I swept under there last. No wonder she's getting sick if she's breathing that stuff in all night! We are seriously considering getting a HEPA filter for our home. James and I are both highly allergic to dust (I haven't stopped sneezing all day since cleaning). We also may get our air ducts cleaned out. Unfortunately both of those things cost hundred's of dollars. So until then, cleaning and cleaning and cleaning is my only option.

So my first order of business was to clean their room. I did a deep, deep clean, as in a move-all-the-furniture,hands-and-knees clean.

I'm happy to say that their bedroom is now spotless.

I am unhappy to say that our hallway is now filled with 3 boxes of old clothes that I need to sort through and put out in the garage, as well as an assortment of odds and ends, that again, do not have a place to go until I clean a couple of other rooms.

Now, the true question is......how many other rooms will I be able to clean before this first one dirty again?

My streak is over! (and a birth story)

Actually, two streaks have ended for me recently. The first streak, unfortunately, was our healthy streak. James and I had the stomach flu last week (and I'm not talking your garden variety stomach flu; I'm talking the someone-please-kill-me-now stomach flu). We were greatful that our kids did not get it, although this week we're dealing with 104 degree fevers, earaches, hacking coughs, tummy aches and lots and lots of snot. It was nice while it lasted.

The second streak is one that I've been waiting to end and it has! My string of long difficult births! I went to the best birth on Thursday. She is a wonderful sweet Russian woman, "M". It's a true miracle she hired a doula, because her husband happened to be very ill that day with a high fever and really bad flu so he stayed home! I was the only one there for her at the hospital. Her last experience was really awful. She had a few interventions and an epidural that left her bedridden for days with a horrible spinal headache. Not wanting to experience that again, she was looking forward to an unmedicated birth. M's water broke at 8am and she called me minutes later to ask me about it (she wasn't sure). An hour later, her contractions had picked up intensity. I arrived at her place a little after 11 and she wanted to go in. We arrived and she was 3-4 cm. The first nurse we were assigned to was HORRID! I'm trying to tell myself that perhaps she was just having a bad day, but she was just awful! She was short (in temperment, not just stature), and tried to scare my client into making different decisions than she had planned on. She came in and told her she "had" to have a heplock because in an emergency her veins might collapse and they wouldn't be able to help her. M kept holding her ground saying she hadn't wanted an IV and the nurse kept telling her it wasn't (and I know it's not, but no one wants a catheter stuck in their arm when they're trying to get comfortable!). M finally gave in and when the nurse left the room and quietly reminded her that she didn't "have" to have a heplock unless that was something she wanted. She assured me that she did NOT want one and decided to tell the nurse so when she came back in. The nurse came wheeling the IV tray in the room and M politely told her that she did not want one, that she had already discussed this with her Dr. and her Dr. had said that was perfectly fine with him. Nurse Nazi replied, "Well, your Dr.s not here today!" But M held her ground.

M was doing so well, but the nurse kept making her lay on the bed to get monitored. You don't have to be on the bed, those things work standing up, but it can take some creativity, and obviously creativity was not something that nurse was willing to try. She flat out refused when M asked over and over to stand up. M was too nice to smack her. The nurse checked her again at 2pm and she was still 3-4 cm. Then I had to leave to make a quick phone call. I found out afterwards then when I left, M had asked the nurse to hold her hand through a contraction (remember, no one else was with her) and the nurse had replied, "Just breathe." and walked away! That right there left me so angry with her.

But fortunately, her shift was over after we had been there for 3 hours and the world's BEST nurse came in! She was so positive and supportive. When it was time to monitor, she saw that M was comfortable in the tub and just told her to relax and that she would bring the monitors to her in the tub. M never even had to ask. She had to rig the monitors up quite a bit to get them to read in that position, but she just quietly worked with them so that M could relax and do her thing. When M started feeling pushy, the nurse let her stay there while she checked her, even though that meant the nurse had to contort herself over the edge of the tub and use her left hand to do it! She was awesome!

It was about 5:30 and M was 6cm. Her contractions were quite strong and M moaned and held my hand and moved her body with each contraction. She prayed continually for strength. At 6:30 I asked her if she felt like pushing and she replied, "oh, I already am." LOL. Since that particular hospital does not allow waterbirths, it was time to get out of the tub. It took two of us quite a bit of tugging and pulling to get her out. A final check showed that she was complete and baby was very low. She started pushing and baby just came on out! She took it really slow at crowning and didn't have any tears. The nurses and Dr.'s were all so impressed and went on and on about how they hardly get any natural births there. One Dr. even made the comment that she wanted to look into what it would take to do waterbirths (because it seemed so ridiculous to have to make M move in the first place when she was so comfortable.

The best part of the birth by far, was the fact that M was so happy with her experience. I was a little concerned becasue she was so vocal and seemed to struggle at times. It's always hard to tell if that is just their style of coping or if they are actually struggling. It must have just been her coping style (which I can appreciate, since I'm a pretty loud birther myself) because she absolutely loved her experience. Even 5 minutes after the birth she could rave about how perfect and wonderful it was. That right there is what makes it all perfect and wonderful.
The nurse was so impressed she announced how great the birth was and that it was completely unmedicated to every single person who walked in the door. lol. She openly admitted that she would never do natural birth herself, but that just made me love her all the more because you would have never known that by the love and support she showed M. In my opinion, that is what truly makes a good care provider....someone who can give a person everything they need to feel supported and to achieve their goal regardless of what their own personal beliefs are.

M's baby had a head full of dark curly hair and the chunkiest cheeks I've seen on a newborn in quite a while. 7lbs 13oz baby girl!

I can't wait to go back and see her in a few days. She was such a special woman and so strong. It was a joy to be at her birth. And to be perfectly selfish, it was so wonderful to be at a birth where I did not have to deal with the emotions of a changing birth plan. Most of all, it was so fulfilling to see one more woman proclaim, "WOW! I did it!" and to realize for once how truly miraculous and strong they truly are.

Monster children

A few months ago, my husband and I sat down to watch a TV show. It was something about extravagent 16th birthday parties for rich little brats. These girls were thrown parties that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. They whined, they begged, they stole credit cards, they flew to paris to find the "perfect" dress, etc. They cried buckets when told that they would be recieving a 3 year old sports car instead of a brand new one.

It made me want to puke!

These girls were so spoiled and their parents looked on with blank eyes and stupified expressions mumbling something about how "good" their kids were. Did I judge them? Heck ya! Spoiled, spoiled brats!

My husband had a conversation with my oldest daughter today. She is having her 6th birthday party next week. The conversation went something like this, "Dad, you and mom had better have the laundry done before my party because I am NOT going to have clothes that don't match. My clothes HAVE to match and I HAVE to be the best dressed one there."

Our party is $60 instead of $600,000. Our child is turning 6, instead of 16, but anyone see a resemblance?