Yolande

Happy Easter!

So, I was quoted in an article on Huffington Post. CRAZY, right? I mean, it's hardly a feature presentation on me, but it is an important topic. The Huffington Post article links to the original Slate article and it's all about the cost of a miscarriage. Lots of interesting points about healthcare in America, loss, and financial implications of a loss with the complexities of healthcare in America. The author at Slate emailed me after finding my Cost of a Loss post and I emailed her a response to her questions. So much more to say about this topic but it's something I've posted about many times before. So anyway, on HuffPost, woah.

Other articles I read and am sort of obsessed with? Pregnant Chicken: about babies being 'cake'---and how I'm totally going to be that older lady telling young moms to savor this season of life. Because it's easy to forget the hard stuff, man. THANK GOD. Fantastic read.

And again on Huffington Post: It Goes So Fast. But not how you think---I have my 34th birthday this month and yes, I know that is far from being 'old'. But birthdays do make one ponder the passage of time. This was a great read and a nice change in perspective.

Tonight was one of those nights when we all started running out of steam, patience, and energy well before bedtime. It's both my greatest joy to feel so needed by three children and also my biggest challenge. So many needs when it's physically impossible to do everything for everyone at the same time.

A hungry baby that wants to be held and cannot consume food fast enough for his liking. An emotional daughter that wants to be held/doesn't want to talk/is in a mood. A particular oldest who wants to keep a bandaid on his finger for a microscopic cut. Which would be feasible if I didn't make him take a bath, potentially loosening the beloved bandaid from his wound. It's really a tough life sometimes.

I took some deep breaths. We took some selfies. Saying, 'Don't ANYONE smile, don't you dare!' worked like a charm.







Wednesdays, man. They are no joke. Having three kids is no joke. But it's still the best and I love it even when I want to poke my eyes with a dull spoon. Which is only sometimes, don't worry.

Mornings in this house hinge on Cecelia's very unpredictable mood. All of yesterday was tainted by a crabby, emotional, demanding little lady who began her day entirely too early and just couldn't push past a crappy start.

But this morning? She walked downstairs with a huge grin, ran over to me, and hugged me authentically. It was a fantastically normal morning without the three time outs before 8:30 am. I liked this morning 100x more than yesterday, plus there were pictures like this:

Who knows, Porter. Who knows.


The boys sort of worship her/love to push her buttons


Ducks were spotted next door shortly before I left for work, which also means Cecelia's day was made. High fives all around for an above-average morning.

And then something happened at work that yanked my head down from the clouds. Driving to my 11:00 patient's house, I passed the Walgreens that's just two blocks away from my patient. It's a Walgreens I've used as a bathroom break plenty of times and it's not in a particularly rough neighborhood, not a place that makes me stand on attention or where I feel uncomfortable or overly concerned about crime. Which is important to note because when working in home care, I am not always in the safest areas although I try to stay close to home.

As I passed this familiar Walgreens, I saw police tape around the entire perimeter. Cop cars were everywhere, blocking off the street, dozens of people lined the outside of the tape. There were news reporters, helicopters in the sky, and a 'incident command center' truck from the Milwaukee police department, too. At first I thought somehow it was a really awful car accident but I didn't see any smashed up cars. Once I arrived to my patient's home a few minutes later, she was watching the news and there had been a shooting at Walgreens. An undercover cop shot a masked and armed robber who was planning to rob the pharmacy for prescription drugs. It happened about an hour before my appointment with my patient and I could have easily seen her earlier in the day and might have taken a pee break at that Walgreens.

This was the first time in my four years of doing home care that I was really freaked out about crime. Just another reminder that life can change in an instant and I'm going to have to push my bathroom breaks even more now.

Truman and I picked up Cecelia and Porter a little early from Lori's, since she called me to say CC's eyes looked red and gunky again. <Sigh> No clue if this is pink eye round two or what but this is getting really old. I took all three kids to Target on our way home which was *definitely* pushing the limits of a work day witching hour. Two potty stops for Cecelia, busting open a can of baby cheese puffs for Porter (clean eating!) mid-trip, and a mostly-complete Target list? I call that a success.



Dinner was touch and go for awhile, but once Porter ingested more calories than both of his siblings combined he was much happier with life. And the siblings somehow plowed through their potentially critical attitudes, ate their dinner, and hopped over to the school playground as their reward. I drilled them before we left with the facts: fifteen minutes, no whining when I say it's over, and get out alllll of your energy pre-bathtime!

The clouds were pure insanity. Breathtaking, really.










Thank you God for clouds, for sunshine, for sunsets that happen later and later each evening, and for lightweight jackets. Winter sucks. Spring is the best.

Also, clean babies are the best. His personal goal is to soak me with incessant splashing throughout the duration of the bath. He usually achieves this goal, obvi.


Bedtime was fairly painless for all involved, and Truman asked me to read two stories from his children's Bible storybook. This reminded me that a lot of Biblical stories are INTENSE and full of death and fighting and scary stuff (i.e. Satan as a snake in the Garden of Eden, and then David and Goliath). Truman is now officially obsessed with the giant Goliath and pretended to be dead after our story, just like the giant. Very intriguing subjects of discussion for a five year old! Thanks, Old Testament!

Nate arrived home shortly before I laid Porter down for the night, and to see that baby's face when he recognizes his dad. I heard the sweetest sound of, 'You're the best mommy ever,' from my darling Cecelia. And now that I think of it, Truman also randomly told me in the van today, 'Because I love you, mom.'

So yes. A good day today indeed.

I have a serious obsession with decorating our walls, usually relying on printed photographs and frames for my go-to standard but sometimes getting wild and using non-children pictures, too. I haven't done a post about about our wall hangings since August of 2013 with this post. It's high time I show our new additions!

Above the computer, these three images of Nate and I holding each newborn baby make me smile. I printed off the name tags with their birthdays because my frames were abnormally long and skinny (11x17 or something) and like how it turned out. I also made the state prints in Photoshop after seeing this idea on Pinterest and Etsy. These four states are where we have our immediate family: Nate's brother is in Oregon, my brother and parents are in Colorado, Memaw and Papaw are in Missouri, and the rest of the crew is here in Wisconsin.  But the main reason I'm showing you these now is because I just painted all of those frames white, but all seven were originally black. I can sleep easier at night with white frames, as black isn't my thing but brown wood is totally fine. I don't get my issues with frame color either, it's okay.


Then one of my favorite new prints is our 'family wheel' from Etsy seller mycirclefamily. Literally obsessed with this one and it was fun to have both Tony and Lois and my parents dig through their papers to search back five generations. (Really just want to show you our last name here since it really takes away from the print with the name blurred, but oh well. I am starting to not care as much about keeping it a secret anyway)


Reading some of the names of our ancestors is highly entertaining. Appalonia Greenbaum might be my favorite. Or Sam Blizzard. So many Marys and Johns and even two Caspers! Family trees are awesome and I love how modern this one feels. I printed it in 11x14" and it's a good topic of conversation when we have guests in our home.


In the sunroom, I did a few more canvases with Kid Memory Preservation stuff (aka handprints and footprints). The three footprints make it seem like I'm slamming that door on a fourth child, right? ;)


I've shown our black and white gallery wall in the dining room before, but I did add a few new prints post-Porter. These are all 11x14" and I get the urge to switch out photos quite often. I think once a year will be plenty *if* that often.


And finally, my favorite new area on our walls: silhouettes! I sent iPhone pictures of my precious offspring and their little profiles to Etsy seller iillume.  She was amazing to work with and the charcoal gray background with white foreground feels classy enough but also a little different. The prints are 5x7 and I had to trim them to fit in the oval frames I (finally) found online at Hobby Lobby. Oval frames are hard to find, but I like the silver color--matches the curtain rod perfectly;)


Little corner with the silhouettes = my fave. Also note the actual baby in the jumperoo. Also, this was within the 2 second time frame when my house was actually clean, so of course I had to snap pictures that very morning before the kid tornados hit.


I think silhouettes would be a great gift for the grandparents---stuff like this makes me kind of weepy and nostalgic for these days even has they are currently happening. But those sweet little noses and CC's pony tail give me all of the feelings.

I think that's it for wall updates.