Party of Five

All photos by Jessie Nelson

Everyone likes to ask how life with three kids is going.  Well, here's the long answer.

If I were writing this post two months ago like I had planned, the answer would have likely been a lot different than it is today.  It would have probably have been a bit more gloomy, a bit more frazzled and sound a lot like "we are super happy and love Ivy so much but we are still totally in survival mode!"

Now we are nearly 1/3 of the way through our baby girl's first year (what?! four months next week!) and life doesn't seem nearly as crazy as it did those first eight weeks.  Truthfully it is still is quite crazy, but I've come to embrace the chaos and busyness that is life with three children ages five, three and baby.

The past few days I have just felt so much love for these little ladies, and so much awareness that time is so fleeting.  Don't get me wrong, some days are long.  Our schedule has been pretty consistent each week and it lends itself to some busy days and long nights that have me wishing it was bedtime at 3pm.  But man, this baby of mine is so happy and just makes my heart burst with gratitude every time she flashes that gummy smile my way (which is a lot!)  And as much as Eliza sometimes feels like my shadow and I don't always understand or sympathize with her attachment to me, I know this phase is going to pass and that soon she will be more than happy to leave me alone.  And of course there is Stella.  Every day she ages another year as her life skills move her closer to complete independence from me.  She reads, writes, dresses herself, and does all things "big girl" without being prompted (well, most of the time).  She goes to kindergarten next year and just the thought of it is stirring up these emotions I didn't even know I had.

I guess all of this is to say our little life feels crazy and sometimes more overwhelming than motherhood has in many years for me.  That's hard for me to admit.  That I am not sure if I am doing this whole thing right or that I even want to be doing it all some days.  My house isn't nearly as clean or organized as I would like, and I have a long list of projects that I'm not sure I will ever get to.  Basically a recent article I read put it all best, but especially the part when she said "everything feels undone."  I'm four months past "just having a baby" and most of life still feels rather undone. But the past few weeks have been good.  I'm finding my groove as a mother of three, and we are enjoying life as a party of five.

Because I want to remember some of the chaos of those first few weeks (and some that continues today) here are a few of those moments that just solidify the fact that you really are a mom, a wife, and a grown up.  What a life!

• Just before Ivy was born we discovered we had a mouse problem.  What is it with us and pests? (The Bedbug debacle of 2011, anyone?)  It was quite traumatizing for me, but the girls found it fun to check the traps with dad each night when he got home from work.  Thankfully we have great landlords who went right to work trying to fix the problem, but it included several pest companies, set traps and nightmares to get to where we are today, which is no mice in the house (or in our case, vents) and lots of issues out in the yard.   Yikes.

• The day before my mom was to leave back home after I had Ivy, we discovered that our dryer wasn't working anymore.  Well, newborns tend to create a lot of laundry, so it was pretty bad timing.  Our favorite next door neighbors were kind enough to let us break into their house on multiple occasions to use their dryer for the next week and a half until Ryan could get around to fixing things.  At Thanksgiving, he and John watched a few YouTube videos and bought a part from a crazy lady and seemed to have things working.  Until it stopped working again a week later.  After that it was decided that we just needed to bite the bullet and get a new one.  Unfortunately the 10 days it was supposed to take for the new set to be delivered turned into 15, and our poor neighbors had to deal with us for a little bit longer.  It also meant lots of laundry piled up in an effort to keep the number of visits next door to only a semi-annoying amount.  

• Also, the light in our master closet suddenly went out for no good reason.  It was starting to feel like one of those "when it rains, it pours" moments. Another call the the landlord and things were fixed after a few days, but until then it was fun using a lantern to pick out my clothes.  Although at two and a half weeks postpartum, it wasn't too difficult to find something that matched my black yoga pants.

• One of the most overwhelming moments for me came on a Sunday night, when Ivy was just two weeks old.  I knew it was back to reality the next day after two weeks of hospital/Nana Joni/Palmer family Thanksgiving, and I wasn't sure if I was gong to make it running everyone around to their various appointments and activities, all while keeping up with the demands of a newborn, two older kids, and the household duties (ya know, the usual postpartum hormone breakdown).  To make matters worse I was starting to experience symptoms of mastitis and was not feeling well, and the Bishop had just left our house after asking Ryan to be the new Young Men's president.  It was a lot to take in that night, but after a good cry in a nice hot shower, life felt a bit more manageable (and it was!)

• December was full of sick kids: puking incidents, weird viruses full of body aches and sore throats, and an ear infection (including ruptured eardrum) for Stella.  It was exhausting and trying to keep a newborn healthy made it even more so.

• One night when Stella was sick I was giving the girls a quick, much needed bath.  I was hurrying to get Stella out and dressed because she didn't feel well, when all of the sudden I hear Eliza freaking out.  I run back into the bathroom to watch Eliza pee all over in the tub before I had even washed her hair.  Out of the tub she went so that she could run around naked while I finished getting Stella dressed and new water in the tub to finish that bath.

• I remember on what was Ryan's first or second week of mutual, at one point in the night all four of us girls were crying about something.  That was a real great moment.  Sleep deprivation was also in full force at this time, which never helps anything.

• At one point during the week before Christmas, I had a pest control guy waiting inside my door while I helped Liza poop in the potty and change her underwear, all while Stella was crying on the couch because blood was dripping out of her ear from a ruptured eardrum.  Two minutes later (with the pest control guy still at our house) Stella's preschool teacher showed up to bring her the Christmas present she has missed getting at her class party that morning.  Good thing that is when Ivy slept all the time!

• I can't even count the number of times Ivy has nursed in the van.  One time was while we were waiting to go watch Stella's dance and tumbling classes for parent day.  Stella has tumbling first, but I knew Ivy needed to eat so I told her we would be in as soon as the baby was done.  Well right after she finished eating she had a nice blow out and of course I didn't have any extra clothes.  So into the car seat she goes, poopy clothes and all, as I drive across the street to Kmart and buy her a cheap little outfit.  We pile back into the van, drive back to the dance studio where I change Ivy and help Eliza go to the bathroom, all in time to finally sit down and watch Stella's dance class.  And of course Eliza was wearing her pink princess dress during it all!

• And then we have today's incident.  It is my last day of teaching my nutrition classes for a little while (it's the end of my second 10 week session, and something just needed to give in our schedules for a little while).  Thanks to Eliza's attachment issues she has grown to hate going to the gym daycare and would cry after being left there for three minutes.  This resulted in her joining me for my class which wasn't working out, not to mention Ivy was too little to go care until a few weeks ago.  Because of all of these factors I worked it out with a good friend so that she would watch my girls during my morning class (Stella is at school) and in turn I would watch her kids once a week so she could go run errands.  My friend happened to be out of town for today's class, so after lots of pep talks I left Eliza and Ivy in the gym daycare.  Well with ten minutes left of my class the daycare teacher brought me not a crying Eliza, but a poopy Ivy.  I hurried and finished up my lesson, weighed people in, and dished up my sample to find that not only was it a messy diaper, but it was blowout.  Thankfully everyone was gone by then, but I just had to laugh at the site of my baby laying on a blanket on the floor in just a diaper, my notes and computer set up on the table to her left and my healthy recipe sample set up on a table to her right.  But Eliza stayed in care the entire time (though not without a few tears, of course) so I'm calling it a win! 

So that is life lately at the Palmer house.  It's nothing out of the ordinary, I'm sure most everyone can relate to the stories I've shared, but it's been an adventure figuring out this new normal for our family.  Amid all of the day to day chaos we are making big decisions and anticipating exciting changes, working at jobs we enjoy, fulfilling church callings (none for me right now, thanks to our ward's unofficial policy of releasing new moms for a few months) and loving one another fiercely.