After scraping off the melted plastic, I gave up on sitting down and made myself some coffee to take with me and gathered up all the stuff I needed for going out. I changed both kids into presentable clothing, new diapers, and buckled the baby into his carseat carrier, which is totally just inconvenient anyhow because he's huge and it's unwieldy and too heavy for me to carry comfortably. Just when I picked up the seat, he gave me this quizzical look and I suddenly had a very bad feeling. I said, "Don't you poop!" and just as I said it, he let loose with an extended pooping sequence. Again, HOW DO THEY KNOW?? I yanked him out of the carseat as quickly as I could and narrowly missed another blowout before I changed him again and packed him up.

We all made it outside to the car and I had nearly clipped his seat into the car when Amelia announced, "Mom, I'm really chilly!" I looked down at her. She was wearing a jacket. It was 50 degrees out. Then I saw her feet. Her bare feet.

Third time's a charm. We went back inside to get her boots on, and on my way down the steps, I fell onto both my knees in the driveway while carrying Elias. He didn't even bump and got gently set down in the grass in his carrier while Amelia stood gaping and I silently warded away many of the bad words I've heard in the course of my life from coming out of my mouth. I had ripped the last pair of jeans that actually fit me in my post-pregnancy limbo, Amelia's stuffed dog that I had also been carrying had flown out of my hand and onto the lawn, and I had broken the hood of the baby carrier as it caught on my belt when I fell. Amelia just stood there bemoaning the displaced stuffed puppy. You carry them for what? Ten months? And all they worry about is their stuffed dog. Just warning you now that someday your precious little newborn infant who you *think* believes you're, like, the awesomest thing ever is going to turn two and a half and you're going to beef it in the driveway, your dignity shredded just like the bleeding left knee of your jeans, your teeth gritted and back thrown out, and your precious, precious baby is going to be extremely concerned about that ratty old stuffed dog getting a piece of dust on it.

I got up after a minute trying to recoup my own personal moment of peace and muttered what was likely a selfish prayer that nothing else zany happen for a little while, at least, buckled everyone in, and drove right to a Dunkin Donuts, where I ordered a large and very soothing almond flavored coffee. And everything was strangely better after that.

Life is a never ending up and down cycle, only with no schedule to the events, no warning about the next downslope or upswing. Sometimes an upswing lasts for days or months, sometimes there are both ups and downs over the course of the day. I hate the unexpectedness of my emotions. I wish I were more stoic.

Why God or anyone chose me to love, I will never know. I am full of all things unsavory, weeping bitterness while I thank the Lord for my blessings, the embers of my anger left smoldering quietly in the back of my heart as I go about my daily business. I choke off the weeds of bitterness, but only on the surface where they're visible. I leave the roots to rest in the cold, and when the warm opportunity of my temper coaxes them up, I turn a blind eye. This is who I am inside, world. Maybe someday I'll pull them up. I'm still not sure why this is so difficult for me.

Some people spend a lot of time asking, "Why me?" and I may ask that for them as well - some people I truly do wonder Why. But I never wonder it of myself. I know exactly why. I am so stubborn that without something goading me for years on end, I never change, never grow. I've been at this journey for fifteen years now and I'm still needing this baby steps business to help me get along. So that's why. No surprise there. Just surprised I'm still in this spot all these years later. Still mucking along. Still learning.

    I'm reading Ruth Reichl's twitter and cracking up over her descriptions of the food she eats in the morning - "softly melted cheese," "sweet plump briny oysters," and "spicy Sichuan peppers" all feature in these tweets. It's no surprise, she was the editor of Gourmet mag for years so it's what she does, but sometimes the mental picture of her - of anyone - sitting in a breakfast nook in the mountains, eating oysters and crepes with sour cream and roe is enough to make me laugh while I'm drinking my jug of coffee and generic brand Total cereal. My tweet about my foodie morning would  often be something like this:

Cloudy New England day. Peeling bonded leather sofa. Coffee. Handful of stale raisins. Two smelly children. Already have a headache. 

I was reading her twitter, though, and smiling as I thought of her description of one of her mornings as Still and Cold. When I think of that I think of our few little mornings up in Vermont a few weeks ago. We had all been up later so Amelia slept in later than her usual 5am, and when I rolled over to look out the giant picture windows, I saw the snowy mountains, felt the coolness of the room, the down comforter warming everything but my face, and the perfect silence. No cars, no humming appliances like the ones we have in our little house, just the gentle breaths of two little and one big human sharing the room with me. I got up quietly and ate a little peppermint bark chocolate out of the gift basket left on the bed for us when we arrived to the house, a gift from our hosts, savoring the cold air and the view and the calm. I wish every morning could be like that. 

   I think of that morning there in the mountains, right before the holidays, our mini vacation with a newborn and a Terrible Two, and to me that picture in my mind tastes just like dark chocolate peppermint bark. 

Sharp. Minty. Chocolate sharply snapping with each bite. Breathtaking view. A perfect morning. 

So I guess Ruth isn't such a windbag after all. 

  This second time around, I'm an even more relaxed mom, but there's less lounging around, fewer walks (it's a lot chillier in November than it is in July..), and a lot more keeping up with a two year old's schedule. There's more to do, and I think I like it. It's been nice to start to really think of myself as a mom first, nurse second. It was probably just denial about the next infinite years of my life being taken up with childrearing, but it's taken me this long to put things in that order without feeling a loss of identity. I worked hard for that RN, I currently work hard to keep educated in my profession, but I think I'm finally able to loosen my grip on it, knowing its not my most important role these days. 

  In the process of getting my life in order since November, I've also committed to a whole house cleanse. Every room except for our spare bedroom's closet has been picked through and reorganized, things we don't need given away, clothes sorted and purged, closets overhauled. My parents never would have known it when I was living at home with them in my trashed room, but I'm now somewhat of a neat freak. I'm thankful for all I have, I don't mind owning things, I just want them all to have a use and place in my home. If it doesn't fit those two criteria of (1) Purposeful use and (2) Designated home, it usually has to go. I find single-purpose items interesting, but not for me. So all this housecleaning has done wonders for my psyche. It's so much more pleasant to live and move about in this little space I call my home when I don't have to look at things I don't use lying around on top of every available surface. I was so depressed, my energy reserves completely depleted during this pregnancy, I was not able to do any of this and it only made me feel worse. It's as if a huge weight has been lifted off of me to clean my house, to have no piles of laundry, to be on my feet, to exercise, to be around friends and people again, to greet my husband at the door after his long day at work without breaking into tears and dragging him down with me into the pit I was living in. I'm back from doing more than just the bare minimum to survive. What a tremendous blessing these past few months since then have been. 

  Hindsight is enlightening. I was overwhelmed by many little things then. Some of the hardships have not gone away, but they seem much more manageable now. I think we all have our coping mechanisms, but for me, the thing that makes it hardest for me to cope is feeling as if I can't be productive, sitting around seemingly doing nothing. It's refreshing to be on my feet, caring for my family in all the many little things I do every day and being more in control of my own emotions, despite being unable to change our circumstances. To make my home a haven for my husband to come home to, rather than his second job - keeping his wife from a mental breakdown - to give that little gift to him after a long year where he carried me and the kids in addition to the long hours he works... that truly makes me the happiest. A clean home and an unhysterical wife to come home to are very small things, a pittance of thanks to that man. 

   So I open up the shades every morning, the sunshine coming through so warmly even though I know it's freezing outside, and I feel just like the weather, crisp and bright and shining. I find myself stopping to thank God periodically throughout the day for restoring my joy, not in circumstances, but my joy in him, and it spills out into life at large and fills this little badly-decorated house in the suburbs and makes it warm and beautiful to me again. 

   Perhaps it's only my guilt about my poor skills of gifting on command, but I have never loved Christmas. Besides having pagan origins and people having a fit on either side about whether we should or shouldn't call it a "Christmas" or a "holiday" tree, I would rather we just separate from things altogether. I love celebrating the birth of Christ, my Messiah, the excitement of reimagining Mary's anticipation of her child, not fully understanding the miracle that it was. I just wish all that wasn't stuck with all the other dumb things like Black Friday, Santa, and the stress of making everything perfect for one day. I even like Santa, and Rudolph, and Burl Ives. I just sorta wish we could do Christmas and the celebration of Jesus' birth separately. One, a secular but happy family holiday to eat good food and give thanks, the other, a sacred one with singing and happy reflection on a very solemn but joyful occasion such as the coming of the God-man. 

    I stifle my cynicism now with beautiful songs about His birth, enjoying the thoughts of the angels saying "Glory to God in the highest!!" The weight of those words pulls my heart heavy to my feet, then lifts it back up as I remember that Jesus lives and is coming again. I redeem the ugliness of the holiday for my own purpose - to have a Season to remind me to think on that amazing moment where our own Redemption came to live on the same Earth I occupy now. That's worth celebrating to me. 

     As I sit now enjoying the gifts I was given this season - a warm candle to freshen my house with the smell of pine, lotion to soften my cracked and sore hands,  coffee beans to wake me up - I can be thankful for even this hard year of our lives. We are nearly at the end of it and I have my marriage, my eternally patient and giving husband, the calm and steady to the storm of emotion and feeling that's inside my head. I have my daughter, already a person of her own, full of personality and silliness but so much like me that I worry for her. I have my son, healthy and giant and happy despite the terrifying minutes of his birth when I thought maybe none of those things would be true for him. I have these things and more - warm house, health, clothing, food - than I could ever use or need at times. I can't say this year has been perfect. I spent many days of it in tears, frustrated and depressed, but it has been perfectly orchestrated by God in ways that are only visible to us in our own little home. This year has been the epitomization of Life with a capital L, that state of being that describes all the sorts of things that happen to frustrate our plans in a way that's perfectly personal, but not unique to the human condition at large. I guess what I'm trying to articulate is that the happenings of Life are not what make it bad or good (as I've experienced that life often has more sadness than anything else), but the resources to cope and move within those situations are what I can be thankful for. A moment when I'm in despair and my kid asks me to make them something to eat, taking me out of my private sadnesses and into the present where life doesn't revolve around only me. When Mark and I get an extra unexpected moment to be together and talk. A day of warmish fresh air to open the windows and clear the stale air of indoors. These are my precious blessings. 

   I have no illusions of deserving any of this. I have none that these things will last forever. I can't think about that too much. But I can be thankful for them right now, and I surely am. Welcome, New Year. 

Get up from a sitting position to standing without making this sound: "Urghhgmmph."

Sleep on my stomach.

Buy this shirt in a non-XL size.

Help to lift my patients at work again.

Go for a jog.

Not talk about labor and delivery stories.

Drink far too much coffee.

Go more than an hour without a pee break.

....May it ever be so, amen.