Growing Family

Getting Back Up

Today I was driving home from picking the kids up from school/preschool. I was just doing my normal thing - doing what I had to do - but then I felt that flutter inside. Hope. Optimism. Cheer had returned.

It is amazing how heavy my insides feel when hope's not there. I felt like I was carrying around lead in my ribs. Thank God that feeling is starting to subside.

I swung through the liquor store and picked up some boxes. I think I might begin to tackle the bookcases.

I'm scrubbing my soul with my new Mindy Smith album (stupid love). Captain bought it for me awhile back, and I listened to it once and then forgot about it. I am usually unimpressed at first listen to most albums, and then I fall in love. 

Good stuff.

The Down Low

We're nearly two weeks into this new gig. When our tiny foster baby, The Ant, arrived, I was a little bit sick. I rallied, and for the first couple of days I kicked this whole parenting four thing, hardcore. We were early for school. Everyone had shoes on, and had eaten breakfast. I took showers and combed my hair. The Captain came home to a clean house and dinner on the table while I read to the kids on the couch, glowing a little with a maternal hue.

Then, I got the flu. We have since descended down some kind of dark tunnel. We have become a writhing, biting, fighting mess of unhappiness and illness. There are raisins and chip crumbs in the carpet, cubwebs hanging from the ceiling like circus nets, and the dog it about to put himself up for re-homing. 

I have not been so sick in a long time. Every time I'd start to pull out of it, The Captain would take a turn for the worse. We've been taking turns trying to keep things afloat while the other crashes, and neither of us has gotten enough rest to recover. How can you, when there are four kids who don't put their needs on hold? A new-born's sleep schedule doesn't exactly read "restful nights". 

So...between the quarantine for sickness, and being home-bound with a newborn, and finding my friend circle reduced because of friends moving, I'm feeling incredibly blue. We have four more days of school before the holidays begin.

I'm so excited to have a break from needing to do things, and having to get out in the morning, but I'm also worried. I'm worried about finding people to connect with when I'm already feeling lonely and isolated. I'm worried about packing to move with four kids underfoot. I'm worried about spending so much time with my kids when they've been a bickering, whining mess all week (and I haven't been much better). 

I feel like I've dropped all the balls I was juggling, and now I've slipped on them and fallen flat on my back.

Where's that wormhole home when you need it?

 

The Week

Last Saturday, despite the rain, we headed out house hunting on the holiday weekend (The Queen's birthday) with our three kids, plus the little guy who was staying the weekend with us for the last time. We found a house we liked. It was the newest/nicest/biggest house we'd seen so far by miles and miles. 

In the gap between open houses we stopped at McDonald's to give the kids a rare treat. We decided to go all in, so to speak, and offer the asking price on the house. After dropping Small Sun off at a birthday party we returned home and called up the agent with our offer. Shortly after he let us know it had been accepted.

Experience has taught us that there is really nothing certain to that and Monday was a holiday. Tuesday morning we had the building inspector out on site (the same guy as we hired to inspect that cat-house). The rest of the week we've spent wrangling with the bank to get the valuation done on the property, and with the lawyers over getting the contract in ship shape. 

This morning we exchanged contracts. It is official. We got the house. Now we have several more hoops to jump through before we settle, or close as we say in the U.S. That will happen July 29th. The whole thing was crazy. 

The owner listed the house at a bargain price because he wanted to sell it immediately. We were the first offer and he let us have four days to get our stuff together, without issuing any other contracts to other parties. Evidently they had about 40 parties interested in the property. I can't believe we got it.

Wednesday afternoon, in a flurry of house phone calls, I was surprised to answer a call from our foster care worker. I was even more shocked to hear that there was a baby needing a placement in just a few hours and could we take him, please?

After a whirlwind trip picking up Small Sun from school, racing through Big W (WalMart) with my three kids, just grabbing diapers, formula, bottles, and clothes, and flying by my friend's house to pick up a car-seat and bassinet, I managed to get home and have the whole lot unloaded in the middle of the living room floor before baby arrived.

Yes, you heard me, a baby is here! He is 5.2 lbs of preemie amazingness. He's in the bassinet near me right now, I do not lie. If I had known Tuesday night was my last full night of sleep I might have gone to bed earlier. As it was, I was in the shower when the caseworker arrived with him, trying to shave my legs in the last un-strategized time. 

Lucky for me he has come from the hospital on a schedule, and eating well. He is all about the sleeping, as I'm sure he will be for awhile before he plumps up. He is TINY. It looks like he'll be with us between 4-12 months.

Did I mention that The Captain is in the middle of a really busy week at work, bringing a project of several months to culmination and delivery? Well he is. And in the middle of that he got contacted about a new job opportunity.

I'm still a little sick, Finch is recovering, and Small Sun is home with a high fever and the wobbliest tooth ever. I think it might fall out in his sleep tonight.

So, just to recap, house-baby-crazy work week-sick kids-wobbly tooth.

I am going to cuddle up with the little munchkin and watch Better Homes and Gardens. I'll probably eat some cheese or chocolate or ice cream. I need the room to stop spinning.

Foster Care Update

The baby girl is going into a long-term care solution. The fewer homes in her little life, the better. So we're back to enjoying our quiet little season and waiting for "the call". 

The Problem With Australian Winter

It has only been officially winter for nine days and I am already over it. I'm such a flake!

Before we moved here I gave away my fabulous collection of vintage and modern coats. I went to REI and bought a simple, black jacket. I had read the temperature averages for Sydney, and they said the average coldest temperature in the winter, in Sydney was around 50F. 

There are palm tress there. 50 must actually be kind of breezy-cool. I told myself. I put on the REI jacket and walked, shivering in the Nashville winter night, to my car. As I drove I checked the temperature gauge on my dash for comparison. 52F it read. But 50s must feel warmer in a place with palm trees. 

It doesn't.

I still think about those coats.

Houses without insulation or central heat and air aside, there is one major problem with Sydney's winter: lack of holidays. 

The other day I was in a parking garage unloading my shopping cart into my trunk. I shivered in the cold and had that little thrill "it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas" spark through my mind. Ever since I was born the cold weather heralded the beginning of a parade of exciting holidays. 

      
It all starts with Halloween, which my family didn't (doesn't) celebrate. For us it meant fall festivals and farm parties. Bonfires, corn mazes, bobbing for apples, hay rides behind a tractor, candied apples and toffee, marshmallows and hot cider, all herald the beginning of the excitement. 

About one month later we do the drive up north to Pennsylvania, without fail, to join my mom's family for Thanksgiving. The 14 hour car ride is absolutely routine and we pack in blankets and pillows and novels, along with the laden cooler of mom's trip goodies for the drive. 

In Pennsylvania we rendezvous with my mom's six siblings and all their children - too many cousins to keep count, and still popping. Now there are great-grandchildren in the mix. Even though we lost my grandfather in a horrific car crash, the family continues our tradition of gathering for a Thanksgiving meal, the plank wood table supported by saw horses groaning under the weight of turkeys and pies, succotash and potatoes. There are still monetary awards for scriptures memorized and then the family talent show (which always involves several of my male cousins break-dancing or doing a push up contest). Last but not least is a mad rubber-band fight you have to wear layers of clothing and goggles to survive, and then eating the second-hand feast before falling asleep in a pile of cousins every which way (perhaps after a game of scrabble where grandmamma smokes everyone).

   

   

A month after that we climb into the car again, each trip north holds the hope of snow. This time it is only eleven hours to Michigan to my dad's side of the family. He has five siblings but there are only reasonable amounts of cousins and everyone has "normal" jobs and lives. The car is packed with presents and grandpa has waited for us to arrive to trim the tree. There's a dancing santa and stockings with our names on them, mysteriously bulging at the toes. We play pool in the basement and do the twist with my grandparents, choosing records from their collection. Pictures of the whole family's modeling careers look down from the walls, ancient oriental rugs serve little protection from the freezing tile floors. Sometimes we are blessed with snow and we sled and toboggan down the hill at Our Lady of Sorrows. We used to go carolling in the neighborhood, even though most of us couldn't sing.

   

Back home for New Year's there is an endless parade of memories. Different parties at different places, mostly blending my brother's friends and mine as the groups intermarried. We went to Mexico one year.

Eventually winter, as mild as it is to start with, peters out and spring comes with a riot of rainstorms and daffodils. We don't even really mind winter because it is just the backdrop for all the fun. The weather needs to be bleak so nature isn't in competition with our celebrations.

That's the problem with Sydney's winter. Other than one day off in June to celebrate the Queen's birthday, there's nothing to color it up. People go to the Blue Mountains to celebrate "Christmas in July", but I have the same issue with that as I do with faux-finish antiquing on walls - it's not real. You can't put a wash on walls that were put up five years ago and make the inside of your house look like an ancient monastery. It just isn't. Christmas isn't in July, even if that's when you can get a bit of snow in the Blue Mountains.

Living here I am still trying to re-create the life I want. My friends and family are scattered across the U.S. and the globe so I cannot have what I had. I have managed to create summertime Christmas traditions but the winter is still bleak and underwelming.

So, to combat the gloom and depression that is hanging around the boundaries of my house these days, I think I need to invent some Australian winter holidays of my own. We can make our own traditions! Welcome to doughnut making, cider simmering, scrabble playing, June-tide! 

PS- the first photo is from my parent's place in Tennessee. We don't really get frost like that here.