It was the best Christmas ever! Two six year olds and a two year old?! What could be better at Christmastime?! Check back soon for a mega post: J-M Family Christmas 2010! In the meantime you can think of me… clicking through over 900 photos and trying to figure out how to do the story justice (oh and doing 900 loads of laundry and trying to not lose my mind with the thumping drum beats vibrating throughout our whole house). X O Happy Week-Between-Christmas-and-New-Year!

Happy Holidays to all of our J-M Family Blog Readers!

We love you! We appreciate you! We wouldn’t be blogging without you!

THANK YOU FOR READING!

May you and yours find JOY in this season and throughout the New Year!

We’re taking a Christmastime Blog Break! We’ll be back the week after Christmas!

Due to everything (‘tis the season, please see post below), please accept our sincere apologies for being so incredibly tardy in getting answers to you on all of your blogiversary questions. We can’t wait to answer them (really!). It is fun for us (really!), and something we look forward to (really!). It is just impossible right now to devote the time needed to do it. And the honest truth is that we probably won’t be able to get to it until after Christmas. Check back, though, we keep our promises, and we promise, it will be worth the wait! 

I was going to write a post about how I’m feeling right about now, but then I thought, “Wait a minute! Haven’t I already written that post?!” Sure enough, yes indeed, I’ve already written that post. So, I’ll just say this instead: DITTO TO EVERYTHING I WROTE HERE LAST YEAR RIGHT ABOUT NOW. I’ll only add this: Ugh. It just seems to happen every year, no matter how hard I try to keep it at bay, that flood of frantic frenzy that just overtakes me.

I was really doing well until Monday morning. And then it seemed to just come crashing down on me. Braydon had left before it was even light out to go to an early meeting (terrible timing, but he’s having to leave for work early every day this week, before the kids are even awake, which leaves me to do the whole morning routine solo during a week that I could really use my co-parenting partner). Anyway, things were under control, I had gotten them all up and going, finished making the boys’ lunches, fed them all breakfast, and had everyone bundled up to head out the door. We were about to leave to drop off the boys at school when the phone rang. It was Margie, saying she was sick and could not come in. I had to work hard to not have a panic attack. But I accepted my fate and desperately tried to wrap my mind around what this meant for my day and my week. Words cannot express. Ugh. Anyway, now late, I rushed the bambinos into the car and peeled out of our driveway like a bat out of heck. About three minutes down the road I was pulled over by a cop. Nice. He told me I wasn’t speeding but was “all over the road.” He gave me a verbal warning (no ticket, thank my lucky stars!), but when he told me to “remember” that I have “precious cargo on board” (i.e., my three kids in the back seat), I lost it. It was just the little shove that pushed me over the edge. It was going to happen, the only questions were: when? and what was going to set it off? So, there I was, crying my eyes out – a big ugly sobbing meltdown – right there on the side of the road. Owen kept saying, “Mommy, don’t worry! You’re not going to jail!” and Kyle was reaching forward from the backseat to rub my back, while Meera lost it crying, kicking, and screaming “Mommy! Mommy! WhatsamattaMommy?!!!!” and the nice policeman stood there stoically telling me to “calm down, just calm down ma’am” (nice… that’s just what a woman in that state needs: a man to tell her to “calm down”). I finally collected myself, and continued on to drop off K & O at school. I felt a little better after that (sometimes a good cry really does help). I just wish that I could have done it in the presence of Braydon, or my Mom, or Shalinee, instead of in front of my three young children and a cop. Anyway, it was what it was, and then it was over. And I have absolutely no problem letting my kids and the police see that I’m not made of steel and that I do have a breaking point.

There were about a million things leading up to that meltdown. One of the most notable is the following:

Friday I needed to go to my office to deal with something that could not wait until Monday. Fridays are usually my days with Meera, so it was unusual, but I took her with me to the office. I hadn’t brought her there in quite some time. As we entered my building and headed into the lobby area, Meera looked around the office and said to me, matter of factly, “This is Mommy’s office. This is where Mommy lives.” It was one of those moments where time stands still and you feel like you just swallowed your heart in one gulp and it is now sitting in your throat and you’re about to choke on it and die. Our department coordinator overheard it. I said to her, “It is pretty bad when your two year old thinks that you live at your office.” She –nicely— (she’s super nice) laughed and shrugged it off. She always makes me feel better. The truth is, I know that Meera doesn’t really think I live at the office; I know I have a relatively incredibly flexible and cushy job; I know that, all things considered, I’ve got it real good; I know that I should not complain. But Meera’s comment hit me like a ton of bricks. I took a deep breath and tried to tell myself what I know to be true: It is the end of the semester, the hardest time of year for me, and everyone is just tired, this always happens, and we’ll be alright once we get to the other side of this in a few days, right now we’re just seeing the wear and tear. I’m o.k., Meera’s o.k., we’re all o.k…. and we’ll be o.k…. but it will sure be nice when this week is over and we can move on from here.

While the boys are loving their new school, and absolutely thriving beyond all belief, Meera is suddenly feeling lonely and ready for more in her life. Kyle and Owen have a longer school day now, and Meera is on her own with Margie for most of the day. She tells me daily that she doesn’t want to stay at home, doesn’t want to be with Margie, and doesn’t want to have all of us leave her for school/work. I watch her carefully and I can see the shift in her. My heart tells me that she is not o.k. anymore just being at home while the rest of us go off. And if my gut wasn’t already making it clear, Meera said to me yesterday, point blank: “I want to go to my own school BY MYSELF.” She’s making it pretty dang clear: she, at least according to herself, is done with the staying-at-home-with-the-Nanny-routine. She wants more. She wants girlfriends to play with. She wants out of the house. And so, like every stage so far with Meera, she’s pushing the envelope long before we would choose for it to be pushed (can’t she just stay home happily until she starts kindergarten at age five?????). But this, after all, is how our girl rolls. She is sweet and gentle and quiet (at least relative to her brothers), but she has a good track record of letting her needs be known. And so, now, we’re waiting to see if this is just an end-of-the-semester-sick-of-everything-and-everyone phase (a phase that all five of us J-Ms know all too well), or if this is for real. If it is for real, there are all sorts of ramifications. For now, we’re trying to stay tuned in to our daughter, and just giving it a bit to see how it unfolds. Another UGH.

In the meantime, while the end-of-semester-and-creating-Christmas dust is swirling like crazy around us, and I –especially I—am just longing, and so looking forward to, the moment when that dust settles (cue Hallelujah Chorus), we continue to charge forward with valiant attempts to breathe deeply during this, The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year. Ugh.

P.S. One thing is for certain, I can easily keep it all in perspective by reminding myself that while this is a tough time it is waaaaay less tough than it was a few years ago when I needed to strap 18-month-old-K&O in their high chairs and feed them popsicles just in order to steal five minutes to get something – anything! – done. Wow, it is so much easier now!!!!!!!!!!!

Owen is quite a little cook. Anyone who’s ever known Owen has known that Owen is a handful (and a half). Because he is all spunk all the time, they’d be surprised to know how truly great he is in the kitchen. While his energy is boundless, his ability to focus in on a task is extraordinary… when (and if) the task is something he’s interested in. And he’s very interested in food. The boy can eat. Lots. But he can also savor, taste, and enjoy. Of our three bambinos, Owen is definitely the most Foodie. He will often taste something I’ve made and guess, correctly, the ingredients. He knows when I’ve added butter to the macaroni and cheese, and when I haven’t. He’ll experiment with anything and try everything. Nothing daunts him where the culinary world is concerned. He is a food lover and is well on his way to being a really good chef. I could not be more proud. This kid drives me nuts. Daily. But he also makes my heart sing. Daily. He is a whirlwind of messy, a tornado of flour flying, a food-stain magnet. Often I wonder if time spent with him in the kitchen is actually worth it (the clean up takes at least twice as long as it took to cook whatever it was that we cooked). But nothing much delights me more than watching my boy cook. And there is nobody in the whole wide world I’d rather cook with than Owen. I say that with complete sincerity.

His favorite is to help with pasta sauces (because he loves them. all of them). Cooking shrimp scampi:

He also loves grilling (a man after my own heart!). Grilling kabobs:

And he’s absolutely enamored with kitchen tools the way that Kyle is with power tools. One thing most people don’t realize about Owen is that he would choose the Cuisinart over the chainsaw any day of the week:

He sometimes bakes with his sister, or his brother, which he enjoys:

But most often, he cooks alone with Mama, which he enjoys the most. Making himself a cheese omelet:

Meera loves to paint. Watercolor, tempera, finger-paints… she loves it all. Sometimes she’ll get one or more of us to join her at the table painting, other times she’s happy to just paint on her own. But rarely does a day go by that Meera doesn’t spend some significant chunk of time fully immersed in painting.

I rarely get to rock Meera to sleep, actually getting her into bed is something Heather does mostly and something Meera insists on.  Tonight was special, tonight was Heather’s last night of teaching the graduate class for the semester (it will crank back up next semester of couse).  And since it was the last night, it ran particularly late – I had to put all three kids to bed.

Gently rocking her I felt all the times I had rocked her as a little little baby.  At that time she was smaller than the pillow she lay on, the little blanket went fully over her and her head rested on my arm.  Tonight, as her breathing got heavier and more even, I noticed how much she is growing up – legs off the end of the pillow and neck in the crook of my arm.  But her eyes still slowly close and off she goes.

I read stories to the boys and got them into bed.  Kyle accidentally pinched Owen, and we had drama.  But reading “Kate and the Beanstalk” while my two sweeties rest in their beds and follow along a story of empowerment and self discovery is something very special.  And they settle in together, gently drifting off.

Thursday’s are special.  We have pizza on Thursdays. Pizza at Sal’s, or pizza at home, home made, store made, french bread pizza, boxed or frozen. It’s become something we do.  It’s a ritual:  mommy is working late, it’s Pizza night with papi.

We have baths, get ready for bed, read books.  When we hear mommy’s car, we go and hide around the corner and jump out and surprise her; welcoming her home. Or we sit quietly on the couch reading and when she comes up the stairs, the three kids jump up and scream in excitement that she’s home.

Tonight we did go out and went out to Sal’s; I ordered a medium and large pizza.  I had three pieces, Meera had one (kind of – she mostly ate Kyle and Owen’s crust). The boys had the rest – there were two pieces left. And they are 6.

It’s not just that they were hungary, or that sharing pizza crusts in a family is fun, or that we draw pictures on the back of the placemats, or that Meera smears her pizza hands all over my shirt, or that Owen mostly wants to watch the man make pizza.

It’s that Thursday night is pizza night with Papi.  And it’s special.