First Day of First Grade

Here are a couple pictures of #1 after she had spent the weekend carefully considering her wardrobe, hair, backpack, and lunch options. She likes to have things just so…







After having a sleepless night, she awoke and was too nervous to eat a good breakfast. (#3 ate #1's eggs and toast, and #1 snuck some zucchini bread.) We waited on the driveway for the bus, which seemed to take an eternity to come. I think she was already exhausted and the day had barely begun.

A little after 4:00pm, the bus dropped her off and she had had a wonderful day. I have heard all kinds of little details throughout the day. Morgan kept lifting up her dress and showing her underwear; Phoebe kept saying “shut up” and the girl who sits diagonal to her said, “enough with the ‘shut ups.’”; the girl who sits diagonal is not fat; she and Justine did everything together; Abigail gets off the bus before she does; the teacher taught them a special clap that they repeat so that they all know it’s time to listen; the teacher kept calling Connor the wrong name….

So, to celebrate, I told her she could choose whatever she wanted for dinner, which the immediate response was “Steamed clams at Browns.” That’s my girl. Off to Browns we went. Brown’s is a few miles away, and sits right on the marsh. It is a delightfully New England place where you simply can get fresh seafood. Steamed or fried. The only sides you can get are corn on the cob and fries. Anything else you would like to complete your meal, you are welcome to bring. But who needs anything but a heaping plate of fried food, or a mound of clams or a lobster with warm butter?









Needless to say, my girl had a bellyache on the way home and needed plenty of fresh air.

Bed Time Rituals

The other night, when the kids were being put to bed, #1 had a “buddy” and #2 decided he couldn’t sleep unless he had a buddy too. So he was sent over to the enormous wooden crate full of stuffed animals to pick his favorite buddy for the night. He came back to his bed with an empty box of Hershey’s Unsweetened Cocoa Powder and climbed in bed happy as a clam, hugging his little box. That’s my boy.

Falling Apart

I worry a little bit about this body of mine. My husband just falls in bed and goes to sleep. In the morning, he just wakes up and goes. I have all kinds of extras, and it’s worrying me…

Firstly, I can see Jack Squat. Nada. So in and out of contacts every morning and night I go. Squirting, rinsing, and placing carefully into my eyeballs every morning, and grabbing, rinsing, and placing into tiny cups every night. I have to take two kinds of thyroid every day, for the rest of my life. I have found that Straterra for my ADD has done wonders since the birth of my third child and the chaos in my head was driving me into a whirlwind of never-ending stress. The rosacea on my face has gotten worse and worse in the past five years, so I have had to go on and off of tetracycline to fight the redness and breakouts. I have had pregnancy induced hypertension in all three pregnancies, putting me into bed on doctor’s orders, and an emergency c-section which caused all kinds of trauma. I have some form of horrid dry-skin-leprosy-looking rash on the palm of my hand that I am putting some kind of prescription cream on morning and night, and now I have just found out that I have a newly acquired heart murmur that I need to get tested. All of these things, coupled with constant bruises covering my body and dizziness throughout the day, and I wonder if I’m gonna make it to thirty.

It is amazing to me that I am paying hundreds of dollars to the pharmacy and have had a number of referrals and doctor visits, while other people just live. That’s all they have to do. Wake up and see. Take breaths, and their minds work. Walk around without fatigue. Beat, beat, beat, without any swishing involved. Bodies making babies without breaking down. Am I missing some secret? Does clenching your teeth while you sleep cause sickness and hormonal imbalance?