Melissa Anne Cohen

– Take out really does make my life so much easier. Given the option, I’d always rather have take out, over cooking at home or eating at the restaurant. I know it’s the definition of lazy, but seriously – I adore it. Food delivered directly to your door – is there anything better?

– It’s extra special nice when my kids really, really get along. The squabbling and bickering can get so tiresome and irritating, and when they actually forget that they are supposed to battle, and get along, it’s so incredibly gratifying.

– When it’s ninety degrees outside, birthday parties are just better when they’re inside and air conditioned.

– There is nothing cuter than my favorite cousin, twenty two weeks pregnant. Just nothing cuter. I can’t wait for Julianna’s best friend to be born.

– Being the second wife never actually gets better. It gets easier, as the kids grow up, I get more used to the role, etc – but it still always has the potential to suck. Hard.

– Sometimes, when your little boy wakes up with a nightmare, and is inconsolably sobbing, and finally chokes out “I want DADDY!”, your primary feeling will just be relief that it’s not you who has to get up and sit with him for the next two hours. I do the vast majority of the nighttime parenting, partially because I nurse, but also because I think I’m just better at it. Sam is such a great sleeper, and almost never gets up – but was up Saturday from quarter of three until after five in the morning – and I got to sleep thru it. It was AWESOME.

– Going to the movies with my daughter is endlessly fun. Sometimes, it easy to forget that it was once just she and I – she was my only baby and my only focus. Now I’ve got three little lovelies to pay attention to, and while the love I feel for Jess has never diminished, the amount of time I was able to spend one on one dropped significantly, with the advent of her siblings and her starting school. I really, really enjoyed spending Sunday night taking her to see Ramona and Beezus.

I think I forget sometimes, just about how much sheer TIME I spend nursing. I nursed Sam for so long, my primary breastfeeding memories are still of nursing a preschooler, and that’s fast and easy. Nursing a baby is so very different. Julie really is perfectly content to spend ALL of her time latched on. Sometimes nursing, sometimes dozing, sometimes actually sleeping, sometimes sipping occasionally while pondering whatever it is that she ponders. I don’t think I did anything else really today. I mean, I did, obviously. I fed the kids, did some laundry, some dishes, cleaned Jessie’s bedroom, vacuumed. But mostly, I just sat and nursed. On the upside – Grey’s Anatomy is on three times a day on the Lifetime Channel, and I’ve been watching my way thru that. I read an article, where they asked three different doctors if moms should watch television while nursing and all three of them said no – it was prime bonding time and mothers should spend their time gazing lovingly into their child’s eye. Not that I don’t gaze lovingly – but all I could think was that none of those doctor’s clearly were ever SAHM’s who nursed an infant full time.

I’m kind of worn out today – touched out, frazzled and tired. I’m ordering take out for dinner, and Marc’s at the gym. Jessie came home from camp, breezy and beautiful and thrilled with herself. Sam is overtired and I’m hoping he’ll eat before passing out for the night and Julie, my little Julie bug, has been cooing at her big sister, I swear she misses her when she’s gone all day, and is just now starting to fuss. Time to settle her down for a nap, hopefully, but other than a good nap this morning, the only sleeping she’s done is at the breast. She bounces awake every time I lay her down.

Some mornings just are unpleasant. But I did what I’m constantly trying to teach my daughter NOT to do, and made sure that everyone was just as unhappy as I was this morning. Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I guess, and I’m reminded of when Marc told me that Jess was me with no impulse control. The house is cluttered and messy, clean laundry is scattered all over the house waiting to be folded, everything is hot and sticky and Marc had piled a big bunch of paperwork all over the dining room table. Jessie couldn’t find her bathing suit, and I lost my cup of coffee. Everything just piled up, one after another, until all I could do was just plead with the universe to let me go back to bed and start over again.

But, since going back to bed isn’t an option, I’m doing my best to start again with a new cup of coffee (I’ll find the old one eventually). I’ve got the kids’ combo birthday party on Saturday, and then one of Marc’s aunts is having a cookout in the afternoon. Sunday is probably a day when nothing will happen, as Marc has made plans to be with his friends for the bulk of the day, but I’m hoping to take Jess to see Ramona and Beezus that night.

All is well with the kids. Jess is really enjoying summer camp this year, she’s growing up so fast. She’s all tanned long legs and big eyes – her new hair cut makes her look so much older, somehow. Sam is bouncing around my bedroom right now, fighting the imaginary bad guys with Jordyn, and Miss Julianna is sound asleep on the couch. One thing I really like about her schedule is that she wakes up to eat and then goes back out for an hour, or sometimes two or three, first thing in the morning. It gives me time to get the dishes done, or the laundry, or to blog, in this instance.

Sam is in the living room, Julie is asleep on the couch (thank goodness – yesterday was a no nap day), and Jessie and Marc have already left for camp and work. And Sam’s got his army guys and his fireman figurines out and he’s in there chanting quietly to himself “Never give up, never give up, never give up…” It’s an odd sort of song that he made up to sing while he plays with his guys – and I love it. I love the message it sends, I love that he emulates strong men who dedicate their lives to helping those who need it, and that he totally gets that the goal is to “never give up.” Having a son is so freaking cool.

Ah – it starts again. I hate teething – I hate the idea that my kids are in pain and there’s nothing to do but suffer thru it. Poor Julie is drooling all the time, chewing on her fists and having such a hard time sleeping. It’s ten of two, and she just now fell asleep for her first good nap (she normally naps from around nine until eleven and then at least one more good nap in the afternoon, sometimes two). There are no teeth popping thru yet, but I know the signs. Jess and Sam both cut their teeth relatively early (Jess was five months, Sam was seven), and I’m fearing that Julie will be even earlier.

Which would be par for the course, since we’ve had more nursing battles, she and I, than I had with the other two combined. It would only make sense that we’d start the biting earlier as well. My breast infection seems to have cleared up, thanks to Dr. Marc. I’m using lotrimin ointment (yes, the same stuff used for athlete’s foot and jock itch) and it worked better and faster than anything else I’ve tried. Julie is still showing signs of thrush, so I give her to nystatin whenever I happen to remember it, and just hope that it doesn’t get bad again.

Jessie had chopped off part of her hair several weeks ago. Gave herself some odd bangs, actually she cut it down to the scalp, so she’s now got some odd bangs, having grown out the crewcut. Her hair is silky and wavy – sometimes it curls, sometimes it’s straight, but it’s baby fine and so beautiful… My sister is much more organized or rigid about hair. She likes her hair done, perfectly, and after a week with her, Jessie came home convinced that only Auntie Mandi could make her hair look right, and any attempt on my part or on hers was bound to result in the poor kid looking like an idiot.

There was no talking her out of it (with curly hair myself, I learned early on that my hair has a mind of it’s own, and any attempt on my part to influence it only results in frizz), and she was so upset about it, that I offered to go and get her hair cut. And since my hair is a disaster, I went ahead and got mine chopped off as well. I got about five inches cut off of mine, so now it’s just above my shoulders and super, super curly. The hairdresser “shattered” it, which is similiar to layering it, but not as blunt. I guess. All I know is that he used a ton of product and my hair was so crunchy and stiff it was scary. It’s much better today, but still super curly and far too short to bundle back into a messy bun the way it usually is. Jessie’s hair is straight up adorable, her’s is layered and cute.

In other news… Julie’s eyes are turning almost a green. I’ve got hard core brown eyes, and so does Jessica. Julie and Sam both have my eye shape, but Sam’s are a greyish, greenish brown and I think Julie is going to have the same thing 🙂

I survived another trip to Maine with the kids. My whole family is up there, my mother, two step sister, one sister and one cousin so I’ve got tons of help up there, but still found myself feeling stressed out and like I needed to clone myself in order to really care for the kids the way they needed to be cared for. Jess was FINE (see previous post), and there were only a couple of times when she demanded attention. And Sam really was better than he was last year, he’s a kid who likes things the way they are, big changes throw him off a little. He wimpered himself to sleep on Wednesday night, looking for Marc and my heart broke a little bit listening to him. “I want Daddy…” in the littlest quiet voice. He was really pretty good, but when he gets really upset, he wasn’t happy with anyone other than me, and that was difficult for everyone.

Julie is still at the stage where she’s nursing pretty much non-stop. I think she’s starting to teeth, because her fists are in her mouth a lot, and she’s drooling more and more. (Sam suggested that we start calling her Droolie instead of Julie) But because Sam was so overtired and cranky, I felt like I spent most of Thursday nursing her, passing her off, trying to soothe Sam until Julie cranked back up with the wailing and then latching her back on. To the point where I started to suspect that maybe she was nursing so much just because it was the one time when she was guaranteed to be in my arms.

I’m very happy to be home 🙂

Even when you don’t necessarily want it….

My sister and mother invited Jessica to go up camping with them this week. We’ve been camping forever at this one campground in Maine, it’s right on the ocean, and most of my family goes up there. I’m not a camper, and neither is my cousin Becky, so for the past couple of years, we’ve been going up for half a week, and staying at my sister Aimee’s house, which is about twenty minutes away.

Jessie left last Saturday, and I got up there on Wednesday afternoon. I’ve NEVER not had Jessie with me for more than one night. She’s done the occasional sleepover, but only for one night, not ever for FOUR whole nights. And she was perfectly fine without me. She’s LOVING it up there, I swear to God, she’s taller. She’s super confident, totally independent, and perfectly content up there. She didn’t want to come back to sleep at my sister’s house with me on Wednesday night, and didn’t even consider coming home with me last night. We were joking that she may well just try to find another family when my sister comes home, so that she can just stay the whole summer up at Hermit Island ;-).

My kids are clingy. All three of them. They’ve all been renowned throughout the family as being especially attached to me, moreso than the average kid. And I indulge it, I rarely leave them, especially if they don’t want me to go. I hold them all the time, nurse on demand, co-sleep, wear the baby. There have been times when even I think I’m crazy and too indulgent with the attachment, too quick to bring them along with me, and not force them to go off without me. But I can’t stand to leave them crying, and have always felt like if they wanted to be with me that much, if possible, I let them.

And the results are… a beautiful, confident, independent seven year old, who’s self reliant, perfectly behaved and so amazingly independent that Iwas totally taken aback. I expected her to cry and whine and fall apart once she saw me, to graft herself onto my leg and not ever want to leave. And it just didn’t happen. She did sit on my lap, and she definitely missed me, but she didn’t need me up there, and was more than happy to wave goodbye when I left and go back to enjoying her time at the beach. Everyone up there kept reassuring me that Jessica was the best behaved child up there, never whined, never fussed, was independent and happy and just an angel girl. She played well with everyone, could entertain herself just as easily alone.

I am so incredibly proud of her. So in awe of the girl that she’s becoming – and just a tiny bit wistful… where did my baby go?

Earlier tonight, Sam and I were watching a little television. I was reading and nursing Julie and Sam was stretched out on the floor in front of me. I asked him what he wanted to watch, and listed a couple of choices for him to pick from. He told me he wanted to think for a bit so I went back to my book. After a few minutes, I looked down to find him gazing contemplatively at me, so I asked if he had decided yet. And he said, in the sweetest little boy voice possible, “No, Mama, I just like looking at you.”

I may just be the luckiest mommy in the world, to have been blessed with a Sammy boy like him.