In which I discover that gender disappointment is diagnosable and has a name

When we found out Squishy (the Duke) was a boy, I was totally thrown by how gutted I was.  The (distinct) impression I was basing my life on since 2009 was one of 4 boys and 2 girls.  Still outnumbered, but still a mother of girls.  It felt like a compromise and I shook mental/spiritual hands with it and moved forward.

It meant about 4 more pregnancies than I really wanted to live through, but I learned after Sir O was born that it was possible to feel like it was worth it, once it was over.  And at the point I got pregnant with Squishy (the Duke) (pregnancy #5) I had 3 boys and 1 girl, so if I was 'expecting' one more of each, it didn't much matter which, right?  Only every time you have more of one gender/sex, your actual statistical odds of having more of that gender/sex increase.  So to find out I was having a boy then meant the chance of that last girl coming got slimmer.  So I struggled. I floundered, I surprised myself at how unnerved I was.

(I will interrupt myself here to aside that I am fully aware that being capable of birthing healthy children is a blessing.  Like really, really, really, shamefully aware.  It's a thought that beats me up about every 5 minutes of my life like a playground bully and threatens to punch me in the face every time I have a less-than-grateful feeling (over which I have really very little control.) Like so many things in life, it is possible to live with seemingly contradictory truths here.  Cognitive dissonance is my permanent roommate.  For life.  Get comfy with it. I cannot find a way around it.)

I have been saying since before this pregnancy that it REALLY needs to be my last one.  As much as I've become a pro at rolling with punches and lowering the bar, the bar is at rock bottom.  For the sake of my older children, I really need to be able to step up and parent more whole-heartedly.  Which is nigh unto impossible to do when one is mired in the pseudo-food-poisoning knockout known as the first half of my pregnancies, or the depressed and anemic quagmire known as the second half of my pregnancies.  Despite my apparent fertility, I am not a seamless baby making machine.  Every pregnancy kills me a little, in the very most literal sense. By my estimation it takes me 2 years postpartum to recover fully, which means I have recovered fully all of 1 time in the midst of 6 pregnancies.  My body and my mind are quite literally worn out, and to keep doing this would without a doubt shorten my lifespan significantly, to say nothing of the implications for my quality of life.

SO it has been, and has felt like a very real, very valid and valuable sacrifice on my behalf to try to live up to that 6 child impression from 8 years ago.  I felt like I was expressing my faith by cooperating with it when it was so hard for me.

Today ultrasound # 6 showed boy #5.  Not only that, but the ultrasound tech said, "that's a boy all day long..." just to let me know that there was not an iota of room for doubt.

Remembering how the rug had been pulled out from under me last time, I had been trying to prepare for this possibility for months.  I had never once allowed myself a verbal expression of a hope for a girl.  Despite the dozens of inquiries about my preference (because what else do you talk about with a sick pregnant lady?) I had firmly stuck to my "you can't have a baby because you want a boy or a girl, you have to just want a baby" mantra.

But the truth of the matter is that the moment Squishy was revealed to be a boy, the words that popped into my head were "well, I guess the girl will have to come next."  As hard as that day was (and it was hard, and I cried then too), there was still an open, if unlikely door.

Today, as hard as I tried to avoid repeating that struggle, the door appears to have actually closed.  And it's totally eclipsed the struggle I had last time.  This time, it actually feels like someone died.

Do you have any idea how much shame lies inherent in feeling like you've miscarried when you're actually carrying a perfectly healthy baby?  To be swallowed by these huge and awful and unexpected feelings and to be shocked and horrified by them?  The compounding, complex awful emotions that swallow you whole, and you rock violently from one to the other?

So today has been a relentless ride on waves and undertows of sorrow.

That daughter, that I hoped would give me the peace of mind that my journey through rough pregnancies was an acceptable and complete offering to God, is gone.  She doesn't exist.

That impression of my completed family, on which I based my willingness to go through the most excruciating months (accumulating to years) of my life, is shattered, is false.

My faith in God is stout enough that I'm not totally thrown overboard, but I'm shaken.  This is the 3rd such experience in 4 years that has left me totally upended regarding my relationship to and interpretation of divine influence in my life.  Today I totally get the idolic interpretations of deity as capricious characters willing to play cruel games with men and women's lives.  (Looking at you, Aries) In the thick of it, as things are happening that just can't be made to not hurt, it's the only easy way to make sense of the pain.  God has betrayed me, made a fool of me, let me make a fool of myself.  I know all those feelings will sort out over time, and that it's even possible that I'll arrive at a place where having only one daughter will make sense to me.  You know, before I die.  But today I'm not banking on it.

So today, as I quickly realized that Mr Renn is good for many things, but he's not much good for emotions so complicated that you can't even talk about them out loud because you cry so hard, I found through the wonder of the internet, that I am not the first person to ride in this horrid boat.  It's so common that it has a name and is considered a consistent and relatively common factor in postpartum and antenatal depression.  Gender disappointment is common enough to be shortened to an acronym: GD.

Unfortunately for me, the majority of discussions around it revolve around parents of only a single gender (i.e. mothers of all boys) and don't address the huge heaviness I feel about my failure to give Bunny a sister.

I know it was pinning all my hopes on the agency of others, but I had hoped to give all of my children, through siblings close enough in age, a support system of people who'd be going through similar stages of life through adolescence, adulthood, and hopefully to sustain them once I'm gone someday.  While Bunny can still have a great relationship with her brothers, they will experience life and the world differently than she will.  While I have hope that the world will continue to treat women better in her lifetime, there will be a difference.  She may have stellar relationships with sisters-in-law someday, but she may not.  She will not have a sister who will have shared the quirky family background and know her from the ground up.  It's something I would have given blood and guts to have provided for her.  And I tried.  But it's not happening.  It's a huge, heavy thing to grieve.  She may be fine, this may not be something that even matters to her.  But I've been lonely for a sister my entire life.  ( I got a sister when I was 13, we lived in the same household less than 5 years, and we've never yet been in similar stages of life, so we'll see if we get closer as we age).  Having someone to reach out to who was already permanently invested in me would have made a world of difference in my life thus far, and I'm not charismatic enough to have filled that void with friends or mentors. So this is a grief I feel for Bunny's future that is far heavier than my own personal disappointment in not getting to have a group of girls to do girly things with.  (Though that's real too.)

So yes, there's this nonexistent girl who's lived in my head for 8 years, who was going to signify so many things for me.  My girls were going to take care of each other.  My family was going to feel peacefully complete.  I was going to get to have "girls" and amidst the ferality of our wild boy house, we were going to put on plays and have high tea and wear aprons and watch foreign films .  Poof.  Gone.

So yeah, nobody died, but it's a grief like someone did.

It's not like there's nothing to salvage here.  I have to start the really painful process of peeling off charred skin and evaluating the carnage beneath to evaluate what can be saved.  What's actually not necessarily incompatible with my real life?  Where can I graft?

I tried to look up ways to enjoy being a mother of boys, and I didn't get the kind of answers I was hoping for.  The advice this kind of search gets you is to find the beauty in their wild, forgiving, fiercely alive ways.  And I've been playing that game for years now.  I've got to figure out which of my "girls" daydreams can be transplanted into my real life where there's a "strong-willed girl surrounded by a grundle of boys with wildly different temperaments".  There can still be baking, and if I can get my health and stamina under me, there could still be plays (probably with more gore), and I can share Hedgehog in the Fog with all of them.  It will just take more work than I was planning on.  And I will have to learn to go with the flow of their personalities and interests, which is a fact of parenting regardless of boys or girls.

I have never properly bonded with any of my babies before birth, and sometimes even then it's taken a day or two.  The ultrasound has always helped though, to make them seem more human to me.  I was alarmed when that didn't happen today.  This boy baby didn't feel any more a person for having seen him and his parts move.  I'm attributing that to the ultrasound tech showing and announcing his boy-ness before even sharing his profile with me.  I had to put up my "I'm totally cool with this" guard right off the bat, which stifled my vulnerability and bonding mojo.




The other clincher is the weird, societal anathema of being pestered to make a public announcement of some sort of "gender reveal."  This would have been easy if it'd been a girl.  Tada!  Our family is complete and makes sense and everyone is excited and happy and aren't we cute?  Pop a confetti-filled balloon and call it a day.

But this is my real life and nothing in my real life lends itself to being cute or making sense.

So instead I have confused children who thankfully didn't take it too hard, but aren't the least bit excited, and a self/pregnant lady whose hormones aren't helping her out as she hasn't been able to talk without weeping bitterly for 16 hours now.  And Mr Renn, trying to manage us all and trying to minimize my ocean of emotions into a single palatable sentence so he doesn't have to think about it too long, and wishing to God that his wife could just function again because he's so tired of living that second shift that every working mother knows but never gets to chuck.   We are not the stuff of viral instagram feeds.

And here I am (it's 3 am now), sitting forlorn at the bottom of the barrel, hoping that when the sun comes up tomorrow I am able to function better than today (despite not sleeping) and that I can find some bootstraps.

I am absolutely certain that I will get over this, but I'm also certain that it will take me some time.  This is why we did this today.  I knew that I would need time to adjust, and the kids would need time to adjust and that we needed to get that adjusting out of the way before there was an actual baby in our faces.  This because I locked myself in the bathroom and cried for hours when my 3rd brother in a row was born (when I was 8) and I didn't want my kids having that experience on what I hope is a very happy day for our family.

Anyway, where is the value in writing this all down and posting it in a public-ish place?  Well #1: I need to be work things out in my own head and #2: It would have been valuable for me to find a post like this today.  I found a few that helped a bit, but felt like most of what I found excluded the possibility of a mother who already had children of each sex/gender experiencing this intense whiplashing ride. And most people who mentioned religion/God at all seemed oblivious to the possibility of feeling a little abandoned by/peeved at Him.

Thankfully my best preparation for today was reading (and almost finishing) ReReading Job years ago, wherein I discovered that A) extolling the patience of Job totally misses the point and that B) God would rather have my honest messy struggle than my pious martyrdom.  So I'm comfortable talking to God about how I honestly feel today.  I have trust that those feelings aren't permanent.  I feel comfortable being honest that I felt them.  My identity isn't every emotion I experience.  I can recognize them, try to honor and learn from them, and then let them go.

I am not a horrible person or a bad mother because I am dealing with grief today.  I have lots to be thankful for and I know it and I know that will be the long shot take away from this stage in my life.  But at this apogee, we have grief to deal with and expectations to adjust and that takes time and work.  We will do the work and the time will pass and I will outlast pregnancy and life will take on color and buoyancy again.  I will adore my untamed children and I will find renewed energy for teaching them how to stay fully alive in a world that expects manners and conformity.  I will feed and teach and cloth them and read to them and pray for them.

And God will laugh, as He does.

Lightness of Being

Bunny is buoyant.

Despite being a whirling dervish of physical energy, she is also radiantly pleasant. She has the attention span of an attention deficit puppy, but she's polite about it. This girl must say "thank you" more than a hundred times every day.  And she still says "come see me" when she wants to be held (which is pretty much always), and she's got emotional radar.  Whenever anyone else in the house is feeling grumpy or sad, Bunny is instantly underfoot offering hugs and snuggles or to have your cheeks held between her palms.

She also calls her belly button a belly butt.  Which cracks me up every time.

Her inherent interest in the well-being and emotional state of the people around me brings me joy.  It kind of feels like there is a tender plant growing that will one day become the type of a tree I could pass all of my stewardships over to when death comes for me.  There will be someone around to love my people the way only I know they need to be loved.



I actually spent time today trying to guess how old she'd need to be to introduce her to several of my most indulgently favorite things.  Anne Shirley, first and foremost.  I see a lot of them in each other.

So while I'm not sure what I expected having a girl to be like, it's not what I expected.  It keeps surprising me with how awesome it is, and fun, and terrifying.

Bunny, lately

This poor undocumented girl.




The consensus is that they must have based the Despicable Me minions on a 20-month-old just like her.  She is crazy, and hilarious, and crazy, and insane. And you should hear her say "Spi-bull Me!" when she wants to watch those minions while I am fixing her hair.  (Were it not for the iPad, she'd be in a permanent state of rat-nest-ness).



She is also needy, as in she needs every blanket, and "baby" and stuffed animal in the entire house with her at all times.  Oh, the meltdowns. They're kind of funny, if you can keep from going insane.



But mostly, she just knows that she's the boss around here.  If mom doesn't facilitate her whims, she's got 3 devoted brothers to turn to.  And dad is wrapped around her little finger.  The girl tends to get what she wants. As a disturbing number of strangers have pointed out in the grocery store and other public settings, she needs a younger sibling or she's going to be spoiled rotten. We'll get around to that, eventually.

The horror of almost forgetting to document something as important as our first broken bone.

You guys (all two of you who still read this).  I am having over-sized mom guilt about how everything is going undocumented these days.  At least over here, in a searchable-long-after-the-fact way.  I know there are people who "say" they are posting things to platforms like Facebook so that they can "reference it later," but in my experience, finding anything over three weeks old on Facebook is an exercise in frustration.



And, on that note, I'm finally resolving to begin the painfully expensive process of printing off photobooks of all these thousands of family photos that only exist in pixel form.  Slow and steady, and no scrapbooking.

But sadly, really, what I've failed at most is documenting the emergence of Bunny's personality and all the complications involved in that.  Because she is complicated.  (Duh, she's a girl, I know.) But as of late her primary characteristic is a strong blend of delight (everything is so amusing!) and strong-will-ed-ness.  It is possible, I grant you, that she is learning to act as spoiled as she is.  Sometimes.  The girl's just got so many fanboys who say "how high?" when she says "jump."

So - an obstinate streak.  Currently streaking. What do you do with that in an 18 month old?

Which is relevant because her obstinacy is largely what landed her with a broken leg a month ago.  She had sneaked into the laundry room (with its cement floor) and when Mr Renn was picking her up to remove her, she squirmed and arched in just such an unanticipated way as to cause Mr Renn to lose his hold on her and she fell. Less than 2 feet, but on a cement floor, landing in just the wrong way, and we had the minor-est of fracture types on our hands (or legs).



Four weeks and several thousand dollars later, it's quick becoming a distant memory.  But for a while I dealt with being kicked by a cast (ouch) on a regular basis and hearing the peg-legged sound of Bunny's funny little casted gait.


She adjusted to the cast in a matter of minutes and it didn't seem to slow her down one iota.  She's sort of full-speed ahead every waking moment these days, and hasn't the time to give consideration to inconveniences like broken bones.



Her comprehensible vocabulary is still very limited, but her communication skills are grand.  She signs "more" dolefully, asks for "mamamamama" over and over and over again whenever she wants anything.  Says "Daddy" with joy when Mr Renn comes home, and says "Ousch"while pointing with gusto which means "Outside" about 6,000 times every day.  Man, I wish she didn't have such a magnetic relationship with the middle of the road.  Or that I had a fence.  When she is allowed outside she has to be watched like a hawk, which is rather incompatible with my lengthy to-do lists.  We manage every day for at least a short spell, but the girl wants to live out there. Preferably smack-dab in the middle of our street.



So - first broken bone of my parenting career is under my belt.  For what it was (expensive) it was relatively un-traumatic.  No limbs dangling at contorted angles, no blood, no blood curdling screams.  Just lots of wimpering, refusal to put weight on it, and a long afternoon and evening of hospital hopping. The cast itself was a dry-cast, so we could bathe her normally, and it only restricted her ankle mobility, so she was able to walk almost normally. Quite low-maintenance for what it was.  After they removed the cast the most traumatic part of the whole thing seemed to be the surge of itchiness she suddenly experienced.  Before we could intervene she had clawed herself so badly her leg looked like it'd been mauled by a cat.  But a week later it is almost completely healed.

And frankly, we have our hands full preventing her next broken bone.  This age is so incredibly fun, and yet so much work!

Bunny Shuffle

I was so worried that Bunny was going to take off with walking during the week that Mr Renn and I were away.  She certainly made progress then, but it's been in this last week that she's finally become fully converted.  She is now fully ambulatory and passed over the peak where crawling still seems more efficient.  But she's not yet 100% solid.  You still feel like cheering for her as she goes - partly because of her gusto (everything full speed all the time!) and partly because she's still just wobbly enough that you're not certain she's going to make it wherever she's headed.





Good Golly this is a delightful age.

stretch marks

Why yes, I did just accidentally go a month without blogging one word.
It's lunacy - my life.
But it's nice to be able to say I haven't blogged for a month because I've been too busy doing things.  In the past when I've gone a month or two with mostly radio silence it's been because I've been essentially depressed and overcome with unhealthy apathy.
So sure, the effect of my absence is the same either way, but I prefer a more buoyant excuse.



The month of November ... the blur... I have no temporal details for you just now.

But things floating to the top of my brain include:

We are becoming genuinely concerned about Sir O's intense anti-social habits.  It is becoming apparent that the kid sets himself up to get picked on; he makes enemies easily.  He's intensely defensive and likes to lord over people when he can get away with it.  He also goes to ridiculous legths to avoid dealing with new people or new experiences.  Altogether not a super-loveable pile of characteristics.  Lucky for him we love him anyway, but I can't take away the social awkwardness he faces.

Conversely, my 3 other kids make friends wherever they go.  The Captain, despite his physical awkwardness, is often the center of socialness because he's so dang delightful.  And Bunny flirts with most strangers (though only from the safety of her parent's arms.)

Bunny also plays with her tongue all day long.  And on her it's darling.  But her brothers have started copying her, and a 3,5,or 7 year old blowing excessive raspberries at you is not cute.  It's just rude.

Mr Renn has been picking up a lot of slack for me this holiday season.  He's taken ownership of all of our holiday baking, gingerbread building, neighborhood gifts, and contributions to family parties.  In other words, he is a lifesaver.

I've realized that despite my proclivity for it, I have a rather pathetic collection of holiday decorations (for every/any holiday).  I may never arrive at that place where I feel I can give myself permission to spend time or money toward that end.  Over the years thousands of items have been put in carts, only to be removed before purchase.

Mr Renn claims we can start looking into buying a house of our own in earnest come February.  You cannot grasp the weight of this promise - but I'm posting it here to hold him accountable.  10 years of "I don't want to bother with that until it's our own house/I don't want to have to move that" have taken a toll.

Sir O has developed an intensely irritating habit of discarding and losing expensive articles of clothing.  He never loses the cheap stuff, only the newer and most expensive things.  If I had a dollar for every time that kid has lost or destroyed an article of clothing the first time he wore it - I'd have at least $50.

My first grad school finals are December 17th, and I am a mess until then.

I am not getting nearly enough sleep to function properly.  Hence my sluggish responses and reflexes.  And yes - this blatantly affects my performance in class. Vicious cycle.

Our gentleman began potty training and then quickly lost interest.  Time for plan D.

Bunny is standing often, and her brothers are the best cheering section a girl could ask for.  But when they cheer too loudly she realizes she's standing and quickly gets herself back down.  She's only taken 1 step, and she's still mad at me for tricking her into that one.

She's also terribly fond of playing peekaboo, and while her favorite is to hide in the curtains, she'll also hide her eyes with the backs of her hands, and make a squished up face that is beyond charming.

She still loves her dad more than anything or anyone in all the world.

I bought Sir O some sketchbooks, and I love what he comes up with.  Today in church we got 5 pages of clone trooper helmets.  We've also gotten a lot of dinosaurs, volcanoes, trucks, tall buildings, and mountainsides (with either a U or a Y emblazoned on them).

Our Gentleman's tongue thrust shows no sign of letting up.  I watch him talk and all I see is his tongue hanging out.  Speech therapy forever more, because that's how we love to spend all that extra time of ours....

Our Christmas cards are running late this year.  Hopefully they will arrive this week and we can create a super-sonic assembly line to get them back out in the mail without eating up too much study time.

Because yes, finals at Christmas time is utterly brutal for moms who are students.  I cannot speak for moms who are teachers or professors, but in a great many households Christmas is a production put on by mom behind the scenes.  When mom's time, focus, and energy is at a crazy premium, things get hairy.  Let's just say we're going to be flexible with celebrating St. Nicholas day this year.  Like - almost a week late flexible.  Same goes for St. Lucia.  I am giving myself a year off, and hopefully next year Bunny will be old enough to be the center of that celebration.

I only bought 2 new Christmas albums this year.  So far that's a record low.  But when you have over 1200 Christmas songs on your playlist, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify new additions.  Still really loving Joshua James, Sleeping At Last, Sufjan Stevens and Bebo Norman.

So, there's some catchup of the random-crap variety.  I hope I don't prove this spotty for the entirety of grad school, I still want to document life outside of film responses.  But you know, I'm dropping balls all over this place.  I'll try not to leave this one lolling on the floor for too long at a time.

As my baby bunny slips through my fingers

Remember when we necessarily rushed through Bunny's first birthday?  That was a blight of unfortunate timing.  I had class, and Mr Renn and I played our weekly game of ships passing in the night.  We quickly, and long after her tired eyes had come, did a birthday cake and a present that night.  Then, as soon as she'd had a chance to smear frosting all over herself, I whisked her off to a bath then her anxiously desired bed.  It was shamefully anticlimactic.



The thing is, Bunny doesn't care that she's been all the way around the sun.  I'm the one who's sentimental and certainly the only one who mourns how incrementally less celebratory each successive child's birthdays are able to be.  But really and truly, most every moment of every day is spoken for in my life right now.  Special occasions and their accompanying obligations are kind of like wrenches thrown in my barely functioning systematized engine.  Deep down I am a magnificently celebratory person, but in a world of finite time and energy, it doesn't actually take much to scrooge me over.  It makes me grateful that I can affirm that our current state of overcommitment is temporary.  Even if it's a rather long form of temporary.

So, baby girl, I'm sorry that your mom was in the thick of grad school on your first birthday.  You were an exquisite little sun spot regardless, and you are the most whole-hearted daddy's girl I've ever seen.  You don't mince words, you will take Mr Renn over me any moment of any day, and you've got him wrapped around your little finger in that absolutely universal daddy daughter archetype.

But, since I'm home more than he is, you settle happily enough for me most of the time.  You love to play peekaboo with the curtains.  You are thiiiiiis close to standing on your own, and if you can reign in your straddle you'll be walking soon too. Our gentleman is constantly wanting to hold you, even though you are nearly as big as he is.  I forget how remarkably comfortable you are hanging out with your brothers until I try to leave you with or near anyone else and you dissolves into a fit of separation anxiety.

Also - on the one hand, dressing a girl is so much fun.  On the other hand, dressing a girl is so much work.  I keep forgetting that I should be doing her hair, and playing the "keep track of that bow, and those shoes that she's likely to drop anywhere at any time" game.

To state the obvious, Bunny is the apple of everybody's eye around here.  It's sometimes like our immediate family exists only to bring together her most ardent fan club members.  But still, she's clearly decided to give the backstage full-access-to-my-heart pass to her daddy.   I'm not saying I'm jealous, except how can I not be?  Everybody wants someone to look at them the way she looks at Mr Renn.

Bunny Trouble

Understandably, it's hard to be angry at her when she's got that face on her.  But Bunny has discovered mischief.  She likes to make my life trickier, certainly messier.  Lots of tricks like blowing raspberries at me right after filling her mouth with baby food.  She thinks it's hilarious.



And lately she's made it her personal vendetta to ensure I get the least amount of reading and paper writing done during daytime hours.  Her nap routine has been shot to pieces all of a sudden.  Which of course means not only that she is not sleeping when I need her to, but that she's whiny and tired and demands my full attention every.single.moment OR ELSE.

Sometimes I get really frustrated.  I'm certainly getting really sleepless.  But then I look at that face.  Who wouldn't melt?

a sunbeam

Consensus is: the awful ailment that has supplanted my delightful baby with a terror was most likely roseola.  It has been an intense week, folks.



Bunny is naturally happy and forgiving.  She rolls with things, she laughs at things, she patiently waits her turn.  For the past week she has been a screaming banshee.  Every waking moment her misery was transparent.  High fever Sun-Tues, followed by a rash through Friday. She completely melted down if she was awake and not being held.  Really brain-burningly awful from Sunday afternoon all the way through until this morning (the following Sunday).


 This morning she woke up and suddenly she was back.  We heard her laugh.  She was willing to eat food.  I was so excited I just wanted to hang out with her and soak up the pleasantness again, to let it wash over me and cleanse all the exhaustion and resentment that was starting to build up after a really, horribly long week.  Instead, I packed my family up and toted them to stake conference, where in the last 20 minutes I got her to fall asleep in my arms.



So while I let my other 3 children run rampant and continue disrupting the poor people sitting around us, (sigh - Stake conference and hard chairs in the gym), I mostly sat and watched her content little peaceful visage.  She is growing up so fast and is navigating life with 3 brothers so well.  I view her calming influence on the rest of us as a gift, something she just came with.  I have missed it fiercely this past week.  So much of parenting is what your kids bring to the table, and it's so much easier to be a decent parent when they bring contentment, joy, and patience.  Granted, that doesn't stretch or teach the parent very much, so that tends not to be the consistent offering from kids.  But I'm going to take it while it's available!

Bunny Hop

Ah, sister.  At 9 going on 10 months we are well past the point where we can't imagine life without you.  We can't even clearly remember, emotionally, what it's like to not have an oversized spot for you in the tenderest corner of our hearts.



The sweetness of this baby girl just makes me reel on a daily basis.  She's so excited to be with us, every chance she gets.  It makes ordinary everyday-ness feel terribly special.



As her name means faith, and truth, the sincerity of her little soul is appropriate and asphyxiating.  It is easy to get smothered in Bunny-ness and to forget that the rest of the world isn't always so sweet.



Buy hey, who needs the rest of the world?  I'll take her instead.

somebody slow her down

Bunny has been racing toward some finish line with growing up lately.  Within 3 weeks she has sprouted at least 4 new teeth, learned to crawl, and developed an insatiable appetite for being spoon fed.  She's like an entirely new, wigglier baby sprouted from the chrysalis of the mellow, low-maintenance one I had a month ago.



She is, luckily, still happier than not.  Although separation anxiety has reared it's annoying little head.  Such an unbecoming, if nearly universal, baby trait.  Only people who put in their hours get to be in her circle of trust.  It's a pretty small circle.  But even if she doesn't want to be held by other adults she is perfectly willing to be charming with them from arms length.



She is oh, so healthy.  Her squishiness leads to some swooning, and certainly keeps her fan club peopled.  I'm still getting used to the difference teeth are making in her visage.  I don't think I was ready for them.  I certainly could have done without the steady stream of snot they caused.



She seems to be losing her touch for perfect sleeping habits, which makes me weep.  She is still remarkably social compared to her brothers.  Sir O has always been more anti-social than anything.  The other two boys seemed much more socially aware by comparison, but none of them can touch the way Bunny thrives on and seeks after eye contact, recognition, and positive responses.  If she were capable she'd do cartwheels just to make someone else smile. It's impossibly endearing.

Doggie Pile on me

This summer.  Oh, my.

I have never in my life been so consistently overwhelmed.  All my kids all the time with so very few experiences that could be categorized as "breaks."  Let's just say that at this moment 4 kids feels like a larger amount than it sounds like.  I need 3 of me even more than usual.  I could keep one of me more than busy just keeping tabs on the kids.  Another one could clean and clean and clean, (because kids are gross) and maybe cook, and the third one can think more than 10 minutes ahead and plan and record and think clearly and be gracious and funny and get enough sleep.

But despite the bulldozer aspect of the majority of my summer, there have been some shiny moments.



The boys all had a few days of heaven during our bi-annual family reunion in Hanna.  (Bunny however had a cold, so neither she nor I got any sleep and the two of us were grumpy the whole time).



I'm pretty sure I've aged 2 or 3 years this summer from sheer sleep deprivation.  My kids appear to be on a rotating schedule for illness and night terrors and bed-wetting.  It is always somebody's turn.  Last night the Captain came knocking at my door at 1 am, complaining that he was tired.  I do not joke, my sleep losses are not funny to me at this point.

Bunny has nearly exploded with teeth in the past few weeks.  She has also become fully mobile.  She's a cute, slobbery, wiggly mess and nothing is safe with her around.   Everybody who sees me in action says my hands are full, and it seems to become more true every passing day.



Somehow though, in the midst of sheer exhaustion, I can see how I would miss all this craziness some day.  There is a lot of vibrance in the mess.  There is always something to do.  There is something endearing about all this neediness from all these oblivious short people.  They are physically exhausting but they are also transparent.  The stakes are still low.  The drama is still over snacks and losing a game and not wanting to wear pants.  They will all still hold my hand and sit on my lap when they are pouty.  They will grow up, they will need less from me for their health and well-being.  The things they'll need from me will get infinitely more spindly to navigate.  It will get harder to tell how I'm doing and where I'm failing.  So this straightforward exhausting bit will look pretty sweet in retrospect.

Somehow I've just got to wrestle my way through the remaining two weeks of summer vacation.  Sir O starts back and then (gulp) I start back a couple of weeks later.  Things are destined to get more intense, and not less.  But there is hope that with the older boys in school on a regular basis I will occasionally find a moment to come to the surface for air before diving back in.  It's truly amazing what a difference realistic expectations make when one is attempting ambitious lunacy.  I can see how wild it's going to be and how intensely tightly I'll have to budget my time.  I can also see how relatively short of a time the whole endeavor will be.  I suppose it's a sign of some sort of old age when I find myself saying "I can do anything for only 2 years...."

Kicking It

  This summer is an interesting animal.  On the one hand I am about to dive into a bucket-list-grade adventure in the fall.  On the other hand I have not got much to show for the summer happening in the meantime.  In the space between my propulsion from the high dive and actually entering the water there is a silent sort of space.  I'm rather antsy about it.  Life with 4 kids always home all the time is not for the faint of heart, nor is it for people who want to be productive.  It may be some years before I learn to feel magical about summertime again.  Napping babies are sacred, and I'm prepared to canonize the sweet young women in my neighborhood who are doing a free dance camp for all the neighborhood kids.  I've had two hours every day this week to do glamorous things like folding laundry and spoon feeding Bunny without the usual steady stream of interruptions and cracker crumbs.

  My burdens are small if relentless, but I've had a summer so far where the trials of the people around me seem utterly stifling.  And several times a week when I think I can't possibly stand it all I get pummeled with another round of rough news from a totally unexpected corner of my life. I have such a long list of people I'm worrying about and praying for just now.  It's beginning to affect my ability to function.  I'm working on "letting go and letting God," but I am a genetic worrier.   I find I'm scrambling for unqualified positive energy.

And guess where I always find it?  All I have to do is walk into the room where Bunny is and she lights up like magic.  I can't get over how in love with me she is.  She's happy and she cheerfully goes to most people, but she clearly prefers my company.  Some days it's just the type of affirmation I need to get through the emotional wreckage.  I want Bunny to be a socially adroit little sunshine face, so I neither want nor expect to always be her fierce favorite.  But for just a short, short while, it's a tender mercy for me.

Sufficient as that is, the rest of the summer is welcome to take it easy.  The crisis quota has definitely been met.  Am I the only one out there who internalizes other people's trauma more than is maybe appropriate?  How does one get that under control without totally withdrawing emotionally anyway?   Also, besides emotional eating, how do people cope with emotionally raw stretches? I find I need some new ideas.

chopping block and life when you're the fourth

So - as she approaches 8 months old, Bunny's hair was becoming a struggle.




She had rubbed so much of it off, and it was growing in so light - it was looking scragglier by the day.  I was finally resigned to giving her a real hair cut.






When I had my first haircut, being an oldest child, it was a production.  Lots of pictures taken before, during, and after.  I'm sure I had my mother's undivided attention throughout the entire process.  Alas, Bunny is the fourth child.  And her first haircut went something like this:

I scheduled haircuts for all of my boys on the evening Mr Renn has to work late.  I asked if we could squeeze Bunny in there too.  To clean her up a bit and de-scraggle her as much as possible. We headed over to our hair lady's house with my 12 year old cousin to help out, we are always a traveling circus.

Because Sir O was being especially ornery that day (and every day this summer) I bribed him into going first.  Then our congenial Gentleman was begging to go next.  And just as his haircut was wrapping up, the Captain peed all over the nice hair lady's sofa.  He hasn't had an accident in 6 months.  Of course I was unprepared for that, so I sequestered him in their bathroom, and ran home for a change of clothes and our carpet cleaner.

And so it worked out that instead of even being present for Bunny's first haircut, I was running home and back and cleaning up pee.  And when she emerged all pixi-fied I was quite melancholy.  Not because I didn't like her haircut, but because I missed it.

But you know what, hair is just hair.  And hair grows.  And Bunny hasn't a clue that she looks any different.  Nor should she.  Nothing that's real has changed.  Nothing that lasts has changed.  And she has plenty of bows.

Veer Right

I've been running in plenty of healthy circles lately.  Nobody can ever tell me that parenting is simple or straightforward.  The gray area is just a massive cloud of small, significant decisions to make and places to be.  And when your child exhibits characteristics that fall outside the bell curve, it always means more work for the mom.

Apart from Sir O's anxiety, the Captain and the Gentlemen with their speech, and the Captain's sensory issues (which are still getting figured out), I noticed a few months ago that Bunny was definitely favoring one side of her head over the other.  No matter how I try holding her she always wants to look to the right.  She can turn her head to the left, but not as far and certainly not as comfortably.

When I mentioned my concern to the pediatrician I got (without so much as a glance to see for himself) a rather glib referral for an x-ray to rule out skeletal issues and a subsequent recommendation to see a physical therapist. (For torticollis)

If only it were that easy.

No radiologist is going to give a baby an x-ray without anesthesia.  Most of the time they won't use general anesthesia on babies until they are at least 6 months old, and all of that seemed awfully expensive for a baby that nobody had actually taken a good look at or done a physical assessment on (especially when we would be paying for all of it out of pocket.) All of this seems like expensive overkill for a condition that "usually resolves itself."

And so we've been looking into our options.  But there's no clear-cut choice for me to make.  I have to create and imagine my own path here.  Part of me wants to brush it off.  Part of me wants to go to the ends of the earth to see it resolved.  The remaining parts of me are just tired and busy worrying about my other children and their quirks.  How much running around and being tested and receiving professional assistance can a family of relatively "normal" children manage to require?  The appointments, the babysitting arranging, the paperwork, the long, long list of things we should be doing at home.  Is this the destiny of every parent, or are we just that "special" ?

Have I brought it upon my own head by my diligence in trying to make sure my children's needs are met?  Would we all be better off if I would just chill-out?  How does anybody survive parenting without wallowing in a mire of self-doubt?

And when Bunny looks at me like this (every.single.day. I am so lucky.) I know she trusts me to take care of her every need.  She's not the least bit worried whether I'll mess it all up.  Faith is magic, I tell you what.

as for my passive aggressive posting habits

I have a very good reason for disappearing lately.  I have been uncomfortably busy trying to pull off large and intimidating things.  If things go well, which they very well might, I'll be able to let you in on it soon.

But while I've been even more on my toes than usual, life has kept on. And regretfully life has not included pulling out the "real" camera.  Every one of these is an instagram.  Sigh, and soldier on.

Bunny continues to catch my heart in my chest several times every day.  Almost 5 months old and I'm still pinching myself every single day that I have a daughter and that she is a delight.









The boys, collectively, have their own brand of delight.  It's a bit harder for me to stay on board with in a moment-to-moment way, but they still regularly make me happy with their particular quirks.







And, in an effort to make his mother feel old, Sir O has been losing teeth about as rampantly as I've been losing my post-partum hair.



As a sort of parenting bonus - Sir O has a mortal fear of the tooth fairy.  So she doesn't visit at our house.  We just ceremoniously pack teeth up in a pouch I bought on etsy, and call it good.

In other news - my settee made the rounds and came back to me - not as I'd envisioned (or instructed), but still a nice little addition to the front room. There is apparently a quota of irony I must meet regarding my expectations every month or so.  This catches me up.



My baby sister brought the world to tears with her thoughtful portrayal of Mary, as the lead in A Family Portrait, a suppositional story about the family of Christ.  I am so proud of this girl.

And, my little brother got married this past weekend.  I shopped the cooler and pulled together a bouquet for them the day before.  Koch roses, spray roses, waxflower, and stock, with salal and some myrtle. After a really brutal year, we are all rooting for him to have some happy days ahead.





That accounts for some of what we've been up to.  Just add cleaning the bathroom, preparing meals nobody wants to eat, doing laundry and cleaning the kitchen floor an infinite number of times (each) and you've got a pretty good picture of my present tense.