When life gets in the way...

2014 is here.

I wasn't ready for another new year but it's here anyways. When I look back at 2013, there's so much that happened that I didn't share and it makes me sad. Last year (so weird to say that) was hard for me. Right now is still hard for me but I'm getting through.

Jay & I have struggled. Like, really, really  struggled. I've had a difficult time adjusting to life with a new baby and two older kids. Phoenix is doing great in school but is having some emotional issues, most likely because of the new baby. Paxton's probably the doing the best out of all of us, funny as that is.

My mental health has taken a major hit and I think not blogging was a part of that. This isn't just an outlet, it's a source of confidence. It makes me feel good to blog and to get these thoughts out of my head. I love documenting the twists & turns our lives take, even if some of the darkest stuff is next to impossible to write. It's something I need to work on; writing about the bad. This last year was full of it. Instead of letting out my frustrations, I let them fester and now, I'm rotting inside.

No more.

I don't want to rot.

I want to heal and be better.

I know I need to get back at it but it's been a bit of a challenge to get the blog-ball rolling again. My life is different; I have less time, less energy and many more woes & complaints. I'm still me though and this has always been a form of therapy for me. I get a chance to process and ultimately release emotions and thoughts I would otherwise bottle up.

I posted pretty sporadically last year and then just stopped altogether a few weeks before Korben was born. I'm disappointed in myself; this is really about documenting memories & I've let so many slip by in the time I've been gone.

It's a gap I can never fill.

I want to blog again. I love it. I miss it. I need to get back to it.

Now seems as good a time as any. It's a new year, a time for fresh starts and resolutions; I don't make resolutions but I do have the goal to BE A BETTER BLOGGER.

Even if it's just an hour or two a week, a recap of what's happened, I need to do it. There's no shortage of topics to write about; there is always something going on over here. When things get crazy-busy, it's even more important to find the time. These kids are growing up too fast; you can't blink without missing something. In the last 20 weeks, Korben has changed drastically and none of it is here. Such a short time, yet so much has happened.

I also need to lean on this more, personally. When things get bad, I shut down and retreat. It's my defense mechanism, I guess. The problem is: it doesn't work. I need to open up and allow myself to process those feelings the same way I do everything else. I need to stop fearing judgement.

I need to be more honest.

Taking care of the two older boys and the baby has been way harder than I'd anticipated. Way harder. It's not them; it's the baby. I forgot just how much energy/time/attention a baby takes and the reality I'd envisioned has been replaced by the Actual Reality. I'd pictured things much the way they'd been when Phoenix and Paxton were born. Jay & I were both active in parenting, sharing baby duties like early mornings, night feedings and diaper changes. I'll admit, it wasn't always an agreement but we'd worked out a system of Your Turn/My Turn that worked fairly well. With Phoenix anyways.

When we had Paxton, I planned on breastfeeding but we were also planning the move to California. After a few weeks of being the only food source, I was overwhelmed. I needed to be able to hand Paxton off to Jay the way I had Phoenix. Plus, with the move coming up, I needed to be able to feed him on the go. So we switched to formula. It made things easier; we were more of a partnership again. When Jay started working with his step-dad, I started taking on more responsibilities around the house, as well as the kids.

When he took over the business, I was officially a stay-at-home mom.

It took awhile to find the balance again; it was my job to take care of house, home and children; he would go to work and earn the money we needed to survive. He was still Dad; still played with the kids, just didn't want to do anything chore-like. Understandable. Frustrating at times but understandable. We fought about it & still do but I really do love being at home, most of the time, and it truly is a privilege so I put on my big girl panties and buckled down. I'm not perfect. I still let dishes pile up. We run out of clean underwear every now & then and sometimes, our bathroom looks more like a filthy barber's shop than a bathroom but I'm owning it. 

Maybe my "balance" was more of a "see-saw" but it was working. I thought we'd be okay, adding a new baby but things weren't as easy as I'd thought. Jay's exhausted every day from work. I'm exhausted from the kids. I want a break. He wants a break. We both feel overwhelmed and underappreciated. It's a bad situation. This time, I feel like I'm on my own and there's this gap opening up between us.

I'm tired of fighting. Tired of the anxiety. I want peace. I want calm. I want my partner back. I want my family whole again.

I have hope this is just another rough patch. That we will weather this storm like the ones before; that we will come out on the other side, stronger and wiser. We're all still adjusting to life as a family of five. A lot has changed for all of us; it's going to take more than a four months to get back to a state of normalcy. Things are slowly getting easier and getting the kids back in school helps to get all of us back on routine. I've got my fingers crossed the worst is behind us.

I'm ready to come up out of this hole.

IT'S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

JESUS CHRIST.

It's been way too long since I've posted. You understand, I know, but I still feel a twinge of guilt at leaving you all hanging for MONTHS.

Well, life and this pregnancy have pretty much taken over EVERYTHING. So much drama with this pregnancy, I'm glad we only have 26 days left. TWENTY SIX DAYS. Less than a month and we'll have the newest little Murphy, Korben Michael.

I've done really well through most of this pregnancy; my biggest complaint being my irritability. I am your worst nightmare right now. Vastly pregnant and raging like a bull in the blink of an eye. Then there's the other side to that coin: the tears. I cry over EVERYTHING, including being totally, irrationally emotional. Yeah, it's been awesome.

My emotional state as been hard for everyone to deal with and life hasn't been all rainbows & sunshine. A few storms have broken over us but we've weathered them and come out the other side. Phoenix has been having an especially hard time because he can see I'm not my usual self. We've butted heads HARD and I've felt like an absolute failure more often than I care to admit lately.

I know I'm not in my right mind but that doesn't make it easier to deal with shit; it just leaves me more frustrated because I feel like I should have the patience, knowing it's not really my fault or the kids'. AH, brain. You are so awesome...

Good news is we've had a ton of help in getting ready for Korben's arrival. It's been so humbling. I realize how lucky I am to have so many wonderful people in my life, people I am so proud to call friends. We also have family coming in from out of town to help out; Jay's Grammy Murphy and my mom will both be here to help us celebrate and make sure we survive the first week or two. We're hoping his dad & step-mom can make it out too.

There's no better excuse for a little family reunion than a new baby, right?

Well, that's all I can manage right now; kids are screaming upstairs and Jay should be home soon. I'm not going to say I'll be back soon because chances are pretty good I won't be. I'll try to stay in touch & maybe I'll even get a couple folks to guest post for me so you all aren't left in the lurch for another 3 months.

Until then, be good to yourselves and each other.

Catching Up, part 3 -- Paxton goes to College

Say wha?? My two year old is going to college? Well, yeah. He kind of is. After setting up an assessment for Paxton at the Maryjane Rees Language Speech and Hearing Center at Sac State and receiving his report, he's ready to start speech therapy.

This is such a huge win for me, as a mom. I feel like I'm doing something for him that I couldn't have done for Phoenix. I know that I am. While Phoenix had all sorts of early intervention, it was all from the school district, mostly Portland Public School, and was based on integrating him into a "normal" classroom. His teachers and I didn't fully understand the limitations Phoenix had and couldn't fully address his needs. I think it was because we didn't do the kind of evaluations they do at CSUS. Phoenix has grown so much in the last year and I feel like most of that progress is because of his time in the clinic at CSUS.

Looking at Paxton's report, I see a much different child, with very different problems. Mainly, he barely has any. He scored at the highest level and is emerging at age-level in all areas of testing but is still a few months behind his peers. The clinician also recommends looking at the possibility that Paxton could have CAS, Childhood Apraxia of Speech. It's something I researched when I was trying to figure out why Phoenix wasn't making much progress and it kind of fits with Paxton.

Overall, he seems to be in a much better place than Phoenix ever was and I'm hopeful that getting him into the clinic will help him get up to age-level before he starts school. He's not even three yet and won't be starting preschool until next Fall so we've got plenty of time if we work hard enough. I've already noticed an improvement by simply implementing some of the tools, tips and tricks suggested by the assessor. Slowing down my speech. Enunciating the words. Using shorter, easier to copy sentences.

He's very good at copying most of the sounds he hears and speaks in sentences and paragraphs but most of what he says is beyond my abilities to translate. He asks lots of questions and "But why?" has to be his favorite. It comes out more like 'Gah why' but you can understand it. He also loves to ask what things mean. 'What left mean?' 'What up mean?' and he definitely understands things better; he's always throwing out 'No Fair!', usually when he's getting screwed out of something or getting left behind.

All in all, I'm confident his issues are much smaller and easier to resolve than Phoenix are/were. He'll start Speech 1 next Tuesday and then we'll see how fast this kid can fly. This is one chapter I am eager to start and watch unfold.

Catching up, part 2 -- Jay goes 'Superhero'

In part 1, Paxton got stitches after bailing sideways off a slide and landing on his head, on a pile of rocks, in true Murphy style. So much for a Saturday at the park. It's now Monday, less than 48 hours after The Fall. It hasn't been two days since Paxton was dosed with a hallucinogen and laced up with five neat, pretty little stitches but Jay and I have to take him to his pediatrician to get his stitches checked. Everything looked great & we set an appointment to come back on Friday to get them taken out. He was a real champ, considering.

On the way home we pulled into McDonald's to treat Little Man to a burger and fries and were greeted by a lovely breakfast menu. Really, Ronald? Is it that hard to make burgers and egg mcmuffins, simultaneously? Don't you think your patrons would approve of breakfast and lunch 24 hours a day?? We ordered him pancakes instead and since we were close, we went to the Chicken Park. It's a small park with an amphitheatre and playground in the middle of downtown old Fair Oaks -- Fair Oaks Village, a totally cool, old timey little part of town that reminds me of Oregon -- and chickens. Lots of real-live, WILD chickens. Most of the ones you see are roosters and they can get HUMONGOUS. The kids love it and we enjoy it too.

After Paxton played and fed the chickens some pancakes and played some more, we got back on the road. Jay's brakes were squeaking in the truck so he wanted to stop by AutoZone to get some new pads and if it weren't for that last-minute to-do being put on the list, we wouldn't have been at that particular intersection, at this particular time. We wouldn't have seen the accident that sent one car across two others and put the other up on the little curb of a median. We never would have seen the kid hop out of the Camaro up on the median and take off on foot, running right out of his shoes.

And Jay never would have had the chance to go into full-blown Superhero mode.

Instantly, he's on the move, jumping the median the guy's Camaro is stuck on, darting through a parking lot and into an apartment complex. Right on the guys ass. He heard us coming and went from safely jogging, not looking very suspicious to sprinting like he just crashed a stolen car. And bailed over a wall, into someone's backyard.

Jay threw the truck in park and went after him. I barely had time to yell, "Don't get hurt!" and it was probably more of a mumble. I called 9-1-1 and got in the passenger seat. I kinda sat there for a minute, talking to the operator but when she asked if i could still see them, I knew I had to go find them. I drove back by the scene to give the operator the plate number on the Camaro then headed to find Jay.

He was blocks from where he'd left me, standing on the side of the road. With another guy. A guy that looked just like the guy running from the Camaro. Then I saw the car in front of me. Saw it braking and pulling over. Watched this guy Jay had caught up to and detained get into another car and speed away. The guy had to have seen me in the truck, had to have recognized that giant beast because by the time Jay was in the driver's seat, they were gone. I'm smart though and I know which way I would go (almost) if it'd had been me running. It also helps that the street I found them on is on I drive almost every day because it's right behind our house. I told Jay to go down Hilltop, the street we live off of. We didn't see them until we got to our driveway and there they were, at the bottom of our hill, turning back towards the accident scene (that's where my escape plan and his, differ. No way in HELL would I go anywhere near that ish).

Jay caught up to the getaway car and asked the guy if he was going back. He said he was but when we passed by the accident, Jay shouted to the one and only cop at the scene that the guy was in the car next to us, pointing it out, yelling make & model. We pulled over into a parking lot right across from everything and watched the cop pull this guy out of the car at gunpoint, throw him down on the ground and put him in cuffs. Jay was crossing the street to talk to the cops when the crowd of people that had gathered saw the guy in cuffs and then saw Jay with his white truck across the street and erupted in cheers.

The cops didn't take Jay's name or any sort of information which kind of cheeses me off. I mean, he totally deserves some kind of award or medal or prize or something. That shit was insane and not a lot of people would have gone to all that trouble when they were only witnesses; I'm not sure they really understood the lengths he went to to catch this guy. The lady in the other car thanked Jay, told him she really appreciated what he'd done and that she was fine, not hurt at all. He got back in the truck and three of us went home. Paxton went down for a nap and we sat down to digest the days' happenings.

At the scene, when the guy was cuffed, waiting for Jay, I talked with a couple kids who watched the whole thing unfold. One said he'd never do anything like what we'd done and the opportunity to help humanity evolve presented itself to me: If everyone goes around thinking everything is everyone else's problem, we're all lost. If ONE PERSON among us stops to help another, maybe that person will stop to help someone else and that person will help one more. And that's the power of one person. The power of doing what's right, when you see something that's wrong. 'I'm a mom', I said. 'If that were my kid, I would want someone to do something. This didn't just happen. This has been happening and no one has ever told his kid, "No. Don't do that. That's WRONG."'

If just one person, one dad, one mom, a sister, someone's cousin -- JUST ONE PERSON -- steps up to play the superhero, our world would be a better, safer place. I think there's superhero in all of us. Don't be scared. Pull up your tights. Throw back your cape (totally optional) and GO DO GOOD.

Catching Up, part 1 -- Paxton gets stitches

Too much has happened that I haven't posted about. So much that I'm not even going to attempt to put it all in one post. Welcome to the Catching Up series. I know it'll be at least a few parts long and could potentially be an on-going thing here at Oh Boys, since I seem to be getting fewer and fewer chances to sit down and write. Mainly because of all the craziness that's been plaguing us lately.

Let's go back a couple weeks to the first Saturday of October. Down here in NorCal, the weather is still set to 'Summer', for some awful reason, but we decided to be good parents (for the first time in, like, FOREVER) and take the kids to the park. Jay was driving so we didn't go to the park I take the kids to; we went to a park I never take the kids. We only ever go there with Jay. It's on a busy street and it's just bigger and therefore more dangerous, in my Mom-mind.

It's got tennis courts, a soccer field and two playgrounds, one for littles and one for the bigger kids. Paxton never plays on the little one; he always heads straight to the big kid park. It's never been an issue before because he's always been a bigger kid and is physically advanced, thanks to having a big brother to take example from. He heads up and shouts for Jay and me to watch him as he runs back and forth on the 'catwalk' then gets set to go down the twisty slide. It's not the spiral that goes around; it just kinda snakes left then right and pops the kid off at the bottom.

Somehow, he ended up sideways, facing me at the bottom and instead of just landing flat on his ass, he tips off on his side and lands RIGHT ON HIS HEAD. I watched it happen in slow-fucking-motion. I ran over, scooped him up and walked around trying to soothe him. He was screaming bloody murder; not just an 'I'm-scared-and-hurt-and-oh-shit-that-sucked' kind of cry but and 'HOLY-FUCKING-SHIT-I-THINKING-I'M-DYING' kind of cry.

And that's when I realized his head was sticky.

Blood. Is. Everywhere. All over his head. All over his face. All over my face, my neck. All over my shirt.

Now, it's MY turn to freak out.

'We gotta go, Jay. We gotta go NOW!' 'There's blood. Jay, HE'S BLEEDING!' 'OHMYGOD, JAY! HIS HEAD!'

I literally ran with him to the car and for the first time ever, was completely THRILLED that Jay never locks my damned Jeep. I had no idea why he wasn't right behind me but he was there by the time I got Paxton buckled in. Phoenix was next to Paxton, convinced his baby brother was going to die. I tried to reassure him that Paxton was not in fact dying, that his brains were not actually falling out of his head and that the doctors would make him all better, while shrieking at Jay to GET US TO THE HOSPITAL.

It wasn't even ten minutes from the time of the fall til we were in the lobby of the E.R., filling out paperwork. I was shaking, choking down sobs, trying to hold my shit together and NOT be that mom. I hurriedly filled out the admittance form and got his pulse/ox reading. Then we waited. It was maybe a half and hour until we got called into triage. The nurse and a doctor checked him out, gave us some gauze and said we would definitely need stitches. Then they sent us back out to the waiting room and Jay shows me what Paxton landed on: a patch of jagged rocks. At the bottom of the slide, there's NO bark dust, just these awesome, flesh splitting rocks. Great.

We knew we were in for a long wait so Jay ran to Safeway down the street and grabbed some snacks and soda so we could settle in. Paxton was falling asleep and if you've ever had anything to do with a good bump in the head, you know falling asleep is bad, so he got a Mt Dew. Phoenix got a root beer. It seemed like a great idea at the time but after two or three hours of waiting for a room to clear out & stitches to be administered, having two kids all hopped up on sugar and caffeine in an E.R. waiting room was just ridiculous so Jay took Phoenix home.

Paxton's coming off his high now; he wants Daddy, he wants to go home. He fights and screams and throws a massive fit. It's now something like 3 or 4 o'clock; he hasn't had a nap, he hasn't had real food since breakfast and I was pretty sure he didn't have a concussion so I let him melt down. He was so worn out, he just fell asleep and I wanted to too. Instead, I used some of the last bit of battery power left in my phone and sent another text to Jay's mom to let her know we were still waiting for stitches. Next thing I know, she's there, in the waiting room. AWESOME. I don't have to worry my phone is going to die, leaving us stranded at the hospital.

She' must be some kind of wonderful too because almost as soon as she got there, the doctor who checked him in triage called his name to check his BP and let us know she was working hard to get him a room. They had to wait for approval of his sedative too, since they were going to be giving him ketamine. I didn't know why that sounded familiar until we got into the back.

Ketamine is what doctors call the street drug, Special K. It causes hallucinations and shit and apparently, kids love the stuff. I was never one for hallucinogens so I have no experience with it, personally and the doctor warned me that Paxton might "look funny". No shit; the kid is frying balls to Spongebob. Man, it was the craziest thing to watch too. His little eyeballs got big as saucers and floated all over the place. He started drooling but soon enough, the stitches were in and the ketamine was starting to wear off. I was warned not to stimulate him too much while he was coming out of his trip because overstimulation can cause "an emergence reaction" which is why they don't give this shit to grown folk. It's much easier to restain a toddler who's having a bad trip than an adult.

I could tell he was definitely freaked out by something; he kept crying and couldn't really be comforted. He eventually came out of it and a nurse brought us graham crackers and apple juice while discharge papers were drawn up.

He got a Civil War bandage; I got a stack of paperwork and we went to go find Grandma Mindy. It was dark by now; Grandma Mindy was waiting outside and we finally made it home around seven.

An entire day at the hospital, five stitches and a freaky trip on Special K, all because we wanted to be good parents who take their kids to the park. I think we'll just stick to being shitty parents who never leave the house. Much safer that way, if you ask me. Much safer...