Mother's Day 2013

Love.  I scribbled the word on my left wrist in blue ink the other day, wondering what it would look like to have the reminder permanently noted so I could look down and remember to do it:  Love.

My mother stitched it in beautiful colors of tiny threads and hung it on our wall, perhaps to remind us, perhaps to remind herself.  I'm sure there were many days with her nine kids that she felt like she might need a reminder to love us--especially when we all disappeared after dinner and left her with a stack of dirty dishes a mile high.



When I had our first child, Abby, I was a mess.  After sixteen hours of labor that ended in a c-section and a very shaken husband, I needed help.  A nurse came and talked to me about feeding my baby every couple of hours, even if I needed to wake her to do it.  A nursing specialist from La Leche League came to help me because my baby wouldn't latch on.  I was in tears from pain, and she was in tears from hunger.  After four days in the hospital, Dave drove me home to our little apartment.  What would I do with this baby?  I could barely even walk! How would we survive?

Dave called my Mother.  He got her on a plane.  And when she showed up from 2,000 miles away that night, I knew everything was going to be okay.  She rocked my baby in the night so I could sleep.  She made us food so we would have strength.  She forced me to get that baby to eat, even though the pain of nursing made me cringe and cry.  "Just relax your shoulders," she told me, "and take a deep breath.  You can do it."  And she was right, I could do it.  I DID do it--through the pain, through a clogged milk duct, then abscess--night after night, day after day: which is exactly how I learned to be a mother.

Little by little, as we suffer and struggle, we laugh and comfort, we learn how to do this sometimes thankless job.  Some of us are lucky to have had a great teacher . . . the one that shows us that the most important thing is so simple..... Just Love.

    

*Happy Mother's Day*

I love you, Mom! 

Insomnia

Springtime Blooms

I have insomnia.  Luckily it's just medication induced, as I try to fight off this weird head cold that has been making the rounds in our family.  Dave started it, then the three little ones had a touch of it, and now it's my turn!  The solupred I take in the morning helps me breathe and sometimes I can even hear without things sounding too much like they're underwater.  It also gives me quite the energy boost and I  was able to spend all day cleaning the house so that we can move back in sometime this week.

And, it makes it so I can't sleep!  It's pretty quiet at this hour, with just the frogs awake in the background.

Our few summer-like days last week ended all too quickly and more chilly, covered skies have returned.  Boo.  But we squeezed in tons of fun while it lasted and hope the warm sun will come back soon.
 

Carter playing cars at the beach in Frejus.  

Sam was trying to have fun, despite his head cold.  He's better now!

In the meantime, Dave is taking this week off work to help me get this put back together:

I think it might take a while . . . good thing I'm not tired!

Spring

Spring has Sprung!  Boy did it take its' sweet time . . . but now that it's here I think the entire Cote d'Azur has breathed a collective sigh of relief.   We are a few days into our 2 week spring break and while I should be at the house, trying to get things finished so that we can move back in, I am enjoying the sunshine instead.

Since school got out on Friday we have been trying to squeeze in every possible thing that makes us happy.  We had dinner with our friends and neighbors four times in a row on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.  Dave mowed the lawn, I hung laundry out to dry on the line!  We ate blueberry cheesecake ice cream that I found at the grocery store!  I took the boys to the pool where I didn't hear one single negative comment for four hours straight.  I napped in the sun.  It was heaven.

Which just goes to show you . . . what things make us happy?  Truly happy?  Is it having a helicopter, like Dave's friend from business school?  Or the security of a pretty good job that makes you feel satisfied--and gives you enough time to just hang with the people you love, maybe eating Ben & Jerry's Peanut Butter Cup ice cream that you found in your town where people don't even eat peanut butter?

On Sunday we spent the day with an American family that moved here the same year we did.  We laughed and made jokes about all the things here that drive us crazy and wondered to each other what the heck we are still doing here . . . and then proceeded to discuss how when the weather is good this is one of the most beautiful places on earth and that we have been lucky to have such an experience.  All while we stuffed our faces with pasta, salad nicoise, homemade fudge and mint brownies.



I took pictures, declaring that "this may be our last April together here . . . "



and then for posterity allowed someone other than me to use my camera.  ;)


After I finish writing this post, I should get busy on the list of things that need to be done at our house so we can move back into it:

-paint the bedrooms
-vacuum up all the dust
-scrape the tape off the floor in the hallway
-cut the bottom off the armoire so we can free it from the hallway where it has been trapped for 100 years (already cut off the legs and that wasn't enough)
-hang light in bathroom
-call the window people about window that won't open in attic
-find sliding door & rail for laundry room
-grout shower
-dust off the clothes left in the bedroom and vacuum everything
-clean off box spring that has been under a tarp outside for 6 months and take it to attic
-find towel bars for bathrooms
-fix broken tile in main bathroom
-finish painting attic bathroom
-varnish all the interior doors
-find some way to light up the dark kitchen
-put up IKEA armoire we bought for boys room
-find a place for everything that has been shoved into the living room for six months
-dig a trench from the new electricity box to the house and have the line connected
-have phone company re-connect line
-burn the huge pile of stuff on the side of the house
-burn all the stuff we thought we wanted to save from the attic that got destroyed in the rain even though it was under a tarp because nobody ever thought it would rain that much!
-a trillion other tiny things that I can't remember right now but will as soon as I go to the house.

But who cares how long the list is . . . it's sunny and warm!!!!