Some Helpful Suggestions and One Asshole

Thanks for listening to my venting in my last post. I actually feel much better now. My MIL picked up J from school today, which enabled Seth to go to BJs and the grocery for me. Another friend stopped at the kosher butcher and picked up chicken and ground beef for me. My mother called randomly and told me she'd be willing to take J to school Thursday morning to help me out while Seth was out of town. I got a LOT of baby food made tonight (and you know what? It was SO YUMMY). Slowly, the pieces fell into place.

A lot of you had some good suggestions. For example:

Use grocery delivery services (e.g. Peapod)
This is a good suggestion, and one that I've used in the past. It's not a fool-proof suggestion, though. The limiting factor for me is that I keep kosher and I can't get all of my kosher products from delivery services. I can't get any kosher cheese, meat, or specialty items. I can get produce, paper goods (when available), and some commercially available products (though the online selection of kosher products is never as good as the in-store selection). That's not to say it's not a useful suggestion, it just has to go hand in hand with others as well. I also happen to suck at getting myself organized enough to get orders submitted in time for when I need them... but that's another story and something for me to work on.

Your babies really don't need much, if any, solid food right now. Give them some bits and pieces to nibble on if you get the chance while J is eating (bits of ripe pear, banana, avocado, steamed broccoli if you have the time to make it, steamed carrot, rice cakes spread with philly, toast etc.). They get enough nutrition from milk, and they will be learning to feed themselves. See www.babyledweaning.co.uk for more info
I'm actually a big believer in baby-led weaning. Er, I just haven't managed to implement it in my own life. Heh. The babies and J don't eat at the same time, so that doesn't work SO well, but it's all good. The babies DO eat little bits of our food when they're at the table when we're eating and they enjoy it, but they also REALLY love their purees, especially the chicken and broccoli (which I leave a little chunky for them). Fortunately, I did get a lot of food made tonight and it's in the freezer so it will last for a while.

Follow up to previous suggestion...
If you really want to feed them purees, buy jars. It's ridiculous that you are adding making purees onto your life. If the UK has places that will deliver organic baby meals, I would bet my life the US does too.
Again, the limiting factor here is the keeping kosher bit. Kosher jarred baby food is pretty limited to just a few kinds. As for delivered organic baby meals... not kosher ones. Still, I have to say, some of the most relaxing time I have these days is the time I spend making food for the babies. It really DOESN'T take that much time, and it gives me time that I can spend chatting with friends while I'm cooking the food. Pureeing takes seconds once the food is cooked. I feel such a sense of accomplishment once all is said and done that it's something I'm loathe to give up.

For heavens sake don't tidy up for your cleaner. She can tidy herself, or just clean around the mess.
Most weeks, I'm more satisfied if I can get rid of some of the clutter before she arrives, but this week, I WHOLEHEARTEDLY AGREE WITH YOU. You are 100% correct.

can't the nanny make up the bottles herself?
Oh, she could. But it's a holdover from when Ellie's bottles were all complicated with the fortified calories. I've only JUST weaned Ellie from the fortified bottles, so I'm used to being a bit of a control freak about that. It was too complicated before. But you're right. It's probably time to just remember that I can give up some control in the world.

Does the four-year-old often fight with you about eating, or might this be a request for attention? Perhaps some extended, special one-on-one, just for fun time with him in future weeks would help.
It's both normal and a cry for attention. J has a whole set of his own issues. We got him when he was a year old. He's got a whole host of issues that were present probably long before we got him, poor kid. I have a whole post a-brewin' about what's been going on with him. We had a classroom consult done for him recently by an OT/Behavioral Specialist and are now working with a developmental pediatrician to decide how best to address his issues. He definitely DOES need some special one-on-one time, which we do try to fit in for him... he gets lots of individual attention from his grandmothers who each take him out (JUST him), and a fair bit from Seth, but I need to work on taking him out by himself also, because he doesn't get a lot of one-on-one time with me. That being said, the tantrums, fits of rage, sensory issues, attention problems... those were all present before the triplets were conceived, before they were delivered, before they came home, and before they started interfering with his world. They certainly don't make things better, though, do they?

******

Those were some of the helpful suggestions. Now I'm going to start cursing, so if you don't want to hear (read?) cursing, um, stop reading? Because after all these lovely helpful suggestions, there was, of course, one obligatory asshole. An anonymous one. And before you go telling me to turn off anonymous comments, I will NOT do it. As I've said before, I've got several regular anonymous commenters (whom I recognize from content and writing style) that I love and I'd hate to lose them. The vast majority of my anonymous commenters are awesome. They are a good part of why I won't go password protected, also.

So, before I get to the asshole, I'd first like to thank the subsequent anonymous commenter, who totally rocked my world when she (I'm assuming she, but I suppose it could be he) wrote, "Hey Anonymous at 8:46, stop giving us Anonymouses a bad name!"

And on to the asshole, oh Anonymous at 8:46. I'll take your comments one at a time so that I can address them each, individually, with complete fairness, and with all the respect they deserve, and then some.

Why don't you sleep instead of taking all this time to type this all out?
My point of the post wasn't so much that I was sleep deprived, but rather that I was (am) facing a rather hellish week. Yes, I'm sleep deprived, but that's not really my issue. Furthermore, I posted this post at 9:15 in the morning. I was at work. I wrote it while I was on a break pumping, if you must know, so I was multitasking. I can't exactly sleep in the lactation room at work, but I CAN type. I didn't have any work that I could be doing in there, so getting a little personal stress out so that I could work effectively the rest of the day seemed like a good idea at the time. Come to think of it, it still seems like a good idea. It's certainly not like I do it every day. I don't even post every day. Also, I type about 85 words per minute, so it's not like it's all that difficult to type something out. And, for the record, if you're wondering why I'm not sleeping now, instead of typing this out now, I'm pumping. Again. That's what I DO.

Why are you paying for a Nanny and a housekeeper if you say you can't afford groceries?
I pay for a nanny because I go to work every day. Full time. A nanny is cheaper than day care for three infants. I've done the math. I make more money than my nanny makes. I've got several posts in my archives about the financial sense of paying for a nanny. I will not repeat them here. If you don't like it, screw you. I don't have a housekeeper. I have a cleaning lady. There is a fundamental difference between the two, actually. A housekeeper implies someone who is here much more full-time. My cleaning lady is here once per week for less than 2 hours. Why am I paying her? Because I have four children and a full time job. I don't pay her very much, but there are only so many hours in the day. I didn't explicitly say I couldn't afford groceries. I said I didn't know how I was going to pay for them. I'm splitting hairs now, but bear with me a minute. The point is I'm stressed about money. But so what? FIND ME SOMEONE WHO ISN'T STRESSED ABOUT MONEY SOMETIMES. Seriously. Screw you for judging me based on one off-the-cuff comment. You have no idea what my financial situation is. I'm not sitting around my house eating bon bons and watching television whilst I have my household help take care of my children and clean up my bon bon wrappers as I drop them on the floor. No one is peeling my grapes for me. I have someone come in to clean the floors and the bathrooms in my spacious mansion modest house, because there just isn't enough time left to do it all. I do believe I said quite clearly I'm NOT supermom.

Don't you think J is acting out because of the triplets?
No, I don't think that's it at all. I think if you knew anything about J, you wouldn't ask any such thing. I think ANY child would act out with the addition of a sibling and certainly with the addition of three siblings and to a certain degree, J did that in the beginning. But that's not what's going on in this case, in terms of what I was trying to illustrate in my previous post. As I said above, J comes with his own set of issues, and they are issues that were present long before I was pregnant at all, let alone pregnant with triplets. Long before the triplets came and turned his life upside down. J is at his calmest around the babies. I don't want to give anyone the wrong impression about him either... he is one of the most loving, affectionate, sweet, giving children you will ever meet. But he also needs so much help. And we're GETTING him that help. We're WORKING with him. But when you have a child who perceives true physical pain just from putting on a pair of socks, a child who will SCREAM in true AGONY because he feels THAT level of pain from the sock when he's having one of "those" days (and you can't predict when one of "those" days will happen), you know that child needs help. When you have a four and a half year old who has been abandoned by his mother and is now so anxious anytime anyone leaves the house and forgets to say goodbye (even if it's just, say, a repairman or someone who wouldn't know better) that he becomes inconsolable for a ridiculous period of time.... you simply CANNOT blame that on the triplets. But you went and made a snap decision. You sat there with your armchair psychology and made assumptions based on very little knowledge of the actual specifics of our situation, didn't you? You just don't have a clue what this poor child deals with every day, but you just MUST know what you're talking about, musn't you, because you have the luxury of not living with whatever he has to live with. Well, WE are the ones who live with him and help him and love him and hold him and hug him and cry with him and laugh with him and giggle with him and tickle him and find the ways out of the scary places he finds himself in. WE are the ones who have worked through so many problems already. WE are the ones working with doctors and OTs and therapists for him. NOT YOU. So bugger off and stop acting like you have a cluestick, you dimkwit.

I think in a previous post, you said you wanted more children. Maybe you should re-think this because from what you have stated I don't think it would be wise financially or emotionally.
And this, you little shit, THIS is where you started me on my cursing, ranting, raving madness tonight. I'm sure my venting session right now is only adding fuel to your fire in terms of your belief that I'm too emotionally unstable to have more children, but you know the best part? YOUR OPINION DOESN'T MATTER!

Here's the thing: In the past 8 months, have you EVER known me to post a post in which I've been THIS overwhelmed? I don't think so. And did I not EXPLICITLY STATE that I generally am "very, very good at keeping everything together. I don't get stressed out. I don't get overwhelmed. I handle things with grace and ease, MOST of the time." ??? Was I not clear that it was simply all the shit that I have to deal with THIS week that was overwhelming me?

And what the hell? Find me ANYONE who would NOT be overwhelmed with this week. Find me ONE PARENT who has NEVER been overwhelmed a SINGLE DAY of their parenthood. Oh, you'll find parents who CLAIM never to have been overwhelmed, but they're lying. You'll find parents who will never write down in a blog that they're overwhelmed, for sure. But you'll NEVER find a parent who has never a single day in their entire parenting lives felt overwhelmed.

Today, I felt overwhelmed. And writing that last post was part of what I needed to put it into perspective. I felt a little better getting it all out there. You know why? I wrote it down, read it, realized that I'd only written down about a QUARTER of what was going on this week and thought to myself, "Okay, Karen, you are COMPLETELY justified in feeling overwhelmed. Now what are you going to do about it?" And then I got myself together and made it happen. And now the rest of the week looks a lot better and I know it won't be a problem and I'm NOT overwhelmed anymore. I'm honestly looking forward to it.

There isn't a single day that I'm not grateful for my children, all four of them. There also isn't a single day that I don't wish for another. I long for another child just as much today as I did before. The pain of infertility is still fresh in my mind. My arms are finally full of babies, in a way I never expected, nor dreamt of, but that doesn't mean I have to be done. I have so much love to give the babies that I do have and so much love to give the babies I don't have. And I'll have as many children as I am able to. Maybe that means I won't have any more. I don't know. But I sure hope that's not the case.

Before I go to bed each night, I look into each one of my babies' cribs (they all in their own crib now!), and also into J's room, and I think about what each one of them did to make me smile that day. It's always something different. Today Sam tried his darndest to crawl, and he almost did it. He also ate five graham cracker halves at the park (my nanny even got it on video on her cell phone for me) like a little piggie and wouldn't eat his dinner because of it. Ellie gave me such HUGE smiles this morning at breakfast time. She was so happy and smiley and cuddly. She smiles for everyone, but for the first time today, she showed a little bit of stranger anxiety, which makes me tear up a little - another developmental milestone that she's showing signs of reaching - a bittersweat moment for me, but one worth a smile from me. And sweet Abby with her two toofuses. She had such a great belly laugh today. And she LOVED those graham crackers today, also! I never would have thought to give them graham crackers yet (another nanny in the park - our old nanny for J, actually - gave them to them), but Seth picked some up at the grocery today. Abby was so sweet and giggly and she chewed with such excitement on her new teething ring today. She's definitely Dracula! And J? Sweet J. Tonight he wanted pasta (he has a tendency to want "second dinner" as a stall tactic at bedtime), so I re-heated some pasta that was leftover from last night. He ate the pasta and said it was yummy and he came into the kitchen and said, "Oh Eema, do you know what I'm going to give you for making me this yummy pasta? I'm going to give you this nice hug!" And he did. He gave me a great big bear hug, and it was perfect.

Some days are overwhelming. Every single day is 100% worth it. My kids... all FOUR of them... are amazing.

Comments

[Anonymous]

somebody is a little sleepy...

[Ela Beach]

I'm delurking to leave a comment for the first time. The anonymous commenter above me is an idiot. We all have moments where we need to vent, where we need more sleep, need help (even if we're not sure how or why). Personally, I think you're amazing with what you manage to do in a day and week with working fulltime and the 4 kids! Please know that most of us lurkers are incredibly supportive of what you do and I'm sorry that some anonymous people feel the need to be mean. Ela

[illahee]

oh man, asshole anonymous. very annoying. ok, virtually kicking him in the nuts (if it's a woman, she can get a kick in the ass. harumph!!)i don't blog about every minute of my day, how could i possibly?? and so, i don't assume you do the same. i also get the concept of writing it down, putting it in perspective and taking a second look. and i admire you a lot! i have three little ones and yet i still don't see how you do it! ;)

[Anonymous]

*applause*

[Mary]

Hey anonymous! Why dont you try and raise triplets AND a 4 year old!!And Karen, dont let these people get to you! they have no lifes what so ever. Your doing a great job.God Bless!

[tovarena]

I was planning on commenting on your last post and just somehow didn't get there. But I am TRULY in AWE of how incredibly TOGETHER you are! I only just have my two little twinsies (I posted once before - they're 2 days older than your trips) and also work full time but truly cannot get done with two what you manage with 4! Your last paragraph brought tears to my eyes - all the wonderful little things that these little ones do day to day that make us so happy. It's really incredible!

[Jessica]

This anonymous dude is really getting on my friggin' nerves. I just want to know what brought them here?! What the heck man... Go away... Go pick on someone your own size. jerk.

[Anonymous]

Somebody needs to go to Anger Management......

[Familyof2]

I really hate the annonymous option. Be man/woman and stand up and be counted. This isn't a national election its a blog. If you have something to say; say it. Its a free country, but stand up and at least leave your name and or email address.Further, until you walk even an inch in someone shoes who has experienced infertility, miscarriage or both go back under what ever rock it is that you climbed out from under. Now before you comment further, yes I know I need anger management, but at least I post under a name, and not an annon cloak.

[Heartbeat]

I'm glad your week is looking better. Sometimes when things get so completely overwhelming, I think it's actually a good thing. I find that when I reach that point, I am better at finding the solutions I need. Anyway, the week is half over now so that's a very good thing!

[amber]

you know, i've never understood people leaving asshole comments on blogs just for the hell of it. seriously! from all of your posts it sounds like you're doing a fabulous job with your family and you're right, everyone, parent or not, has those days where they are just truly overwhelmed with everything they have to get done. kudos to you for writing it out, taking it all in and then dealing with it.i really hope you don't let the a-hole anon commenters get to you. lots of love to you, seth and all the kiddos!

[lucky #2]

I have been absolutely amazed with how you have managed over the past year. You are such a strong woman and one bad day gets you attacked by someone.anonymous needs to get a life.

[Amy]

What a moron, I find you coping with your situation to be inspiring! I'd like to see that person handle the things that you do.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like you've got yourself a troll. What a passive-aggressive your commenter is. Almost a little funny because really, how stupid can one person get, but mostly she/he is just a f**cktard.When I read your post, I was thinking, damn - I have those days without any kids (we've been in IF hell for years now), and here you are with four. I figure if a few words on a blog help get you through a stressful day, you go girl. And all the better for us who enjoy the little glimpses you give us into your lives.I harbor no doubts that I wouldn't get through it nearly as gracefully.-J

[Deb]

Here-here Karen!! Well said - every f***ing word of it. Funny how the "anons" (granted not all of them) have the balls to say whatever when hidden. Come out from behind the shadows jackass.

[Beth amp; Steven]

My advice... completely ignore the jerk anonymouser. He/she is obviously leaving obnoxious comments now just to get a rise out of you. It's ridiculous and so immature. Not worth a moment of your precious time and energy.Yep, I did leave a question on Jessica's blog on how you two became friends. You both seem *awesome* to me. Any chance you guys live in DC and want to get together for a playdate? :)

[Kim]

so sorry that you had to receive a comment like this! I have three boys and I agree there are days when it would be easy to run outside and scream. Days when I wonder how in the world will I make it to bedtime. But those days are few and far between and I believe a normal part of being a parent. And just like my relationship with any of my other family and friends, there are ups and downs. Some days are easier that others and that is life! I think you had some great answers for them! NCLM

[Anonymous]

Congrats on your wonderful family that you are obviously head over heels in love with! As a teacher, I only wish all my students had a mother who took such care and time with her children. People can be so rude. Sorry that you had to experience that. Praying for precious rest and peace for you. Thanks for letting us enjoy a view into your sweet life.JoAnn in MI

[Anonymous]

what if it's not just ONE anonymous poster?!? then what happens??

[chicklet]

Sadly, I love this, "If you don't like it, screw you". You rock sista. Cuz seriously, screw them.

[Rachel Inbar]

Just a comment about having more kids - even if you did feel overwhelmed now, kids grow up and things calm down (there are other issues, of course, but it's never going to be the same as it is now). Personally, I think I'd just delete any annoying comments and ignore them completely. Answering gives that person too much satisfaction...

[Jackie]

Karen, you are so real and I absolutely love you for it. Brava!

[Karen]

Oh Karen, I hadn't checked your blog in a week. You were justified being overwhelmed. I have been overwhelmed less than that over the nearly 13 years of being a mom. An out of town husband used to put me over the edge. Hang in there and don't listen to the idiots. Tomorrow is usually better, LOL!

[triLcat]

Congratulations. You're doing great. I sometimes don't do that well with my one.And really, PLEASE don't beat up on yourself. Everyone has bad days. Seems like you got a little overwhelmed thinking of the week, but then you came through it great. As for J, you say you're going to an OT. Are you pleased with your OT? My brother's son had good results with something called a "sensory diet" which is a series of exercises designed to deal with sensory stimulation problems.

[Casey's trio]

Phew....sorry about the a-hole commentor. I really hate how people get so judgemental about others and feel the need to comment about it.I'm glad that the majority of commentors are supportive as well as your "real-life" friends and family.HUGS!