a big (little) family: story of us

Read part six here.

Read part seven here.

Read part eight here.

The neighbors. Oh, the neighbors. The ones who shared our building were the hardest part. He was on house arrest, she was angry at everyone, and their children had more language than I knew how to deal with – particularly when my daughters started repeating things. They vacuumed at 2 am, pounded on the wall when our alarm went off at 8 am, and left garbage everywhere in the yard. Showing them Christ was a stretch, when I really wanted to tell them something else entirely. I didn’t, but I failed to show them Christ all too often as well.

The man on the other side of us was Bob, a new widower who loved my kids and gave us vegetables from his garden. I wonder about him still.

Then there was the man down the block who watched us. Constantly. I still don’t know what to think about that. Locks are good.

Sterling was six months old when nursing hit a bump. It wasn’t going well. At all. Christmas in New Jersey had me there and Blaine there and gone again, back to work. My sister in law bought me a pregnancy test. I thought she was nuts. A few minutes later, I was crying, calling my husband, and telling him how horrible and awful our future was looking - words I would never use now to describe Ruby. Ruby, of course, charts her own course. My pregnancy was run of the mill normal. I was sick, then I was better, then I was huge, then I was huger. When I hit 39 weeks, I waited to have a baby. My brother in law came to watch the girls. Liberty and Eden were born at 39 weeks 5 days, Sterling at 39 weeks and 4 days, and surely Ruby would follow my pattern.

Then I hit my due date. That first Sunday after she was due, the neighbor Bob asked me if it was twins, and if I was due soon. The sight of me was painful, to be sure. He suggested I shouldn’t be headed to church.

The day before Ruby was born, at 40 weeks and 6 days, I had an appointment with my midwife. I suggested that Ruby might be breech – she just felt different. She thought not, but ordered an ultrasound.

Ruby was breech. Ruby was estimated to be 8 lbs. 15 oz. They scheduled a c-section.

The next day, Ruby was born behind first in an operating room while I lay strapped to a table. It was not my birth of choice. Afterward, as I healed from major abdominal surgery (during which they did not tuck in my baby belly, unfortunately) for many months, I felt like I was mourning the birth I’d imagined.

5.18.2013

The story of us. Part eight.

Read part six here.

Read part seven here.

After managing the apartment complex for many months, painting more walls than I care to count an awful shade of off white while my daughters ~~played in the paint~~ colored and sang and danced around empty apartments asking if I was almost done, we’d had just about enough. Dealing with tenants, non payment, eviction, judges, massive ice storms, and one interesting and hard landlord who mocked our beliefs had just about done us in.

My final straw was, now pregnant with Sterling, telling the landlord and hearing his reaction. We were insane, I tell you. Two kids replace you in the universe, three is far too many and socially irresponsible. Oh, the horror. If he could only see us now. Then Blaine got a promotion. A really nice promotion that put him on full time and making enough for us to pay rent and quit dealing with all that was at the apartment complex.

We live at the apartments until Sterling was three weeks old, then moved to a two-family rental. That move was interesting. Blaine was still working on apartments and full time at the newspaper, so it fell primarily on me. With a newborn. Blaine’s brother saved the day when he came to stay with us. He helped me pack the van, then stayed with the kids while I took it to the new house and unpacked the van. We got it done up to the big stuff that way, and then Blaine had a day off and we finished. Not the best week of my life, but we were so glad to be free of the apartments.

We had space, a small backyard to share with the other half of our building, and world’s nicest landlords. And then we met our neighbors. Weeks in, my daughters were banned from playing with them alone, and the complaints began.

Life couldn’t just be comfortable. I still had more lessons to learn, after all.

5.11.2013

The story of us. Part seven.

Read part six here.

Within the month, we’d closed on our house and had a big rented truck packed with all of our worldly belongings. We didn’t know exactly where we were headed. Blaine had great memories of Pennsylvania and the cost of living was reasonable. We looked at a map, considered as much info as we could find online, found a church, area within a few hours of Blaine’s family in New Jersey, and chose Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania as our final destination. Blaine’s pickup went on the dolly behind the rented truck and I followed behind in our car with the girls. I watched the topper to Blaine’s truck flop with every bounce, my ficus tree (this one!) in the back window, all the way to Pennsylvania. Ah, the memories.

We pulled into Wilkes Barre a few days later, found a motel room, and started calling on ads in the newspaper to find an apartment. We met one kind soul, saw a few apartments she had ready, were told that despite never not having a year contract signed, she was willing to do it for us, and we moved in. We had the smallest space we’ve lived in yet: 2 bedrooms, a super-small kitchen, a tiny bathroom, and a living room. It was an upstairs apartment (one of three in a large 3-family home) up 21 stairs straight off the street. The couch wouldn’t fit upstairs, so it went into the shared basement and we sat on kitchen chairs and the one rocking chair we owned, taking turns each night who got the comfy chair. It was definitely an interesting time in our marriage.

We found out days after we moved in that we were now living on the most dangerous street in the city. We found out this news days before looking outside one day to find 50 cops swarming the area.

Turns out, a man who was wanted for theft of a pizzeria who then stole a cop car to get away had relatives living nearby. The cops searched the back of Blaine’s pickup, guns drawn. Nothing. We did have a black Coleman sleeping back disappear out of the basement that week. I still wonder.

Blaine quickly found a job working at a donut store pouring coffee and selling donuts. The job of his dreams, to be sure.

He wanted to work for a newspaper as a photographer. He flooded the local area with resumes and poured coffee at ridiculous AM hours to help stretch our savings.

A few months after we moved to Pennsylvania, Blaine was hired on part time at the Hazleton Standard Speaker, half an hour south of Wilkes Barre. He worked night shift there, mornings at the donut store, and we started talking of moving south to Hazleton. Gas was killing us.

God was leading us during this time, to be sure. Craziness was ironed out, time after time. We spent 5 months in Wilkes Barre before moving to Hazleton. We found a job managing an apartment complex in Hazleton that provided a free apartment and occasional extra income and made up for Blaine “only” working 36 hours a week. We found a church to settle into there, made a few friends, and “enjoyed” working with some interesting tenants at the 32-apartment complex we were now managing. Oh, the stories. Insanity. Some people are crazy, I tell you.

5.04.2013

The story of us. Part 6.

The regular pediatrician was gone for Thanksgiving vacation, and I got the doctor on call. He ordered a test to check for acid reflux, prescribed Zantac, and within three days we had a very different baby. She quit crying all the time, and by six months, she was sleeping through the night. Motherhood wasn’t looking so bleak.

When Liberty was eight months, I quit nursing. Upon realizing her weight gain wasn’t what it should be, I was threatened with a call to child services if I didn’t stop nursing and start formula. At 19 and scared, I bought formula on my way home. Liberty still was small, and didn’t gain weight any better on formula. I tried to tell her I had a very thin husband, but it didn’t matter. I switched pediatricians and learned a hard lesson. Fight for what I believe in, and no one will stand up for my family better than my family.

April 30, 2004 we bought our first house. A few weeks later, we found out I was expecting. I was working at our church as a secretary, babysitting one little girl, and also cleaning a few businesses and homes to make ends meet. Our marriage was stronger than ever, and we were starting to learn what it meant to become one. Liberty clung to me and cried each evening when Blaine got home and I headed out to clean. In the end, I quit the cleaning business and babysitting in exchange for Blaine working extra hours at his job instead. Life settled into a new routine again.

Our Great Pyrenees liked our neighbors better than us, and she went to my parents’ to live. We got a border collie mix we named Heidi. Walks with Liberty and Heidi became routine, and I got to know the streets of the tiny town we lived in pretty well. My pregnancy went along far easier than my first, and I found contentment far easier when life was easier. Understatement, eh?

February 1, 2005, Eden Rayne was born. You can read her birth story here. Her first year had many more changes for us. Just before Labor Day, 2005, Blaine was laid off from his job. He’d been longing for the East Coast, so we put a “For Sale By Owner” sign in the yard.

Four days later, we had a signed offer. We were moving.

4.27.2013

The story of us. Part 5.

Read part one here.
Read part two here.
Read part three here.
Read part four here.

June 21, we celebrated Blaine’s birthday and having made it to the nine month mark. Now it seems funny, but at the time, I was pretty concerned with appearances and did not want questions as to the conception of my child.

June 25, labor began. I was admitted, confirmed to be in labor, and left to progress on my own. After several hours, I was moving along, and then it stopped. The next morning, when given the option to induce labor or go home, I stupidly made the decision to induce and get it over with. The doctor broke my water, began pitocin, and that night, Liberty Skye was born. You can read her birth story here.

And so, another of my plans was altered. A girl? First? Certainly we’d have a boy first. It’s the American Dream, after all. A girl first was not on my radar. I struggled with wanting the perfect life – and this was not what I’d envisioned. More money, peace in my home (and heart) and less struggling were what I thought I deserved. I wasn’t content. I had so much to learn. Apparently, I was one of those. You know, the ones that have to learn the hard way.

We settled into life with our first child. We moved from our apartment to a rented old farmhouse, where we burned wood for heat, got a Great Pyrenees dog who drove me nuts, and we worked towards buying our first home. Choosing not to heat the whole (big) house, Liberty’s bedroom sat empty and her crib hung out in the kitchen, closer to the wood stove. Flies and box elder bugs were abundant, and some unknown creature chewed on the floor boards from the dirt crawlspace. The pipes froze when it got really cold, and paint flaked off the living room walls and fluttered to the floor on a regular basis. God was working on me and this whole contentment thing.

Our marriage was rough. Blaine changed jobs, we’d been married a year by that point, and had a new, very crabby child who screamed day and night for the first five months of her life. I knew something was wrong, but the pediatrician kept saying it was normal. Finally, after many sleepless nights and at my wit’s end, I took her into the doctor’s office again, handed her to the doctor, and told him to figure out why she wouldn’t stop crying.

4.20.2013

The story of us. Part 4.

Read part one here.
Read part two here.
Read part three here.

Finally, I started to come around. I was huge, swollen, but no longer losing most of my food. My hormones stopped telling me how awful my husband was. I was starting to think maybe I hadn’t made a huge mistake in walking down that aisle. And steady as a rock, Blaine was there for me.

My due date was June 30, 9 months and 9 days after our wedding date, and it loomed in front of us. We joked that the baby had better stay put until Blaine’s birthday, June 21. It was our nine month mark.
June 6, labor began. I drove myself to the hospital and Blaine met me there.

This was not supposed to happen yet.

We were checked in on the maternity floor of the small Spearfish hospital. They kept me for observation and informed me that if I was in labor, it would be stopped. If they couldn’t stop it, I’d be sent to Rapid City, the larger town in the area. Spearfish doesn’t have a NICU and won’t deliver a baby less than 37 weeks. I was 36 weeks and 4 days. If I had been 3 days further along, they would have left me to labor.

But I wasn’t. A few hours later, I had dilated 1 cm, and a shot of awful was injected into me. I shook and froze and felt generally awful for an hour or so, but contractions stopped. I was sent home.

4.13.2013

The story of us. Part 3.

Read part one here.
Read part two here.

Finally, my shell-shocked brand-new husband came around. And then… he jumped into action. We had to leave New Jersey. We had to move to a cheaper area. He called his brother in law from South Dakota and asked for a job with his construction company.

Early December, we packed everything we owned into my little Ford Escort and my father-in-law’s Ford full size van (not all so different from my current family van) and headed west. We didn't own much, but we had what we needed. We arrive in Belle Fourche, South Dakota a few days later and moved into an apartment picked out by Blaine’s sister. Rent was 1/3 of what we’d paid for the house in New Jersey.

We settled into life there. South Dakota is my home, and despite being 6 hours away from my parents, it was still home. We found a church, a doctor, and had almost instant friends. I couldn't find a job in my pregnant state, but I started working a bit for my brother-in-law in his construction office.

I proceeded to have my worst pregnancy ever. I vomited 5-10 times a day for 7 months. My feet swelled. My hands swelled. By 30 weeks, I couldn't wear my wedding band. I was miserable. Our new marriage was off to a rocky start. I was less than agreeable and I didn't like my husband very much.

4.06.2013

The story of us. Part 2.