Loss

This last weekend our family experienced a tragic loss and as with any experience like this it makes you question the choices you have made. Meagan was a beautiful young girl who was a truly gifted artist. When she was little it would look like she was just colouring like any other 9 or 10 year old and you would look over her shoulder and find an intricate scene on the paper in front of her. As she got older she became our go to babysitter and seemed to tolerate Jamie and me. She always had a soft spot for Patrick. The older Meagan got the more expressive she became. People always say be yourself it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, well Meagan was one of those rare people who was always herself. She used her appearance as another outlet for her creativity. You would never know what colour her hair would be or how exactly she came to that combination of accessories but hey that was Meagan’s thing.

It seems that as the years went on we would see her less and less. We were starting our careers, having babies and busy. She was a teenager, what teenager wants to hang out with her older brother and his wife? When we did see her she always seemed to be looking for a way to get back downstairs where she could just hang out with Patrick and get away from the rest of us. It was all normal teenage stuff and you just figure at some point spending the weekend at the Ocean with the whole crew will stop being torture and eventually be enjoyable again. I figure this happens sometime between 20 and 25. So we made no effort. Sure we would ask her questions and try to have a conversation when we saw her but really we were so wrapped up in our own lives that we didn’t do any more than that. That will be a regret I will have forever. You assume you will always have time. You assume when she grows out of it, when we aren’t so busy. Someday you will be able to hang out have a beer, laugh, and just be siblings. We have no more time.

I plan on becoming a nightmare to every teenager in my life going forward. I don’t care how much they don’t want to, I plan on having conversations. Actually stopping to listen and ask the follow up questions, try to understand what they are doing, and giving undivided attention.

Independent Woman?

First of all this post has nothing to do with the 4^th of July or American independence, it is purely coincidence that I happen to be posting today. Maybe I should dress it up and say the theme of independence has led me to reflect….

It has been about a year since I stopped working. I can’t remember the exact date but it was just after my birthday that I went on bed rest, so sometime in the next 2 weeks I will have officially been a stay at home mom for a year.  The last year has been exciting, overwhelming, scary, fun and rewarding. We’ve had our baby dragon princess Ella; she is the cutest thing you’ve ever seen and has the perfect roar that makes everyone laugh so she is commonly referred to as baby dragon. We moved to England and have had the ups and downs of assimilating into a new country, and we have had adventures both in the UK and abroad as we learn how to travel with kids and experience new places. Staying home has been somewhat like I expected, it has been a luxury to never feel like I’m missing their milestones or not getting enough time with them. It has also been harder than I anticipated. The 3 kids each require massive amounts of patience but each in a different way, I happen to not be a very patient person so I’ve had to work on making sure I keep some perspective when I’m at my whit’s end. I envisioned lots of fun playtime and snuggles, I get these but I also get lots of cleaning, straightening and dirty diapers. There have been times where just the mention of going back to work sends me into a panic feeling like I never want to go back and I just want to be there every minute as they are little and then as they’re older I want to help with homework and volunteer in the classroom. Other days I have updated my resume and LinkedIn profiles and applied to online job postings.

When we first started talking about me quitting my job I could tell my parents had mixed emotions. They seemed happy that I even had the option, they were supportive and understood my desire to stay home but they were also concerned. Their main concern seemed to be me becoming completely dependent on Jamie. What if something happened to Jamie, his job, our marriage? I understood their worry and thought of it more in terms of Jamie becoming the ‘boss’ of the house and I didn’t think that would happen. Now a year later I find myself thinking of independence in a different way. It really came out last night when I declared, “When we get back to the States I am definitely getting a job! I can’t stand having to schedule everything through you!”

Jamie and I complement each other well. There are things that we each naturally take the lead on. I have always been the one to manage our money and pay the bills, that hasn’t changed. So while the pay check may come in his name I’m the one managing our spending. If either of us wants to make a large purchase we would discuss it together there’s no boss or final say on either side. Just like I am not the decision maker on how we raise the kids just because I’m home with them. We talk about what’s going on and how we want to handle it (in reality we vent to each other and try to find coping mechanisms). Jamie loves to plan things so I actually go into our vacation with little to no knowledge of the details and that’s just fine with me. I listen to countless options as he researches each day and what we might want to do but I actually hate vacation planning so try to stay as far away as possible. I feel the need to research our benefits and try to figure out which options are the best for our family. I get really anxious that if we don’t make the right selections we could find ourselves in a bad situation. I could go on and on; I clean the inside he’s focused on the yard. But the point is overall I don’t feel any shift in our dynamic, he hasn’t become the boss, the decision maker or any other stereotypical dominant man/subservient woman type relationship.

But I have lost independence in a different way and it is a challenge. The current example is the company car benefit Jamie has here in the UK. It is really common outside of the US to have a company car available. We didn’t fully understand this benefit when we first moved; I wish we had, so we didn’t take full advantage of it. Essentially based on your level you have an amount of money each month. You can chose to just take the money or you have a whole selection of cars you can chose from. The company will lease one on your behalf and take care of insurance, road tax and maintenance. You select a car and depending on the price you either just get a car or get car and some money back. So for example if you have £100 per month and the car you want is £50 per month you will get an additional £50 in your pay check each month. Or you can just take the £100. Well we’ve come to learn that insurance is expensive here and since we don’t know how long we’ll stay we don’t want to finance a car. We first chose to buy a used inexpensive car and we haven’t been crazy about it plus we want to do more road trips in the coming year. Now what we want to do is take the company car instead. At the same time we can only use our US licenses for 1 year and then we need to have a UK license so we are having to go through the process of getting our provisional licenses (permits) and then the testing for our UK license.

Here is the challenge. Being the spouse I don’t have access to any of our benefit information, I have to do everything through Jamie. I’m used to being able to look up my own benefits, research, make a decision and take action. Now I have to send questions wait for him to get a response, often times just a phone call, he relays the info back and then I ask my follow up questions, he contacts them again and we continue on this path. It is so slow because everything has to flow through Jamie, not to mention the fact that he is trying to do his job and I’m busy with the kids so what should be easy information to get ends up being a multiple day back and forth. Now with the company car it’s not that big of deal, obviously the chance to drive a new car is exciting and I’d love to hurry the process along but this is really important for things like our dental insurance and trying to research orthodontic coverage levels for Patrick.

Since I have the kids with me all the time there are things that I just can’t do unless he works from home to stay with them for an hour or two. So scheduling my written test to get my license required sitting down and figuring out when it would work within his meeting schedule. It has been challenging to have to plan all of my appointments around Jamie’s schedule. When I worked I could schedule things when they worked for me now I have someone else’s schedule to take into account. I am Mom 100% of the time. When you stay home everything about you is in relation to the kids. If you need to get something done it’s either planning the best way to do it with the kids or planning for some sort of childcare. Even the friends I have made, who are great, our common interest is the kids so you end up talking about kids. I miss being Nicole sometimes.

This is my mission for the next phase of staying at home. How do you prioritize and carve time out to be an adult and an independent person outside of your kids? I love them, I’m glad we chose to have me stay home and the truth is I’ll be sad when this phase is over. But I need to figure out how to also be Nicole more often. Jamie has been great and super supportive of my interests. I’ve been taking one class a quarter through Oxford’s Continuing Education program and that night has become sacred, regardless of meetings or anything else I am out the door by 6:45. I always feel a bit saner after spending 2 hours learning and thinking but 2 hours is not enough.

I’ve finally reached out through a Mom’s network and found a few nannies, or child minders as they call them, that take on extra work so hopefully every now and then we can actually have a night out. I’m thinking I might even be able to use them a few hours here and there if I need to make an appointment or run errands that are just too tedious with kids. It will be a series of baby steps I’m sure until I figure out the right balance. Ella is also getting bigger and I’ve started to wean her (she is resistant) so that gives me some more flexibility as well.

I’ll also keep working on Grandma and Papa, I’m sure they would love these 65° July days, maybe they should just relocate and then I won’t have to work or have the kids full time. That actually sounds like the perfect solution.

Delicious Weekend Getaway

Before I start this post I should warn you, this contains a graphic description of a potty training incident. Consider yourself warned…

There are so many great places within driving distance to visit and explore that we just haven’t taken advantage of yet. So this weekend we decided to head to Bruges, Belgium for the night. Each time we go on a new outing whether it’s a day trip or vacation we learn something new. So this time we decided to try the ferry from Dover to Dunkerque then drive up to Bruges. As we planned our night away we really tried to minimize cost, the more affordable these small trips are the more we can do. So to be prepared we packed a cooler with snacks, drinks, sandwich ingredients and a few treats. With the three kids it seems that someone is always hungry for something and the better prepared we are the better everyone’s moods are. I even baked muffins Friday night so we could have breakfast on the road.

We got up early Saturday morning, threw the kids in the car and were on the road by 6:30. Now Kellen is getting so big, he is officially potty trained now, he does need to be prompted and reminded but he only wears a pull up while sleeping. Knowing that we had a 2 hour car ride ahead of us and that he would probably fall asleep we were fully intending on him wearing his pull up for the car ride. Well as usual Kellen had a different plan. He was determined to wear his big boy underwear so with much nervousness I put a pad under the cover of his car seat and loaded him in. We were off, the drive to the ferry terminal in Dover is about 2 hours and we made it right on time. The drive was happily uneventful, the kids fell asleep, we didn’t hit any major backups and sun was coming out, can’t ask for much more. This was our first time in Dover, as you head into the town you can see the white cliffs of Dover so that was fun to see next to the beautiful water. These ferries are about double the size of the ferries we are used to in the North West, the route itself is about 2 hours long and they load them full of people cars and a lot of semi-trucks. Our first learning was to find out you can’t stay with your car or even return to get things out of the trunk during the trip. In a panic to get upstairs we grabbed a few random items and forgot most of our snacks or any entertainment for the kids to make it through a 2 hour trip. Being on a boat did provide its own entertainment, we walked out of the deck where Kellen got blown around for a bit before heading back inside. There was also a kid’s soft play area that was small but perfect for the little ones to run a little bit wild.

Here is where the graphic part comes into play. On Thursday Kellen started running a fever he didn’t have any other symptoms other than being really grumpy. By Friday he seemed better but poor little guy had an upset tummy which resulted in frequent bathroom visits, being newly potty trained we had a few accidents but that is to be expected. By Friday night he seemed to be doing well, nothing to make us cancel our little weekend getaway. So as we boarded the boat he went to the potty then we had some snacks and just in case went to the potty again, all seemed normal no concerns. We then headed to the soft play area. I had Ella playing on my lap while Kellen was in climbing around the play course. Suddenly Kellen pops out and says “I, I, I…” he didn’t seem to know what to say and was kind of upset and pointing down. I look down and see that the poor guy had an accident, not only an accident but diarreah. I grabbed his hand and we ran to where Jamie and Patrick were sitting, I think I threw Ella at him and grabbed my bag. We then hurried to the changing/handicap bathroom, it was closed, so we ended up in a stall in the women’s bathroom. Poor Kellen was upset and kept saying “look there!” By the time we got into the stall his legs were each coated, he was a mess; even his crocs had puddles in them. So here we are a total mess, in a tiny bathroom stall, with only a packet of wipes. I think as a Mom you must just go into auto mode. I proceeded to methodically wipe him down inch by inch. We went through an almost full packet of wipes and his crocs got washed in the sink. Needless to say he wore a pull up for the rest of the weekend. It was one of those moments that are so ridiculous you will always remember them. I’m just thankful that I always carry a full set of backup clothes. By the time his crocs were dry Kellen was over the incident but I still have the occasional flashback.

Finally we arrived in Dunkerque and we were off, it was only about another 45 minutes to Bruges. For some reason unknown to me Jamie chose to enter the coordinates of our rental instead of address. Our 45 minute zip into Bruges turned into a 90 minute tour of Belgium, at one point we drove into a town that was so charming we wanted to stay and explore but we with the kids we just needed to get where we were going. After we turned around we noticed a sign now entering Belgium, hmm… we pulled out the map and it turns out we were so off track we actually drove into the Netherlands. But eventually we found the right place, unloaded, got settled and headed into Bruges. We’re lucky to have 3 good car sleepers so for Jamie and me it was actually a really nice tour of the area. Belgium feels nice, the houses are set back from the street, everything was orderly, and the people are cruising around on bikes everywhere. Jamie even commented, “This is weird, everyone looks so happy.” I have always heard about the number of bikes in Amsterdam and other European countries but this was the first time I’ve really seen how much easier a bike can be. The bike lanes are not right on the street but instead next to the sidewalk, so as a rider you aren’t in fear of getting run over but instead have your own space, traffic signals and you have the right away. Everyone seemed to be on bike; young or old, male or female. The entire area was flat so a quick pedal to the store or into town looked not only practical but fun. There are canals through the city, the buildings are ‘Flemish gothic’ (according to our tour guide Jamie) and the people were so friendly. On Saturday night after dinner outside next to a canal we were looking for the best bus route home, Jamie asked a driver and he said jump in I’ll take you, he literally drove us right up to our rental not even just a bus stop.

On Saturday afternoon we walked through the city making a point to sample the chocolates, fries and waffles as we went. Kellen had fun dashing from chocolate shop window to chocolate shop window to check out all of the crazy shapes and displays. The chocolate was beautiful. One window would have a full scene with chocolate boys surrounded by treats, the next would be rows of truffles, and of course there were plenty of racy chocolate figures available as well we tended to pass by those without comment given our crew. I think we ate more chocolate in 24 hours then we normally do in a month. It seemed you were always walking by a shop no matter where in the city we were and once Kellen got a taste that was all he wanted to eat all weekend. There were also waffle stands that were my favourite. I’ve always been a waffle lover, I’ll take waffles over pancakes any day, but these were different. They were thicker and almost doughy, and then covered in a chocolate sauce and whip cream that was the perfect combination. I bought one to sample and once I had the first bit I didn’t want to share with the kids (for the record I did share). Just in case the last two were too much sweetness there were hot salty fries waiting for you. I think Ella may have liked the fries the best; they are the easiest for her to hold on to. That night we had dinner outside next to a canal and the entrees came with fries as the starch. It was a very nice restaurant and I got a basic roast chicken, salad and fries. My chicken was perfect the salad was nice and fresh after my afternoon of chocolate and waffles but then instead of each of us getting fries on our plate they brought out a big bowl full of fries for the table. The traditional way to eat them is covered in mayo but they served the mayo on the side. I think every fry got eaten and everyone left dinner happy and full.

On Sunday we went back into town. It turns out there was an annual antique fair going on that day, the largest in Belgium we were told. So a large area in the city was lined with tables and people hunting for antiques. We explored courtyards and of course snacked as we went. We took a tour of the city by canal; I think this was the highlight of the weekend for Jamie and me. There were these really cool old homes that backed up onto the canals. The old bridges and the architectural detail you would only see from the canal side of the buildings. After some more exploring we started our journey back home.

Aside from ‘The Incident’ on the boat it was a lovely weekend away. We got to see a new city, the kids had a lot of fun, it was affordable and we ate too much. We learned that while the ferry is much cheaper than the tunnel it does take significantly longer once we factor in loading and unloading time. If you do take the ferry be prepared, you will not have access to your car. There is a long list of destinations that really are within driving distance that we have hardly started to explore.