Summertime

It’s amazing how quickly time passes.  One day flows into the next and then here we are, it’s August. Well, it'll be August in an hour and a half!

I have been enjoying my mommyhood very much.  Every day is slightly different than the last.  It’s a good thing.  We’ve been making an effort to do something interesting (or at least something, period) every day.  I walk, a trip to the park.  My in-laws have been visiting for the last week, so we’ve headed out to the lake every day.  Swimming and barbeque - summer all wrapped up into a nice little package.  When they come, they call themselves the “Nana and Dieda Entertainment Show.”

They left for home this morning.  It’s bittersweet.  We don’t get to see enough of them, and at the same time, at the end of a visit, it feels like we got to see too much of them.  I think that if we could see them more frequently, but for shorter periods, we’d all enjoy one another better.  I wish I could work out a better way to do that, but we all live about 7 hours apart, so frequent visiting is a difficult proposition.  I think we will get to see them a bit more often in the future, as Dieda is retiring the middle of next month.

It always takes Niko a little while to warm up to them when they get here, or we get to them, and I always feel a little bit bad about it, but I can’t see that there’s anything we can really do about it (Skype isn’t really an effective option for a 15 month old, although I can see including it as she gets older.)  Otherwise, this visit was great for her.  she got to spend her days with family, and she got to go swimming at the lake pretty much every day.  That’s heaven for our little water baby.  I could wish that she was a little more cautious around water, but I just keep letting her go under for a bit hoping she realizes that she can’t breathe under there.  (for those without a sense of humor - yes I’m watching, prepared and willing to lift her back up, and no, I won’t let her drown.)

Juggling the demands of extended family is something I’m still trying to work out.  I come from a large, connected family.  Not that my immediate family is huge, but I’m pretty close with most of my aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. as well.  And it’s a family that really believes in being there for eachother.  Jakobe’s family is smaller, farther away, and he has a lot less contact with his extended family.  Most of mine lives within 50 miles of us.

Sometimes we end up doing quite a bit with my family:

• I have a sister who is struggling with an addiction, and has a daughter younger than Niko.
• My parents got divorced two weeks before Jakobe and I married, and my family is still trying to work out how to make that family dynamic work.
• My dad struggles mightily with depression, and is only barely able to take care of himself, as much as we want to wish otherwise.

Recently, my family has been needy.  I know it, and I can wish otherwise.  I've more than once had to drop my plans, and deal with a family crisis (mostly my sister) in the past 3 months.  But - I feel like it’s what family does.  If we needed them, they would be there for us just as fast. Jakobe sometimes feels like I’m being taken advantage of.  That and sometimes I think he wishes I had less(or was not as close to) my family.

I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with his most recent request.  My parents don’t have holidays together anymore, you know, being divorced and all, and Jakobe doesn’t want to do the multiple holiday thing anymore.  I would understand it better if we had been trying to do both holidays on the same day, 50 miles apart, but my mom has been really careful to try and pick a different day to have everyone over to celebrate the holiday with her.  I found it incredibly frustrating that he requested it, as it’s usually only one holiday a year, either Thanksgiving or Christmas (the other one is spent with his family).  My current feeling is “Fine then, you can stay home, and we’ll go.”  Anyone have any insight on how to wiggle my way into a more satisfactory solution? this compromise of him staying home and me doing things without him seems to be expanding by the day.

Niko Update:

In the past couple of months we've been through walking, and we’re really starting to see the beginning of talking.  On Saturday, Niko said her first phrase: “Hi, Daddy!”  I missed it, but I’m so glad that Jakobe didn't.  Mostly what we get from here is the words Juice (synonymous with anything in a sippy cup that isn't milk),  Doggy, and Kitty (which are almost exactly the same (doddi) and meows  - much closer to squeaks, but the squeaks sound a lot closer to what our cat actually sounds like than the word meow does!  She also gave me a kiss completely on her own initiative this week.  Which, since she’s recently been having a reluctance to give mama any kisses at all, seemed like something huge.

Infertility Update:

I’m currently on the pill in preparation for doing another Round of IVF in August.  It will be interesting to see how different it all is financially since Insurance is covering it this time.  I talked to the pharmacy this morning, and then had them run the scrips past my secondary insurance (having been denied by the first because my work doesn't provide infertility coverage) and they were supposed to call me back today, but haven't yet. We're back on the roller coaster... and I wonder what the ride will be like this time.