Uncle Jerry

I’m finding myself in a bit of a funk lately, and I’ve had a bit of writer’s block.  So today, I decided to do something I’ve thought about for ages.  In my current job as an online writing lab tutor, I get a lot of papers from students in basic composition classes.  They frequently get assignments that are biographical in nature, and I’ve often thought about how I would answer some of the questions posed to them, and how I would use the advice I give to them to write a compelling essay myself.

So today, I decided to being writing mini-essays about my life.  I’m starting with what I consider the most pivotal point in my life.  Hopefully, over the next days, weeks, or even months, there will be more.

Ouch!

The universe seems to have decided that it’s really fun to kick us when we’re already down.  Nothing all that big has even happened, but it’s just that all this little stuff keeps piling on.  Last week, I got my first ticket since I was 16.  And it was for a really, really bogus offense.  The officer claims I ran a red; if I did, it couldn’t have been with much more than my tail pipe.  And he was very nice, but instead of writing me a warning, he’s insisting I come to court and he’ll “work with” me on the points.  Of course, the problem is I’m still gonna have to pay court fees and all that jazz.  Not to mention that it will likely raise our insurance. 

But today was the real kicker.  I’ll preface the story by saying that it all turned out OK in the end, but I didn’t know that as we were going through it, and I spent most of the morning as a sobbing wreck.

Nate has been our bill payer for years, and although I’m not totally incompetent, it’s also really intimidating to try to insert yourself into someone else’s flow on something like this.  So when he had his surgery, he set up online payments for all of our bills for the next month, hoping that he’d be able to see well enough to do it again the following month and I wouldn’t have to try to fill in any gaps.  Fortunately, things worked out well and he was indeed able to keep going the next month.

However, as the weeks have passed, we have realized that there are some problems.  The big one is that Quicken (which we use for all of our record keeping) can’t be blown up and he was making some small mistakes recording things when he couldn’t see them well enough.  So we decided I’d have to take over at least this part of bill paying, but it actually hasn’t happened yet.  We decided this right before we left for NYC, and receipts just haven’t been entered since we got back.  Which isn’t a good thing, but we also knew how much we had in there and how much we were spending and that we were OK.  Which we were – except for one unexpected problem.

Nate accidentally paid our mortgage twice this month.

He swears he cancelled one payment, but somehow they both went through.  So either he THOUGHT he cancelled one but missed some important onscreen notation that it didn’t go through, or there was a hiccup in the system after the fact.  Regardless of the cause, our mortgage (which as you might imagine is our biggest bill) got paid TWICE.  When you live paycheck to paycheck, you can see how this would be a problem.

So we noticed this problem Sun night.  At that point, we were supposedly $180 in the hole.  On Monday, Nate called our mortgage company to see what could be done.  They said they couldn’t issue a refund, but they COULD transfer the excess to our HELOC, and then we could write a check out of that to deposit into checking.  So with this knowledge, I went to the bank and deposited $300, which should’ve been more than enough.  I should’ve known better.

The rate at which things show up on the online banking system is painfully slow.  This includes NSF fees.  Yesterday, we checked our account again to see if the check had cleared.  It hadn’t, but mystifyingly, our balance was now $300 in the red, even though no new major expenditures had gone through.  (Indeed, there was nothing more than $20 outstanding anyway.)  We finally found out today that it was because we were assessed 4 NSF fees for a total of $130. 

So again, Nate swung into action on the phone.  He called the bank and was told that they can’t discuss accounts on the phone because the lines are “insecure” and that we had to call an 877 number.  Oooookey dokey.  So Nate called them.  And wouldntcha know, it was an offshore center and the employee could barely speak English.  Given the chance, I’ll speak with the bank employee on an unsecure line than try to sort out complicated financial matters with someone whose English is less than stellar.

In any case, after a lot of hassle, Nate got them to waive 3 of the 4 fees.  However, these fees were all apparently assessed on Monday, and SIX more (remember, these are $35 a pop) were going to be assessed yesterday, and they refused to do anything about it. 

At this point, I was nearly in hysterics.  We just can’t afford this.  Our finances are completely out of control, and we’re barely making ends meet.  I didn’t know how we could possibly cover this. So we decided we had to go to the bank and talk to someone in person if they couldn’t do it over the phone.  We hoped that a local bank employee who could actually see us would help.

Well, when we got there, both Maggie and Gus were asleep.  (Maggie is still sick, too.)  So Nate when in by himself, hoping he could work it out, and we decided I’d join him when/if the kids woke up.  And after about 10-15 minutes, Gus did just that, which also woke Maggie up, so we headed inside.  At that point, Nate and the bank employee, Kim, had gotten to the bottom of how many fees were out there and were trying to figure out if we made a small cash deposit today if we could avert those fees.  It turned out that was a no-go because the fees were actually going to be assessed for transactions that posted YESTERDAY, so adding money today would do no good. 

Finally, I butted into the conversation and said, “Listen, we’re asking for a favor.  We’re asking you to waive the fees.  We’ve been with this bank for 3 years and never once had an NSF.  In fact, in all my banking life, I’ve never had an NSF.  We’ve had a horrible, horrible year.  He [pointing to Nate] had surgery in Januar.  He [pointing to Gus] was recently diagnosed with scoliosis and we’re going through some scary testing.  Two or more members of our family have been sick at all times since the beginning of January.  We’re asking you to please, based on good faith, cut us some slack.”  By this time, the tears were streaming down my face, and although Kim had been as helpful as she could to that point, she clearly softened.  (It helped that Maggie was looking as pathetic as possible, curled up on my lap through the whole diatribe, haha.) 

She finally said that the only person who could probably help us was the regional manager.  She dropped big hints at us to let us know that we had to ASK for his number for her to give it to us.  When we finally figured out what she was getting at, Nate asked for the guy’s number, and she willingly gave it to us.  She said she’d email him and explain what had happened and what our extenuating circumstances were, and that we should call him. 

Well, the bank is right by home and Nate needed to swing by there to grab something off the computer for work that he had forgotten.  So we went home, and he did that first while I nursed Gus.  It took about ten minutes, and he had just gotten up to grab the phone to call the regional manager when our phone rang.  Our bank’s number was on the caller ID.

It was Kim, who had spoken to the regional manager herself.  And he’d agreed to waive the fees!  So all $210 were wiped out, thank goodness.  So we’re all good.  But this morning was super scary, and I’m just starting to realize what dire financial straits we are in again.  We got this HELOC last summer, but it didn’t get us far enough out of the hole.  And we didn’t get rid of Nate’s car quick enough, so we’re still essentially living in the red right now every month, slowly building more and more debt.  And we’re just about maxed out on debt, which means we’re going to be SOL soon.

I’m really starting to freak out here.  I feel like everything that can go wrong is.  (OK, not everything.  No one has died, and we haven’t had any debilitating or expensive accidents.)  The big and the little.  And I just wonder how much more I can take.  I feel like I wanna throw my hands up in the air and say, “I quit!  I’m done!  Game O.V.E.R.”  But I can’t.  There’s no such option in real life.  (And no, I’m not suicidal or anything.  Don’t freak out on me.  I could never leave my kids.)  But the sick thing is that we can’t even declare bankruptcy anymore under the new laws.

So what DO you do when you literally don’t have enough money to pay the bills but you can’t declare bankruptcy either?  What on earth happens?  I don’t really want to find out, but I fear that day is not long off…

Faith and begorrah

I was raised a Catholic.  My dad comes from a proud Irish Catholic family, and my mom happily converted when they married.  During my childhood, our Mass attendance went in waves, but we always identified ourselves as Catholic.  I even went to a Catholic high school. 

But in the last many years, I’ve had a slowly building crisis of faith.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’m an unabashed liberal.  So as you might imagine, I find a lot of the Catholic church’s teachings and directives are the polar opposites of my own beliefs.  However, over the years, I always said, “I don’t believe there is any church out there that matches my beliefs entirely, but I do believe in Jesus and that he was the Son of God, so I’ll remain a Catholic in name and worship there when I choose to do so.” 

And then I discovered Universal Unitarianism, a religion that respects all beliefs.  I attended a few services, and I liked it a lot, but the nearest church is about half an hour from me.  And, well, I’m lazy all the time, but especially on Sunday mornings.  Plus, Nate wasn’t really on board with it; although he’s as liberal as I am, he doesn’t feel a disconnect from Catholicism quite as much as I do.  So we went about 3 times, and then stopped going.

But to be honest, in the past couple of years, I’ve found myself not really believing in Jesus, the Christian God, or really any god anymore.  I look around and see so much heartache in the world, and I just have a hard time believing that there is any loving being out there who allows it to happen.  Certainly, there are miracles in life – my children leap to mind – but I just can’t wrap my mind around all the pain.  So I’ve found myself walking down the path of agnosticism, heading rapidly toward atheism.

That said, I’m not a cynical or hostile agnostic/atheist.  I have no problems with those who do believe (as long as they are respectful believers who don’t push their beliefs on others, anyway).  In fact, at times, I’ve envied them.  When we learned about Nate’s brain tumor last year, I wanted desperately to believe in something, to find comfort and succor in the idea that Something was looking out for me.  But I just couldn’t.  Any attempt to do so felt fake and false, negating any gain I might have gotten from it.

And yet even though I don’t really believe, I appreciate the prayers of others for me and my family on a very deep level.  I received in the mail today a Mass card from my wonderful Aunt Patty, saying that she had signed Nate and Gus up to be on a daily prayer list.  And it brought me absolutely to tears.  Doesn’t that seem odd?  Paradoxical?  Nonsensical?  If I don’t believe in God, gods, fate, or any sort of higher purpose, why should it matter?  I mean, obviously I’m going to appreciate that someone is thinking of us.  But specifically, the nature of prayer (whether Christian prayer or otherwise) touches me.

So I’m rolling this over in my head and trying to figure it out.  Because I think it is a part of my faith journey, whatever it may be.  I do know this – a big part of me wants desperately to believe in something.  Like I said above, when life overwhelms me (and it seems lately that that is all it does), I want to have somewhere to turn, something bigger than myself to look to for guidance and comfort.  And yet I feel that I don’t.  But I think that maybe what it is is that I DO believe, but I’ve somehow lost my relationship with whatever that greater power is.  It’s like the parent I’ve had a falling out with and we stopped talking.  I’m at a point where I want to start talking again, but the distance between us has grown too great, and picking up the phone just feels too awkward.  So maybe when other people pray for me, it’s kind of like someone is at least letting that long lost parent know what’s up with me. 

Eh, I’m rambling.  I know I’m not making any sense.  And I guess that’s the crux of the issue.  I don’t know what I believe anymore.  I don’t know even IF I believe anything, other than we’re all floating out here for a tiny and discrete period of time that will simply end one day.  But the fact that other people do believe, and that they are willing to use their beliefs to try to help us, somehow gives me a tiny measure of comfort.

No one expects the Spanish Panic (attack)

I just watched Once Upon a Mattress today, so this post title makes total sense to me.  Humor me.

Anyway, the title is my witty segue into saying that I had my first panic attack in almost 2 years (and only my 3rd panic attack ever) tonight.  To explain why, I have to back up to Gus’s PT appointment yesterday.  His therapist was concerned that his back seemed worse and worried about the amount of pain he experiences when placed on his left side.  She suggested we see the orthopedist again soon, rather than in late May, as originally scheduled.  She said she’d go talk to him (they’re in the same building) and either call me or talk with me next week.  I didn’t think this was that big of a deal.  I just figured it meant another X-ray. 

Then today, the phone rang unexpectedly, and our pediatrician’s office was on the line.  After talking to the therapist, our orthopedist (who is also in the same building) walked down to the pediatrician’s office and said that Gus should get in for an MRI ASAP.  Apparently, our therapist is more worried than I realized, and the orthopedist doesn’t like the fact that he seems to be in pain.  I guess scoliosis is typically painless, and the presence of pain could indicate that something more nefarious is causing the scoliosis.

One of those more nefarious things?  Tumors.  Like maybe the spine tumors VHL patients get?  Um, yeah.  Now granted, this is only one of many possibilities, and VHL verrrrrry rarely manifests this young (and never has in my DH’s family), so it’s unlikely.  In fact, it could be that Gus’s fussiness during therapy, which is being interpreted as pain, is more from crankiness (he’s always nap deprived when we’re there) and there is nothing at all.  That’s probably the most likely scenario.  But just the possibility of all these other things is frightening  nonetheless.

Then to make things even better, one of the nurses from the MRI unit at Children’s Hospital, where Gus will be having the procedure done, called to get some intake information from me.  It turns out that because Gus has scoliosis, which can place pressure on the lungs, he may not be a candidate for the standard mild sedation they use on children.  He might need general anesthesia.  We won’t know for sure until tomorrow, but for some reason, this idea chills me to the bone.  Actually, I know exactly why it does: general anesthetic produces an unnatural stillness that, in my mind’s eye, looks too much like death. 

Which I did OK with at first.  I mean, really…adults, kids, and babies go under general all the time.  Yes, it’s a risk, but most of them come out just fine.  Getting in the car each day is a risk, too.  So I thought I was doing fine.  But then something got me thinking about it, and all I could do was keep picturing his motionless little body being slid into the tube.

And that did it for me.  I just lost it. 

Actually, at first I thought I was going to be OK.  I had some scary breathing, but I got it under control.  However, just as I had to post this here, I found myself needing to get into writing what had just happened, so I shared it in my journal on a message board.  In my post, I said that I was afraid if I was this freaked about an MRI that I was really going to go off the deep end if we get any bad news back.

And then I really lost it.

This time, there was no fending it off.  I was having a full-blown panic attack: hyperventilating, sobbing, heart racing.  And I knew that I HAD to talk to someone.  For some reason, I needed a human voice.  But Nate was still at work, and I knew he was crazy busy.  (He wouldn’t have been there if he wasn’t.)  So finally I gave in and called my mom, even though it was 11:30 her time (12:30 mine).  I didn’t want to because she gets up very early for work, and I knew she’d be in bed.  But she’d told me earlier today to call her at anytime, and well…she’s my mom.  So I called, and I could just barely croak out, “Mom, I’m having a panic attack.”  She was really wonderfully calm and talked me through it.  She kept entreating me to breathe deep, but I literally couldn’t do it at that moment.  Still, just hearing her voice was enough to help the attack subside after about a minute.  I was still kind of gulping and hiccuping at that point, but the worst was over.

It’s funny, though, how long the consequences of a panic attack last.  It’s been an hour and a half now, and I still don’t feel entirely back to myself.  My heartbeat is a bit fast and shallow, my head is swimming gently (with occasional moments of outright vertigo), I’m mildly nauseated, and my limbs feel tingly, heavy, and slightly numb.  But my mental panic has quieted down.  And for now, that’s good enough.

Well that’s a strange toy for a kid’s meal

Nate had a really late night at work last night, and my head was killing me from my sinus infection, so we just decided to pick up some fast food on the way home.  (He still can’t drive, so I’m picking him up from work every night.)  However, we had one other errand that had to be run: buying a new plunger.  Ms. Maggie repeatedly clogs (or clugs, as she says it) the toilet by using way too much toilet paper, and it happened again yesterday.  But we’d thrown away our plunger recently (let’s just say it’s an incident involving a severe “clug” and Drano and leave it at that, mkay?), so we needed to run by some place to pick one up.  It happens that Lowe’s is right behind an Arby’s near our home.

To save time because it was so late, we decided to drop Nate at Lowe’s to run in and grab the plunger and have me drive through Arby’s and then come back and grab him.  We had assumed it would take him longer than it would me, but we’d forgotten one crucial factor: this is the slowest Arby’s on earth.  So when he called me to let me know he was done, I still had one car in front of me in the drive thru line.  It was a decent night out, and all Nate needed to do was cross the big parking lot, so we decided to have him walk.  But here’s the rub: he didn’t get a bag with the plunger.  He had assumed I’d be picking him up.

So he walked across the dark parking lot.  Plunger in hand.  Then walked up to my car in the drive thru line (where there were now 2 cars behind me).  And got in.

The two of us laughed almost to the point of tears at what the people in the cars behind us must have thought.  And the poor girl at the drive thru!  She’d been admiring the kiddos and chatting with Maggie when we first pulled up.  Then she walked away to get our food, and Nate got in the car in the meantime.  You should’ve seen the look of surprise on her face when she noticed him.  She was in mid-sentence, and stopped short, and said, “Oh, I didn’t even see you there before.”  We explained to her that he’d just gotten in the car after walking over from Lowe’s.  She looked at us like we were a little bit nuts, but she laughed good naturedly.

It’s a good thing she didn’t see the plunger.

Mucinex, take me away!

In the ongoing illness saga that plays out daily in our household, I am now in the grip of a sinus infection.  Fortunately, I’m still finishing up the antibiotics from my bronchitis (got a bit behind on our vacation…bad me!), so I think that will keep it from progressing too badly.  But the pressure on my forehead and eyes throughout the day is sometimes almost unbearable.  I take Mucinex twice a day, which helps for about 4-6 hours, but it can only be taken once every 12 hours.  I use a hot rice pack on my forehead whenever I can muster the energy to stumble to the microwave.  It feels like sweet, sweet heaven.  And at least the fever I was spiking periodically this weekend seems to have abated.

But why, oh why, can we not get healthy?  Nate is still really sick, too.  We were SO healthy through December, but the period since January has been our worst winter ever, illness-wise.   At least for the time being, both kids seem on the mend.  But that’s not the first time I’ve said that in the last couple of months either, and it has yet to last.

My first baby kiss!

Well, from Gus anyway.  But I swear to you, he just tried to kiss me!  Perhaps I’m reading too much into it (because frankly, I think my cold is morphing into a sinus infection, and I could really use a kiss), but he did one of those wide-open-mouth-on-the-cheek things that babies do before they figure out puckering.  He’s just barely 5 months old.  I wonder if this is possible?

Anyway, I was playing with him and had him kind of standing on my belly.  I often eat his belly when we’re like this, and my hair tickles his face, and he thinks it’s hilarious.  Well this time, I just kind of laid my head on his belly because it hurts so bad.  Not knowing the difference, he thought it was our usual game and started giggling madly.  This gave me the big old grin I badly needed, and I looked up at him to smile.  And I swear to you, he zeroed in on my cheek, opened his mouth wide, and dove in!  Then a few seconds later, I was holding him over my shoulder, giving him a big hug, and he turned his head toward me, mouth wide open, and laid one on again.

I have the sweetest babies on earth. *gush*

Our trip to NYC

There are a lot of people I’ve promised to tell all about our trip, so rather than type this story over and over, I’m just going to tell it here and then link.  Is that too lazy?  Eh, I’m sick, dealing with a 4-year-old with an ear infection and a teething infant who is still wheezing from RSV-induced bronchiolitis.  If I’m being lazy, so be it.  And just a fair warning: this is going to be really long, and I’m not even going to bother proofreading it.  So if there are any grammar/spelling/punctuation errors, I cannot be held accountable, haha.

So for those who don’t know, we spent most of last week in NYC.  Nate had a very important conference to attend that was scheduled late last year, before we knew about his eye surgery.  The problem here is that he is not allowed to fly for 10 weeks post-surgery due to a) the gas bubble in his eye, and b) the pressure changes on his healing eye.  I volunteered to drive him if it meant the paper would pay our mileage and I could stay in the hotel with Nate.  They agreed, so off we went!

Not a shining parenting moment

Nate’s still recovering from his cold, so in an effort to help him sleep better, he’s been sleeping in Maggie’s room, and Maggie is sleeping with Gus and me in our bedroom.  I actually love sleeping with her except for one thing: she has a tendency to try to sleep ON me.  I’m a tosser and turner, and this just doesn’t work for me.

So last night, we went to bed at 11 (yeah, yeah…even the kids go to bed late in our house, although 11 is a super early night for me), and I was feeling very tired because I’m getting sick again.  However, I was having insomnia for some unknown reason, and as of midnight or so, I was still awake.  During this hour, Maggie kept scooting on top of me, and I kept moving her back to her side of the bed.  (It’s a king, for heaven’s sake!)  This is not uncommon on nights we bed share, which we’ve been doing a lot of lately since Nate’s surgery.  (He had to sleep alone then to keep anyone from accidentally hitting him in the recovering eye.)  It’s never been a problem.

But last night, around midnight, she started crying.  I knew she was upset that I had moved her and wouldn’t let her snuggle anymore.  At first, I kind of rolled my eyes that she was being melodramatic.  I told her (admittedly not in my nicest voice) to quit crying and go back to sleep.  She was still upset, so I gave in an snuggled her a bit to calm her down because I was afraid she was going to wake Gus, who had already had a difficult time falling asleep.  However, she progressed to hiccupping sobs.  I’ll shamefully admit that I was starting to get angry.  She was totally overreacting, and I was tired, and she was getting really loud.

So finally I said, “Get up and get out of the room.  We can’t wake up Gus.”  And we both got up and came out to the family room, where she continued to sob and refused to actually say anything.  She just cried and cried.  I was still kind of angry, but it’s also hard for me to stay angry when I see her sobbing like that.  Finally, she tells me that she was upset that I “pushed” her.  I explained to her that I just moved her, and we again went over the Reasons Why Mommy Can’t Sleep With Someone on Top of Her.  And even though she said she understood, she was still sobbing. 

And then it all finally made sense:  “Mommy, my ear really hurts.”

Faaaaantastic.  She’s got an ear infection, and here I’ve been mad at her.  Granted, I didn’t know she was hurting (and I’d even asked her earlier if she felt sick because her behavior was so unusual), but still.  So I gave her some ibuprofen for the pain and some Alpha CF (a homeopathic cold/flu remedy that we usually use religiously and with great results when she’s sick, but we’d been lax on this time with our trip to NYC), and actually sent her off to bed with Nate in case she woke up again crying.  Gotta minimize the number of waking babies, ya know? 

Fortunately, this morning she says her ear doesn’t hurt, it just feels “clogged.”  (Although her chin and her legs supposedly do hurt.  Huzzah?)  So I’m hoping her body is fighting it off quickly, but if she’s not better by tomorrow, we’ll go to the doctor.  In the meantime, we’re plugging away with the Alpha CF.  I’m actually feeling most guilty about that.  Normally, I’m very good at giving that to her at the first sign she has a cold, and she hasn’t had an ear infection in the more than 2 years that we’ve been using it.  So I’m feeling bad that forgetting to get her on the Alpha CF sooner is probably what caused this.  And I feel really terrible about snapping at her last night when she was in so much pain – I had my share of ear infections throughout elementary school, and I remember distinctly (almost viscerally) how badly they hurt. 

What was that I was saying just two days ago about my parenting toolbox?  It might be nice if I actually opened the damn thing and used some of the tools every once in awhile…

An interesting perspective on letting babies cry

I really like Gus’s physical therapist.  We’ve been there 3 times (working on the torticollis), and I think she sensed from my cloth diapering and unabashed nursing that I might be a kindred parenting spirit, so our conversations sometimes touch on this ground.  Today, we happened to get onto the topic of what’s often known as “crying it out” or CIO – the philosophy that a baby should simply be left to cry so that he/she learns to self soothe.  Although I’m not as passionately against this as some people I know, and I do believe that some babies need to fuss to settle themselves, letting a baby truly cry (especially a young baby, under 6 months or so) is something I’m not in favor of.  Parents who allow their children to cry to the point of vomiting or wear ear plugs and take sleeping pills to help them ignore the sound make me so sad. 

Anyway, as I said, we got on this topic today, and she made a really interesting point.  I’ve read lots of arguments against CIO, and although I don’t think what she said was particularly new, I liked the way she put it.  She said when her oldest was a baby, people were always telling her she need to let her baby cry.  He’d never learn to sleep, it was good for his lungs, etc.  Then she read something in a magazine that really connected with her, and it does for me too.  Essentially, what it said was, “When you were pregnant, what did you envision?  Watching TV on the couch with your husband while the baby screamed down the hallway?  Or did you envision rocking your baby to sleep?  And 20 years from now, what do you think you’ll want to remember?  Listening to your baby scream down the hallway, or rocking him/her in a chair?”

Don’t get me wrong.  I know parenting isn’t as idyllic as the mental image of a blissful mama rocking her baby to sleep seems.  I know that real life gets in the way.  I know that day-to-day life with a baby who doesn’t sleep well is TOUGH.  (Believe me – I lived it for about a year and a half, and there were days that I couldn’t tell up from down.)  I know that we all have breaking points sometimes.  (There were 2 or 3 times when I tried to let Maggie CIO out of sheer desperation and frustration.) 

But I do think the gist of that comment was really dead on.  Even if life isn’t ideal, that doesn’t mean we can’t strive for the ideal.  There are always exceptions, times when we stray from our own ideals, whether for good reasons or for bad.  We’re only human.  But I need to keep in mind: what was my overall idea of parenting before I had children?  And what do I want to remember about parenting my children when they are grown and have children of their own?  I really think that putting that spin on it will help give me strength during some of those more difficult moments.  And I think it applies to a lot more than just CIO.  It really highlights the fact that the easy thing isn’t always the right thing, especially in parenting.  Our children are only young once, and sometimes we have to make sacrifices for them.

So her point is one I have a feeling I’ll come back to over and over as the years pass by.  It’s another tool in my parenting toolbox.  And boy oh boy, there are some days when I need all the tools I can get!