Dim Sum Mum - Tess' Little Pieces

my face, my fault

tertia posted on this topic a while back, it is probably a universal theme amongst mothers.

how much effort should i make with my own appearance?

what is an effort?

it can range from

1. brushing teeth

2. brushing hair

3. taking off makeup from night before

4. styling hair

5. applying chapstick

6. applying lipstick

7. applying mascara

8. applying rouge, and coverup while infront of a mirror (as opposed to using jasper's drool bubbles as a mirror)

9. applying eye shadow

10. applying lip glass

i can confidently say that i do number one. usually number two as well. (i can do that while sitting on the toilet) maybe thrice a week i get up to a four, and once a week maybe an eight or nine.

why is this.

i really don't care how i look. i always get a bit surprised at people's reactions to me when i am looking disheveled, but i know they love me for me. and if they don't, hey, i am 35 now, i can say I DON"T CARE and MEAN IT!

makeup is not essential to my life right now. my mothering abilities, patience, temper, insight, love, etc, (and i know this from experience) is not affected by the amount of makeup i wear. if it was, i would be a tammy faye.

even wearing my nice clothes, i don't, mainly because i am still horrified by how i look in them, and secondly, it makes more sense for me to wear easily cleaned jeans, sweats and shirts right now. if i am on the floor playing with my kidlets, the last thing i want to worry about is keeping my legs crossed. so goodbye to everything but the very washable and longer cute skirts. i need to lunge to catch errant bodies, and toys. why bother getting upset with the smear and dirt marks the filthy three leave on me when i could focus on the stains on the sofa?

i don't always look groomed. i never care. my appearance reflects my life right now. definitely, you don't have to look like me, look at all those new mothers out there who look divine. heck, i looked great when sebastian was a toddler. i don't mean to be an advertisement for "parenting hell" (a) because i am not getting paid for it and b) because i don't think i am in parenting hell). my look right now is what works for my life.

i look at other mums with newer kids who have taken the time to put on their makeup and i know it is just a case of different priorities. i could do that if i wanted to, but right now, i don't. i'd rather take the five minutes and read. talk with charles, or a friend. my face, my choice.

looking back at pictures of myself, i occasionally wonder why i don't make more of an effort, but hindsight is 20/20.

jasper just vomitted. it has been that sort of day.

lastly, thank you for all the kind things written in the comments section. v.v. nice to read on a day like today.

a while ago, i had an email from a friend who has having trouble conceiving. her secondary infertility was a specific sort, and so i put her on to a tres cool fellow blogger (who has yet to have kidlets) with the same issue.

said friend has now started her own blog. has linked our mutual friend and listed her under her "i'm loving it" reading list. yours truly is absent from the list. there are other bloggers with children on the list (as well as tertia, she is prerequisite!) but mine is not there. i didn't even have to ask the friend why, she wrote me and said that she is focusing on "edgy" blogs.

i apparently, am edge-free.

but i suppose that could be true.

i don't have the time to craft brilliance and cleverness. (i'm not saying others don't have the time either, it may just come faster to them.) such is life. is the point of my blog to be clever and edgy? it would be a nice benefit, i suppose, but aspects of my life are not edgy. holidays are making me frantic. vomit coats my potential edginess.

other times, it is a stretch for me even to be sarcastic, because when i am writing about my suburbian hong kong existence, i recollect the love i felt, and that love overwhelms even my ever present sarcasm.

i thought love was supposed to make you gain weight. i never knew it whittled away your edges.

gal pal, i guess im staying off your "i'm loving it" list, because i'm too busy loving them.

JUNE 2 - CARYS WAS RELEASED FROM HOSPITAL!

magnificent charles was travelling the day carys was released from hospital. she had been on home leave, but needed to go back for one final exam, and so i could sign the final papers, pay the final bills, say the final goodbyes.

how anti climatic for magnificent. oprah would say there was no closure.

the day i took carys in for her final check up and farewell, as with sela and jasper, nurses and doctors had brought cameras to take pictures of the triumverate. when we had taken sela and jasper home, we knew we would be coming back to the NICU that night, to see carys. the goodbyes were emotional as we manipulated jasper and sela's hands into little bye-bye's but carys' leaving was the real goodbye.

the face masks and language differences were tough enough, but how could i put into words my gratitude? for three months i had seen more of this staff than i had seen of friends. they had watched me make the toughest decision of my life, they had witnessed miracles. thank you is such an inadequate word, when you are describing lives that have been saved.

we had watched children die in the nicu. walked into the room the next morning to see the isolette, charts and too small infant gone. we had watched the nurses adjust our babies positions, coax them out of apnea spells, administer medication, change iv lines, nappies, masks. they held our children and loved them when we could not. they were tender. the doctors, maybe not tender, but they certainly saved their lives. again and again.

i was thrilled and horrified to leave the security of the nicu. magnificent wasn't at home, could i handle three babies and the very active sebastian? what if i messed up the medicines? they never would have done that in the nicu.

in the end, there were no words. there were hugs, there were waves, there were promises to come back that we all knew couldn't happen because the babies and i were not allowed back in the NICU once formally discharged. it was a new phase of their life. and mine.

tubes, plasters, duoderms, lines, goggles, caps...all had been removed from their bodies over the past three months. the butterflies had emerged from their chrysalids and were preparing to soar.

and all i could do was cry as i said goodbye, and carried my littlest girl home.

http://home.netvigator.com/~tlyons/tripmu.htm

check out the website. can you believe it has been one year.

from the adoption files...

day five....my thoughts....

we are getting down to the nitty gritty. i am facing some tough questions.

how will i answer the question: why did you keep the others and you didn't keep me?

will i really think i have done the right thing when i see that first baby picture?

we are still getting the occasional stray unsolicited request for embryos, but basically have told the lovely lady at the agency that she does not need to forward us any more applications. the early bird got the worm and all that sort of stuff.

there is a plan, and we just need to trust. doesn't mean it is easy.

the other day i asked magnificent, "do you want any more children?"

he looked at me and said, "do you?"

and i said "hmmmm".

i would love a pregnancy. but only if it was like when i was carrying sebastian, feeling wonderful, staying active, brilliant short labour that i felt was not long enough. giving birth again, that final push, that squalling indignant cry. yes, i would want a pregnancy, but not for the right reason. i would want it not for the baby, but so i could look back on pregnancy and childbirth with teary smily memories.

but more children? i love my children, that isn't the issue, is it. i don't know if my health can take it. even a singleton. is it fair to risk my health and the mediocre mother i can be to these children for the sake of other children?

i'll change the topic....babies are back on mylanta to help prevent the vomit. carys has both upper teeth coming in and can now growl out, bah bah while waving. magnificent is going to california for eight days on sunday.

wish me luck.