Social Experiment

So, today I had an idea...an epiphany, if you will. This will help if I start at the beginning.

Money has been tight since I resigned from my job to stay home with my kids. This has made us a one-income family, a situation that the majority of families found themselves in about 70 years ago. I started thinking today...wouldn't it be neat to live life as they did in the 1940's? I mean seriously, what better time in modern history could there be? The depression is over, women can vote, cars are huge and awesome, kids wear trousers and dresses, by 1944 WWII is over, there's nothing like a good war to boost an economy.

So those facts are floating around in my mind today. I posted something about this as my facebook status. Of course, my mom and Petunia get into age-bashing each other and someone brought up cow patties...why they insist on using my page as a battlefield I don't know, but I digress.

Since I was a girl of 10, maybe 12, I've thought I was born in the wrong era. I love the music of the 40s, the fashions, the wholesome way of life. I look at pictures of my grandparents and can picture myself walking around in the background living there, then.

I get lost in movies set in this time period like White Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Story, It Happened One Night, An Affair to Remember, Casablanca, Topper, Topper Returns, and on and on and on.

To get back to the main reason of this entry, today I was thinking of ways we could save money...give up some of our luxuries like our BlackBerrys. (Right now we are spending roughly $170/month for cell phones. And to be honest, the only thing I really do on mine is facebook. I rarely make or recieve calls anymore. It's all texting, emailing, message posts, instant messaging online. Whatever happened to writing someone a letter? I would love to get mail other than Christmas cards and bills.)

Then my mind wandered...what did They do back then for entertainment? How did a Stay at Home Moms keep her kids busy while she kept the house going? Surely there was no Sesame Street On Demand at her beckon call, no DVDs to pop in. What did kids do? Played outside. Used their imaginations. Read books. Can you imagine?

What did families do during dinner? They had conversations…at the dinner table…with each other…face to face, not facebook to facebook.

I want to conduct an experiment of sorts. For one year, I want to rid my home of the luxuries They did not have in the 1940s. No digital cable or cell phone or internet or computer or microwave or answering machine or call waiting or caller ID or pizza delivery or Chinese takeout or air conditioning or blow dryers or whitening toothpaste. I would have to keep some modern amenities so we can keep up with modern life outside our doors, like internet and a computer so my husband can continue to do his work and make a living, and I will surely keep my washer and dryer…I mean come on, I have twin 17-month-olds and a 4 year old.

These are details that can be hashed out later. I want to be able to say Merry Christmas without someone jumping down my throat that someone within earshot might be Buddhist or Jewish. I want to be able to let my kids play outside without the fear that I will never see them again. I want my daughters to become teenagers who don’t feel the need to leave nothing to the imagination when they get dressed.

I’m still in the brainstorming stage and will have to convince my husband to agree to this.

If you have any ideas, input, advice, comments to add, please do. Any and all are welcome!

…in my head, this experiment is already a mini reality show on TLC.

...jeez, it's like it's Christmas Eve and I'm 6 years old...

Well, here I am, at 37 weeks and 3 days: extremely frustrated and forever swollen with a bladder that I don't think will ever feel empty again. My husband and I are anxiously awaiting July 14th at 5:00am...yes, A.M. The other day at my checkup, we came this close to having the delivery moved up a week, but alas...no dice. Well, it was nice to have had the possibilty for 3.5 minutes. **sigh**
It will be interesting to see if the twins get up at 2:00am, 4:00am, and 5:30am. That's the times they are waking me up now to pee (and I use that term loosely) every night. Seriously, every night...like clockwork.
It takes me at least 7 minutes to sit up, scoot to the edge of the bed ever so slowly so I don't wet myself, get to my feet and stand as erect as cro-magnon man, then try to stand like a semi-evolved human, then shuffle to the bathroom like a 99-year-old woman. Any normal person would be able to do all this, pee, and return to bed in a matter of about 90 seconds. Remember now, this 7 minutes is how long it takes me to get to the bathroom.


The actual act of peeing in the middle of the night is a whole other saga. That takes about 4 minutes and seriously (skip this part if you don't want to continue to hear about my pee) the 4 minute episode that you think could fill a pool, would maybe fill up the cap of a tube of toothpaste. And I don't even mean one of those new no-mess huge circle caps. I'm talking old school.


I have to pee.

"The Goose" Turns 2!

I know this all sounds a little repetitive and common, but especially this year, the March of Dimes has more meaning to us...even though everything is going great right now with this pregnancy, anything could happen at any time. I'm already 24 weeks, but it truly is a comfort to know that if Catie and Kelsey do decide to grace us earlier than expected, we will be well prepared for them, medically.

Watching my friend Teresa and her husband Jeff go through what they went through after their 2nd daughter, Anna Grace, was born is an experience I won't soon forget.

I remember the morning of March 23, 2006 when I got the phone call at work from Teresa that she "had the baby last night." She wasn't due until July. She left work early on the 22nd because she just wasn't feeling well - typical for a pregnant woman, right? Wrong. Turns out she was going into labor at 23 weeks along. She had already been out of work a few weeks earlier because she was so dehydrated she had to be hooked up to an I.V. at home.

Teresa and Jeff held on tightly to the 50/50 chance doctors gave Anna to survive just after she was born. Each day she survived, the chances increased by the tiniest bit in her favor. By the 2nd week, Teresa and Jeff could be "cautiously optimistic."

ANNA GRACE - 1 WEEK OLD

Within the 111 days Anna was in the hospital, she withstood a battery of tests, tubes, monitors, surgeries, etc. Her first pictures looked more like a pile of wires than a baby. Jeff and Teresa still have a picture of baby Anna on their fridge from when she was 2 days old. It's a daily reminder of how far they've all come as a family, and how lucky they are.

Anna's tiny 1 pound, 9.5 ounce body had to be resuscitated on a daily basis no fewer than 4 or 5 times a day. At two and a half weeks old, she went to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester to undergo open heart surgery.

The first time Teresa got to hold her daughter was just after surgery for about 15 seconds when the nurses changed her bedding. Teresa and Jeff had to wait to hold her for any extended amount of time until she was 53 days old. May 14th. Mother's Day. She had to weigh at least 4 pounds to come out of the incubator. Anna's nurse fudged her weight - she was actually 3 pounds 12 ounces.

ANNA GRACE - 2 YEARS OLD
Anna "Goose" (affectionately named that after she was born by her big sister Samantha) just celebrated her 2nd birthday! Thanks to the advancements in medicine to help premature babies, made possible through the March of Dimes, Anna Grace is a smart, spunky, beautiful little girl who makes everyone she meets smile and laugh with her personality!

Since Anna was born, we have participated in the March of Dimes Walk America, now formally known as the March for Babies. This year, this walk is even more special to Thom, Hailey, and me as we are expecting our twin girls in July. Multiples have a reputation of arriving as many as 6 weeks early, if not more. It's nice to know that the March of Dimes is there, enabling medical staff to do all they can with modern advancements in medicine, to give premature babies a fighting chance to survive.

BIG SISTER SAMANTHA & MOM TERESA

Please help us raise money for the March of Dimes on behalf of Anna by donating right on my website at www.marchforbabies.org/MorganKrauss. If you prefer, you can always donate cash or write a check (made out to the March of Dimes) and I'll happily hand it in the day of the walk.

If you would like to sign up and join Team Anna to walk on April 27, 2008 at 10:00am at Delaware Park - Parkside Lodge, go to http://www.marchforbabies.org/ and click on "Join a Team" and join in the fun on Team Anna!!

$12 chairs and I have to pee

RANDOM THOUGHT WARNING: ...we're still in Animal's mouth...

BACK TO THE REGULARLY SCHEDULED BLOG:

I'm tired right now but my mind is racing. How are we going to set up the spare room for these twins? Right now the room consists of:
~a gothic 1970s armoire with one drawer pull missing
~a china cabinet from Reist (and, consequently, Primrose)
~a spare kitchen chair with my scrapbooking accoutrement stacked on top
~a 3-drawer dresser w/ mirror and things in my "to be scrapped" pile
~a computer desk w/ PC, boom box, 4-in-1 printer, DVD/VCR combo that doesn't work, and some music tape dubbing machine thing
~the old orange chair that has been reupholstered and now resembles Marty Crane's Barco-Lounger but is still so comfortable
~a 3-tiered bookshelf holding children's books bigger than Hailey
~endless amounts of clean laundry
~the Minnie spoon might be in there somewhere, too, mom.

So basically, right now, that room is a liiiitle too cluttered for 2 more cribs. I can't wait till spring when we clean out the house and have a yard sale. It's amazing what people will buy.

Last summer, we had a garage sale. This older gentleman stopped by in his '72 hoopdie, waddled up the driveway, sat in one of the chairs we had for sale, and paid $12 for it. At the same time, no one bought the picture frames, glassware, or jewelry we had out. You also get the people who go garage sale hopping looking for specific items. One guy came up asking for "huntin' knives with big blades." Yeah, no. Sorry, we just sold the last of them to that eighty-two-pound 90 year old lady over there wearing the hand-knit fatigues.

It's 10:30pm and I'm watching cheesey home videos on ABC family. I remember this show being a lot funnier when I was a kid. I realize calling this show "funniest videos" is so inappropo. It should be called "stupid people willing to be embarrased in public." How funny can a guy trying to put a nerf ball in a basket with his feet get? Is it better when it turns out he consequently puts a hole in the wall with his butt? But, maybe I'm just bitter right now because I have to pee. Shocking, I know. I'll admit though, when the dog caught the frisbee and then proceeded to lay it on the ground and, ahem, relieve himself on it, I laughed. Out loud. Alone.

I might have even snorted a little.

so...yeah...

OK, so here I am, in a writing mood and I don't have a thing to talk about. I'm at work right now and should probably be doing something else...you know...work-related. Oh well...

It's like I have senioritis all over again at this point. Thom and I are expecting twin girls this summer and we have a 2 1/2 year old daughter already. She is so much fun! And she's going to be the best big sister ever!! She definitely keeps us on our toes though.

Like the time she couldn't get a toy pacifier to fit in her doll's mouth and yelled, "Damn it!"

Or what about the time when I was in the bathroom and told the dog to move so I didn't step on her and my darling daughter smoothly said, without missing a beat, "Hannah, get the fuck out of the way." Thom was walking by and stopped dead in his tracks and we just looked at each other, jaws and eyes WIDE open. Good thing I was already sitting down, right?

...seems this entry is taking on a Hailey-isms spin...

Like the time we went to communion at Sunday Mass and got back to our seats. She looked up at Thom and asked him if she could "have a chip, too."

Like another time at church...we just arrived and dipped our hands in the holy water and made the sign of the cross. Hailey wanted to do it, too, so she stuck out one finger, dipped it in the water and made the sign of the cross. When the ushers said hello to her, she stuck the same finger in their faces and shouted, "I got water!"

God, I love that kid!