*Cricket cricket*

Well hello.

You've been quiet for quite some time. Oh wait, that was me being quiet. Quietness is not really something I'm known for. Like, at all. I guess le blog totally fell off le priority list. For a long time.

I'm back, I guess. I kind of like having a place to write ridiculous things because I AM known for being ridiculous.

So here we are. Let's chat. Let's paint each other's nails and play truth or dare. I'll go first. I choooooooooose TRUTH!

Today is my seventh wedding anniversary. SEVEN YEARS. Feels like 2. Feels like my husband and I are growing into each other; growing with each other, intertwined in each other's branches. Feels like we are truly working for the same things and on the same team and speaking the same language for the first time, maybe ever. Feels like our roots are sinking into the soil even further, and he would happily give up some nutrients to make my leaves greener and my branches longer. We are building something here; something ugly and gorgeous and knotted and breathtaking.

Also? I may or may not have thrown out my back. Talk about knotted........

Someday

In honor of my husband. Because I know how much he loves Justin Bieber.

An explanation of my smirk when you declare how absolutely amazing being a mother to your newborn is.

In the last 3 months, I have 9 friends who have had babies and I personally know (at least) 15 women that are pregnant right now.

That’s a lot of babies.

I am genuinely happy for my friends. I love to bask in their big-bellied glows and hear their birth stories.

But.

I am glad I am not one of them.

Among the 25+ women I have mentioned, there are 6 who were pregnant around the same time I was pregnant with Ava. That means I am officially getting passed up in the baby-making department. Initially, this thought made me feel a little bit of pressure and incited panic and shock. After mulling it over though? I am totally okay with it. This is not a race and I am not superwoman.

Like I said, I do love reading my friends’ birth stories. Well, ¾ of their birth stories. I hang on every word while they rehash the dilating, the contractions, the insane, indescribable pain, the pushing, and that amazing relief when they get to meet their teeny, tiny humans. It’s after that they lose me. They’re generally sharing their stories a week or more after they took place and by then are incandescently happy with their babies. I know they are sleep-deprived and probably still in pain but they are happy.

I didn’t feel that way with Ava. I loved being pregnant (one plus to being an amazon – it wasn’t as uncomfortable for me as it is for a lot of women) and I loved her actual birth but after that….?? Instead of being exhausted, happy, and a little scared that I was responsible for another human being, I was exhausted and devastated. I spent a good portion of my time alone wither her sobbing. I bawled the whole time my mom was at our house thinking about the day she would leave and I would have to take care of this kid all by myself. It was like I had a giant, ugly monster sitting on my chest, squeezing all the happiness out of my heart. I loved my baby but I mostly felt an obligation to keep her alive more than an overwhelming urge to love her. I had moments of happiness and contentment but they were few and fleeting.

It was clear, after weeks of weeping and being unable to feel spiritual comfort, that something was terribly wrong. I made an appointment with my OB (I loved my OB). When he came into the examination room to see me, he took my baby and held her. He commented on how beautiful she was. Then, he looked up at me and asked me how I was doing. I had a hard time answering through the tears streaming down my face that I was trying so hard to hold back but all I said was, “not good.”

I wasn’t prepared for this. I hadn’t done any research on it while I was pregnant and I was such a naturally happy person that I thought I didn’t need to. But everything in my life aligned to create the perfect storm – Danny was in his final and busiest semester of law school so we never saw him. Ava was a seriously high maintenance baby with acid reflux and a need to be older and busier than she was. We couldn’t figure out the breast feeding. I was trying to adjust to being a mom while being a hormonal mess. My body was done. Everything was out of my control. I was out of my control.

My OB prescribed Zoloft. I’m not really sure how much it helped. I know I should have had a follow-up appointment or seven but my insurance was up 6 weeks postpartum so I didn't. The meds generally made the horrible thoughts go away and allowed for more joyful moments but the monster on my heart was still there. He kept squeezing, turning my devastation to anger. Unfortunately, I unloaded most of that anger onto my sweet husband (who I’m pretty sure was wondering what the heck he’d gotten himself into). I was medicated until Ava was 8 months old and my body decided it was done with the meds (sudden weight gain).

I adjusted. I finally fell head-over-heels in love with my baby and couldn’t get enough of her. The ugly monster stopped squeezing my heart and let me breathe again. But then he relocated to my head. He nestled right behind my ear and taught me the fine art of negative self-talk. I constantly told myself that I wasn’t good enough, pretty enough, attractive enough, that I wasn’t worth a thing. That thought process? caused so much marital strife because I usually interpreted everything as an attack. It was Tiffany vs. Danny, not Tiffany and Danny vs. The World. The PPD pretty much dissipated by last January but the negative self-talk habit still lingers.  

I am working on it. I am working on everything. Our job and living situation did a 180, in the best of ways last May, and it threw me out of my catatonic indifference to the quality of my life. I mourn the loss of my daughter’s infancy and the fact that I was unable to enjoy her during her littlest moments. But I have to move on. I am moving on. Danny and I can both breathe and think and laugh again. I feel as normal as I think I will ever feel. The ugly monster is tucked into the recesses of my subconscious but he isn’t gone. He will never be gone. Depression like that leaves scars. And broken parts. And unshed tears that surface at a memory you can’t completely bury.

So my baby train is on a different schedule than everyone else’s. And you know what? I don’t care. I don’t need my own tiny baby to hold right now, not when there are so many around me already. One day, that may change. Heavenly Father will slip some forgetfulness into my morning smoothie and I will want another one. But that day isn’t today and it isn’t tomorrow. 

It is finally Danny and Tiffany and Ava vs. The World and I just want to enjoy it for a while.

So romantic

So we saw this commercial tonight:



and Danny said, "if I die early that's going to be you".

And then, I wiped snot off the tiny human's nose and onto Danny's pants so he literally pinned me down on the couch and wiped his pants on my face.

To top it all off, he informed me this evening that he is part of 2 fantasy football leagues.

Boys.

A letter to my husband

My dearest Danny -

Remember a few weeks ago when Ava fell asleep in church and you pretty much begged to hold her? Or when she fell asleep in the car on the way home from the beach and there was no way you were letting anyone else carry her up to her crib? Remember how excited Ava gets when you come home everyday and how hard only you can make her giggle?

Yeah. That melts me.

I love when you come home for lunch. I love when you make me laugh while I'm trying my hardest to stay mad at you. I love listening to you talk to your brothers on the phone. I love how hard you've worked to get us where we are and all the plans we're making together.

I love knowing that I get to be in love with you for the rest of forever.

That's a pretty spectacular forever.

Thanks for being you,

Your wife

The one where I talk about a sissy habit my husband has.

Danny divulged the fact that he isn’t good with blood (mostly his own blood) while we were dating. Well into our first year of marriage I learned that he is, in fact, TERRIBLE with blood.

It was his own fault really. He started tickling me. Don’t tickle an amazon and expect it to end well - I thought it went without saying. But he tickled and I squirmed and I ended up punching him in nose. He ran to our teeny downstairs bathroom, blood running down his face while I ran after him apologizing profusely and suppressing my giggles.

It was probably the worst nose-bleed I have ever seen but at the same time? IT WAS A NOSE-BLEED. Don't be a baby. I knew I hadn’t hit him hard enough to break his nose but I saw the color draining from his face and I remembered him telling me that he can’t handle blood. At this point he was hunched over the tiny little sink and just as I finished saying I think you should sit down, he passed out. The man PASSED OUT!

People of the internets, I have no medical training. I am not even CPR certified. I maintain that I can’t handle medical grossness (probably caused by seeing too much Liposuctioning on TLC) so I FREAKED OUT a little bit because my husband was dying in our teeny bathroom. The situation ensued thusly:

WHY is he snorting?? ABCs of first aid or CPR or something like that, right? A! AIRWAY! He can’t breathe very well, that’s why he sounds like an overweight, rabid dog. *Grabs husband’s feet and pulls heavy, limp body into hallway in an attempt to straighten him out so he can breathe.* This must be what it’s like to move a dead body. WHY IS HE SO HEAVY??? *Finally gets husband breathing normally and then begins to confuse passing out with getting a concussion. It becomes clear to her that she needs to wake him up somehow.* Where are the blasted smelling salts when you need them?! HOW do I wake him up?? Should I bleed him? Whyyeeeee do I read so much Jane Austen?? *At a loss and thinking that her husband has been out for too long she sits on his stomach and does what any normal person would do – she begins to smack his cheeks and shout “WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!”

He finally came to, looking all green and confused and sickly. He chilled out on the couch for the rest of the night and every time he started to dose I sweetly yelled, “don’t go to sleep! Don’t go to sleep!” because, you know, I thought he had a concussion. From being punched in the face. Heh.

So! When we started ripping up carpet in the house last week (side rant: WHO in their right mind moves into a house with wood floors and decides to lay carpet down instead of getting the wood refinished?!) and Danny’s blood started flowing freely betwixt the prying and the tearing, I had the presence of mind to be proactive. I didn’t want him passing out again so I covered the wound quickly, sat him on the floor, and made him drink water. He was green for a while but at least I didn’t have to drag his limp body anywhere.

Blood? Check

Sweat? Double check.

Tears? Not yet but it’s inevitable.

A slightly handmade wedding

I love to make things. See, when I don't have an outlet for my creativity through music, I HAVE TO LET IT OUT SOOOOOMEWHERE. So? I make things. And I love making things for specific people because I get to think about how cool they are and how happy I am to know them as I go.

Danny's sister, April, got married last week (awww shmoops have been married for a WHOLE WEEK today). After the initial excitement settled in when she told us she was getting married, I realized that I had an awesome reason to make some super girly stuff. Heh. So. Here's what I made:

Some headbands for the Sadie and Makenna:


A fancy dress and jacket for Ava:




Some earrings (pour moi)(I also made a headband for me but I'm too lazy to go take a picture of it):


And a wedding present:

I thought that all this creating would satiate me. But it hasn't. Stay tuned for more cute things.

The time our daughter raised herself in the jungle because we abandoned her

Danny's cousin plays right tackle for the University of Utah Football Team so when they came to South Bend to play Notre Dame we had to go. We didn't want to take Ava with us so we left her at home by herself. Kidding. We have some friends in our ward that are awesome and watched her for us. But still. I hadn't left her for that long. Ever. Turns out that she loved playing with other kids and really didn't miss me at all. Nice.

It was rainy and cold and the stadium at Notre Dame needs some serious updates and it was an ugly game that we did not win. BUT I basically got to spend THE WHOLE DAY with JUST my husband. It was SO weird. And aha-wesome. And we got to see some quality people as well. So? WORTH IT.



RAIN CAN DIE.



Mmmmmmm. Stale popcorn. POPCORN NEEDS UPDATING TOO, NOTRE DAME.



Happy football man.



Danny's cousin, Tony Bergstrom. 7-0.



I love the mist that falls over the field...





4th quarter...