Category Archives: Family

Stories about the characters in my life

Sunday Column: On a memory named Pooper

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It’s raining, the grass is getting greener and the calves are being born. I love this time of year where things are fresh and new and there’s nothing ahead of us but the promise of warmer weather (after a couple spring snow storms that leave us holding our breath of course).

The bottle calf in the barn has made me a little nostalgic and I’m having a flashback of a bottle calf my little sister and I took care of back when I was the boss and she didn’t care…

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Coming Home: Everything is better with some cows around
by Jessie Veeder
4-17-16
InForum
http://www.inforum.com 

Calving season is in full force here at the ranch, and this year it’s extra special for my husband and I because part of the new herd we’re building is our own.

And by better, by no stretch of the word does he mean easier. If I learned anything in my life it’s that better doesn’t always mean easier. (I’ve found this to be true in ranching and in motherhood.)

Anyway, it could be the green grass sprouting up on the hilltops or a little hope of warm rain in the forecast that sends us outside with the enthusiasm of a kindergartner with a new backpack on her first day of school, but I know it’s those cows grazing on the hilltop and the babies trying out their new legs beside them.

Last week, one of our best new cows gave birth to twins. I was in Bismarck with Mom and Edie at a singing job when I got a text with a photo from Dad telling me the news. My little sister, my mom and my husband all got the same message and I smiled at the realization that we’re living in an age where my dad sends group texts to his family about cows.

This morning one of those twin babies is waiting for me in the barn because, as it goes sometimes with animals, the cow didn’t recognize the second twin as hers.

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So I’m her momma now, a job I happily volunteered for because feeding babies is something I know how to do, and it’s not just due to my new role as a mom.

I have pretty vivid memories of all of the bottle calves we had when I was a kid growing up out here. One in particular left a big mark on my sister and I, mainly for the role that little calf played in our epic, sisterly fights.

I was 12 and so I pretty much knew everything, and my little sister was 7 and not as eager as she should have been at being bossed by me.

The calf, lovingly named Pooper, became our responsibility and part of our daily chores, which we eagerly took on in the beginning. Because, in the beginning, calves are adorable and have yet to grow into a 150-pound puppy on legs who has figured out two little girls are his only food source, and coincidentally has also figured out how to escape his pen in order to chase them down the road after the empty bottle, tongue out, bellering, head down in feeding position in case he caught up to one.

And he always caught up to one; it just was never this one. Because I employed the age-old advice: Want to survive a bear attack? Just be faster than the guy you brought with you.

Turns out my little sister never forgave me for it. Last weekend I took her down to the barn to have a look at the new baby, and she started getting the cold sweats. Instead of seeing an innocent newborn creature, Alex was having flashbacks of snowpants full of slobber, swift head butts to her rear and unanswered cries for help directed at a big sister sprinting to the house half a mile away, leaving her to suffer a terrifying death by the tongue of a baby calf.

Apparently, the times we spent together feeding Pooper were the first times she heard me cuss like a sailor, knocking me off my very low pedestal. I know because she brings it up at family dinners, holidays and probably the toast she made at my wedding.

Needless to say, my little sister will find different ways to help with the cattle business. Like babysitting Edie.

And I don’t blame her. It’s not easy playing momma to a baby with a giant head and four wobbly legs, especially when you’re feeding her with one hand and trying to put the pacifier back into your human baby’s mouth with the other.

It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. Because everything is better with some cows around.

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Sunday Column: The Red Guitar

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A couple weeks ago at a show, I met a man who suggested that I write a few columns about my guitars. He is in a band himself and had seen me play a few times, and had taken notice of my different guitars, and being a musician he knew there was likely a story behind them.

So this week I took him up on that suggestion (it was a good suggestion) and wrote about one of the most important guitars in my life.

Coming Home: From first memory to now, guitars hold an elusive sway
by Jessie Veeder
4-10-16
Forum Communications

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I love guitars. I love the way they look sitting in the corner of a house. I love how they feel in my hands; the new ones shiny with promise of the music that is to come, the old ones worn from years of picking.

Because you know how everyone has a first memory? That moment you look back on where you were the youngest version of yourself you knew. Maybe it’s only a few moments in time, but it was so powerful that you hang onto it hard and forever, whether you want to or not.

That memory is a guitar to me, dancing in the basement of our old house while my dad played his red Guild and sang a song I don’t remember. But I do remember the brown shag carpet and how he wore his hair a little too long and how his wide, leathery fingers eclipsed the strings at the neck as he swayed back and forth and tapped his foot, just a little bit off of the rhythm of the song he was singing and picking — the same way he does today. And I remember wanting him to let me pluck the strings on my own, so I could make the music come from that mysterious instrument.

That red guitar.

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The guitar still remains a mystery to me, how six strings touched the right way can produce sounds that make you laugh and cry and tap your toes or sing words you didn’t even know you had in you.

It’s amazing that the sounds coming out of a body made of wood can be so different depending on who’s touching it. I’m in awe that a guitar can transform a campfire, a living room or a makeshift stage into a world where love is lost and found, real cowboys still exist, summer always stays.

Yes, the guitar remains elusive to me even though every person in my family, as a sort of right of passage, owns their own version of the instrument, tucked away in basements or propped up next to the piano or the living room couch. It’s a necessity. Whether or not you ever learn to play it, you need it there next to you in case you or a guest are ever so inclined.

I’ve had in my possession a number of guitars in my life, all given to me by my dad based on his judgment on what would be the best fit for me. From the old Taylor I play today to the green Takamine I got when I convinced my parents that the guitar was more my instrument than the saxophone I played in band class, so we traded it in, as my dad does with guitars and horses.

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I found out later that’s what happened with the red Guild. I showed interest in taking up an instrument for band class in fourth grade and so dad traded it for a saxophone.

Oh, if guitars could talk! I suppose I could say that for instruments of all kind, but I’m partial to the guitar. I think they’d have the best stories.

That red Guild found its way back to the ranch eventually, another of dad’s trades of an amp or a banjo, so that he could pass that guitar along to my little sister when she went to college. I liked to imagine her sitting behind it, so far away from the buttes of the ranch, closing her eyes, plucking the strings and hearing the sounds of home.

That Guild sits in its case propped up in the corner of the house she now shares with her husband, holding in it stories about her dad playing in bar bands and coffeehouses before she was born and memories of three little girls twirling, laughing and singing along in the basement of a little old house.

Yes, all of the guitars I’ve possessed have given me something — confidence, my first song, a stronger voice. But it’s the one I never owned, the one that gave me my first chord and let loose the music inside of me, that has been my greatest gift.

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In the spring season…

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It’s that time of year. The in between phase, where it can’t decide if it’s winter or spring so it rains then it shines then it snows then it freezes then it shines again and the crocuses come up and the trees work on blooming and then the wind blows in some weather and it starts all over again.

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And I can’t help but feel like the seasons. Four months ago when we first brought Edie home the world was sleepy, resting for a few months, waiting peacefully under the snow and cold for its time to wake up and start growing things. I sort of felt the same. We were in the resting period before the growing period. Snuggled up and sleepy and wondering what the next few months might bring.

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Most winters around here feel like they last forever. I press my nose up against the glass of the windows and doors and whine about freezing. But this year I can’t decide if it all went by so fast or if it was the longest winter of my life.

On one hand I’m not convinced it’s spring, because I feel like I missed winter all together (due to the haze I was in from feeding, burping, diaper changing and watching this baby’s cheeks get chubbier) and on the other hand the complete change of life, the 180 I experienced from late fall to early spring makes me feel like December was a lifetime away.

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As I watch the spring wind whip and bend the trees outside the house I feel as conflicted as the weather. We need the rain and snow, but not when the calves are being born. So I pray for rain to help green up the grass, but please Lord, let it be warm rain. My prayers and hopes have stipulations.

As if I can control anything.

I know better.

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But the grass is getting greener despite an unusually dry year and although I haven’t seen one for myself yet, I heard the crocuses are sprouting on the hilltops, reaching up to the warm sun and blue sky, opening their petals. The newborn calves are running, jumping, kicking up their heels in the wind, happy to be here. The birds have come home to perch on my deck and look in the window. The two geese float on the damn like they do every year right besides the mallard couple, getting ready to start their family.

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And we are watching here, commenting, taking it all in in awe like we do when we get our spring back.

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I look at my little girl kicking her legs, reaching for noses and hands and the world she sees before her. She’s rolling over now. She’s already sprouted two teeth for cryin’ out loud! She’s looking out the window. She sees things and her eyes fixate. I think she’s wondering. I think she’s learning. She laughs with intention, like full on belly laughs that light up her body, and she smiles like the sun on those crocuses on the hill.

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I can’t help but look at her now and think that she’s truly waking up to this world. If we were winter the first three months she was born, resting and feeding and getting ready for a change in weather, this little baby is wide awake. She’s spring embodied.

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And just how we feel compelled to take in every moment of the beautiful weather we’re granted, in all its indecision and change, soaking in and learning about this baby’s personality–keeping her safe, rocked, fed, entertained and maybe sleeping some day–is marvelous and exhausting and a down right miracle.

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And it’s my favorite. My favorite time of year…

Sunday Column: The thread that ties us together

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We baptized baby Edie yesterday. We have a happy, healthy baby girl surrounded by the love of a great big family who all showed up for her.

That’s all anyone can ask for in this life, to have something so precious tied to you.

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I have known in my life that this isn’t a gift granted to everyone, but when you’re wrapped up in the challenge and goodness of it all, sometimes you’re given a moment that reminds us again to be grateful and humble and happy in the gifts we’re given.

This week’s column is on one of those moments and the thread that winds and unwinds between us….

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Coming Home: Feeling the strong yet fragile thread that ties child, parent
by Jessie Veeder
3-27-15
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

It was one of those little scenes that would play out in the movie version of your life, one that offers comic relief to a series of tense emotions, an argument or a confession: a pile of little kids stacked up on a battery-operated toy pickup, driving back and forth in front of the stage where I played with the band last Saturday, and one little boy, dressed in boots and a Wrangler butt pointed in our direction as he rolled by, bent over the side revealing to us a tiny full-moon.

An oblivious drive-by.

In the middle of a song I was singing about being strong and holding on, I looked over at my bass player to make sure I wasn’t the only one witnessing the cutest and most hilarious thing in the world. He looked back at me with a big grin, and I finished the song through stifled giggles.

So much for keeping it together.

But it was a welcome scene. On one of the first nights I spent on a stage away from my baby, we were singing to a crowd of kids, families and bouncy houses at an event raising money to grant wishes for children with cancer.

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Up on that stage, you get a bird’s-eye view of a community coming together to help ease the burden on families who have been sentenced to watch their babies suffer. From up there, it was hard to tell which children were sick, which were healthy and who had overcome so much in their short lives.

Take a step down and it might become a bit clearer, but from where I stood they were all just kids busting out their best break-dancing moves, giving smaller kids rides on the horse on wheels, requesting that we play the chicken dance and working to break their sugar quota for the year.

Watching their enthusiasm for being let loose at an event designed for them used to remind me of what it was like to be a kid with boundless energy oblivious to the worries of the world.

Now I look out over those dancing, laughing, bouncing children and every single one of them is Edie.

Edie who loves music. Edie who, in just a few short months, might be dancing to it. Edie who would love that toy horse on wheels.

Edie, who was likely fighting off sleep in her dad’s arms. Edie, happy and healthy and so fresh to a world where anything can happen.

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Some days having a baby feels like having a tiny little anchor tied to your ankle. I say this with love and honesty as I try to put into words what all you parents out there have experienced tenfold already.

It’s similar to the “heart outside your chest” analogy I suppose, except to me that always sounded so raw and terrifying. Ever since Edie was born, I haven’t felt ripped open as much as I feel like I have been walking around with a thread spooling and unspooling, connecting me to her.

That night I was 60 miles away from my daughter, standing on that stage, and I imagined that thread stretching out along the highway, through the badlands and over the river to where she was breathing, happy and healthy and loved.

Looking out in that crowd of children dancing, I imagined a spider web of threads connecting those tiny souls to the souls sitting on folding chairs, visiting and laughing and keeping one eye out for the little heartbeat they created.

I could say here now how I can’t imagine what I would do if little Edie got sick enough to be granted her wish to ride a rollercoaster or pet a giraffe in Africa, but does it need to be said?

Until the last four months I didn’t know about the thread. And last weekend I was reminded that the thread is as fragile as it is strong.

I opened my eyes in the dark of the early hours of this morning. In the quiet I thought about the little girl in the princess costume being granted a trip to Disneyland. And then about that little boy on the tractor.

I smiled. My baby stirred. The thread pulled tight.

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We’re having cake, and other news from the ranch…

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My little sister and I used to text back and forth about whether or not I had vodka at the house so we could make bloody marys when she came over.

Or if we should buy the concert tickets and what we should eat when we get there.

Or organizing dates for a ski trip.

Last night we dropped Edie off at auntie Alex’s while we ran to a meeting and a half hour later I got this text message.

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At least we’re still talking food and beverage.

And then she sent me this, so I knew they were all going to live.

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So that was last night.

And today Edie’s going to her four month checkup. We’re going to drive her there though, cause she doesn’t have her license yet.

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It’s the only time in this girl’s life where guessing her weight will be fun. I’m thinking she’s passed the 20 pound mark by now, the girl likes to eat.

She gets that from her momma.

Anyway, these days I don’t have much news that doesn’t involve this little squishy person.  It’s snowing, I have a show in Bismarck opening for Confederate Railroad next week and, oh,look at her sitting up and watching T.V. She loves to watch T.V.

She gets that from her dad…

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Yup. That’s how a conversation goes with anyone near this child lately. Never mind anything you want to tell anyone because they get distracted. I blame her for everything I forget to remember and everything I forget to say.

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Anyway, on Easter Sunday Edie’s getting baptized in the little country church down the road. I just got off the phone with the bakery and they’re going to make her a cake. Pink and purple just like everything in her wardrobe.

A few weeks ago my mom’s sister sent the baptism gown that I wore. Turns out it was my great grandfather’s. My grandfather wore it along with a few other kids on my mom’s side of the family, including me. I sent it with Husband’s mom to fix the snap in the back and get it all ironed out and ready to go, and now I’m just holding my breath in hopes that her pudgy little arms fit through the tiny arm holes.

She’s got a backup dress just in case.

It’s going to be a good weekend and it looks like the weather’s going to cooperate for an outside egg hunt and kids running all over the ranch.

So along with the baptism gown and Easter dress, I sent for a fleece snowsuit and sunhat for the little child so that she will be all ready to play outside too…because only in North Dakota does the weather require you to dress a kid in a snowsuit, beanie and sunhat.

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We went out yesterday in the 50+ degree weather to test it out because it’s my role in life to teach her that anything is possible with the right outfit.

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And that’s the news from Lake Wobegon.

Wishing you all a warm and lovely Easter Weekend. We’re having ham.

And beans.

And cheesy potatoes.

And a pink and purple cake.

And probably a bloody mary…if I have vodka…

Peace, Love and Television,

Edie and her mom

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Sunday Column: The boy on the hill

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Longtime blog readers might remember this story. I stumbled across it in the archives last week while I was revisiting some of my writing as I contemplate putting together a book.

Yes.  A book. Because I’m not sleeping anyway, so I might as well start another project.

Anyway, in those archives there’s lots about the weather and family and what the landscape looks like as it goes on changing every day.

And then there are little snippets of conversations, glimpses into our lives, past and present. These are my favorites.

Sunday Column: Family lore lingers around Sunday dinner table
by Jessie Veeder
3-20-16
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

Most Sundays we get together with Mom and Dad for dinner. After a week of work and crazy schedules, one of us decides that someone should cook a decent meal, pour some wine and make us all sit down.

Recently, Dad shared a story about his childhood that I’m sure I’ve heard dozens of times before. But it doesn’t matter.

I want to exist in this 10-minute vignette of my father that somehow sums up everything he became here on this landscape.

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I love the way he tells it, sitting at the end of the table, plate pushed forward, arms folded, coffee brewing for dessert. He looks to the ceiling as if he might catch a glimpse of that little boy, 4 years old with curly black hair riding bareback on a paint pony alongside his father. He throws his head back, squeezes his eyes shut and laughs.

It’s fall or summer, he can’t remember, but I imagine the leaves were just starting to turn as the pair trotted out of the barnyard, the little boy on his father’s trail moving east toward the reservation where the cattle graze in the summer.

He’s not sure why his father took him along for an almost 7-mile one-way cross-country trip. He thinks now that it might have been a little extreme, but ask him then and it was all he wanted to do. Leave him behind? He would have tried to follow.

The pastures out east, even today, are some of the most isolated and untouched places out here. The rolling buttes rise and fall for miles between fences into creek bottoms with black mud and cattails. The oak groves, bordered by thorny bull berry brush and thistle, begin to blend into one another and look the same.

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So there he was, a little boy clinging tight to that pony as it jumped over the creek and raced up side hills to keep up. And it was at the top of one of those rocky hills that he was told to stay and wait.

“Don’t move,” his father said as he made plans to check the tricky creek bottoms for cattle. “I’ll come back for you.”

So my father waited on his pony, wind flopping his hat and moving fluffy clouds over the buttes.

Dad searches for more recollection in his coffee cup and then rests his chin on his fist. He remembers he didn’t move, he just scanned the hills and squinted into the oak trees. And while he was peering into that horizon, holding the reins of his pony, someone did come over that hill. But it wasn’t his father. It was a girl with long black hair and legs dangling on each side of her bare-backed horse.

“Can you imagine what she thought?” my father chuckles at the memory of this girl, who he recalls was a teenager, but was probably only about 10 or 11 years old.

She asked him if he was OK and if he was lost. He told her that he wasn’t supposed to leave this spot. That his dad was coming back for him.

So she stayed with that little boy with curly hair on that hilltop, likely joining him in holding her breath and scanning the horizon for any sign of a cowboy hat.

He doesn’t remember how long she sat with him. When you’re 4 years old, 10 minutes can seem like hours.

But it doesn’t matter. She stayed until that little boy had an escort through the valleys and over the creeks, back west to the barnyard and to his mother waiting with canned meat, biscuits and a report of the day’s events.

So he told his mother his adventure, and for years to come this would be one of their family’s stories shared over and over again at Sunday meals, about a little boy who found a girlfriend out east on the hilltop.

And as my father protested, they would throw back their heads, close their eyes and laugh.

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Taxes, Netflix and what I learned this week…

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Every day with a baby in the house comes with a little life lesson.

That, for example, is one of those lessons. That there’s always a lesson.

And just when you think you have it figured out, you are reminded at 1 am when that baby is lying wide awake in her crib practicing her new pterodactyl noises, that you don’t.

And you will never have a full night’s sleep again.

Right now though, I’m holding out hope that just like her recent waking up every two hours in the night has thrown me for a loop, so soon will her sleeping through the night.

“Soon” being the word that I’m hanging on to by a thread.

 

Anyway, it’s Friday. As if that means anything to a mom who stays at home with the baby, except that, besides the gig I have on Saturday night, during the weekend I don’t have to try to work too.

Or do taxes.

Yup . This week was the week of the taxes. And lest I have mislead you to believe I am organized (which I’m pretty positive I haven’t) taxes, when you own a small business that sends you working in different venues across the state all year, mean you have to keep track of things like hotels, meals, miles, contract help and dozens of 1099s, and I suck at it.

I wish I lived in a world where I didn’t need to know what a 1099 is. But I don’t.

If only I had the self-discipline to stay on top of what I need to stay on top of to make taxes easier on myself. My system looks less like Quick Books and more like “put all the receipts and contracts and paperwork in a folder and sort through them the week before your tax appointment.”

I mean, I don’t even have my shit together enough to buy Quick Books. I need to get my shit together enough to buy Quick Books.

That was one realization I had this week.

Another? I eat way too many burgers while I’m on the road.

Like lots and lots of burgers.

Anyway, aside from the lessons my taxes tried to teach me this week, I also learned that baby Edie is one wiggle away from taking off out the door to college.

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She can’t be trusted alone on any surface, so we all prefer the floor.

And so I’ve learned I need to sweep more.

And mop once in a while.

And maybe use my burger money to hire a housekeeper…or maybe just tape a Swiffer pad to the baby and get her started early on chores.

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Anyway, aside from taxes, this week also found me in town at my Little Sister’s waiting on the shop to get done fixing my car, which also had a flat tire and three inches of prairie mud stuck to its finish, not that that’s anything new.

Little Sister has high speed Internet and Netflix, a luxury we apparently aren’t afforded if we choose to live in the boonies. And so I irresponsibly decided to use that Internet, not to get work done, but to watch whatever the hell I wanted. Because when you have access to high speed Internet, you can watch whatever the hell you want.

But it turns out I can’t handle that kind of power. I just hold the baby and flip through the choices and never make a decision. I become a channel flipping, time sucking zombie.

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I can’t handle the pressure.

And so maybe our lack of basic Netflix/Amazon Prime/Internet good enough that I could at least watch a YouTube clip, is a blessing in disguise.

I mean, how would I ever get my taxes done knowing that every season of the 1980s hit television show “The Wonder Years” is just waiting for me in that black box?

So there was another realization.

And the wind and the snow outside this week reminded us all that it’s not spring yet.

And this morning, as Edie’s eyes are about to pop wide open after her typical 10-minutes-or-less nap, I am reminded that I should use those ten minutes to fry and egg or something because I’m starving and might have missed my breakfast window.

Which reminds me that I need to get eggs.

At the grocery store.

Shit. I need to go to the grocery store.

And the post office.

Because, well, taxes…

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With a little help from the best…

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Edie’s getting a new perspective on the world these days.

The weather has been warmer and I’ve scheduled a few appearances out of town, so that means road time, restaurant time, hotel time, shopping time and the best part, auntie and gramma time.

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They are the only reasons there is even a prayer for me to continue to travel and sing with a baby in tow.

And last weekend they earned their keep as they endured loading all four of us and our suitcases, a guitar, a giant stroller, a car seat and thirty-seven changes of clothes for the baby into Husband’s giant pickup because the tire was low on my car. They held their pee without complaint for the three hour drive because the baby was sleeping and we didn’t want to disrupt a good thing only to have to pull off the interstate to feed her twenty miles from our destination just like I predicted.

Because a screaming baby can test even the most loving aunt, gramma and mother…

It’s a small price to pay to have the little cherub along though. Because 90% of the time she’s a drooly dream who makes everything harder and more fun. We got the hotel and just stared at her on the bed, hanging out in her diaper practicing rolling over.

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And leave it to Edie to wait until I’m gone to bust out her big tricks. While I was waiting to go on air at the North Dakota Today show the next morning, my little sister was texting me video from the hotel room of the little turkey rolling all over the bed.

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Apparently she needs a bigger audience.

And after one live TV appearance, one terrifying trip through the carwash with the giant pickup, one equally terrifying trip through the narrow Starbucks drive through, lunch, a nursing/puking/outfit changing session in the parking lot of the liquor store while my mom and sister shopped the buy one/get one sale…

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and a meltdown in the car seat from one end of town to another, we finally made it to the mall where we promised ourselves a quick trip.

Mom just needed to exchange some things. Little Sister just needed to look at some boots. I just needed a couple new shirts and ingredients to make some bars for the Fireman’s fundraiser the next day…

But also I needed makeup. And mom needed a giant pack of paper towels for the store and an equally giant box of toilet paper. And speaking of boxes, she might as well pick up that plastic box for the deck so Pops can store his grilling tools out of the weather. He just leaves them outside you know…

Oh, and I guess she also needed a bucket and a mop. Apparently it’s spring cleaning at the store…

And while she was trying to fit that all in the cart I figured I should pick up some more socks for Edie. And then pick up Edie out of the stroller. Because the stroller is a little too much like the carseat and, well, she has a short tolerance for such confinement.

So you can about picture it. Three women, one pushing an overflowing cart full of cleaning supplies, one pulling a stroller full of purses and coats instead of a baby like God intended and the other one wandering around aimlessly, a burp rag over her shoulder, holding the baby in one hand and a cell phone in the other, texting to locate the other two women she arrived with.

I swear, we passed two moms strolling tiny twin babies in the mall that day who both looked like they just arrived from a spa vacation compared to the hot mess we had going on.

And that was before we attempted to sort all our treasures in the checkout line and fit them into the pickup.

Really. Only the Veeder women could fill a one-ton, long box pickup to the brim after one overnight stay in the big town.

It’s like we never get off the ranch.

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So that was Friday.

Saturday mom came with me to take care of Edie while I sang at an event that evening, and Edie only screamed once for no apparent reason and didn’t require an outfit change, so that was good.

I however, emerged from a back room feeding to sign CDs with my dress hiked up past my hips, puke on my shoulder and my bra unlatched.

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I got distracted.

I’m sure no one noticed.

But then this was Sunday.

70-degree Sunday.

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Or as Little Sister declared as she walked the gravel road with my baby strapped like a little kangaroo to her body…”What Sundays are made for…”

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I couldn’t agree more.

And now it’s Monday. Time to rest up for the weekend.

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Because I’m raising a singing, kicking, screaming, wiggly, drooly, road warrior…with a little help from the best…

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Tutus, cousins and pipe cleaner glasses…

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IMG_9107Remember my three blonde nieces?

Well, it turns out we’re pretty popular with them these days, you know because we managed to produce the girl cousin they hoped and shopped for.

And it turns out, that little girl cousin sorta looks like them, especially when you add the pink tutu and headband.

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Anyway, they came for an impromptu visit last weekend and it was just as much the explosion of fun as they always bring, only we got to add an infant and a new puppy to the mix, so yeah, this is the place to be man…

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The first thing on their agenda was picking out Edie’s outfit,

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then on to pancakes,

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then it was time to play with the puppy

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and then, well, Edie needed to be dressed again, because the last outfit wasn’t pink or frilly enough apparently…

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And then the highlight of my weekend, when The Middle Niece whipped up a pair of pipe cleaner glasses, you know, so Edie fits in with her semi-blind cousins.

Oh. My. Gawd. I can’t stop laughing.

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Seriously. I think I peed a little (and not because I recently gave birth).

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No, there’s no shortage of cute and chaos around these parts.

Having family around at the ranch with this new little human is a big blur of love and kisses and weekend afternoons spent cuddling and fussing over her. Add to that the a couple puppies and, well, this is life these days…

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I still don’t know exactly how I’m going to handle a baby and a baby puppy, but we’re full-on bringing Dolly over to the house this weekend after I get back from a road trip with Mom, Little Sister and Edie to the big town. I’m starting to get back into playing some music now and will be on the North Dakota Today show on Friday morning, so at night I’ve been playing the guitar and practicing a bit while Edie kicks her legs and flings her arms and coos and works out some good gas bubbles for me.

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So while life is completely different it is also so much the same. Three months into parenthood and we’re not sure what we did before her, except it’s been established that road trips were a little easier.

Probably everything was easier, but who’s to say really when it doesn’t really matter.

If I know anything it’s that the best part of life happens in moments that look a lot like chaos.

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And now, in case you didn’t laugh hard enough the first time…

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Sunday Column: Two sisters, two puppies, a baby girl, a 5-year-old Batman and 100 crickets take a road trip.

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If there’s one thing I predicted correctly when it came to new motherhood it’s that all of the gadgets associated with keeping the baby happy, healthy, safe and alive would put make me crazy, sweaty, confused and hanging by a thread.

I could go on here with the examples of how I continue to find a way to lock the lid in the up position on the Diaper Genie, rendering it completely useless for its intended purposes, or how I inherited a bottle sanitizer without the directions so I just. Can’t. Even.  Or this weekend’s battle involving tears, pools of sweat and a nearly dislocated shoulder in an all out war to get the baby in one of those cool, hippy-mommy baby carriers I always envisioned myself sporting so we could go on a walk together for the love of fleece beanies and 60 degree February weather…

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But that’s nothing compared the the weekly battle with the car seat. No one in this house loves the car seat. Especially not the baby.

Because why, when we live at least a half hour away from anywhere we need to go, would God give me one of those babies who loves to snuggle and falls asleep as soon as she’s strapped in and rolling down the road? That would just be too easy on this momma.

Instead, I got one of those babies who likes to sprawl, arms above her head and legs pumping, one who would prefer to lay on her back and watch the world smile on her than be rocked in the chair in front of a TV tuned to the hunting channel like her dad hoped.

Maybe the next one.

But for now we have this…

And unless you’re sitting in the back seat with her inserting her pacifier on demand so that she might lull off to dreamland, or entertaining her enough to distract her from realizing her unjust confinement, traveling can be loud and, well, just like everything else these days, sweaty.

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So when I was charged with delivering the last of the puppies to a town two hours away from the ranch, I knew it was going to be an adventure. And when I heard Husband had to stay back because he was on call for work, and my 5-year-old nephew was coming for a sleepover, I knew I had to call in reinforcements…

Her name was Little Sister and after it was all was said and done, well, it might be a while before Edie get’s another cousin…

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Coming Home: Mastering routine of traveling with a baby is easier said than done
by Jessie Veeder
2-28-16
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

Two sisters, two puppies, a baby girl, a 5-year-old Batman and 100 crickets take a road trip.

That was last Saturday in a nutshell. Because the last of the 11 puppies were ready to be delivered to their new owners, and plans had been made to meet up in Minot, a good two-hour drive from the ranch.

These days, a two-hour drive might as well be across the country when you factor in the preparation needed to get me and my 3-month-old out the door, buckled in and rolling down the road anywhere close to a promised timeline.

Add to that my 5-year-old nephew who stayed for a sleepover and two wiggly, fluffy little cow dogs who needed to be retrieved from the barn, loaded in a crate and introduced to a moving vehicle on a full tummy. It became pretty clear I needed backup.

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So I called my little sister, who I recently discovered would do anything if it means she gets to hang out with the baby, even if it requires waking up at 7 a.m. on a Saturday with no guarantee that the babies, human or canine, won’t cry, puke or poop along the way.

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Now, I like to give myself credit for being a multitasker, and I’ve certainly put plenty of miles under these tires, but I’ve only been a mom for a couple of months, and to say that I’ve mastered the routine of packing up and traveling with a baby would be a lie. In all of the mom blogs and what-to-expect essays I’ve read, no one maps out what it really looks like to get you and an infant out the door with minimal puke or poop on your outfits.

Sometimes there just aren’t enough burp rags in the world.

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Anyway, here’s my opportunity to fill in the missing information: Life with an infant is a ticking time bomb that can be controlled by a meticulously managed process of wake up, change her, feed her and get her happy and comfortable enough so that maybe she’ll take a little nap while you take a quick shower, find something to wear, run a comb through your hair and, if you’re lucky, find some eyeliner while filling up a thermos full of hot water so that in a pinch you can warm a bottle because you get a 3-second window of time between a hundred smiles and a wail of hunger that needs immediate attention, always during a time it’s not so convenient to feed the baby the old-fashioned way.

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And then there’s planning for the blowout that may or may not happen when you’re in the middle of buying laundry detergent and more tiny socks. They don’t tell you that the world isn’t quite set up for spontaneous diaper changes. I mean, up until Edie shot a poop so explosive the aftermath reached well past her little shoulder blades while I was holding her in the plumbing section of Menards, I was completely unaware of the importance of the life-saving “family bathroom.”

These are the life lessons I have come to appreciate.

And last Saturday, I also came to appreciate a 5-year-old who can brush his own teeth, comb his own hair, dress himself in the clothes he wore the day before and provide running commentary on why the puppies were crying, why the baby was crying, why he doesn’t want the crying baby to come with him into McDonalds and why, for the love of chicken nuggets, the puppies barfed everywhere.

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Because they ate too much, he thought. And maybe I drove a little too crazy.

Crazy like his mother, my brave older sister, who, after the pukey puppies were delivered, the 5-year-old was filled with french fries, the baby fed, changed and almost sleeping in her car seat, and two lattes were purchased for an aunt who just spent half her paycheck on gifts for her niece and nephew and a frazzled mom who had to call her husband to figure out how to close the collapsible stroller, thought it would be a good time to text with a request to pick up 100 crickets at the pet store for the 5-year-old’s lizard, Frank. You know, if we hadn’t left yet.

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