Momma's Gone Mad!

Tell it Like it is

2011-09-16T13:38:00.004-11:00

It was a peaceful start to the day today with Dear Son still in HIS OWN bed at 8:30 this morning, sleeping soundly. We've only just recently gotten to the point where Dear Son stays in his own bed instead of wedging himself between the Husband and I in our bed sometime during the wee hours. I realize the child is only five, but not only is he big for his age, but sharing a bed with him is like sleeping with an octopus on crack. He manages to take up three quarters of the bed, starting in the middle and working out, and typically leaving me teetering for dear life on the edge of my own mattress. Not only that, he somehow he manages to kick me in the head all night, while simultaneously stealing the pillow out from under my head. It's a mystery. We have finally increased the incentive enough for him to remain in his own bed all night where he can kick himself in his own head to his heart's content.

Typically Dear Son is up before his big sister up in the morning, and we often have breakfast together, just the two of us, before I wake his sister. It's peaceful that way. If you've ever parented a spirited and precocious eight year old, you know what I'm taking about. This morning, however, it was Daughter with whom I shared breakfast before Son was up. I believe it may have been the first time this has ever happened (Daughter is about as much a morning person as I am). She was sweet as pie with her manners and overall presence as the two of us shared breakfast. I kissed her on the head and called her "my sweet girl," and in all the sweetness her eight-year-old self could muster, Daughter replied, "That's because Zach isn't up yet to fight with." Sweet girl, indeed. And she's also insightful and honest.

Twitterpated

2011-08-24T16:19:00.003-11:00

Dear Son: "Mommy, if I was old enough, I would marry you!"

Me: (swoon)

I have the sweetest little yellow haired boy on the planet.

I Believe I Can Fly!

2011-08-18T16:28:00.007-11:00

My Dear precocious Daughter turned eight a couple weeks ago. Eight years gone in a blink. Halfway to driving a car. Unbelievable! Of course, I still remember the day of her birth like it was yesterday. She caused a stir before she even entered the world. My girl-child likes her some drama. She wasn't moving satisfactorily when my pregnancy with her was six weeks from D Day--or should I say Bday (haha)? My doc put me on fetal monitoring every 72 hours. That means a trip to triage every three days. On this fateful morning, I had eight days left before she was supposed to arrive, and I went to triage for monitoring on the way to my first meeting of the day. I never made it to the meeting. Doc agreed that day that Baby wasn't moving enough, and we (that means "me") were going to have a baby that day. Drama.

I was shocked and caught totally off guard. I didn't even have "the bag" packed. I was supposed to wait a looooong time at home when I started labor (directions from my momma, the labor and delivery nurse, who warned me that first births can take a really looooooong time). Don't go to the hospital until the baby is crowning. Or something like that. Of course, I've been told the story many a time, about how I was nearly born in the backseat of the car in the middle of an Iowa snowstorm after Uncle R (my momma's brother) had a heck of a time getting her out of the upstairs bedroom where she was in major labor and flopping around like a fish--or something like that, the story goes. My dad was in the Navy and somewhere overseas at the time.

So there I was, intending to head to my morning meeting as soon as the needle on the monitor waved around satisfactorily and the Velcro belt around my belly was removed. The baby wasn't crowning yet. I don't think she had even "dropped." I hadn't had a single labor pain. And the doc said I was having this baby today. Next thing I knew I was being admitted and someone was poking an IV into my vein and my mom was at my side reminding me agin that this could be a looooong process. I was calling the husband telling him to pack that bag that I never got around to and bring me some movies for the loooooong wait. Oh, and by the way, you're having a baby. Today.

Couldn't have been an hour into this process when I noticed Baby's heartbeat was slowing waaaaay down. By the time I said something to my mom, still at my side, she already had a concerned look on her face. "Turn this way!" She ordered. Pause. "Turn that way!" She ordered. Pause. She pressed the nurses button (I was delivering at the hospital where my mom worked, but my mom wasn't on duty that day). My mom then opted not to wait for the nurse on duty to arrive. I'll spare you some detail, but she needed to remove the medication that had been inserted by my cervix to get the job rolling. Now we needed to stop the labor quicker than we had started it. I realized later that my daughter may not have made it if my mom hadn't been there (my nurse must have been off having coffee somewhere as she waited out the loooooooong process). Drama.

Doc arrives on the scene quickly while nurses and techs poke and prod me some more and someone thrusts a clipboard under my nose informing me that I need to sign it before I can go to the OR. I saw three pages of microscopic text, and was pretty sure that somewhere within I gave full consent for the medical personnel to do whatever they wanted to me with full agreement from me that I would never sue them for the mistakes they could be about to make-including that I could become paralyzed for life or die. We needed to do a c-section. I called my husband who had just finished getting me movies for the looooooong wait. I informed him that I just signed away all my rights and was at the mercy of the white coats wielding needles and knives. It hadn't clicked for me that there was any rush, so I didn't tell him to hurry. I hung up, and next thing I knew they were suiting up my mom to join us in the OR in case the husband didn't make it. Husband ended up arriving just as they began wheeling me out the door towards the OR. Drama.

I watched the ceiling as I was rolled through this corridor and that. It was a view I hadn't seen before, except for a dramatic camera shot here and there on the old tv series, "ER." I felt vulnerable and terrified. I didn't pay attention to this part in my birthing training. This isn't the route I was going to take. I was going to go into labor at home and wait a looooong time before I went to the hospital and deliver a baby without medication and without that baby being cut out of my abdomen. Doors swung open. People talked about me like I wasn't even in the room. Some man stood at my head unsmiling and later barked at me for fidgeting so much. I realized later he was the anesthesiologist. And he had a terrible bedside manner. I was flipped and turned and moved to a gurney that only half my body comfortably fit on. The "wings" came out and my arms were strapped down. There was a mask over my nose and mouth. I felt claustrophobic and waaaaay too vulnerable. This was seriously cramping my "gotta be in control" style. Sheet went up below my face. Doc asked if I could feel this. Then, could I feel that. Crap. I was freaking out. Not only could I not feel it, but my brain was telling my feet to move, and nothing was happening. Seriously freaking out. Panic. Drama. "No," I informed the doc. "I can't feel a thing." Crap. I can't feel a thing. I can't move.

The doc started narrating what she was doing. That she was cutting and which layer she was in. Crap. Shut up! I don't want to know this stuff. I can't feel a thing. I can't move. I'm laying on a 2x4 with my arms tied down. While I'm panicking, Mr. Personality Anesthesiologist is barking at me to be still, and the doc is informing me that she is cutting through my abdomen. And I had just signed away all my rights under great duress. Drama.

Then, "Oh, she's a cute one!" A baby crying. Lots of talking and hubub. In a few moments, they handed her to my husband. I could barely muster a care. I was shaking so bad that I was sure I would shake right off that 2x4 with my arms still tied down, and land on my face with my guts spilling out of my gaping belly. And then the doc narrated that she was sewing me up. Please stop telling me these details! It took forever. I gotta get outta here-but my legs won't move! Finally, the doc finishes. In rush the aides and nurses. They flip me this way and that off the 2x4. Oh crap-I'm looking at the blood splattered floor. Now I'm looking at the ceiling again! They're gonna drop me on my face for sure this time! Still can't move! Feet won't respond. Panic. Drama.

It was traumatic. But it didn't take long for me to fall in love with the tiniest person I had ever seen.

And the drama still hasn't stopped.

"I want' to be an inventor!" she recently announced, and then she began drawing intricate blue prints for various contraptions. I would find them all over the house. Detailed, complex robots. Crazy (but creative) ideas--one after another. This particular day (represented in the photographs), she decided to see if she could fly. She spent a good hour and a half creating gear and dreaming up how this could work. Cardboard wings. StuffMart bags around her arms and ankles for parachute action. Two balloons in her arms with clothespins holding them shut until she was ready to release the extra force of their air. Helmet, knee pads, elbow pads. And Crocs. That's an excellent choice in footwear when you are trying to fly. "I'm going to take a flying leap off the bed of the pickup!" she announced to her daddy and I. We convinced her that wouldn't be wise. But not wanting to break her spirit, we agreed to accompany her outdoors in the 105 degree heat to help her find something appropriate to jump off of and to cheer her on. She wanted to fly, and I figured the Wright Brothers had to start somewhere, too.

I won't have to tell you that she didn't get far. But if precociousness and perseverance is any indicator, eventually she will go far one way or another. It's been a wild ride. One that I hope stops its breakneck pace. Eight years went waaaaaaay too fast, and in the rush of the next eight I'm certain I will long for her to be satisfied to jump off of stuff in the backyard with homemade wings and shopping bags and balloons rather than trying to learn to drive a car. Slow down, Sweet Girl. You haven't let me catch my breath in eight years!

Turds Hanging from a Chandelier

2011-07-19T16:28:00.001-11:00

Dear Daughter: "I wish I was a hippie!"

Me: "I wish I was one, too. Only I don't have cool straight hippie hair, so I'd have to wear dreadlocks."

Dear Daughter: "Dreadlocks! No way! That looks like turds hanging from a chandelier!"

She does have a point.

He's Playing My Heart Strings Again

2011-07-16T11:11:00.003-11:00

Dear Son: Grabs my hand and whispers to me, "Mommy, when I grow up I'm going to live right next to you!"

Me: With heart full of warm fuzzies,"That would be wonderful, Sweet Boy! I will remind you of that when you turn 30!"

Real Life Word Problems

2011-07-11T16:54:00.003-11:00

Dear Daughter: "I'm getting excited about my birthday! It's only two weeks and ten days away!"

Me: "Well, you know ten days equals a week and three days, right?"

Dear Daughter: ...pause..."Okay, so it's three weeks and three days away then...."

(...sinking in...) "I think I liked it better the other way."

Conspiracy Theory

2011-07-10T08:19:00.007-11:00

There are bugs in this state that is considered "Midwest." Lots and lots of bugs. Large bugs. Large bugs that are noisy. Smallish bugs that are poisonous. Very large bugs that are completely benign (and even quiet). Most of our bugs, however, are really qualified to be bugs of a southern state caliber. And let me qualify something here--while this is considered a "Midwest" state, we live in the far southwest corner of this "Midwest" state, and this far southwest corner is a mere 30 minutes north of a "Southwest" state, and a mere 90-ish minutes west of a "Southwest" state. I don't think the bugs here understand that they are not occupying a southern state, or most certainly they would pack up and move a bit more south, or west of us. It must be Global Warming that is confusing them. I realize I post each year at about this time about the bugs where I live. But the bugs here this time of year really are headline worthy.

I won't make this another post about the thousands of massive buzzing green June Beetles that hatch and overrun our neck of the woods each summer for about three weeks. And yes, we are infested with those as I speak.

What I really want to comment on has to do the poisonous spiders that live in the area and which are apparently especially prolific this year, and which we recently discovered have set up house--in OUR house. These spiders are known as Brown Recluse, and in all the years I've lived here, I've never felt the need to know anything more except that such a "boogey-spider" existed in this area. I assumed them to be some big hairy largish critter with large googly eyes, and about the size of a tarantula, and living only in the backwoods of the remotest hunting and camping spots of the region. Or something like that. This was all I needed to know or believe about such spiders. Afterall, while I've been known to hang out in, and thoroughly ENJOY, the backwoods and remote hunting and camping spots in wilder places of the United States (such as the northmost points in Idaho), I didn't live among bugs there. Oh sure, there were Grizzly Bears and the like. But there weren't bugs. And if there were bugs, they must have been quite small, as I never saw them.

When our pastor was recently bit by a Brown Recluse spider, requiring a visit to the Emergency Room, I became morbidly curious. Google is equally handy and horrifying when a person is morbidly curious. I apparently now know more about the Brown Recluse spider than the professional exterminators who have come to our home recently, and who exterminate Brown Recluse for a living. After reciting a couple Brown Recluse facts, he informed me that he had learned something from me that day. That's when I decided I didn't need to talk to Google anymore about Brown Recluse spiders. Too much knowledge isn't always a good thing.

First of all, for those of you who are NOT familiar with these curiously NOT big hairy or googly-eyed spiders, here is a picture of what they look like (don't worry, I'll keep it a small picture):

See? It's not at all hairy. They don't even have barbs on their legs. And while they have six eyes (rather than the eight that spiders typically have) their eyes are not at all googly. And they are not even big. At full growth, their leg span is not typically much wider than a quarter, but they may only reach about dime width. That's a small specimen who can create quite a big injury. I'm not going to talk about the bites here. Suffice it to say that they are quite painful and can cause a big mess. In some cases even death, though more common a necrotic wound that will heal successfully if treated quickly. Nearly everyone I know around here either has been bit themselves, or know someone who has been bit.

After our pastor was recently bit and I launched my research, feeling relatively sure that I had never seen a spider like this, I happened by the sink in our basement kitchenette, where a spider caught my eye. I did a double take, as it looked exactly like the one in this picture. I stooped over as close as I dared, to examine the back of the critter to see if I could see the token "violin" shape. Indeed, there it was. I screamed for Dear Husband, who didn't spend near as much time or get nearly as close as I had to it in order to confirm the identification of it. He swooped in with a folded paper towel and squashed it, shrugging his shoulders and saying, "So?"

So? SO? SO???!!!!!!

Rest assured that I had already ordered some Catchmaster glue traps over the Internet, deciding that I was determined to see what we would catch. The traps arrived the day after Husband squashed the spider in the sink, saying, "So?" I ordered him to place them around the house. Lots of them. I had ordered 60 traps. Within a couple days, we started catching them. We went from not knowing what they looked like and never suspecting them in our home, to catching them by the dozens. I quickly made an appointment with the exterminator, and by the time he arrived, we had caught over 50.

At this point, we had spent two long days tearing apart our large basement storage area and garage. We store out of season clothing and linens in our storage room. And things were stored in cardboard boxes. Isn't that what storage rooms are for? Clothing and linens and boxes? I learned that is what Brown Recluse like to hide in. We tore it all apart, re-storing clothing in vacuum packed space bags and plastic bags with zip ties. We got rid of all the cardboard boxes. We went through everything. We only found about 2-3 Brown Recluse in the process. But in all, in the past three weeks, we have caught or killed about 75 of these critters. I've learned that they are known to be common HOUSE SPIDERS in this area, living in MOST-if not ALL-houses in this area. Who knew? Hairy backwoods spiders, indeeed.

If there can be any comfort in all of this, the vast majority of what we have caught are dime sized or even smaller. There have only been three or so quarter or larger sized. There have been many tiny ones the size of ants. I would guess we've had more than one relatively recent hatching, as we have juveniles at different stages. However, the exterminator told me that even the juveniles are capable of biting and causing damage to human bite victims.

And it provides a bit of comfort to know these spiders are called "Recluse" because they are, by nature, reclusive. They are shy, nocturnal predators that prefer to hide during the day and live in quiet undisturbed corners and crevices. They are not at all aggressive, and are incapable of biting unless their bodies are compressed, as would happen if sat upon, rolled over on in bed, or smashed against your skin when putting on clothing. So this is why bites often happen when you are sleeping at night. Yeah, suddenly my comfort level wanes a bit. In order to be bitten while sleeping at night, that means that the critter has to be IN your bed.

Most of what we've caught have been in the basement--but we have the kind of basement we LIVE in. Our family room, kitchenette, kids' playroom, office--all are in the basement. We have caught them in all of our bedrooms upstairs. We have 60 traps planted strategically around the entire 3,600 square footage of our home. I check them every morning and every night. I am the vacuum queen--vacuuming diligently in every corner and crevice regularly. I'm confident we are now having a dramatic decline, though I won't be satisfied until they are GONE from my home-something I've been cautioned is practically impossible in this area.

And common, indeed. So far, most people in this area I've commented to about our Brown Recluse battle respond that they have seen and killed them in their homes as well or are battling an infestation of their own.

I was even greeted by a largish Brown Recluse in the sink in the ladies' restroom at my office last week. I thought I was losing my mind. I'm pretty sure I muttered, "You gotta be kidding! These things must be following me!" before I wearily sought out one of the guys around the office to take care of it. Guys like to do those sorts of things--it feeds their egos.

Thankfully, no one in our household has been bitten. I'm vigilant to check bed sheets each night and rub the kids down with peppermint oil (speculated to be a deterrent). The exterminator will be back in two more weeks, and I will call him back every two weeks for as long as it takes.

I'll mention only briefly here that during the week that we caught the first 50 Brown Recluse in our home, I also killed a huge Black Widow in the garage. There are two poisonous spiders that live in this region--and both types apparently like our home.

I've thought a bit recently about moving back to the wilderness area of northern Idaho where I never saw bugs, and where I could leave Brown Recluse, massive golf-ball sized buzzing June Beetles, and other assorted very large and very noisy insects behind, and live peacefully in the mountain forests with the Grizzly Bears.

Rationalizing...

2011-07-03T14:09:00.004-11:00

While working on a little craft project with the kids today, I said we had to take it easy on the amount of tape we used as we were running low.

Daughter busily worked away, and I became distracted with something else until she spoke up as she taped a piece of paper down on her project, "I'm going to have to rationalize this since we are running out of tape!"

I'm pretty sure she meant that she needed to "ration" the tape, though from the looks of what she was creating, rationalizing could help a bit as well....

Turning Corners?

2011-06-30T17:04:00.005-11:00

My Dear Daughter, in all her almost-eight-years-old-ness, has developed a penchant for passive-aggressiveness, especially toward her little brother. If you're a mom, you know the kind I mean.... I'm talking about how she has this uncanny way of saying something to her brother under her breath or behind our backs or in just such a way that she knows will really get her brother's goat. The kind that allows her to follow up with overdone "innocent eyes" and an overdone, "What??!!!" followed by something like, "...all I said was that the show Zach wanted to watch on tv is a 'baby show'." And this really translates into, "You're a total stupid-head if you like to watch that show, so you'd better agree to watch what I want to watch." Dear Son knows that even if his big sister's words appear relatively innocuous, he senses that he's somehow been made fun, belittled, or manipulated. He doesn't have the verbal savvy his big sister has to express exactly WHY he gets so fed up in response to her, so he simply handles it by slugging her. Hard. Eight times in the face.

And some of the time, I confess, I feel like I really can't blame him. HOWEVER--we have been working on the hitting thing since the boy-child was about two years old. No consequence for this behavior ever mattered enough to short-circuit the brain pathway he had built around the idea that when his sister is subtly passive-aggressive or manipulative, the only way to feel better is to smack her. It's been a hard habit to break.

I've come down hard on them both this summer, deciding that it didn't matter if it cost them their entire summer if it had to; the subtle antagonizing and the not-so-subtle beat-the-crap-out-of-my-infuriating-sister behaviors had to stop.

I had long discussions with my girl-child about how she repeatedly sets her brother up to hit her. I had long discussions with my boy-child about how I know his sister knows which buttons to push, but that no matter how antagonizing she is being, it's not okay to haul off and deck her.

The kids lost a trip to play in the water fountains downtown and a trip to the water park another week, and still the rotten behaviors continued. Then one day I promised my little gamer boy-child that he could play Sonic on the Xbox after lunch that day, until I found out he had punched his sister in the face for annoying him earlier that morning. I looked at him sadly and calmly informed him that he was not going to get to play Sonic after lunch after all because he hit his sister, and that has GOT to stop. Whereas he was seemingly unfazed by the other lost privileges this summer so far, apparently this one hit home hard. He left the room silently, and a moment later I heard absolute wailing and sobbing coming from his bedroom. Even Daughter was caught off guard and ran to his side to see if he got hurt. It is not Son's M.O. to cry and wail when he doesn't get his way. He didn't throw a fit, he just sobbed like his little heart would never mend again. I stood my ground, sad as I was myself about the whole ordeal, stressing to the boy-child that he simply had to learn to stop hitting. Meanwhile his sister was impacted by how sad her little brother was and realized how she had again set him up. He asked her to stop doing something that was annoying, and she didn't. So he punched her in the face. I sternly reviewed with her how she is the older sister and how she behaves affects how her brother decides to behave, and how she repeatedly sets him up, blah blah blah blah.

Son, while absolutely devastated over losing Sonic for the day, was very well behaved the rest of the day and the next morning, and I rewarded him with an hour of Sonic that morning. Not an hour after he got to play Sonic, he hit his sister again. It was out of habit. He didn't think before acting and when I called him on it, it was like he hadn't even realized until that moment that he had hit his sister and thus blown it again. The consequences weren't pretty. The kids lost all summer privileges again for a few days. It was sobering for them. I emphasized how their summer is passing them by while they choose to treat each other rottenly.

And that was the last time such behavior happened. It's been 11 days with no bickering, passive-aggressiveness, hitting....My kids have become delightful to hang with. We've gone to the regular park and the inflatable park with friends and tomorrow we plan to have fun at the fountains with friends. Even just hanging around the house with them playing Go Fish! and Checkers has become enjoyable. I'm hoping (albeit cautiously) that we've finally turned a corner.... Hold your breath!

Highly Distracted

2011-06-01T17:47:00.002-11:00

I don't often find myself fumbling for words, and I've often been told that I actually tend to put them together quite well.

I've had trouble with my words and my focus over the past eleven days or so. We live approximately 60 miles from Joplin, MO. Yes, this is the place that has been all over the news for the past week and a half--where the EF5 tornado hit and demolished this city. I've read the twister described as a "multivortex monster" with winds over 200 mph. While we have no direct family or friends who lost lives in this storm, we do have friends whose families have lost their homes. And even if we didn't directly know any of the 140 lives lost, I have felt very somber and in a true "funk" since the event. Highly distracted. While we scurried to find cover as the tornado warnings entered our area, they soon passed, and we ran outside to see the beautiful, yet eerie, double rainbow that hung in the strangely colored sky. The entire double arch could be seen in our backyard. I didn't yet know the extent of the massive impact on our neighbors in Joplin--of the babies ripped from their mommy's arms in the 200 mph winds, the daddy found with his arms wrapped around his two young children (all of them found deceased and buried under the rubble in a local big chain store), of the teenager sucked out of the sunroof of his car and out of his father's grasp immediately following his high school graduation. I didn't yet know these or the countless other horrifying stories that would begin to surface in the following days. I only knew a twister had touched down in a community nearby, and that the sky looked weird.

I had never heard of a "rain wrapped tornado" in the many years that I've lived in this area. Tornadoes are somewhat common here, and in the past decade we have seen the paths of destruction that tornadoes make. We've seen houses destroyed just a few short miles from our own home. We've known of lives lost to tornadoes. Several times each spring, we scurry to our basement to watch the local weatherman narrate what is going on in the current weather patterns as tornado warnings post to our area. We perch, ready to crawl into a concrete room in the corner of the basement on a moment's notice. It's almost normal to us, in a weird sort of way. But I confess that even as we find ourselves huddled before the basement television, watching the weatherman and the storm-tracker radar, I don't often feel great concern. We get desensitized to it around here. Tornado sirens are common and most often don't amount to much more than several moments of watching the weatherman and then returning to our "regularly scheduled" lives. The night the tornado hit Joplin, we carried out this ritual of scurrying to the basement, yet something felt strangely different. Perhaps it was because we had just heard that a tornado hit Joplin minutes earlier. We had not yet heard how massive the tornado was. It had not yet been classified as an EF5. We had no idea that nearly 7,000 homes had been destroyed and that 140 people had died or would die in its wake. Perhaps this time felt strangely different because as I grabbed my cell phone on the way to the basement, I received a text from my pastor's wife asking if we were okay and telling us that our dear associate pastor's daughter had lost her home in Joplin. Whatever the reason that made this time strangely different, my heart pounded heavy until the warning lifted and we got the "all clear."

It could have been my community just as easily as Joplin. And I realize now that if it had, we would not have had time to take cover, as apparently this "rain wrapped" beast was not detected until it was upon Joplin. They had little to no warning. Five minutes, I've heard, but many didn't know anything about a tornado headed their way until it hit-blowing their home and family to the four corners. We, too, would have been blown apart, as we were outside building a patio, and only came in when the rain started and the sky began to look a little odd. I went about feeding the kids dinner as Dear Husband picked up outside. "Check the weather!" He called to me. I was busy putting something in the oven and decided I'd just let him check it when he came in. If we hadn't been blown apart while still outdoors working, we may have been blown apart while Husband was picking up tools and I was putting dinner in the oven. Or even while perched on the couch watching the weather, assuming we had time to dive for cover in the concrete closet.

Yes, it very well could have been us. My heart breaks over and over again for the loss of our neighbors to the west. The aching arms of moms and dads for their lost children and the aching arms of spouses for their partners. Wondering how it must feel to be sitting down to dinner with your family one moment and the next moment have no home or family left. Wondering how a person picks up and goes on after that. It's overwhelming. Word's can't even begin to make sense of it, and in these moments, I am thankful for my faith in knowing I have a God in Heaven whose grace and mercy abounds even in the midst of stuff we don't understand.

...and I'm thankful He can interpret the groaning I feel inside that I can't quite justify with words.

Tender Life Lessons

2011-04-21T17:39:00.006-11:00

A couple weeks ago my parents joined us for the wee ones' Saturday soccer games. Between the two games we had just enough time to give our patronage to Small Town Pizza Joint. The conversation turned to Great Grandma H, who turned 93 last November. Dear Dad offered the information that she is not doing so well, has really lost quality of life the past year, and has begun to comment that she is "ready to go 'home'." It's been a year and a half since Dear Husband and I and the kiddos have gone to visit her eight hours away at her assisted living facility, but Dear Daughter remembers the visit well. I talked some with Dear Dad about what I might be able to mail her to lift her spirits, and then the conversation was lost as we moved on from pizza for lunch to the final soccer game.

Later that day, I was working out in the garden, pulling the weeds and preparing it for the new spring planting. Dear Daughter came out to join me with her shovel, proud that she had figured out how to "chop a box" around the weeds, thus being able to pull them up, roots and all. As we worked in the warm spring sunshine, Dear Daughter's wheels were turning, as they so often do. "Mommy, that's really sad about Great Grandma-that she is sad and wants to go home. But I can understand why she feels that way. I mean, she has been at the nursing home for a really long time, and I can understand why she wants to go back to her old home." Clearly this had been eating at her since she overheard the conversation over pizza a few hours earlier.

I was moved by her interpretation and felt a bit sadder myself as I realized that I needed to explain further to my sweet daughter. "Well, Honey, Great Grandma didn't mean that she is ready to go to her old home...." (pause...as I try to find sensitive, but more accurate wording) "...Great Grandma meant that she is feeling ready to go 'home' to be with Jesus." A long pause followed. Dear Daughter stopped digging and leaned on her shovel as the realization sunk in.

"But why, Mommy?"

"Well, Sweetie, she is just getting really tired and worn out now that she is 93 years old. She can't see very well anymore, and she can't hear very well anymore, and her back hurts her all the time because of her Osteoporosis, and she can't move very well, and she doesn't always remember stuff very well anymore, and...well...imagine how it would feel to just sit in your chair all day and not be able to hear, see, or move or think real clearly anymore. She's had a long, good life, and her husband, Great Grandpa, has been with Jesus for ten years already, and she's just ready to go there, too. You know, in Heaven she won't be so tired and sore and she'll be able to hear and see and move perfectly. So you can imagine, can't you, why she might be looking forward to just going to be with Jesus where everything is perfect?"

Long pause.

"Yeah, I guess I can understand that. But it still feels sad that she is feeling that way."

It was one of those hard facts of life that I rather hated for my tender child to be learning, but from which I knew I could not shelter her. This is my last living grandparent, and her last living great grandparent.

We silently, solemnly went back to our weeding.

"You know, since you are learning to write letters properly in school, you could write Great Grandma a letter any time you would like. And she would love to have a picture to go with it. And I plan to pick up some chocolates next time I go to the store. She loves chocolates. And we can mail all those things with some pictures of you and Zach's soccer games to her. I know she would like that!"

Dear Daughter lifted her face to look in mine. The cloudiness began to fade from her eyes as the sparkle returned.

"That's a good idea! I think I will go write her a letter right now!"

And away she went indoors to work for the next hour on a letter about her little seven-year-old life and a picture of a horse galloping gaily in the springtime. I assembled the package over the next couple days, with the chocolates and photos that I promised along with her letter and picture. I let her write the address across the package in her neatest not-quite-eight-years-old scrawl, and put her return address in the corner. And then she was okay again for a little while.

Later that evening after the lights were turned out at bedtime, we had one of those times that we contemplated the meaning of life as we snuggled closely under the blankets in her narrow twin bed. "I still feel sad about Great Grandma and how she is feeling," her little voice trembled in the darkness. And we talked about it some more, and what it all means, as her tears fell and she sniffled in the dark, and then my tears fell and I sniffled, too.

Mish Mash

2011-04-21T17:32:00.003-11:00

First of all, can I just say that Blogger has come a long long long way since I first started this relationship in 2004? It's amazing how little html or web design language or knowledge a person now needs to do this gig. I used to have to go into the actual code to change color, font, page design, column width, etc. Now I only have to click this, click that, try this or that out in instant real time application before I commit to it, and when I've clicked around and played around enough to be satisfied, I just click the option that basically says, "Yeah--go ahead and do that" and voila!

I'm pleased to say that the Monkey Virus is largely gone now, save for the radiating pain in my teeth. Bizarre, yes. Sinus infection, no. All I know is that my Dear Mother had this illness a few weeks ago and also admitted to painful teeth.

What I really want to say tonight really should not go into in a "mish mash" sort of piece, so I am going to wrap up the "mish mash" in this post and move on to something real next....

The Funk

2011-04-19T16:31:00.002-11:00

What is this illness that plagues our household the past two weeks? I usually get one or two colds each year, usually have one or two really bad days during these colds and then I'm back at the top of my game. This time I must have contracted some rare monkey virus or something, and sadly, Dear Daughter has been plagued with the same. I've been miserable for nine days and counting. Just when I think I'm pulling through, I find myself back in bed, unable to function. My head is throbbing, the snot is running, and I feel like I got run over by a steamroller. Dear Son started us out a couple weeks ago with my typical cold M.O. He was miserable for a day with a low fever and loss of appetite and energy and then the next day he was his old self. Oh what I wouldn't give right now to be my "old self." I finally told Dear Husband tonight just to take me out in the backyard and shoot me and put me out of my misery. Bleh!

Where Have I Been?

2011-04-17T13:36:00.025-11:00

It's been so long since I came here that I actually forgot both my login username AND my password.... *sigh* There's been many a time that I thought about how long it's been, and then I just could never manage to move it high enough up on my priority list. Lots of crazy life has been happening.

Shortly after my last post in October, we enjoyed a blissful 10 days oceanfront in Yachats, Oregon...gazing at the amazing Pacific Ocean sunsets in our backyard, lots of beach combing, time with cousins (first time the kids met their cousins), time with Grandpa and Grandma M.

It was also the kids' first time on an airplane. We had a couple layovers, which required the kids to entertain themselves in the airports--something that is never too challenging for them, easily amused as they are.

We also visited Heceta Head lighthouse (also the scene of my first date with Dear Husband 15 years ag0), Yaquina Head Lighthouse-where we also watched dozens of whales spouting, fluking, and breaching-Munson Falls (highest waterfall in the coastal mountain range), Tillamook cheese factory, stuck our fingers in lots of tide pools, and watched the sea lions at Newport (always endlessly amusing).

After returning from this amazing family vacation, most of us got really ill with some exotic bug we picked up at one of the airports. This pretty much overshadowed Halloween and brought us close to Thanksgiving.

Dear Son turned 5 in December and insisted on a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese (shudder), and the holidays pretty much passed in a blur. I'm not exactly sure what else has happened in the past several months, but we have had an outstanding year of homeschooling (with 5 weeks left in our year).

Dear Son has actually completed Kindergarten now and is reading, and doing simple addition and subtraction. Dear Daughter is finishing second grade, and has learned about the birth of the United States, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the presidencies of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, the inventions of Benjamin Franklin and Eli Whitney, the beginning and ending of slavery, the Louisiana Purchase and the Oregon Trail, and thorough US geography. She is writing in cursive and doing multiplication. Yes, it has been an awesome school year!

I've been swamped with work. The business never stops rolling in and I never have enough time to manage all the work, which is a good problem to have. It also requires discipline, boundaries, and organization, not to mention perseverance and patience and lots of tolerance to juggle this along with the homeschooling. Much of the time I manage it with great skill and grace. The rest of the time (when I get overwhelmed) I curl up in a ball in the corner and babble incoherently for a few hours before I pull it together again and go on.

And so blogging has quite appropriately taken a backseat the past months as I focused on such things as educating the wee ones and juggling my counseling practice--and squeezing in a load of laundry and a round of vacuuming whenever I got the chance. As I see this school year to a close with the kids in a few weeks, I am hopeful to return here to log some more simple pleasures and memories. It's a great way to reflect, log the blessings in our lives, and write off some steam.

It's a busy life, but it's a good life. Today was the second mowing of the year, and as I buzzed around the five acres of grass for two hours on the mower, I pondered the meaning of life. It's my favorite thing to do when I get those blissful two hours to let my mind wander guilt-free and I can't hear any "Mommy, Mommy!" over the drone of the mower engine. As I pondered this afternoon, I thoughts of what a good life this is. I love my independence. I love to be self-employed and answer to no one but myself as I manage my career and do business on my own terms. I love the freedom to school our children and teach them at their own pace, to thrill in the joy of learning with them, and instill excellent character and morals in their little lives. I love to look out our windows and see open space, smell fresh air, and hear tree frogs and coyotes howl in our backyard at night. I love to watch the deer munch our lawn, grow our own vegetables, raise our own chickens and gather eggs with the kids each day.

It's a good life. A simple life, but a life rich in rewards.

Looking at the Bright Side...

2010-10-01T17:24:00.006-11:00

The chicken coop and woodshed project is done and we are now on to cleaning up a massive pile of logs that Dear Husband decided to pay someone to haul and dump in the side yard early last May. Yes, I said early last May. I have looked out the kitchen window onto a 15'x35' pile of logs for the past FIVE months. He apparently saw its potential as firewood. I, on the other hand, have only observed that it is a complete and total eyesore. An embarrassment at times. It sometimes reminds me of a time when I was in late grade school years and my dad decided to buy an old classic VW Beetle. Included in this purchase was a second VW Beetle that did not have any potential as a car that could actually drive. No, the second Beetle was solely for parts for the one that could (usually) have the potential to drive. And so there the "parts car" sat alongside the garage. My dad, quite pleased with himself. My mom, notsomuch.

And so the pile of logs.... Because I want this mess cleaned up, and because I actually enjoy physical and manual labor, and because I've been bored ever since I finished roofing the shed/chicken coop, AND because I love to run a chainsaw, I have been out helping Husband clean up the overgrown mess of wood that now has a place to be stacked (the new woodshed, of course). We wouldn't want "homeless wood" now, would we?

Until about two months ago, I wouldn't have known a Black Widow spider if one would have approached me and asked to shake my hand. I knew they existed around here, but that was in rumor only as far as I was concerned.

Then one day I had a client inform me that she spied a Black Widow on the sidewalk immediately in front of the door to my office building. But she reassured me that she killed it. Being a bit of an arachnaphobe, I was relieved to know that she had killed it. I did ask her how she knew it was a Black Widow, and she said it was black with the telltale red hourglass on it's belly. I actually did not know this information about how to identify a Black Widow, and never had the need to, as I avoid all things spider as much as possible.

A few weeks later I took the kiddos on a field trip to the local nature center, and on display was a Black Widow spider, and a Brown Recluse spider--the only two poisonous spiders that I am aware of that live in this area. I might add that the Wolf spider is much huger and much uglier, but not poisonous. I might also add that until very recently, I did not know that there is also a type of Tarantula that lives in this state. I think I am supposed to be reassured by the fact that this kind of Tarantula is not poisonous. However, I am really not at all consoled, as it is still a huge hairy spider.

A few nights ago I was digging my way through the wood pile and cleaning up debris when I dropped a pretty good size piece of bark that had peeled off a log in the pile. On the underside, which landed up, was a very large Black Widow spider. I recognized it immediately with it's fat round shiny black body, and it was turned at just such an angle that I could see the red hourglass. AND there were two largish egg sacs near it as well. I later learned that these egg sacs each hold approximately 750 babies waiting to hatch. That's 1,500 Black Widow spiders, my friends!

I did what any sensible woman would do whether she is wielding a chainsaw or not: I put down the saw., tried not to pee my pants, and yelled frantically for my husband to come and save me.

I can't help now looking at this still massive pile of logs as the absolute perfect home for thousands of Black Widows and Brown Recluses and whatever number of "non-lethal," but nonetheless horrifying, creatures certainly make it their home. But I try to stay focused on the bright side, which is that if we ever can get the mess cleaned up, chopped and stacked, even if I get bitten by a poisonous spider in the process--one with the potential to kill (don't bother trying to convince me that the odds of dying from such a bite are remote)--at least I will be warm as I lay dying by the roaring fire in the wood stove.

Treasured Memories

2010-08-19T16:05:00.002-11:00

I recently introduced Dear Daughter to Beezus and Ramona, one of my favorite childhood novels. We reached the end last night, in which Beezus is relieved and fascinated to learn that her mother and Aunt Beatrice had a tenuous relationship as children but are now great friends as grown ups and can even laugh about the rotten things the younger Beatrice did to her older sister during their childhood.

As I turned out the light to tuck Daughter in, I commented that one day she and her little brother would be great friends and would laugh at some of the things that he does to antagonize her now. Dear Daughter quickly said, "Yeah! And there are already some memories of Zachy that I treasure!" I giggled at my just-turned-seven year old for her word choice of "treasure" and then I said, "Really? Like what?" There was a really looooooong silence and some crickets chirping in the darkness. I finally asked, "What's the matter? Can't you think of anything?" To which she meekly replied, "No."

So the offenses are apparently still rather raw for her, but I'm holding out hope that twenty more years might heal the wounds.

No Frills

2010-08-14T17:03:00.009-11:00

Perhaps I should blame myself for Dear Daughter's slob-ness. After all, I have never been the pink frilly type. Unlike many proud pregnant parents-to-be who are thrilled to be bringing a little baby girl into the world, we did not paint the nursery pink and buy every girly ruffle and fluff we could find. No, I painted the nursery green and didn't buy a single pink item.

Oh, we were excited to be having a girl, and there was no doubt about that. After all, the odds were stacked against us. Historically, the sperm on the husband's side of the family are gender-biased towards boys. I had resolved myself that despite our crazy attempts to conceive during the window of time that science has suggested improves the odds of a girl, we were likely to bring a boy into the world. Dear Husband's brother had managed to sire three boys already and a fourth boy would come later.

The ultrasound technician seemed to have no question whatsoever. It was a girl. I was beside myself giddy over this concept. A baby girl: my dream come true.

Despite my "never buy a pink frilly thing" attitude, there were many in the family that doted on my baby girl with frilly stuff. Who can blame them? They had been repressed, after all, with no girls to go ga-ga over. I was the one to hesitate to dress Dear Daughter in skirts and gowns and such, especially in the toddler stage. They just seemed so impractical--difficult to play in or even walk in sometimes. I must admit, however, that I adored the matching hats, shoes, and bags that came with some of these outfits. I can still remember my little diva, at two years of age, grabbing her hat and matching purse (and often matching sunglasses, thanks to Great Aunt Pat) each time we were heading out of the house. She was the first to the door, and looking over her shoulder with a grin and eager anticipation, she would say, "Let's go!"

To this day, my little girl, who turned seven just 10 days ago, still loves to dress up. She pleads with me to buy her fancy dresses in the stores and loves to look all pretty. I indulge her at times with the fancy dresses and shoes, but it always seems so ironic. The truth of this matter is that my girl-child is...a slob!

Before you start tsk-ing me, let me defend my statements! While we chose "Grace" for the middle name of this treasured little girl, she is generally about as clumsy as a child could be. She trips over flat surfaces and imaginary cracks in the ground. She spontaneously falls off her chair or out of bed. She lands on her head when she falls off her bike.

Even though Dear Daughter is a full 28 months (that's a full two years and four months) older than Dear Son, it is Daughter's chair that is surrounded by food and stains after a meal and not Son's. And it's Daughter whose clothing is full of stains and not Son's. It's Daughter's pants that have ripped holes and grass stains, and not Son's.

She wants to be a princess, and in her heart she is. But bless that same little heart if in reality she is so much less than polished! She would go days without brushing her hair if I didn't remind her. She nearly always has food or ketchup stuck to her face, and sometimes in her hair. Her clothing, as I previously described, is always stained or ripped. She doesn't bother to check herself to see that her clothing hangs straight or gets tucked in neatly, so it is usually hanging this way or that and crumpled and crooked. She is a nose picker no matter how much I nag her to use a tissue. She forgets to sit "ladylike" when she does wear a dress. And she apparently doesn't even notice when her feet smell so bad that she can clear a room. If it's pointed out to her, she just giggles and thinks it's really funny. She also thinks it's funny to belch and fart like a sailor. I console myself that if nothing changes, at least we won't have to worry about beating the boys off of her in a few years.

But oh how she longs to be princess-y.

Recently the daughter of a good friend of ours got married and asked Dear Daughter to be her flower girl. Dear Daughter couldn't have been more pleased about this whole thing. She got to pick out a gorgeous floor length gown and get all primped and prettied up and carry a lovely white satin basket and sprinkle flower petals. What more could any little girl want? She was on cloud nine, and she ended up pulling it off well. It was an outdoor wedding, and I was nervous for many reasons. The most obvious concern was that she would be wearing a white dress. Somehow, somewhere I was sure she would come up with some grape juice and spill it down the front of her dress before the ceremony. She had to walk down several yards of stairs in her floor length gown as she sprinkled flower petals. My girl, who trips on a flat surface. Also, being an outdoor wedding, there was mud and dirt and grass to attract her. They wanted her hair done and dressed for pictures by 3:00 even though the ceremony didn't start until 7:00. So I hovered around her constantly for those four hours. We made it, with only a tiny stain that no one could notice. When Daughter had made her way down the stairs and the ceremony had begun, Dear Husband leaned over and whispered in my ear, "Well, she's made it halfway through without tripping...." Indeed. It was a proud moment for her daddy and I.

With all that said, what happened today really should not be a surprise at all. Daughter has made mud pies before. Within reason, I just let her be. It was a hot, dry, day. I let her play in the sand and dirt and make a mud pie while I weeded the garden. I reasoned that it was not like that day that I let her stomp in the rain in her rain boots and next thing I knew she had mud sprayed to the top of her head and all across her face.

The neighbor boy had come over to play, and he is a good two and a half years older than my girl. We tend to supervise well when he comes over, for a variety of reasons that I won't describe at the moment. However, as the kids have gotten older, we've tended to relax just a bit on the eagle eye attention when they are all playing. I was busy hanging clothes on the clothesline and only aware that the kids, Daughter, Son, and the neighbor boy, were all playing well together in the backyard. Before I had brought the clothes outside I had noticed the sound of the outside water spigot being turned on and off. I wasn't concerned; it was really hot and I had previously told the kids they could play in the water. As I pinned the clothes to the line I heard the kids talking about being Oompah Loompah's and I still didn't pay too much attention. Then I heard more talk that made me realize that the kids were playing "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." I got curious now, and turned my attention to the backyard at what the kids were doing.

What I saw was a four foot mud puddle with shovels and molds and stuff buried in the mud and the neighbor boy with his hands buried up the elbows in mud, but not a bit of mud anywhere on his clothing. I'm still not sure how he did that. Dear Son had not a bit of mud on him at all. Apparently he was assigned to stand by the spigot and turn the water on and off on command. And then there was Daughter. She was muddy from head to toe. She had mud in her hair and across her face, on her shoulders and chest. Her legs and feet were covered, and she looked like she may very well have been rolling in it just like a little piggy. As usual, she was oblivious to her slob-ness. She acted like she didn't know what I was talking about when I exclaimed about the mud from head to toe. The neighbor boy had made a fast exit, stage left as I hosed Daughter down in the yard before she was even allowed in the house for a bath. She confirmed that they were playing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and didn't understand at all what the issue was with her four foot mud puddle, the shovels and toys and random objects planted in the mud hole, and the mud that caked her from head to toe. My boy child had ducked out stage right at the same time that the neighbor boy ducked out stage left. I've never seen kids scatter like cockroaches that quickly. I found Son inside the house, completely spotless without a bit of mud on his entire body, as his sister passed through the room on her way to the bathtub. Despite the hose down outside, she was still completely unrecognizable.

That's my girl.

Solitude

2010-07-20T17:11:00.007-11:00

Yeah...so I'm back on FaceBook. I reconnected with an old high school friend via FB a few months ago and it turns out she has a son 2 1/2 weeks older than my daughter. She also got married three months after I did in 1997. Anyway, she was the only FB friend I had who actually kept my email address and dropped me a line directly after I left FB. We decided since we now live within 25 miles of each other that we really needed to get together, which we did. Then she called me to tell me that there were old high school pics of me posted on FB and she would try to forward them to me since I'm not on FB anymore. So I caved out of curiosity and I logged back in to FB after about 6-8 weeks of swearing off of it. So far, though, self-discipline has been fairly good. I had to post some old pics myself. Something about a 20 year high school reunion in a few weeks. I'm not going, btw. But I've had such a great time laughing about the good ol' days with my old friend. We've actually gotten together twice now, and the kids have had fun playing while we talk about things of 20 years ago.

*************************************************************************************************

I'm enjoying the 15 pounds lost, but getting desperate for the next 12. I was recently down 17 pounds just long enough to get really really excited, and then those two last pounds came back way too fast. *sigh* Still haven't resolved all my metabolic issues, heading to the doc to plead for some Cytomel next. Apparently I messed myself up a bit roofing and gardening and mowing in the heat over the past few weeks. Nutrionist says my electrolytes are way off right now and also finally decided that since my liver is not straightening up enough with any of our approaches, I should see if my doc will agree to adding the Cytomel. We'll see. Meanwhile, since working outside in the heat last weekend, I've become as bloated as a beached whale; I'm miserable. We'll see if the coconut water my nutritionist recommended to replace electrolytes will soon have me peeing a river. He said if we can get my liver happy and get me balanced, my goal of losing those last pounds can really become a reality. I've been at a near standstill the past two months and discouragement is setting in.

*************************************************************************************************

Life is good right now. I'm enjoying a calm that's been too long in coming. Summer has been good. Enjoying the lazy, free flowing days with the kids has been great. I'm enjoying the kids, period. All the hype of back-to-school is bringing me down. I'm not ready. We're still enjoying the pool and water fights with the garden hose, getting together for play dates with friends, staying up late and sleeping in, and lots more.

Tonight I came home from work and was greeted by my daughter running into my arms and squealing that she loves me. Minutes later my son ran up the stairs yelling, "Mommy???!!!" before landing on me with a big hug of his own. It had only been five hours since I saw them last. They are great kids. As I grabbed my late night snack that takes the place of dinner when I work late, I mentioned to Dear Son that there was an avocado on the counter we were going to have to eat tomorrow. He insisted he wanted it now. "Do you want slices or guacamole?" I asked. "Guacamole" he answered. Of course. He wasted no time getting the lime juice out of the fridge and set it on the counter where I was working with a "Here!" The kid loves guacamole so much that he even knows how to make it. I handed the bowl to him when it was ready along with some chips to dip, and his face disappeared into the bowl for awhile. I listened to his crunching and munching while he downed the entire bowl of guacamole by himself. He turned around when he was done and flashed me a double-dimple grin when he realized I was watching him. There's just something about his yellow curly head that makes it hard for me to resist squeezing him and kissing him.

Daughter was in her room cleaning up and making her bed to please me.

There was no fighting between them tonight. It was blissful. I dared to hope that we've turned a corner. In the next breath I gently cautioned myself not to get my hopes up.

Even the June Beetles are gone now. No more dive bombing 747's until next summer.

Yes, Life is good now. I can just about manage everything and even have time to breathe some evenings. Can't I just freeze frame and live right in this place forever?

Snippets From Our Life

2010-07-09T17:39:00.020-11:00

If you were a FaceBook friend of mine, I hope you realize I didn't delete you (or technically your friendship either). I deleted myself. I developed a love-hate relationship over the past year and a half with FaceBook that turned to primarily hate the last six to eight months. Launching a FaceBook page was just a bit beyond my comfort zone in the first place. I'm a private person. I'm not one of those people who feels compelled to tell the entire world publicly what I ate for lunch or what random thought is running through my head at every moment. There were times I would go days and sometimes weeks without logging on, but then when I checked in I felt compelled to catch up and see what everyone else ate for lunch or randomly thought at every moment for the previous two weeks. I'm seriously OCD like that. Before I knew it I would lose ninety minutes with nothing to show for it...except knowing what all my friends ate for lunch over the past two weeks.

There were other periods of time that I couldn't muster the self-discipline not to check in every day. I do a lot of work on the computer. My counseling practice is all electronic except for the part about face to face sessions. What people don't realize is that there is a lot more to be done for each of those fifty minute hours than just the fifty minutes of chat time. My client intakes, insurance info, treatment notes, treatment plans, and billing records are done and kept electronically. My calendar is managed electronically. Sometimes (most all the time) when I flip open my laptop it's because I need to be doing the electronic work that goes along with each of those fifty minute hours. I've never been much of a procrastinator until the past year when I found myself doing everything possible electronically EXCEPT the work I needed to do. I couldn't quite resist clicking that link to FaceBook and reading about everyone's lunch, or checking all of my email accounts to see if there was anything new I needed to know, or perusing Craigslist for bargains, ...checking the weather...reading the handful of blogs I still follow...shopping via Internet.... I was highly distracted and something had to give; it was FaceBook. I told myself I would drop it for a week or two and if I ever still had enough down time to browse everyone's lunch menu I would re-instate it. Two weeks passed, then three, four...and I lost count. Whenever I thought about FaceBook, something else came up quickly enough that I never go to it. FaceBook became what it was supposed to be for me in the first place: not a priority among things that were much greater priorities. So please don't take it personally if you were on my friends list. As I said, I didn't drop "you," I dropped FaceBook. If you were a FaceBook friend, feel free email me directly instead; I'm still highly distracted by that.

****************************************************************************************************************

Yesterday I spoke to the editor of a local paper in which I advertise my counseling practice. We were discussing the renewal of my ad. They've published my articles a couple times in the past year as well. The most recent one was directly solicited of me by the chief editor to whom I was speaking yesterday. He had asked me last spring if I would write an article for them focusing on why, during these challenging times in our country, do some people lose it and shoot themselves, shoot their families, shoot their neighborhoods, or do other crazy random things while others maintain their sense of "okayness" and well being. He gave me up to 250 words to write this article. You know by now that I am long winded. If I had been given a two page spread, I could have cranked this article out easily in an hour or two. Writing what was requested from me in 250 words took me nearly the entire weekend.

Yesterday the editor referenced that article, and informed me that he appreciated that he didn't have to do any editing on it; he just cut and pasted it right in. He said he could tell I had writing experience because of this and because I got a great point across in very few words. He said that good writers can do that and that I did it well. That made my day.

*********************************************************************************************************

I had a flashback tonight that was contained within a flashforward. As I cleaned up the dishes from the evening meal, I saw my four and a half year old boy-child outside the kitchen window. He was half galloping half running exuberantly out to the chicken-coop-in-progress to hang with his daddy. I watched his yellow curls bounce with excitement as he ran, and I had a flashforward about 14 years in the future to a time when my boy-child doesn't half gallop half run anymore. I saw myself 14 years in the future standing at the same kitchen window and watching my nearly grown boy walking across the yard while having a flashback of today when he was still my four and a half year old boy-child half running half galloping across the yard to see his daddy.

My heart hurt a bit, and I had to resist running after him to sweep him up in my arms and smothering him in kisses while I still can.

*************************************************************************************************************

I took my almost seven year old girl-child shopping today for some new clothes. She is literally busting out of all her clothes, and it's killing me. We bought some size 8's some size 10's. TEN! She is just about to turn seven and she is beginning to wear some size TEN clothing.

She ran around to racks of clothing that looked very teenager-ish. The styles were made in her size, and many were inappropriate for teens or women of any age, let alone for a six year old. She grabbed various things telling me she liked this and like that while I was choosing some other pieces for her. She protested a bit to some of my choices and argued with me that some shorts I said were too short were not too short as far as she is concerned. "You are still SIX years old!" I exclaimed as a sales associate passed by. She smirked over her shoulder good naturedly towards me and said something to the effect of how she seemed a bit young to be getting into clothing arguments with me already. I only paused a moment in my mind to realize the dread I already feel about parenting my girl-child through the teenage years to come.

****************************************************************************************************

My metabolism is still sluggish. My thyroid is getting better, though. Actually, my nutrition consultant said my thyroid is doing quite well now, but my liver is still suffering, and that is what is bringing my thyroid down. I've hit a wall with the weight loss after reaching a 17 pound loss a week ago. I bounced up four pounds in a few days and then down two again. I haven't lost anything significant in two moths. I'm discouraged except that I took measurements today. While I haven't lost any notable pounds in the last two months, I've lost another inch from the waist and inch and a half from the hips and inch from the thighs. My nutrition consultant said my body would change shape as I follow what he is teaching me and that it may not result in pounds lost, but will result in a mass change. While I'm excited to have lost a total of 3 1/2 inches from my hips, 3 inches from my waist, and 2 inches from my thighs since March, I can only lay real claim to a loss of 14-16 pounds depending on the day. Oddly, it hasn't been enough to drop me a full size in most of my clothing. Close, but not quite. Instead, I am at that annoying between sizes point where one is too big and the next smaller one is too small. I am still determined to lose that last ten pounds that will certainly bring me comfortably into the next lower size, but I am having my moments of frustration when day after day and week after week the scale doesn't budge. Despite my efforts. I hate this metabolic nightmare my body is in!

**********************************************************************************************************

Last night I got home from work "early" at 8:30 pm. I was opening the window in the master bathroom and saw some deer in the distance by our bonfire pit. It was a momma with her two babies. I had just been thinking recently that we hadn't seen any deer in our backyard for awhile. The kids creeped outside with me to peek at them in the dusk and the husband attempted to take pictures of them with his new camera until the flash scared them away. Apparently he didn't get one good enough to download anyway.

**********************************************************************************************************
We enjoyed a true RedNeck Fourth of July last weekend. We bought fireworks from a local tent, set up the fire pit and lawn chairs in the driveway to roast weenies and marshmallows for s'mores, and enjoyed our own fireworks show as well as those of the neighbors a few miles in the distance on either side of us.

*********************************************************************************************************
The afore mentioned chicken-coop-in-progress is still in progress. Dear Husband has been working hard on it while I manage pretty much everything else around the house and mowing the lawn. Last Friday he took a day off from work to start the roof. I took the kids to the pool for the afternoon and when we got home Dear Husband was beat. The underlayment was finished on the roof, but it was naked and there were chances of rain. I climbed up and laid the tar paper before it got dark and laid and nailed the shingles the next morning while Husband handed them up to me and trimmed them as necessary. It rained on us for about half of the time. I've done roofing before, but this was the first time I did it in the rain.

Our closest neighbor wandered over with his son late Friday night while I was pounding the tar paper in place. "You do ROOFS, too?!" He exclaimed. I giggled as I thought about the time he came over and I was busy chopping wood with the chainsaw, and his wife's response about me being the one who mows our five acre yard.

Despite the fact that I had been rained on and tortured by giant flying June Beetles all day while up on that roof, Dear Husband apparently still felt compelled to try out his new camera while I was on the roof.

*************************************************************************************************************

And finally, I leave you with some images of life as we know it at our house. Don't look too close at Dear Son's shirt or you will see lots of little finger tip sized stains. Apparently he had a few allergies bothering him that day. He has this disgusting habit of wrapping his shirt around his finger and sticking it up his nose rather than using a Kleenex. Yeah...nice, huh?

Turning Corners

2010-07-01T17:23:00.010-11:00

The dust is settling! Well, as much as dust ever settles for me, I guess.

The dog days gave reprieve this week to some beautiful 80-85 degree days. Not much reprieve from the kamikaze bugs, however. We are filling three "beetle bags" a day full of those wicked wicked Japanese Beetles. The bags won't catch the ones that are four times larger, though. Nothing catches them; they are practically indestructible. These critters threaten to ruin six precious weeks out of every summer for me. That's about the span of their God-forsaken lives. I know I'm dramatic, but so are the critters zooming about in droves across our five acres. Disgusting!

I've never been a big fan of summer time. I know that sounds odd to a lot of people, but I'm not a hot weather person, never have been a big fan of swimming or other summer sports, and I've already made my point on the bugs. Last week a client informed me that she saw a Black Widow spider on the doorstep of my office. This week the same client came in with one of those giant green June Beetles riding on her shirt. She must have it out for me.

Despite not being a big fan of summer, I am really enjoying it this year. I am loving the long lazy days with the kids. I have been really really busy with work, but I have been determined that I will play harder than I work. I've been robbed for too long of my time and energy and emotional and physical resources with the inane ordeal I've described here in bits and pieces over the past couple years. I've put it behind me now, and I've found a good groove with the work of managing my own private counseling practice. Now I am putting my attention towards living up the summer with the kids when I'm not at work. The pressure of homeschooling is temporarily lifted, although we continue to read, read, read (because we love it), and are doing a unit on oceans followed by a unit on Oregon in preparation for our nine day stay in Yachats, Oregon in October. Dear Daughter is so excited to have the ocean in her backyard for the week. The kids will get to meet their only cousins for the first time and enjoy seeing their Grandpa and Grandma M.

******************************************************************************************************************

Dear Son has decided he likes swimming pools after all. Last week I took the kids to the community pool and they both played in the water for three hours and still begged to stay longer. We've also gone to the downtown water fountains to play, to the library lots of times (completed the summer reading program already), to friends' houses to swim in their backyard pools and play on their water slides. We've had water fights in the backyard, played on the slip and slide, and gone to the movies on hot summer evenings.

Earlier this week I took the kids to do some errands and just meander wherever we felt like meandering around town for the day. As we drove along in the family-mobile, I looked in the rearview mirror at the two sweet little heads bouncing along in the second row seats, and I felt my heart swell. I told them that I love being able to just "goof off" with them some days. Dear Son's impish little four-year-old face erupted in all dimples as he grinned, and his yellow curls wiggled as he giggled. He shot a grin across the row to his big sister, who was also grinning and giggling. "What's 'goof off'?" Dear Son inquired with delight because he apparently thought "goofing off" sounded like great fun. It was all I could do not to pull over and wrap my arms around him and kiss his chubby little cheeks.

"Goofing off means having great fun doing whatever you feel like doing!" I informed him, and we proceeded to do exactly that for the day.

Yes, the dust has settled. I have the distinct feeling that it's not just the dust from the past several weeks, but also dust from the past couple years. I'm breathing, relaxing, enjoying peace and calm, and finding my space again. In this space there is room to really notice and appreciate my children--to push all potential distractions aside for pieces of time and just notice them, invest in them, and thoroughly enjoy them.

My girl child is so big now that I can no longer pick her up. She is already disappearing into her bedroom with the door closed to listen to music and read books. She's not quite seven. This isn't supposed to happen until she's 11, I thought.

I can still pick up my boy child, but he is over 40 pounds now, and all legs. There isn't much time left for holding him like this, and it breaks my heart. He loves to mow the lawn with me every Saturday, and I envision 1o years into the future, his yellow curls blowing in the breeze as I turn the mowing completely over to him and he speeds along on the mower all by himself.

When they were each babies, and then toddlers, I wanted it to last forever and felt my heart ache at the thought of them growing into "big kids." While I cherished those years, I'm finding a different joy in getting to do more activities with them now that they are older. We can now spend an entire day "goofing off" around town with no concern of when and where we can change a diaper, have a bottle, find a potty chair, take a nap, or have a screaming tantrum. We can just go wherever the day takes. us. Dear Daughter still has this thing about "I have to go potty" at the most inconvenient times, but she is also now old enough that I can let her go to public restrooms by herself so long as I can watch her go in and come out the door. in fact, I had a moment of great satisfaction and liberation when we went grocery shopping this week.

In the check out lane at the Stuff Mart, my cart was full, and Dear Daughter said, "I need to go potty." Of course you do; it's the most in-opportune time possible. Dear Son piped up, "I need to go potty, too!" Dear Son is quite opposite of his big sister. I have to require him to go potty sometimes because he doesn't seem to notice or care about going until he has to go so bad that the pressure makes it impossible to aim, and it sounds like he is going to pee a hole right into the back the toilet. In short, when Dear Son admits he needs to go, it's serious and there isn't much time to think about it.

I chose a check-out lane where I had a clear visual shot of the women's rest room, and I asked Dear Daughter to take her little brother with her and stand outside the stall door while he goes potty and then have him stand outside the stall door while she goes potty, and then wash their hands and come back to me in the check-out line. I scrutinized every person who entered or exited the restroom until they returned to me, grinning and carefree. It was a freeing moment in which I found great liberation in their growing independence.

I thought to myself how some people barely reach this point with their kids and they bring another baby into the picture. I am quite satisfied to have just two. I can love and squeeze two at the same time. I feel good that attention divided between two is still a generous amount of attention. I can go grocery shopping without having to leave them with a babysitter. I am sure those with more than two are satisfied in their own ways with their beloved brood, and I don't fault them that. It's just not for me. I'm not wired with that kind of patience and tolerance. My heart is overflowing with what I already have, and what I have is enough.

I realized this week that once again we have turned a corner, and Life is good.

Too Early for the Dog Days!

2010-06-22T18:13:00.004-11:00

It's twelve minutes after midnight and it's still 80 degrees outside. I don't even like 80 degrees for a HIGH temperature.

*sigh*

And the gargantuan green June Beetles are hatching again, so I can't go outside right now without hearing the drone of a 747 and without protective head and face gear, lest I get bonked by a kamikaze flying insect.

I need a one way ticket to Siberia.

The Dust Still Hasn't Settled

2010-06-20T19:03:00.006-11:00

I'm starting to lose track of the weeks already as summer break flies by, despite this just being the first real day of honest-to-goodness Summer!

A couple weeks ago, after we got through the whole chicken massacre and moving my business and the dust just began to settle, it got stirred up again. Literally. I was out mowing the back acreage (in some impressive diagonal lines, I might add), when Dear Daughter came running out to me yelling something that I couldn't hear over the drone of the mower. I stopped, shut down the blade, and idled slowly as she spoke loudly into my ear, "Mommy! Daddy put his foot through the ceiling AGAIN, and it's a BIG MESS!" She looked excited and almost pleased to be telling on him. I knew Husband was going into the attic to fix the motor in the roof fan. It crossed my mind that he has put his foot through the ceiling once before in this house, when he was stringing cable through the attic. That hole was near the garage in the laundry room, where it wasn't that noticeable--which was good because Husband never quite got the patched area of the textured ceiling to match the rest.

When I finished mowing and came into the house to assess the damage, it was bad. Worse than I imagined. I entered the house through the garage, and I saw dust. Lots of it. And hunks of drywall. And insulation strewn about. Husband was on a ladder cutting at the ceiling, apparently attempting to make the jagged three foot hole more straight so he could patch it easier.

The hole, mind you, was right in the middle of the room, between the living room and kitchen, in about the most obvious place possible. And did I mention this hole was about three feet across? This wasn't going to be pretty. Meanwhile, it was the hottest day of the year, the air conditioner was chugging,...and I was looking up into the rafters through the big hole that was sucking the cool air out.

"Why don't we just install an attic fan, like we wanted to do before?" I asked, trying to be helpful. "Isn't that hole about the right size anyway? And isn't that about the right spot for a fan?"

Husband stopped in mid-air. He thought it made sense, too. He stopped and did a little research before deciding that this was entirely do-able, and then did a quick about face and took a trip to the local big-name hardware store to buy a whole-house attic fan. And then another trip as soon as he got home because he needed some different wood trim pieces to frame it. And then he spent the entire weekend installing it.

On the bright side, at least he's good at fixing things. A (male) friend of ours told me that Dear Husband did this subconsciously--to fulfill his manly desire to fix things. So I decided that if fixing stuff makes him feel manly, I need to stop withholding that "honey do" list. Husband thinks that if fixing stuff is the standard by which his manliness is measured, his testosterone is enough to launch him to the moon right now.

And it's a good thing, because that woodshed/chicken coop he's working on is slow business--especially when he has to stop to spend days on repairing holes in the ceiling.

If I could figure out how, I'd post the video of the whole ceiling thing that six-year-old Dear Daughter took with the camera Dear Husband picked out for her for Christmas last year. She likes to be right in the middle of the action with her video camera.

The Fanfare Begins

2010-06-16T17:21:00.004-11:00

Summer arrived around here with great fanfare and hustle bustle, and I've gotten swallowed up by it all. As Dear Daughter was wrapping up her first grade year and her homeschool co-op came to a close, there was much upheaval on the home front that really had nothing to do with the school year coming to a close--it just all happened at the same time. The summary of it is that I had to uproot and move my private counseling practice. The move itself was actually the easy part. It began with finding a lease in my budget--which isn't all that easy considering I have a very small budget and do not borrow money to subsidize my business. I also set clear boundaries which, in effect, limits my income potential from said business. My kids come first, I don't use daycare, I love to be at home with them, and I homeschool. That would seem to make owning my own private counseling practice impossible. It's not. I just have to be creative, multi-tasking, diligent, organized, committed, deliberate, and as my pastor would say, "intense with my time." Dear Husband thinks I especially have that last part well covered. I once told him that I longed to be bored, even just for a short while. He informed me that it is not possible for me to be bored. When I considered this, I realized he is right; after all, I have a mental list of stuff I would love to do if I ever got bored, thus making "bored" a non-existent anomaly for me.

As I was saying, the physical move was the easy part. It's the notification of such a move to all the health insurances I provide for that makes changes like this a nightmare. It shouldn't be that difficult. But that has become my theme over the past several years when it comes to working with health insurance companies: "It shouldn't be that difficult!" I'll leave it at that.

So...move is done, dust is settling on that front.

However, in the midst of this upheaval, I managed to leave the dog unsupervised outdoors long enough for him to massacre our entire flock of six two-month-old chicks which we had raised from day-old hatchlings. I was dragging clothes baskets and clothes pins back in from the clothes line, had two kids and two dogs (or so I thought) on my heels as I re-entered the house, and my phone rang. Remember that part before about multi-tasking? Well, when it's a business call, I often have to take it--regardless of whether I have laundry baskets, kids, and dogs in tow.

In the process of all this, Cooper got left behind. Outside. Out of eye sight. I didn't realize it for another 40 minutes. It was 90 degrees outside. The windows were shut, the a/c was on. I was distracted by a phone call and oblivious to the outside world. When I finally opened the front door to look for him, there he sat on the front step. With a dead chicken beside him.

As the realization sunk in, I panicked. I screamed at the dog. I ran outside and discovered he had gotten into their pen and killed them all (or so I thought--until I found one lone survivor who escaped into the garage and was huddling behind the table saw). It was morbid and disgusting, and I felt sick as I cleaned up the carcasses of five dead chickens. I was sure the other one fled while wounded and then laid down to die somewhere on our five acres. I figured I'd find it out on the mower in a few days. If I had had a gun, it would have taken a lot of self-control not to take the dog out back and shoot him in the head. I was so mad. I couldn't even look at the dog without spitting at him for three days. But it gets worse....

The next day I put the lone survivor out in the yard in the rabbit cage to graze. Husband hasn't finished building the coop yet, so they live in the garage at night in this rabbit cage for now. I placed the cage where I could see it from the front windows in the house. It was out of reach from Cooper's dog leash on the zip line Dear Husband put up for them. Baby could reach them, which I intended to remedy by shortening her leash, but hadn't gotten to yet. She never pays any attention to the chickens, so it wasn't a big concern. Cooper's had been shortened that morning already.

Unfortunately, I forgot that there were two different length dog leashes on the zip line. In a rush to get ready for work, I assigned Daughter the chore of putting the dogs on the zip line to go potty before I left. She arbitrarily put Cooper on Baby's leash. That meant he could reach the chicken cage. It would take me ten minutes to pull myself together for work. However, only five minutes into the process, Daughter came screaming into my bedroom, "Mommy Mommy Mommy! You are going to be sooooo mad! I'm afraid to tell you, but Cooper is playing tug-o-war with the chicken's head!"

"WHAT!???!!!!"

I ran to the door and found the last living chicken with his talons curled around the edge of his water bowl, hanging on for dear life. His shoulders were pressed against the inside of the cage, and his head.... Well, there wasn't one. Not on his body anyway. It was lying on the outside of the cage where Cooper had apparently dropped it after ripping it off its body. I quickly surmised that the chicken had poked his head out of the cage to graze on the grass outside of the bars (is the grass ever REALLY greener?). Apparently this is all it took for Cooper (on Baby's leash) to grab it and rip it off its head.

If I thought I was mad the day before, I was beyond livid now. I'm pretty sure I drop-kicked the dog across the front acreage, but it's all a blur now as the rage apparently dulled my memory. I had to leave for work, so I left the bloody mess sitting right there for Husband to clean up. I'd had my fill of dead chickens from the day before.

I still don't know if Dear Daughter was most traumatized by watching the dog rip the head off the chicken, or hearing me scream at the dog and insist for the next two days that he was going on Craigslist to find a new home.

That evening, Husband began building a chicken cage that could compete with Fort Knox. Well, actually not at all close. Nonetheless, he was attempting to build something that would defy the cocky dog (no pun intended--these were hens and not roosters).

We started with a new batch of day old hatchlings, which are now old enough to go out to the yard during the day hours...in their fortified chicken cage that Cooper cannot penetrate. And he is getting his furry butt kicked if he so much as looks at them.

This wraps up the drama for the first week of summer. Next time I'll tell you about the drama for the third week of summer.

Random

2010-05-05T16:16:00.007-11:00

****WARNING--Random Brain Dumpage Ahead****

I recently joined the iphone cult. I have to admit, the Koolaid is pretty good.

I'm working hard at staying focused. Thus, my FaceBook perusing has been suspended. I think I've made a couple brief appearances in the past two or three weeks, but my self-control has impressed even me! If I stay focused on the kids' schooling and managing my counseling practice I can manage to scrape up a small amount of down-time each weekend.

I'm visiting my nutritionist regularly to deal with my thyroid and hormone imbalances. Progress is decent. Still have adrenal fatigue, still not assimilating proteins well, still seriously deficient in magnesium and potassium, still not getting adequate thyroid replacement into the cells...but things are better. I'm in month three of my no-grain diet. My nutritionist put me on an interesting diet that includes next to no carbs, moderate protein, and high amounts of healthy saturated fat. I've seen some pretty impressive improvements over the past almost three months. Most interesting, perhaps, is the way my workouts and stamina have increased. According to my nutritionist, our bodies are designed to burn fat for our primary fuel source, thus we need to feed it adequate healthy fat. While I have been nowhere near the amount of exercise I think I should be getting (it's awfully hard when I school the kids all day and work all night), I am working at it. My nutritionist says "No 'breathless' exercise" as that creates too much lactic acid. I can now achieve a slow jog for quiet a long time without becoming "breathless." I couldn't even do that when I was eight years younger, 10 pounds lighter, and before I ever had any babies. Perhaps the best part of all is that I've finally begun to drop that weight that my hypothyroid condition usually prevents me from losing. I'm down 12 pounds so far. About 17 more will put me at my 25 year old weight. That's my goal: to weigh what I weighed at 25 by the time I turn 40. And getting my hormonal issues under control would be nice, too.

We took a brief hiatus from the grind in late March. I took a couple pics with my new cult-ish iphone and never posted. The "ipics" will include a couple of the kids go-carting and a couple of the kids holding the baby chickens.

Yes, we finally took the plunge. I've been begging Dear Husband for chickens for over two years. Last month we got six day-old hatchlings. Dear Husband has approximately 10 weeks left to get a chicken coop built, and with a bit of providence we will have our own farm fresh eggs by fall.

...and with that...I'm back to work. I turn into a proverbial pumpkin at midnight....

Aspiring Writer

2010-04-29T17:58:00.005-11:00

A few weeks ago I heard about the PBS Kids Go Writer's Contest and encouraged Dear Daughter to enter. She is one creative kid and quite talented in her story telling skills. It was only days before the deadline when I first heard of the contest, so Daughter had to get busy. She bounced story ideas off of me and we talked about the structure and qualities of a good story, and she went to work. She spent two entire home school days working on the prose and artwork of this project. I was thoroughly amused at the puns she included. Her story was about a greedy fish named Gilbert, but his friends called him "Gill" for short. He wanted all the cool new gadgets and stuff that all the other fish in his "school" had. I know I'm her mother, and I know she is only six years old, but I thought she was brilliant! Her story also had a great message about friendship being more important than "stuff."

She finished it up and we drove to the local PBS station to drop it off because I feared it would not reach the destination in time for the deadline. We didn't think much about it again.

A couple weeks later at Daughter's homeschool co-op, she was practically accosted at the door by a peer who questioned if Zoe had won a writer's contest. We had not told anyone except Grandma and Grandpa H about her entering this contest, so I figured maybe she had indeed placed. However, we did not get any direct notification about her placing. I turned to the Internet to see if I could find a winner's list, but despite a couple hours of searching, gave up after finding nothing except that the local contest had been judged and first place winners would be sent to the national contest and all who placed would have their stories on exhibit locally for a week. I never could find names, which makes sense as these are all minor children. Since the little girl who mentioned the writing contest was only 5 or 6 herself, I figured she was just probably confused. Still the coincidence of her asking Daughter if she entered a writing contest was curious. Daughter and I even talked after I discovered the contest had indeed been judged, that it was a real bummer that she had worked so hard and had not been recognized.

A few minutes ago Dear Husband emerged from the basement office and handed me a large manila envelope. Inside was the congratulation letter and certificate for Daugther's honorable mention in the local contest. The letter was dated April 15th. At 15 minutes before midnight tonight, it was as good as being April 30th. Apparently we had this congratulation letter for a couple weeks before finding it.

After thinking about it some more, I remembered getting two large identical manila envelopes in the mail a couple weeks ago. Husband had told me to watch for some building plans he was going to be receiving from the county any day. So when I saw his name on the envelope, I assumed he got two envelopes of building plans. I left them on the kitchen island and told Dear Husband about them when he arrived home that evening because he had been anxiously awaiting them. He opened an envelope and looked at the stuff, and that was that.

In the next week or so the pile of mail on the kitchen island ended up in the basement office to be sorted. The fact that this particular envelope had never been opened was discovered for the first time a few minutes ago. And lo, the mystery was solved. While Dear Daughter didn't place first, second, or even third, I'm still really proud of her receiving honorable mention. She doesn't get to compete in the nationals, but only first place winners in each category do. She won't get a shot at the laptop, digital camera, or MP3 player, but she received a certificate of recognition and her story will have a week long display in the winner's exhibit in a local art gallery along with being recognized at the writer's banquet this fall after the national competition.

...and I learned to look at the mail more closely!

Finding Meaning in Cold Cereal, Public Television, and Jesus

2010-04-21T16:32:00.003-11:00

After reading time with Dear Daughter tonight, I rolled onto my side in her twin bed so that I was eye to eye with her on the pillows. It had been awhile since I had a discussion with her about the Meaning of Life. It seems we used to have these discussions often in the past, as this has historically been her favorite topic for about as long as she's been talking. I guess I felt curious tonight about how that six year old mind is developing.

The first time I noticed Daughter's ability to have a completely logical and philosophical discussion was when she was barely two years old. It wasn't actually about the meaning of life, but about the commonalities between horses and cows. It wasn't long, however, before she began to take on more challenging issues in her conversations...such as the meaning of life.

Me: "So...what do you think about Life?"

Dear Daughter: "I think it's tasty, and I like to eat it!"

Me: (giggling) "NO! I mean what do you think about LIVING--THAT kind of LIFE!"

Dear Daughter: (with a sigh, as if conceding a point) "Oh alllllright. I think Public Television makes me smart."

Me: (having absolutely NO IDEA where that came from and now laughing hysterically) "Okay, so what do you think the MEANING of life is?"

Dear Daughter: (without missing a beat) "Living and loving Jesus!"

She said it as if it's the most obvious thing anyone could ever ask her...and it was a wonderful reminder that apparently I must be doing something right after all!

Freeze Frame

2010-04-16T16:54:00.006-11:00

The kids were huddled around me as I worked at replacing Dear Son's turtle bedding with fresh coconut bark. Actually, he's a TORTOISE my children continue to remind me ever since we studied up on the difference between turtles and tortoises. I was concentrating on the task at hand when Dear Son said to his sister, "Look, Zoe! That is you and me!" He was pointing at the pictures of them displayed in the corner of a glass faced cabinet in the kitchen. Dear Daughter replied, "I know, Zachy. Mommy put them there because she loves us!"

I remained focused on the task at hand, though amused. My eyes didn't move from what I was doing, but I felt the smile tease my lips. Dear Daughter doesn't miss a thing. "Look, Zachy! Mommy thinks we're cute!" and we all busted up in gales of laughter.

I love the days I get so spend with my babies. Especially when the cute outdoes the ornery.

Handsome and Nice...but Grouchy!

2010-03-20T16:30:00.003-11:00

Dear Daughter: "Mommy, I just went in to tell Daddy and Zachy 'good night' but they were both already asleep in Zachy's room, so I just kissed Daddy anyway. ...you know, Daddy IS kinda handsome."

Me: (giggling just a bit) "You think so, huh?"

Dear Daughter: "Yeah! And he is really nice, too. I can see why you like him!"

Me: (giggling just a bit more) "You can, huh?"

Dear Daughter: "Yeah! And he's only grouchy when he's not sleeping!"

Me: (busting a gut from laughing so hard)

My Testosterone is Raging

2010-02-28T17:40:00.008-11:00

Dear Husband keeps pushing for more power. He started out with a puny one for the purpose of cleaning up the woods around our property from time to time. Then he got the brilliant idea to install a wood stove and had to buy a bigger one. When he realized that he needed even more power for falling trees and splitting huge rounds, he had to get a bigger one yet. I have to admit, I've protested a bit that the stove project (that Husband talked me into on the basis of how much money we'd save not buying propane) is taking longer and longer to pay itself off with all these chainsaw purchases. Maybe that's why Husband put the new big ass saw in my hands today--he knew if I got to try the thing out I'd be sold. Either that, or he was just too wiped out to use it anymore himself.

This afternoon he pulled up in the side yard with a truck bed full of rounds, some of them at least 36" in diameter. The kids and I pounced on him, helping him unload. There were a few smallish pieces the kids got to help with. Husband and I rolled the biggest ones off the tailgate onto the ground. I'm not a good judge of size, but I'm guessing these rounds weighed between 100 and 150 pounds each. I didn't ask how he got them on the truck in the first place.

When it was all unloaded, Husband asked if I wanted to try out the new chainsaw. Now, anyone who has been reading me for very long, or who knows me at all well, knows that I love me some big ass power. I also enjoy me some good chainsaw therapy. But I looked at the 4 1/2 foot saw skeptically for a moment, wondering if I could manage the thing well enough. I didn't pause for long before I ran to get my steel toed boots. Husband buckled me into his chainsaw chaps and gave me a quick demo. It didn't take much, I know how to run a saw...I just hadn't run one that big before. Before I knew it, I had sawed at least six 36" rounds in half and my adrenaline was pumping. That's when I knew why Husband said he needed bigger this winter. This thing took on those monster chunks of solid wood like a hot knife sliding through butter. Sawdust flew all around me as the motor roared. It was almost effortless.

As I stood back to rest and admire my work, I thought to myself that I should have been a lumberjack! I'm still longing for that log cabin on the side of a mountain in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest, living off the land and away from society as I currently know it. I can grow a garden, I can run a chainsaw, I can drive a big ass lawn mower pretty good, too (not sure there'd be much need for this on the side of a mountain). I can also pull fish out of a lake, but aside from fish, I've never killed anything in my life (unless you count that gigantic raccoon I accidentally hit several months ago with the family mobile). Despite all these skills, unless I decide to become vegetarian, I wouldn't survive living off the land without learning to shoot a hunting rifle or a bow...and having the nerve to kill wild game. While I have my strong reservations about that last part, if someone offered me a log cabin on the side of a mountain in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest, I think I might just decide to learn.

For the record, if I suddenly disappear without a trace, I haven't been kidnapped; just follow the hum of a big ass chainsaw into the Rocky Mountains and you'll find me.

Tungsten Rings Online

2010-02-23T17:44:00.004-11:00

A few months ago I was contacted by someone from Tungsten Rings Online asking me to promote their site with a link from my site. In exchange, I was offered a ring of my choice (up to a certain dollar limit). I chose the Women's Tungsten Triangle Beveled Edge 8mm Ring. I posted the link and emailed my ring choice along with a mailing address to "Nick" and silently wondered if I'd ever hear anything back from him. Sure enough, a few days later my gorgeous ring arrived. I've worn this ring many many times over the past few months. It still has no nicks or scratches on its shiny surface, and it still glimmers like it did the day it first arrived. As promised in the description, the band is very comfortable, and the weight of this ring is really nice. I've always wanted a nice ring with a wide, but "simple," band that is really versatile. What I really love about this particular ring is the "triangle beveled edge." It makes the ring positively "glimmer" as the light catches the edges. Whether you are shopping for a wedding/engagement ring or just an "accent" piece, Tungsten Wedding Rings is the place to go. They have a great selection of gorgeous rings and offer a lifetime warranty that includes full replacement if your ring is ever damaged during regular wear, and free lifetime re-sizing or replacement if your ring size ever changes. With a deal like that, how can you go wrong?

Getting Crushed

2010-02-16T18:15:00.003-11:00

Last summer something prompted me to begin reading the Little House on the Prairie books to Dear Daughter. I can't remember exactly what prompted me...perhaps it was the idea of taking a family field trip to Mansfield, MO where there is a Laura Ingalls Wilder museum. I wanted to immerse my daughter before taking the trip last fall, so that she would appreciate it as much as possible. So I looked up the first book in the series and we dove in.

The timing was perfect when I began Little House in the Big Woods. Laura Ingalls was really close to the same age as Dear Daughter, and Laura really reminded me a lot of my girl-child--spunky, a bit naughty, more interested in getting dirty than staying prim and proper. We are now reading the seventh book in the series, Little Town on the Prairie, and Dear Daughter still loves to listen each night as we find out what Laura is up to.

Tonight we reached the chapter where Almanzo gave Laura her first ride in his horse drawn buggy. As I read, Dear Daughter's face lit up with excitement. Then she couldn't stand it anymore, and she interrupted my reading, "Mommy! Is that Almanzo WILDER?" She exclaimed as I nodded my head! "You mean the one where she gets crushed?" She continued jabbering while I deduced from what she was saying that "getting crushed" was akin to "having a crush on someone." She prattled on, "You mean they don't know yet that they are going to start loving each other and get crushed?"

Suddenly, all the drama of my dating years washed over me. Crushed, indeed! If things in my dating days had only been more like the days of Laura Ingalls Wilder, perhaps then I wouldn't have gotten so crushed.

My girl-child continued to sit and grin with twinkling eyes at the thought of "getting crushed." It was so adorable that I didn't even bother correcting her. I did, however, silently vow to cruelly torture and kill any boy who ever even thinks of "crushing" my daughter.

BUSTED!

2010-02-15T17:39:00.002-11:00

It's cold today in the Midwest. In reality, it's not any colder than it's been all winter long. In fact, it's warmer than it has been many days this winter. For some reason, however, I've been really cold all day long. It could be related to the fact that no one can seem to get my thyroid gland working the way it's supposed to. Not my nutritionist/naturopath, not my medical doctor, no one. My nutritionist/naturopath is still working on it with me. However, my afternoon body temperature was still only 95.5. This was taken at the time of day that body temperature is supposed to peak, mind you. Besides being cold, it's no wonder my metabolism is slower than a dried up slug. By late evening I felt so thoroughly chilled that I couldn't wait to get the kids tucked into bed so that I could climb into my own bed in full sweats and pile on every blanket we own.

With the kids tucked into their beds, I went about my business of putting on a second pair of socks. That's when I remembered that we have some of those hand warmer things in the cupboard somewhere. You know, those things you shake up and stick in your mittens or your pockets in the winter time to help keep warm. Back in the day, we used to use them in the wet, dark, cold fall weather to stay warm during early morning band practice. I decided right then and there that I was going to put one of those in each of my socks before crawling into bed under every blanket I own. As I headed out to the laundry room to dig in the cabinet where I last saw them, I heard a rustle in the kitchen. I knew immediately what I was hearing. "Zoe Grace!" I said sternly. She came out from the shadows looking soooooo busted, dropping one of her Garfield comic books as she rushed down the hall towards her bedroom calling, "I know! I know! I'm not allowed to read Garfield anymore for a loooong time!" She had snuck out of her dark bedroom where she was told the lights needed to stay out, into the kitchen where there was still a light on over the sink. She was crouched in the corner with her beloved Garfield comic books, reading. This was a first. I've caught her with her bedroom light on well past the time she's allowed to stay up. I've caught her crouched in her closet reading with the door closed and light on, I've caught her with her brother's neon light saber sword in her bed in the dark, using it as a flashlight to illuminate her beloved comic book pages. I have never, until tonight, caught her crouched in the dim light of the kitchen with her comic books.

She loves to read. I certainly don't want to discourage that! She began reading on her own at age three. Seriously. I'm not just a bragging parent exaggerating the abilities of my child. She was reading on her own at age three. She discovered my Garfield comic book collection (circa early 1980's) in the storage room downstairs several months ago, and it has consumed her like a savage addiction. At 6 years of age, she reads with enough skill to decipher the words and enough sophistication to appreciate the humor of Garfield comic strips. And she is completely addicted. It's like kiddie crack.

My girl child is stubborn and determined and willing to go to almost any length to achieve a goal she has decided on. Those aren't bad qualities to have. In fact, in all my years of working with severely emotionally disturbed and behaviorally disordered kids and teens, I've learned to be strengths based in my approach--to see the good in every person and help them channel it through the qualities, skills, and characteristics they already possess. If the at-risk kids I work with have the qualities that I just described my daughter having, I get excited because I know such qualities can serve them well. Sure, these are qualities that often get them in major trouble when they misuse them. But they are also qualities that have ensured their survival through horrendous histories of abuse throughout their childhood. They are qualities that will bring them through to success and see them make something valuable of their lives if they can be directed and taught how to channel such qualities constructively.

Unfortunately, in addition to these other qualities that I have framed in a strengths-based context, Dear Daughter is sneaky. To be completely fair, in a strengths-based context, I would frame it as something more akin to "creative" or "sly." But right now I'm still exasperated and a bit fed up with her. So I'm calling it plain old sneaky. There's been a lot of sneakiness going on in her little world lately, and it's been affecting all of us in this house.

I don't want to break her spirit. I don't want to take the determination and goal-directed-ness out of her. I just want her to be good! For the love of all that is good and holy, my girl-child is a major handful to manage!

I ordered my girl-child to come right back and stand before me. She looked almost scared enough to pee her pants. And then I just stared at her in silence while I tried to compose my thoughts. Somewhere in here, I just knew there was a teachable moment. I just needed to compose myself well enough to figure out what it was.

While my daughter has had the good fortune of being born into a high functioning, well adjusted family, and she has no history of abuse threatening to destroy her success in life, she can still be plain old naughty when she decides to use her stubbornness and perseverance in the wrong ways. I stood looking at her as all these thoughts raced through my mind. Daughter was looking really uneasy by this time.

"What exactly were you doing?" I calmly demanded.

"I was reading Garfield." She said boldly, but not without guilt written across her face.

"So you sneak out here to the kitchen to read your Garfield books after we go to bed?" I asked. Without waiting for a response I added, "And this isn't the first time, is it?"

She shook her head.

"So you've been doing this for awhile?"

"Well, not if you go downstairs...because then you can hear me up here. But if you go to your room I do." She divulged honestly and matter-of-factly. "I can tell by whether the light is on down there or not." She added sincerely. I felt inwardly annoyed at the habit my husband has developed of leaving the light above the kitchen sink on all night long. I spoke to him recently about turning this light off to save electricity and using the tiny little nightlight instead. Most of the time now it is getting turned off, but it still stays on until whoever is last to bed turns it off. That means I leave it on for Dear Husband, who frequently falls asleep for a good while in Dear Son's bed with him after reading bedtime stories, thus making him the last one to bed (our bed, anyway). And he has a bad habit of just leaving that particular light on all night.

Dear Daughter had this ploy all figured out. And she has even apparently pulled it off a time or two before. I recalled at this moment that I already heard Dear Husband scold her once tonight after I tucked her in for sneaking down the hallway. Apparently that was her first sneak through the house to see if I was going to go downstairs or to bed after tucking her in.

I stared at her, this time trying to keep a straight face because I was beginning to find it all a bit humorous--the lengths this child will go to achieve what she has her mind set to. "What do you think we should do about this?" I asked.

She didn't even hesitate. "I figured no Garfield for like a week." She said with a fair amount of confidence. "And probably no desert for awhile...?" She seemed to throw that in to demonstrate to me that she understood the gravity of what she had done. Daughter loves her desert more than she even loves Garfield. She continued to stand in front of me, waiting...uneasily biting her lip. I don't pick her up much anymore because she is 6 1/2 years old now. And heavy. But now I scooped her up and hugged her tight before I set her up on the granite kitchen island for a face-to-face chat in the dimness of that blasted light over the sink. I took a deep breath....

"There's a saying that goes like this, 'Who you really are is who you are when no one else is looking.'" I paused to let this sink in. "Do you know what this means?"

"Yeah," she said. "It means that you'd better not do things you're not supposed to do."

"Well..." I said, "that's only partly right. The part that I really want you to get is that whatever you are doing when you think no one is looking...that is the person you REALLY are." I paused again to let it sink in before adding, "Even if you don't think Mommy or Daddy knows what you are doing, God sees everything, and He wants you to choose the right thing no matter who is or isn't looking."

Daughter responded after a moment, "So you are going to watch everything I'm doing now?"

"No." I said. "Not at all."

"But you're going to take away all my Garfield comics, right?"

"No." I said.

Silence.

"I'm going to let you think about the kind of person you want to be whether I see everything or not. And I want you to remember that God sees everything." I said. "And I'm very sad because I can't trust you right now. ...and by the way, are you SURE you brushed your teeth...because you told me earlier that you did, but your breath doesn't smell very fresh right now and you've lied to me about brushing your teeth before also."

Daughter completely busted up laughing despite herself. "You shouldn't have taught me how to keep the mirror clean, because then you would have at least known if I was brushing my teeth or not!" She thought this was hysterically funny and continued to laugh until she cried.

For months I have worked with her not to splatter the mirror with her toothpaste spits. She would have the mirror absolutely covered halfway to the top with toothpaste spit spots the first time she brushed after I cleaned the thing. She must be the messiest toothpaste spitter on the planet. She has only recently begun to manage not to splatter the mirror when she brushes her teeth. She has also begun to lie to me when I ask her if she has brushed her teeth. "Yes!" She will say. "I can still taste the toothpaste!" One day after this exchange with her, I took Dear Son in the bathroom to help him brush his teeth and discovered Daughter's toothbrush was dry. See what I mean about "sneaky"?

"You see!" I said to her. "Your lies about brushing your teeth has also made it so that I cannot trust you. I'm very sad that I cannot trust my own daughter. I want a daughter that I know I can trust, and it's going to take awhile for you to build that trust back up again."

She looked very serious and sad at that point.

"So what do you think I want you to do right now?" I asked.

"Go get all my Garfield comic books to give you?" she asked.

"No. I want you to take your Garfield comic book back to your room with you, and I want you to put it away, and get into bed, and leave the light out, and close your eyes, and think about what we talked about...and go to sleep."

Then I lifted her off the counter and handed her comic book to her. She walked slowly and deliberately back to her room, where she stayed.

As I sit under piles of blankets on my bed with warming pouches between my two pairs of socks, I am doing some of my own pondering. For example, I don't know if this will sink in for her yet. I don't know if this is a lesson learned yet. But I do know that she only seems to look onto certain types of discipline as a game that she continues to play at in order to "win" at continuing to do whatever it is that she has her mind set to doing. Even the Love and Logic approach (which I have successfully used with LOTS of kids and parents over the years) doesn't always work with her. I don't want her to stop doing wrong things because she fears being punished or even just because she doesn't like the natural consequences of her choices. While sometimes that's enough, other times it isn't. At at those times I want her to choose to do the right thing because she has solid character and integrity. The stakes on this lesson will get much higher as she gets older. I know I won't be able to follow her around to make sure she doesn't speed when she drives, or take drugs when they are being passed around, or cheat on her schoolwork. I also know that even with solid character, she's going to make mistakes. Probably even stupid ones sometimes. Maybe even as stupid as some of the mistakes I made. But I want to minimize the odds and frequency of her poor choices by instilling integrity inside her and helping her to channel those exasperating-but-powerful qualities she possesses. If she can be bound and determined to make poor choices, she certainly has the capacity to be bound and determined to make the right choices.

I'm wondering how parents could possibly have the energy to see their kids through the teen years. I'm thoroughly exhausted already!

Not a Chance!

2010-02-07T17:18:00.007-11:00

After reading to Dear Daughter at bedtime tonight, there were 15 minutes left before lights out. I gave her the option of reading her beloved Garfield comic books or snuggling in the dark with Mommy. She chose to snuggle with Mommy, and it warmed my heart (especially because of how much she loves to read her Garfield comics before bed). As I snuggled up close to her in the dark and softly sang "You Are My Sunshine," I had flashbacks of the past 6 1/2 years. I told Daughter that I used to sing this song to her 6 years ago at bedtime and how much my life had changed since she came into it. I said I had no idea then what I was getting into, and Daughter said, "Yeah! And I had no idea either, until I poked my head into the world!" I giggled as she added, "And you probably didn't know that you'd still be snuggling with me in the dark after 6 1/2 years." But then the reality of that hit me, and I didn't giggle anymore. I'm pretty sure I sighed a heavy sigh before adding, "Yeah, and I have no idea what the next 6 1/2 years brings either, but in 6 1/2 more years you will be a teenager, and I'm pretty sure you won't let me snuggle with you in your bed in the dark anymore!" This time Daughter giggled as she replied, "Yeah! I'll be too busy texting my boyfriend!"

And that's when you could have inserted the telltale sound of the needle screeching across the vinyl. There were no more giggles or gaiety at this moment. In fact, the world went silent as my head spun in the horror of the thought of my baby girl texting a boyfriend.

"No way!" I protested. You'll still be too young to have a boyfriend, and don't even try to argue that one with me!

I still can't quite choke the lump out of my throat.

A New Era

2010-01-31T18:22:00.006-11:00

I think we've entered a new era. I haven't figured out the mystery of how Time can pass so quickly and leave you feeling like you fell into a back hole...dazed and confused, spinning wildly out of control, and strung out like spaghetti noodles.

I have a love-hate relationship with FaceBook. I'm not going to go too far down that path, but just far enough to say that as I've reconnected with high school classmates that I haven't seen for 20 years, I'm struck by how...middle aged...they generally look. And you know what that means.... I obviously look middle aged as well.

As all of you already know, I have two children. Two. I clearly can't handle more than two; they kick my butt everyday. My girl-child is 6 1/2 years old. I frequently notice lately that she teeters between two worlds. In one, she is still a little girl, crying way too easily when she cannot get her winter coat to zip or when she bangs her head or stubs her toe. In this world, she still wants me to do so many things for her...tie her shoes (even though she knows how to do it herself now), hug her and kiss her when she falls down, read her bedtime stories (even though these "stories" are chapter books--currently the fifth in the Little House on the Prairie series). In the other world, she thinks she's already 13. She inquires when she will be old enough to have her own cell phone (when you are 30, Dear Child!), wants to dress fashionably, hang with her "friends," and skip off to class without giving me a hug and kiss good-bye when I take her to her homeschool c0-op.

I know that little-girl-world is going to continue to fade at breakneck speed and give way to a big-girl-world. Today, as I watched her silently from a distance, I saw the last 6 1/2 years pass in my mind's eye, and I dared not let myself consider how fast the next 6 1/2 will also go.

My boy-child is four years old now. We hold him and cuddle him sometimes like he is still a baby. I don't know how much longer we will get away with this; we know this is the last baby we will have, so I guess we are making it last. Yet I can't deny the fact that my "baby," who just turned four years old, is now writing the entire alphabet and numbers to 10. He still wants to be held sometimes even though he is nearly as big as a five year old, but his pleas to "hold ya!" are fading and becoming less and less frequent.

Watching my babies grow up so fast creates a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Yet, in all my "middle aged" glory, I am growing tired. As much as I grieve the loss of Time to that black hole, I have moments now when I feel ready for my little ones to grow more independent. Guilt crowds my conscious as I admit that I'm ready for them to both be able to put on their own shoes and zip their own coats, dress themselves, brush their own teeth. And yet, even as I say the words, my heart aches with the knowledge that once we finally pass all those milestones (daughter has passed all of these particular ones already) they will be gone forever...like Time sucked into that block hole. Gone.

I'm ready for my kids to handle more complex chores around the house, loading and unloading the dishwasher, vacuuming the floor, heck...I'd settle for them picking up after themselves without me reminding them to! The other day I actually looked at my precious little boy child and told him how glad I am that he is my baby, and how exciting it is that one day he will be big enough to mow the lawn by himself.

I guess my girl child is not the only one with a foot in two different worlds.

Is Mommy "Special"?

2010-01-24T11:51:00.012-11:00

"Daddy," said Dear Son last night, "is Mommy 'special'?"

Dear Husband snickered a good bit before he replied that yes indeed, Mommy is 'special.'

Last night we went with the kids and my parents to a Japanese steakhouse to celebrate my birthday. Dear Daughter likes to go "order a volcano." There's really no ordering involved; it's just part of the hibachi grilling show at your table. But let her think what she wants. She refused to use the chopsticks with the rubber band and had to hold them the "real" way. She did a better job than I did with them. Dear Son mainly just liked the noodles! He actually did pretty well eating them with chopsticks. It was nice to get my dad out of the house as he's been ill since before Christmas.

This is always a fun and busy time of year right after the holidays. My birthday comes, followed not quite a week later by our anniversary (it's going to be Lucky 13 this year!), followed less than two weeks later by Dear Husband's birthday. After all that neither one of us cares too much about Valentine's Day a few days later. Not that I remember ever caring about Valentine's Day that much before we met or got married. You may remember that I've posted my opinion on that one before: It's a "stoopid" holiday. But as "stoopid" holidays go (Halloween comes to mind), Dear Daughter loves it. That means we have to recognize it at our house.

My creative juices are rather dry lately by the time I pour all I've got in to managing the kids' schooling and my career. We are currently reading the biographies of Louis Braille and Beethoven, and we are halfway through The Long Winter. It's the fourth or fifth book of the Little House on the Prairie series. We began the series last fall, and Daughter will be sad when we complete it.

I'm also busy teaching Daughter piano and guitar. Since I never learned how to play guitar myself, we are learning together. Of course, the piano part is a no-brainer. I'm sure if we continue on the homeschooling path, Daughter will be enrolling in the local homeschool orchestra in another year and a half when she reaches the minimum age of eight. She wants to play the harp. LOL! Whatevah! We actually saw someone downtown the other day wheeling their harp, in a black case on some sort of dolly, across the street. I pointed out to Dear Duaghter that this would be her fate if she chooses the harp. As a pianist all my life, I often asked myself why didn't I learn the piccolo? Especially after moving my heavy acoustic piano across the country and back and more times between than I can count!

We are pretty well on track with our homeschool goals for the year, but it has taken discipline and creativy and, of course, time--lots of time. In addition to piano and guitar lessons, Daughter is reading Amelia Bedelia books easily now and doing triple digit addition. She can tell you about the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War and the journey of Christopher Columbus. She's learning to recognize the works of Beethoven and develop respect for a musician who was deaf when he wrote some of his symphonies. She can label the instruments in an orchestra and where they are seated in a typical orchestral seating arrangement. She can explain how sound waves work and what happens between the time they enter our ears and get processed by the brain. She has learned how to draw with chalk and blend colors and become a part in a dramatic play or interpretation. She's learning how to look up scriptures in her own Bible and can even read them herself in the new Bible she got for Christmas.

And Dear Son is writing letters and numbers now. While he doesn't spell yet, he places letters together and asks me or his big sister what they spell. He loves to "do school" and play games on the computer and draw robots and Iron Man.

While I've had trouble lately finding much time to blog, or read blogs that I used to follow more regularly, I most certainly can see the evidence of what I've been doing instead, and I believe it's been time well spent.

Blissfully...Fallen...In...!

2010-01-09T19:08:00.024-11:00

Where have I been? I think I've come as close as blissfully possible to "falling in." The holidays seem to have come and gone even faster than any previous year, and they wrapped up with a blast of arctic air and snow that has continued to trickle down for at least a week. I think we reached below -5 once or twice for overall temps and we've had days with highs in the single digits. I know Dear Aunt Pat won't have any sympathy because it's much colder and snowier where she's at, but for us it's cold. The subzero temps combined with 35 mph wind gusts last week took me down memory lane to a time about 30 years ago and a place in rural Iowa where I grew up. I remember the wind blowing so hard and so cold one particular day that I literally got stuck in the gate my dad built between the house and the garage. I was pinned tightly and could not go in or out, and someone else had to free me. The wind blasted like icy knives that day. I was going to check on our pregnant Spaniel who was nested in a bale of hay in the backyard in her dog house. She was to give birth any day. In farm country we didn't keep pets in the house, but that day my parents took pity on Sparky when she came out of her house with the arctic wind whipping snow around in the air, and a puppy fell out of her into a snow bank. Sparky was moved the basement to finish her delivery with a heat lamp. It was a real farm house style basement--more like a cellar, and not at all like the nice walkout basement we have in our house today. It was still very cold down there, but with the heat lamp on her, she and the puppy born in the snow drift were fine along with the other six puppies that came later.

As cold as it's been here for the past week, it's hard to remember (or believe) that on Thanksgiving we were having spring-like temps near 70 degrees and we spent the day cleaning the garage and doing yard work. We got the Christmas tree that weekend, and Dear Son enjoyed helping decorate it this year more than any other year before. He especially liked the glass ball ornaments. Both the kids love the glass ball ornaments. I never have understood what they find so neat about them. We never even owned any until a couple years ago when Dear Daughter insisted we get some because we just couldn't decorate a Christmas tree without them!

Dear Daughter was playing dress up before decorating the tree, and that's why she is dressed in a strappy sun dress. If it was as cold then as it has been lately, she wouldn't have lasted a minute in the downstairs family room in that dress before freezing her buns off.

I wanted a candid shot of the both kids decorating the tree, but they saw me with the camera and would not let up until I took a picture of their cheesy grin contest.

A few days later the weather turned cold. Not as cold as it's been lately, but nonetheless cold. I can't remember if we had highs in the teens or low twenties the day we decided to stay inside all day and bake Christmas cookies. The kids decided they wanted to stay in their fleece pj's all day long, so that's what they did. This is just one of many examples of why I love homeschooling so much. We can have days where we stay in our pj's all day and turn fun things like baking cookies into a learning experience. This activity counted as Math because we practiced measuring ingredients, Home Ec. because I taught Daughter how to read a recipe, Social Skills because I required the kids to take turns and share as they cut and decorated, and Art because we played with food coloring and mixed primary colors to make new colors.

You can see in the backyard that we didn't have snow yet. Nonetheless it was one of our coldest days of the season until recently.

The dogs were thankful for their parkas that day when they were forced to go outside to do their business. Well, to be honest, I'm not sure that Baby appreciated her parka so much, but at least it helped her control her shivering enough that she could pee.

Our dogs have it much better than my dogs did growing up. Not only do they not have to sleep outside in their own straw filled dog house in the bitter cold, but they actually get to share our bed. Baby likes to sleep UNDER the blankets at my feet (helps keep my feet warm, so I'm not complaining) and Cooper likes to share my pillow. When they are not in our bed with us, they are beached in front of the wood stove. Yeah, they've got it good. So good that when temps don't go any higher than 20 degrees and we still push them out the door to go potty, Baby stops on the step and begins shivering violently (I think she just does it for dramatic effect) and looks back at me with an expression on her face that most certainly says, "Oh HELL, no! You gotta be kidding me!"

Dear Son's birthday snuck up on us quickly. Great Uncle Ron and Great Aunt Pat made it out between their own Iowa blizzards to help us celebrate Son turning four years old. You'll notice the Transformers theme going on. Son loves him some "robots." Bumblebee is his favorite, and he has been coveting a "Bumblebee blaster" for the past six months. He waited for his birthday with high hopes that he would receive this for a gift. When he got it, I don't think he let it out of his sight for over a week. He slept with it and ate with it by his side constantly. We couldn't even drive anywhere in the family mobile without him bringing it along.

We took a trip to Silver Dollar City with Great Aunt Pat and Great Uncle Ron to see the Christmas lights for Son's birthday. We thought it was cold that evening, but I think it would actually feel balmy to us right now. Unfortunately, Grandpa and Grandma didn't get to come with us. Grandpa got to come to Son's party, but not the Silver Dollar City trip the next day. He became so ill by Christmas that he wound up in the hospital for three nights. A month later he is still trying to recover from what originally was Shingles and then turned into pneumonia in both lungs and blood clots in both lungs and in one leg. This was a real bummer for all of us on Christmas as our tradition is for Grandpa and Grandma to spend the day at our house enjoying the kids opening their presents and playing with their new toys with them and playing games and doing puzzles together the whole day.

After Christmas, the arctic blast and snow moved in, and we've lived in a deep freeze for more than a week straight.

Right before the snow came, Daughter and I went ice skating. It was her first time, and for me it was the first time in 20 years--so it may as well have been my first time as well. We had lots of fun. Daughter fell a lot. I made it without falling a single time, which is good, because if I had fallen I don't think I would have ever been able to get back up. After an hour and half on the ice it began coming back to me and Daughter was able to let go of the wall almost completely. While I never spent a lot of time on ice skates, I used to be an avid inline skater, skating all over town in a certain small college town in Idaho. I would skate from one end of town to the other, across roads and traffic and all. You probably would not have known it the other day if you were watching me on the ice, though.

Then the snow came, along with the super cold temps. Work slowed down for me, and I appreciated this because I blissfully enjoyed several days of not even leaving the house. We just kept piling the wood in the stove and snuggling up in our warm pj's and blankets. We have enjoyed playing games with the kids and building with the Zoobs that Uncle Jowell and Aunt Lisa sent Dear Son for Christmas. So far I've built a Zoob-a-saur and a bicycle (with real moving wheels!).

I didn't make a gingerbread house with the kids for Christmas this year, so we made one after the New Year while it snowed outside. It was a great indoor activity, and of course the kids loved it.
And so, as I said at the beginning of this post, I have blissfully fallen in. I love winter and cold and snow so long as I don't have to go anywhere. I don't even mind shoveling snow; one day I shoveled the entire 250 foot driveway so we could see to get the cars out. I could stay holed up for months, I think, on the side of some snowy mountain with a fire roaring and fuzzy pjs and blankets, and it would be as good as Heaven.

After several days of indoor cozy activities however, I did have to go back to work. That particular day that I went back, the roads were covered with snow and the wind was howling, and it was about 5 degrees outside. As I drove the kids to Grandma's house for the day, Dear Daughter exclaimed from the middle row of the family-mobile, "Mommy! Zachy and I just saw a Puffin!" She was so excited that I almost didn't have the heart to tell her that since Puffins are Arctic birds, they don't live here in the Midwest. However, before I said anything, I considered how cold it's been, and I decided that we just might have some Puffins living among us after all.

If it's cold and snowy where you are, cozy up to the fire, pour yourself another mug of hot chocolate, and enjoy!

Worse Than Pulling Teeth

2009-12-28T18:03:00.006-11:00

She climbed up into that tall chair that sits in the window. The one that allows all the passers by to watch while they are, well, passing by. She looked excited and perhaps a wee bit nervous. I confess that I was nervous as well. "You're in the hot seat now!" I told her. She picked out a shiny blue pair. Blue has become her favorite color recently. She waited patiently for the associate to come back and seal the deal. It was a busy place to be today, a few days after Christmas with all the area schools out. Kids and teens of all ages ran rampant outside the window from where Dear Daughter was perched in her tall chair.

The associate came back and made sure I had signed all the waivers agreeing to indemnify them of every possible thing that could go wrong with what they were about to do to my daughter. Then the associate loaded her gun with the shiny blue pair Dear Daughter had picked out. My heart beat a bit faster, and I turned my head. I couldn't watch. I just wanted it to be over. I heard a loud exclamation of "Ouch!" I peeked back over my shoulder to assess the damage. My little girl still sat on that tall chair. Her chin was quivering just the littlest bit and she fought back a tear. I resisted the urge to pull her out of the chair and hold her close and insist she forget all about this nonsense and call it quits. But she had told me before that this is what she wanted and that she could handle it. I told her I was proud of her and grabbed her hand as the associate loaded her gun again. "It's almost over!" I reassured Daughter. She caught her breath and looked apprehensive like she wasn't so sure anymore that this is what she wanted. Then it was over. Daughter looked sober for a few moments. I tried to lighten things up for her with exclamations of how proud of her I was and how brave and beautiful she was. She smiled, weakly at first. And then she beamed the rest of the day.

My six year old baby now has pierced ears.

My baby who is so brave at the dentist's office. They told me they look forward to her visits because she is so sweet and good mannered. She doesn't cry or protest when they do their dentist stuff in her mouth. Not even when she had to have those two teeth pulled. My baby who told me nonchalantly in her smiling sing-songy voice that day about what it felt like to have teeth pulled, and the bloody gauze hung out of her mouth as she talked. It "tugged" and felt "crunchy" she told me as I cringed and felt a little woozy myself.

I asked her tonight if getting her ears pierced hurt worse than having teeth pulled. "Oh yes!" she exclaimed without hesitating. I asked her if she had to choose one or the other, would she rather have her ears pierced again or have teeth pulled. "Oh, have teeth pulled!" she said again without hesitating.

Seriously.

The whole ear piercing ordeal struck me as a bit barbaric--forcing an earring until it punches through the entire earlobe. What a strange custom. Thank God our culture doesn't encourage females to wear those coils around our necks to stretch them out. No, at least in our culture we are only fixated on punching holes in our bodies.

Dear Husband pointed out that at least we can probably rest easy that Dear Daughter won't be wanting to pierce anything else on her body. If she even so much as hints at piercing something else on her body someday when she turns into a teenager, I'll be reminding her of how much this ear piercing thing hurt. I'll point out that it was so excruciatingly painful that she would rather have teeth pulled than go through it again. Surely that will work.

I alternated today between thoughts of "Thank God she's only six!" and "Oh My God! She's already six!"

Moment of Truth

2009-12-13T17:28:00.005-11:00

I opened my eyes to the rising sun this morning and looked to see if the familiar yellow curly head was sharing my pillow. Admittedly, I was pleased to see that it was, and I snuggled down into the blankets and as close to his little body as I dared, lest I wake him. I lay there gazing on his angelic sleeping face for a few moments and fought the overwhelming urge to kiss his cheek. And then I couldn't resist any longer, and I kissed him every so lightly. I wondered what a little curly yellow haired boy dreams about as I thanked God for the gift of this child who turned four years old today.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

What a precious four years. And how quickly they have passed. The dear one still allows me to hug and kiss and love on him. When it gets too much he says, "MOMmy!" but his tone tells me he really isn't complaining; he just notices how very much I love him, and I'm pretty sure he rather likes it because he hugs me back as he says it.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

He sighed in his sleep and pressed against me a bit, and I felt his little hand curl around my arm. Those irresistible little hands and fingers that I can't resist kissing. My heart swelled so full that I was sure it would explode from my chest.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"Do you know how much I love you?" I ask him regularly at random when his preciousness overwhelms me. "SOOOOO MUCH!!!!!!" he answers. And don't you forget it, sweet boy child. Don't you ever, ever forget it! Not even when you are 38 years old. And then I imagine for a second what he will look like when he is 38, but that thought is too much and makes my heart heavy with ache. When I finally came to terms with him turning two years old, I begged Time to stop right there. It didn't, and so I watched him grow to three years old and told him often how that was quite old enough. Today as I hugged and kissed him and held him tight, I whispered in his ear, "I just can't believe my baby boy is four today!" and he whispered back, "I still feel like I'm three!" Thank God," I said to us both. After all, I'm in denial as well.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

2009-12-09T14:52:00.002-11:00

I grew up in a small town in the rural Midwest. REAL small. Approximately 350 people small. I was 14 years old when my family moved to a "larger" small town a bit more south, but still Midwest. I adjusted well to having 210 kids in my high school class in this "larger" small town, considering I previously had a class of 20 in the REAL small town. The "larger" small town was essentially a suburb of a small "city" of sorts. Even this small city of sorts eventually began to close in on me, so I moved away for college to a larger city with a metro area population of nearly three million. That worked pretty well for me. I loved the anonymity, the opportunities, the always something do-ness of the city. You would have thought I'd have been in culture shock to spend the first 14 years of my life in a little rural town of 350 people and then four years later find myself in a metropolis of nearly three million people. Maybe I was in shock; college was a blur, after all.

I moved West after that--to Idaho. The entire state made up a total population of slightly more than a third of the population of the city from which I had just moved. I adjusted once again. And then, despite my disdain for small towns, I somehow worked my way back to small town living in the Midwest. Dear Husband and I and our family currently live on a cheery five acres of rural American Dream paradise just outside a small community of about 1,000 people. A short commute takes us to the same small "city" of sorts that I previously mentioned from my high school days. Yes, much as I hate to admit it, it certainly sounds like I've gone some sort of full circle in my life.

My disdain for small town living stems from a deep dislike for small town gossip and a lack of privacy. Somehow, though I can't quite pinpoint exactly how, I felt impacted by both of these in the first 14 years of my life. I promised I'd never subject myself to small town living again. Now to be fair, our current small town life is still much much different that my growing up small town life experience. We currently have a 15 minute drive to a city of sorts (population of about 150,000). Growing up in REAL small town, the nearest city of sorts was at least 45 minutes away, and it wasn't even a "real" city. It was simply large enough to have a few restaurants, a small bit of shopping, a hospital, and some stinky air. I think it may have boasted a population of about 25,000.

We mostly just sleep in our current small town. Well, that's not quite true. We also run around on our small acreage with the kids and dogs, enjoy bonfires at the far corner of the property near the woods, hunt for frogs and tadpoles in the pond, grow a garden, go for country walks, that sort of thing. We just commute for everything else. Once in awhile, however, I indulge in the amenities of our small town. For example, our small town has its own post office, chain-name supermarket, and pizza joint. It also has a few other things that I never use. There are days that I enjoy driving a short mile to the post office where there are no lines to wait in (a nice perk during the holidays), and where I am greeted by the same smiling friendly postmaster guy every time I walk in. And then I can drive another mile to the chain-name market to get a few groceries, and again there is no line to wait in. I always get a front row parking spot, and someone always takes my groceries to the family-mobile and loads them up for me. Small towns, I've decided, do have a few perks.

This morning, however, I had a true small town experience that simultaneously creeped me out and gave me the warm fuzzies. I walked into the post office and was greeted by Smiling Friendly Postmaster Guy, and I no sooner walked in the door than he stepped away to answer his back door, where the UPS man was waiting. Before all this registered in my brain, the UPS man was shouting a street address out to me. I offered back a clueless look before I realized he was asking me if that was MY street address. I'm not used to being recognized like this when I walk into random businesses. I opened my mouth to say "No" and in that moment UPS Man said, "Oh wait! No! You're the house over on _________, the one where all the little girls in princess dresses were dancing around." I closed my mouth without uttering a peep, with the same clueless look on my face until I had a flash memory of Dear Daughter's birthday party last August. UPS came to the door and ten little girls dressed up in princess clothes went screaming through the room. "Yep!" I said. "That's me!" He rattled off my address (correctly) again to confirm, and then offered to leave my packages there with me if I wanted him to. Well, sure. I couldn't see any reason why not. He told me he'd pull around front and meet me, and Smiling Friendly Postmaster Guy told me to go ahead with that business while he weighed my packages. So I met UPS Man at the front door of the post-office (which was roughly ten paces from the back door of the post-office) and he already knew what vehicle I was driving. I had this odd warm feeling as the hair on the back of my neck stood up just a bit and I simultaneously thought it was nice to be known. I wasn't sure which feeling to surrender to, so I just went with it. I confirmed he had the right vehicle and pressed the auto-unlock button on my keyless remote. "Could you just put it in the back of the van?" I remained in the door of the post office, still feeling like this was all a little weird, as UPS Man carefully placed my packages in the back of my van and closed the door firmly. I clicked the lock and stepped back inside as I waved back at UPS Man and shouted "Thank you!" Inside, Smiling Friendly Postmaster Guy was waiting with my packages weighed and ready for me.

In all my past small town living, I have to admit that this was the first time that I went to the post office to mail packages and was greeted by UPS (who immediately recognized my face and my vehicle and could instantly rattle off my street address) offering to load my packages into my car while I was there attending to my other business. I still can't quite decide how I feel about this experience.

Seriously. Small. Town.

Does SOMEtime Have to Come So Soon?

2009-11-29T17:07:00.004-11:00

Dear Daughter is a very proficient reader for a not-yet-six-and-one-half-year-old. She discovered my Garfield comic book collection in the storage room a few weeks back and has developed the same passion for them that I had as a kid. Only I was a quite a bit older than she is currently when I began collecting and reading them.

We've had the same bedtime routine for nearly six and one half years: PJ's on followed by teeth brushing and about an hour of reading followed by several minutes of snuggling together in the dark and debriefing our day, or what we've just read, or whatever is on the girl child's mind. In the past couple weeks a new dimension has been added onto the routine. Dear Daughter now gets an additional 30 minutes of time by herself to read her Garfield comic books after I leave her room as long as she turns her light out when told (she knows how to tell time by herself now), and stayed in bed the night before instead of sneaking around the house.

Tonight I pointed out to Dear Daughter that it's kinda silly for us to turn out the lights and snuggle in the dark only to have her switch the light right back on to read some more by herself after I leave her room. The lights out for snuggle time routine began six years ago as a means of helping her wind down and go to sleep. Tonight I suggested we just leave the light on as we snuggle a few minutes and ponder the meaning of life, and then I would leave and let her read her comic books until the specified "lights out" time. By definition, this arrangement implied less time to cuddle up together. Dear Daughter loves cuddle up time. I expected her to protest my suggestion. I probably secretly wanted her to protest a little. She didn't.

"Well..." she began thoughtfully with a little grin. "I guess I have to grow up SOMEtime! So I think that would work, Mommy! That way you could go get started on your night-time work and I can get to reading my Garfield books!" I watched her face as she spoke, and feelings of bittersweet pride stuck in my throat. I knew I wouldn't be able to stop the tears, so I just let them trickle in warm paths down my cheeks. I was remembering when, at almost two years of age, she finally allowed me to place her in her crib awake instead of rocking her to sleep first. I was pregnant for the second time, and I could no longer lift my big rear out of the chair along with her 30 pound body without causing her to wake up. In fact, tonight was very much like that night just over four years ago. While my rear is not quite as big as it was then when I was pregnant, the same lump choked me in my throat as did four years ago when Dear Daughter allowed me to put her in her crib awake, and with a tearful, pitiful voice assured us both with her words, "Mommy be back!" I barely got out the door that night before the tears flowed, and tonight I didn't even try. I just let them slip down my cheeks as I held her close with the lamp still on.

"Yes," I said in a pitiful voice. "I guess you have to grow up SOMEtime...." I heard her pitiful little not-quite-two-years-old voice echoing in my memory..."Mommy be back!" Yes, my baby girl, I will always "come back," no matter how the fabric of life changes you or our relationship. But that doesn't stop the ache that comes with the knowledge that a milestone has once again been passed, and once again things will never be the same. I would have held you a little longer last night if only I would have known.

Superstitious

2009-11-15T17:20:00.003-11:00

It was Friday the 13th, and I'm not superstitious. Dear Husband commented that evening about some silly poll on the number of people who are superstitious and because of it do not leave their homes on Friday the 13th. It just happened that the kids and I did not leave the home on this particular Friday the 13th. It had nothing to do with superstition; it had to do with having one fabulously joyous day on which there was nowhere we HAD to go. The house was relatively clean. Even my work for the week was nearly caught up before the weekend. This kind of thing just never happens in my life very often anymore. In fact, I cannot remember the last time. I spent the day not thinking at all about it being Friday the 13th. I schooled the kids peacefully. The phones didn't ring. My only chore for the day was the six loads of laundry that I juggled between Math and Handwriting and Science and Social Studies. I enjoyed some outdoor play with the kids and the dogs as well as some games and silliness in the downstairs playroom. As 5 pm drew near, I was satisfied this had been a very productive and even relaxing sort of day, and I was feeling very little stress or pressure. Days like this are too few and far between.

I eventually succumbed to the kids pleas for television by 5:15 pm while I prepared a meatloaf for dinner and then spent some time in the office shredding sensitive papers, rearranging piles, and filing stuff that has accumulated for the past year. This is how the husband manages things. I stay out of it until I feel like I'm going to go insane or until I worry that one of our children will wander into the office and be buried alive under the sliding stacks and mounds of stuff awaiting sorting and shredding and filing.

I was mindlessly shredding the piles of paycheck stubs from the year 1982 or something, when Dear Son came screaming into the office crying above the drone of the paper shredder, "Mommy! I need a snot rag!" He was nearly hysterical. "I put a sticker in my nose, and I can't get it out now!" and he continued to wail in hysterics. I'm pretty sure I exclaimed something along the lines of "Oh crap!" but probably a tad stronger than that.

I took Dear Son upstairs to put him under my strongest reading lamp so that I could peer up his nose, all the while pleading with him how he could do this after the Trident wrapper thing.

I saw nothing but black way up in the uppermost caverns of his nostrils. He had informed me that it was a black sticker he had shoved up there. I mumbled the derivative of "Oh crap!" again as I went for the flashlight. I peered up there again and saw something black all the way as far back as I could see. I was trying to remain calm, but my mind kept racing between my child's welfare and the steep bill this was going to cost us at either urgent care or the ER.

I did what many hysterical mothers of young children do when they don't know what else to do: I called my mom. She is a (retired) nurse, after all. This means that she can advise on anything from high fevers to amputated limbs to stickers shoved up one's nose. She re-affirmed what I already knew: I would have to take Dear Son somewhere to get medical assistance in extracting the object from the depths of his nasal passages. There was that expletive spewing from my mouth again.

I called the closest walk-in clinic. I don't regard them very highly. They've lost my respect for a variety of reasons. But I was desperate. I explained to them the predicament and asked if they could assist in this sort of thing, and I was told that while they could try, they would probably end up referring us to the ER anyway, and so given that we were going to have to pay for this "procedure" out of pocket, we would probably be better off just going to the emergency room in the first place. Really. I let this sink in. My mind was really racing now. I was worried about my son going through a "procedure" to extract this object from the depths of his nose. I was worried about the cost of said "extraction." And now I was also envisioning sitting for hours in the ER waiting room among hoards of Swine Flu sufferers coughing and sneezing all over my boy child. I had one last option. I called the pediatric urgent care associated with our doctor's office, and they assured me that in the vast majority of cases they are able to extract objects from kids' noses and they rarely have to refer to the ER. Okay then. From our past experience with them, they charge more than the walk in clinic, but less than the ER. Seemed like the best option at this point.

Husband walked in the door just in time to rush off to urgent care. A 30 minute drive (with a brief stop to drop Daughter off at Grandma's house) and 20 minute wait later, we were in. Son had complained of his nose hurting on the drive. I was worried about him, like any good mother would be. The nurse's assistant brought us back to an exam room and asked several questions. She left. A Registered Nurse came in and asked us all the same questions. She left. A Medical Doctor came in and asked us all the same questions again. She left. I nudged Husband and asked him if we were going be expected to pay for each of these people's time when all they had to do was review the first person's notes and we'd all be on the same page. The doc returned. She couldn't help giggling. She sees kids do this sort of thing fairly often, she says. Her own grandson had decided to shove an open tube of Super Glue up his schnoz and squeeze the glue out while it was up there. I didn't ask how that one turned out. She was chuckling, so it must not have been too bad.

She peered in one of Son's nosrils. She peered in the other side. She called me over to peer in. "Do you see anything?" she asked me. Well, no, I don't see anything at this particular moment and now that this very small light is shoved up his nose. She said she needed to check his throat to see if it had moved down there. She gagged him with her tongue depressor. He screamed and squirmed. Nothing. She didn't say much, but she left the room. She came back with two more nurses. I again wondered if we would have to pay all these people for their individual time. Dear Son was clinging to Husband and begging to go home. We convinced him to allow us to have another look. The crew had brought a sheet in to wrap his arms to his sides and keep him from flailing. I was thinking of how much I would absolutely hate this sense of helplessness to have my arms strapped at my sides while someone jabbed around in my nose and throat. We made it sound like a game for Dear Son. He was going to get to pretend to be a burrito. He actually fell for it, and didn't even complain until someone started to stick tools in his nose. Who could blame him? They used something to spread his nostrils wider because they were swollen a bit from his allergies and that made it hard to see up there. They looked in one and then in the other before they decided that it was all clear.

What? I asked incredulously. There's nothing THERE? I asked at least a dozen questions and was told about a dozen or stories of crazy things they've extracted from kids' noses, including a bean that been up a kid's nose for so long that it had sprouted. Seriously. They hypothesized that Dear Son had either gotten it back out himself or swallowed it, and that if there were still a sticker up there, it would dissolve in time and make its way back out. Dear Son had insisted over and over again that he shoved a sticker up his nose. I asked him for the three hundredth time if it felt like there was something still up there, and he was SURE he put something up there. He first said "Yes!" and then said that maybe it had already come back out. While thankful that everything was okay and that my boy child was healthy and nothing worse was wrong, I was also beyond exasperated. The staff handed the boy a Thomas the Train sticker on our way out, and I told them it was a sick joke and a ploy to keep kids coming back in. I quickly warned Son not to dare consider shoving this sticker up his nose. They also gave him a purple Popsicle.

The boy slurped happily and obliviously on his Popsicle, and the husband and I exchanged bets on the way out as to how much this visit, that could have completely been avoided, was going to cost us. We agreed that it would probably be somewhere between $200 and $300.

It was Friday the 13th. Turns out it didn't matter that I didn't leave the house all day. I suddenly felt a little superstitious after all.

John Lennon

2009-11-08T17:22:00.004-11:00

My dear three-year-old son is becoming quite the little prolific artist, much like his big sister has been ever since she could hold a crayon. Dear Son's latest art theme is lots and lots of happy smiling people. The other day he came up with this one (pic on the left). It looked eerily familiar to me (pic on the right). When I asked him if he had drawn a picture of John Lennon, I think he snorted and looked at me like I had three heads before he replied, "Mommy! It's a picture of Zoe!" Apparently my 6 year old daughter has an uncanny resemblance to the late John Lennon. Or maybe I'm just imagining things...?

The Farm

2009-11-06T17:12:00.017-11:00

This post is looooooong overdue, which pretty much sums up my life these days. Several weeks ago we made a trip to farm country to visit the kids' great grandmother and great aunts and uncles. We don't travel much. At all, really. This is probably because I hate to travel, and traveling with kids causes me to twitch uncontrollably. Nonetheless, it had been three years since the kids saw their great grandmother. More importantly, in some ways, it had been three years since my grandmother saw her great grandkids. Since this is the only grandparent I have left and we did not get to see my other grandmother before she passed away last spring, I thought it was important to make this trip.

Just in case it wasn't a hard enough commitment to make already, I was faced with a really bad cold that should have landed me in bed for several days. It hit me the day after I let Grandma know we were coming for sure, and I didn't have the heart to let her down. If I'd have started my Vitamin D3 regime a bit sooner, I probably wouldn't have gotten sick at all. At least it helped me get well a lot quicker.

I had ten therapy appointments scheduled the day before we were supposed to leave for the trip. And I was sick. But that's not all. We also got 6 1/2 inches of rain the day before we were to leave. Yes, SIX and ONE HALF inches of rain. In one day. I was driving home from work in the dark around 8:30 pm with my eyeballs swimming in snot, and I was having trouble finding a road to travel that was not flooded. I nearly didn't make it home that night, and I still had to pack for departure in the morning...AFTER getting the kids to bed. I expected a late night despite the fact that I already couldn't keep my eyes open and it was only 8:30 pm.

Right after we got the kids to bed, the power went out. And it didn't come back on. And it was STILL raining. So Dear Husband and I decided there really wasn't anything else to do but go to bed. We would leave in the morning whenever we were ready, and there was no point in stressing more about it.

We made to farm country the next evening, and it was a good thing the kids managed the 9 hour car trip so well. Better than I did, actually. I was twitching a bit by the time we made it in that night, but it could have gone much worse. Not only did we make this trip with kids, but also with two dogs. Baby is our new Boston Terrier. We decided it would be less stressful for all of us to just bring the dogs than to leave them with a boarder. Baby had just joined the family, and Cooper has major separation anxiety and a history of abuse before we got him, and it just seemed less stressful to bring them. Cooper loves to come with us places in the car. Actually, I don't think he loves to go in the family mobile, I just think he loves the part about being with us.

Cooper actually traveled well. He didn't shake or hyperventilate. Only a few weeks before he was riding in the family mobile with us and Dear Daughter called to me from the middle row to tell me, "Cooper is vibrating." I looked behind to see what she was talking about, and sure enough, Cooper was trembling and shaking like a leaf. Vibrating was actually a pretty accurate description.

Baby "vibrated" and hyperventilated for the first 30 miles. Fortunately she got a grip after that since we had 8 1/2 more hours of travel ahead of us. By the time we arrived, both dogs were seasoned travelers with nary an ounce of doggy-anxiety to show for it.

And the kids did amazingly well. We have not traveled with the kids that far in three years, and I was very skeptical. The last time we made this trip, neither one of the kids would nap in the car, and both of them needed to. We had to stop a lot more that time, so the trip became 11 or 12 hours long. And neither one of the kids slept at all the entire 12 hour car ride. Not. a. wink. I was REALLY twitching by the end of that trip!

We clearly made it. Grandma just turned 91, and she still does pretty well in assited living. I think our visit was the highlight of the year for her.

The kids also got to see their "cousins" (which are my cousins' kids). I have to do my research on family relationships to find out what that makes our kids. Second cousins, perhaps? Regardless, the kids (and I) enjoyed a leaf fight. Aunt Pat even joined us for awhile. I particularly like this picture--you can see a cloud of leaves directly over Dear Daughter's head.

These pics are on the property where I spent a lot of time when I was growing up. It was originally my grandparent's and now it is my Aunt and Uncle's. I haven't been there much in the past 24 years, but each visit brings back lots of old family memories. The landscape has changed a bit. Grandpa and Grandma's house is no longer there. A big row of pine trees that used to border the driveway and divide the space from the field behind are gone. But some of the outbuildings are still the same.

The kids also got to see my uncles' farm equipment and even go out in the equipment to the field. Dear Daughter couldn't believe how big the wheels were on the equipment. The kids each got to ride in the tractor and combine. Dear Daughter even got to drive the combine a bit. They had a lot of fun. Then they got to see the 2,500 pigs that my Uncle Randy and cousin Nick manage. I couldn't believe it later when I realized I didn't even get a picture of all the pigs. I guess I was too mesmerized by the sea of 2,500 pig faces and grunting, stinky critters all crammed together to remember to take a picture.

I'm not sure if the farm or the hotel experience was more fun for the kids. The kids had never stayed in a hotel before, and they seemed to think this was great fun. Of course, we couldn't get them to sleep together in one of the two queen beds in the room. They would just giggle and jabber the whole time. So, as predicted, Dear Husband and I had to split up in order to split up the kids so we could all get some sleep.

All in all, the trip went pretty well and hopefully I'll stop twitching before we take on a trip to Oregon next.

Whack-a-doodle

2009-10-18T17:19:00.003-11:00

It's been a "dry year" at MGM. Many of those that used to follow me faithfully over the years have gotten bored with the chirping crickets here. There are a variety of reasons why things have changed at MGM. The most obvious one is that time has been so limited. My "career by a thread" became much busier than I planned or expected. Then I stumbled into a disaster just over a year ago, which I have eluded to, but cannot--for a variety of reasons--describe in this venue. Not that I could find the words anyway. This "wrong turn" pretty much swallowed me for more than twelve solid months. Add to that the demands of homeschooling an extremely precocious child and her little brother, not far behind her. Then I launched my own private clinical practice last spring. Because I contract with more than a dozen private insurances, each of them requiring me to re-invent the wheel of establishing a partnership to provide services for their members, this has been no small feat. Providing for insurances, including the claim filing and bookkeeping involved, is exhausting. In short, the stress of the past stretch of life has pretty much zapped my joy, energy, time, attitude, and creativity. It's been pure survival!

Somewhere on the path of almost completely losing myself and feeling so swallowed up that I didn't know if I'd ever discover myself again, I have just recently begun to feel "resurrected." Glimpses of myself that I haven't seen for a year and few months are surfacing. I find myself able to enjoy my children every day the way I used to, and I try not to dwell on feelings of anger or resentment at how the past year and few months have been robbed out from under me and my family.

Yesterday, Dear Daughter set up a "tea party" and invited her little brother and I and the two Boston Terriers that live here to the party. The tea party morphed into a birthday party for Baby (the recent doggie addition to our home). I thoroughly enjoyed the act of playing this out with the kids, complete with birthday cake and song. Yes, we all three sang Happy Birthday to Baby at the tops of our lungs while Baby sat nervously in my lap. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that after the wee ones quit singing, I went on at the top of my lungs in my most obnoxious voice and as much off-pitch as possible. Baby so enjoyed it that she began to howl in her little soprano doggie voice. Thoroughly amused by her little quivering chin as she thrust her head to the sky and yowled along with me, I pressed on in competition with her. Cooper sidled up to my knees and lifted his little chin to the Heavens as well and began to howl along in his more tenor-ish voice. I apparently enjoyed these moments of howling with the dogs so thoroughly that I paid little mind to the fact that my children had covered their ears with their hands and were making horrified faces at their mother who had fallen off her rocker. In fact, Dear Daughter decided to practice her safety lesson of a few weeks ago and picked up her toy phone and announced she was calling "9-1-1." I quieted enough to hear what she was going to say. "Yes, hello!" she said to the imaginary emergency response person at the other end. "Please send an ambulance for my mommy! She's gone whack-a-doodle and needs to get to the hospital."

Yes, as backwards and ironic as it may sound, when the kids think their mommy is insane it means things are actually returning to normal.

Not only am I enjoying howling with the dogs, but I can once again find joy and humor in the little things of life. Like when Dear Son climbed into bed in the wee morning hours a couple days ago and did his wiggly jiggly thing that shakes the bed and shakes me awake. I try, in these moments, to stay still with my eyes closed and not let myself be awakened by whatever he is up to. It's pure denial as I try to gather a few more moments of sleep, lest I allow full consciousness to leave me wide awake for the day. Finally, realizing that I could not deny myself back to sleep, I gave up and opened my eyes. The wiggling and jiggling was not subsiding and something lumpy was being shoved under my pillow. I saw my dear boy child looking back at me, his bare feet shoved under my pillow. "What ARE you doing?" I inquired with irritation. "My feet are cold!" he responded matter-of-factly. Of course they are. Dear Husband put the boy child to bed without socks the previous night, despite the fact that the lows for the night reached somewhere around the freezing point, and despite the fact that I requested that the husband would put socks on the child's feet. I'm pretty sure the husband also neglected to put the extra blanket on the boy child's bed. And now he was shoving his very cold, naked feet under MY pillow at the crack of dawn! Of course I could not stay irritated at the child who stared back at me with his yellow curls in a frizzed mess and a combination of a shy-impish grin and incredulousness on his face that I would not find this act of shoving his feet under my pillow completely appropriate and understandable.

These are the things that have escaped the past year. Some of them I'm sure I didn't even notice. Others may have been noticed in the moment, but lost in the sea of stress and left to float for all eternity in some vast pergatory where all the missing pieces of my life go during periods of great stress. I hope one day when I find my eternal resting place I will be able to gather all these pieces back to myself and set them in their proper places in my memory. At minimum, these are the things that I had no time or energy to find joy in over the past year and few months, let alone blog about.

Yes, after a year and a few months of previously unknown levels of stress and exhaustion, it feels good to once again be aware of the small joys in each day, and in my enjoyment of them to re-discover my old "whack-a-doodle" self.

Six Year Wisdom

2009-10-17T16:15:00.004-11:00

We had tacos and nachos for dinner last night. Dear Daughter picked up a naked tortilla chip at one point during the meal and began to balance hamburger and cheese on it. I watched her inquisitively for awhile before asking her what she was doing. "I'm upgrading" she responded. Indeed.

At bedtime tonight she asked me if I was going to do "some work" tonight (as I usually do after she goes to bed). She then proceeded to go on some tangent about whether I was going to talk some more to my lawyer and how she doesn't like lawyers because all they care about is money, blah blah blah blah. I interrupted her to ask her how she knows about lawyers and how she came to have this opinion. "Oh, I just know about these things" she responded before jumping right back to her blabbity blab about the issue. I interrupted her again with a sarcastic quip, "You know EVERYTHING don't you?" She didn't miss a beat and responded quickly and innocently, "...no! I don't know where Heaven is!"

...okay. So ALMOST everything!

Irresistible

2009-10-07T16:52:00.002-11:00

Dear Son loves to do errands with me after we drop his big sister off for her afternoon home school co-op classes. Lately we have been frequenting Target. Son has been making his birthday list ever since his big sister's birthday passed a couple months ago. He begs to peruse the toy aisle to drool over his wish-list item each time we go.

Last week he overheard me talking to his daddy on the phone about going to Target that afternoon after dropping off Daughter. He then started jabbering in the background about random stuff that I wasn't listening to. Until I heard something that drew me in. I asked him to repeat what he said to see if he did indeed say what I thought he said.

"I 'need' to loot (look) at that red 'battle ball' when we do (go) to Tardet (Target) today betause (because) it is so IRRESISTIBLE!"

Seriously. Irresistible. He hasn't a clue how to play the silly game, but he sure does love him some robot-like-balls that pop open like little round Transformer orbs. Right now he has his eye on Inclus.

When I asked him where he learned the word "irresistible," he got all shy on me. I was compelled to inform him that HE is IRRESISTIBLE before I smothered him with kisses all over his yellow curly-headed self.

Passports

2009-10-04T13:06:00.004-11:00

A book I was reading to my Dear Daughter last night included reference to a passport. So I paused to ask Daughter if she knows what a passport it. "Oh yes!" she exclaimed and proceeded to describe (quite accurately, I might add) what a passport is. I looked at my six-year-old girl (who has barely traveled out of the state) and wondered out loud, "How in the world do you know what a passport is?" "Oh..." she responded nonchalantly, "I just happen to know about passports."

Okay then. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. This is the girl who can seem to be not listening at all when I read to her sometimes. She can be busy fluffing her pillow and rearranging the blankets on her bed or making eyes with the dogs, and as soon as I scold her for not listening, she protests that she has indeed been listening. "Okay," I challenge her. "Then tell me about what was I was reading!" She will proceed to tell me, practically verbatim, what I've been reading for the past ten minutes. How she can absorb all this--sometimes sophisticated-- information while "multi-tasking" is beyond me. We are currently reading "A Child's History of the World" and she is grasping the origins of our alphabet and pieces of Greek and Roman history....

...and apparently all about passports.

Falsies

2009-09-21T16:14:00.002-11:00

I have a confession to make: I have falsies. No, I didn't get a "boob job" (unless my Wonderbra counts), but for the past few years I've worn false toenails. In this, the era of open toe sandals, they are a life saver for people like me who do not have pretty toenails due to lifelong problems with ingrown toenails and surgeries to fix them gone a muck. The only comments I've ever received on them are compliments. People want to know who does my pedicures. Even the ladies at the salon who actually do pedicures professionally ask who does my pedicures. When I confessed that it was Walgreen's, one professional pedicurist requested that whenever people ask who does my toes, that I reference her. She was willing to stamp her good name on my Walgreen's pedicure-in-a-box.

Yesterday I was fixing my toes with Dear Daughter peeking over my shoulder. She said innocently, "Mommy, why do you always say you have ugly toenails? I don't think they look ugly!" She went on to say, "I mean, people's body parts just change when they get old." Huh? I had to ask for clarification on that one. "Well, you know. When people get old, their body parts-like their toenails-just start to change."

Sure, I thought to myself. When women reach the ripe old age of 37 years and 8 months, all they need to manage their aging body parts is a Wonderbra and some Walgreen's toenails-in-a-box. Er...and maybe some hair dye to hide the gray. Uh...and some tweezers for those stray facial hairs. Um...and perhaps some "shapewear" undergarments to tighten stuff up a bit. ...and that magic nighttime facial cream to erase the wrinkles. And according to my sage six-year-old, it all just goes with the territory of getting "old."

I think I'd better start shopping for some TED Hose. My 38th birthday comes in just a few short months.

Because It Makes Me Feel Better

2009-09-06T18:30:00.006-11:00

I've been wanting to post for quite some time now, but the stuff of Life has raised barrier after barrier against my time and mental state. At times I feel like my children's lives are slipping by right before my eyes. The weather is threatening to change, and has had its moments of cooler temps. So much so that a pair of jeans has occasionally snuck back into the kids' wardrobes. First it was Dear Daughter who exited her bedroom one morning fully clothed and ready for the day. ...Except that the jeans she had pulled out of her drawer and onto her body were no less than three inches too short for her now. That very pair was actually a bit long on her early last spring.

The next week it was Dear Son who decided sport a pair of jeans. His ankles we exposed beneath the hemlines, making him look like his nickname should be "Stretch."

I looked upon them with that irritating ache in my heart and that queasy feeling in the pit of my gut. I couldn't deny the fact that it happened again: my children changed and grew and transformed yet again as if right before my eyes. And where was I when it was happening? Such big changes. Too big not to notice until the next season begins to arrive. I considered throwing all the jeans in their wardrobes away, allowing me to perhaps stay in my state of denial. They could just wear shorts all winter, couldn't they? At least I wouldn't notice their legs growing longer by the day as their hemlines crept up their ankles.

Dear Daughter loves to tell people she is six years old now. It's really not hard to tell by the gaping hole in the front of her mouth where the last lost tooth used to reside. And Dear Son. I still delude myself that he is a baby. His curly head still has that sweet baby smell. Dear Daughter lost that baby smell some time ago. Now her head just smells like hair. Ick. I don't know what happens that turns a sweet smelling baby head into stinky scalp, but I suppose whatever it is, it's a milestone marking the end of an era forever. I squeeze my little boy every day, burying my nose in his precious yellow ringlets and breathing deeply that sweet little boy smell--dreading the day that it no longer smells so baby sweet. I plead with God, please don't let this baby grow up the way You let my first baby grow up! But I know better. And so I deny it by calling them my "babies" anyway.

Dear Son asked me one day why I call them my "babies" because they are not actually babies anymore. I told him it's because it makes me feel better.

Never Too Young

2009-08-23T16:28:00.003-11:00

Dear Son is getting pretty independent in his three-year-old potty habits. It's all good so long as he aims well (I got him trained pretty good now to point that thing down and not to spray the wall behind the toilet). For whatever reason, our home was built with quite tall commodes that don't slack at all in the overall bowl size, either. Son has to hang on for dear life to keep from falling in.

Despite his independence, he still sometimes needs a little help, and he likes me to hang out in the general vicinity in case of such need. Last week I was in the master bathroom getting ready to put on my make up for work when he hurried in and put himself on the tall throne. He sat there with his feet dangling and sweetly said, "Mommy, you are pretty!" I turned to look at him and and repeated what he said to be sure I heard him right, "You think I'm pretty?" "Yeah," he said. "You are pretty when you put that makeup on your eyes." "Oh!" I said. "You think I'm pretty when I put my make up on!?" I tried hard not to stress the part about the makeup and not to sound disappointed in the qualification he added to his compliment. "Yeah," he said. "AND you are pretty without your makeup!" he added hopefully.

The little guy has already mastered the art of putting his foot in his mouth and back peddling quickly.

No Hocky Puck Necessary

2009-08-14T09:17:00.005-11:00

My firstborn, who just turned six years old, finally lost a tooth the "normal" way! As I described in my last post, we were hopeful to be able to lose it this route and not via "dental assistance" like the two bottom ones required. Daughter is just too timid and doesn't like to wiggle on those teeth aggressively. I've been nagging on her for weeks to keep working on it, per the dentist's caution that we had limited time to achieve this task before he'd have to intervene. Dear Husband and I have taken turns wiggling on it for her the past couple weeks.

This morning I noticed it was sticking out of her mouth at nearly a 90 degree angle. It was pretty ugly. But I was distracted first by my trip to urgent care to address the fact that I came home from work last night feeling like death, and woke up this morning disappointed that I was still alive. The doc at urgent care said I was the third case of this throat funk she'd seen this morning. And it was only 9:00 am. I guess I'm not original or anything this time. I was too sick to even drive myself, so I had to recruit the husband. Of course, that meant we also had to cart along the wee ones. I sent them to get some groceries while I sat in the urgent care office. No way I was taking my kids in there or they'd get sick for sure.

It was on the way home that I noticed Dear Daughter was looking like quite the snaggle tooth. As soon as I got that first round of antibiotics in me, I scrubbed up and manhandled her tooth for a few seconds. It began to move around the socket, but wasn't coming out. It was making my skin crawl, so I stopped and asked Dear Husband to finish her off. That's when Daughter took a step back from me and spit the tooth out on the tile floor. It rattled across the kitchen before it registered in my brain what just happened. I looked at the tooth on the floor, I looked at my stunned daughter, I looked at Dear Husband, and then I shrieked that Daughter just spit her tooth out! Dear Husband said proudly that she is just like a hockey player. Daughter was pleased as punch.

We can only celebrate for a day before we have to start working on the other front tooth. Dentist said they both have to be out by her appointment in September or he's going to yank them.

It's the first tooth Dear Daughter has lost the "normal" way, and it was bittersweet. With each baby tooth lost, it feels like another bit of her babyhood is lost. It's been less than six years since we celebrated the excitement of her getting her very first teeth, and now we're already celebrating her losing them. *sigh*

Time Warp

2009-08-09T16:50:00.009-11:00

We made it. It was over nearly a week ago, and I'm just now posting about it, so that should be an indicator of how much it wiped me out! Wild parties have taken on an entirely different meaning since kids came along!

I still call her my "baby" even though she is now officially six years old. She's such a ham that it's nearly impossible to get a candid shot of her. This one is as close as I've gotten.

...and I almost snuck this one in without her knowing. Almost.

The week ended last week with the annual birthday visit from G Uncle Ron and G Aunt Pat and the third annual fishing trip. Followed by a family birthday party. Followed by the day Dear Daughter has been dreaming of for more than half a year: her first birthday party with girlfriends.

She hammed it up with her new Talent Show tent and microphone and competed with her little brother for the best talent in the house. He gave up and took her on in true Bumblebee fashion.

Last year Dear Son was enamored with Darth Vader. This year it is Bumblebee, followed closely by Optimus Prime. As I've said before, he is about as much boy as Dear Daughter is girl.

When the weekend was over, six little girls came to celebrate some more at Dear Daughter's first girlfriend party. Here she is competing with some friends in a round of "Freeze Dancing."

No wonder I ended last week in a complete stupor. Maybe the sore throat I'm battling added to that stupor. And the latest legal battle I'm fighting still with a lady who I'm pretty sure answers to the name of Satan.

So I guess that's a wrap on another year. I'm pretty sure Daughter grew about four inches and added nearly 10 pounds since her last birthday. Her long pants from last fall are now all too short and I plopped her on the scale out of curiosity. No wonder I can barely lift her anymore.

Poor thing is also trying to loose another tooth, but she just can't seem to loose them normally. The clock is ticking, and the dentist says if the two top front teeth don't come out before our visit in six weeks, he's going to yank them himself. Seems the permanent teeth are pushing in, but they are not pushing the baby ones out. One of the two has shifted in position quite a lot and has a funky color now. The dentist explained this is due to the permanent tooth trying to come in and the gum bleeding into the hollow of the tooth. Nothing to be alarmed about, he assured me. But nothing too pretty, either. Fortunately the discoloration has not gotten worse. Yet. I think I have enough stuff on my mind without the constant reminding I have to do to get Daughter to wiggle on that tooth. I figured we'd work on one at a time, but time is running out. The good news is that these teeth are coming in straight as far as we can tell on the x-rays. One of them was rotated 90 degrees a year and a half ago when we discovered the extra tooth that had to be surgically removed. I'm thrilled to hear that it straightened out and will come in just fine so long as Daughter can get those baby teeth out of the way!

For those of you with little children, I urge you to start taking them to the dentist as soon as their baby teeth start coming in. I'm always amazed when I hear parents say they never took their kids to the dentist until they were four years old or older. There's a lot that can be managed with preventative care when kids are seen by a dentist early.

I know my blog posts have been pretty pitiful and completely lacking creativity for quite some time now. The incessant drama of my life this past year has just absolutely sucked it out of me. It all began on Dear Daughter's birthday a year ago. It's not quite over yet, but I'm optimistic that I'm close, and that I'll soon be able to reclaim my life and in time, recognize myself again.

All Sales Are Final!

2009-07-24T16:29:00.002-11:00

The kids have these FABULOUS periods of time every so often these days when they actually play really nicely to together. They like to pretend play all kinds of games together, and I was thankful they were entertaining themselves today as I was washing windows and blinds. It's been two years since I washed windows. I know, I know, spare me the hushed gasps. In case you haven't been reading me much over the past year or five, I've been busy.

I've been complaining for over a year about how dirty the white wooden blinds were getting, and I had made attempts to wipe them down, but they never seemed to get very clean no matter how hard I tried. Seemed like I just pushed the dust around. I discovered today that taking them down from the windows and hosing them off in the shower works better than anything else I've tried.

The kids actually played well together long enough for me to wash four kitchen windows and the glass patio door along with all their accompanying blinds AND wash the tile floor. This, btw, is where the real gasps should be inserted!

As I was rehanging one of the blinds, I heard the kids in the next room. They had both donned their bathing suits and were pretending they were taking a vacation to the beach. In this midst of my passing through the living room, I had reminded them that they needed to put away the remains of the blanket tent they had made for the dog. Dear Daughter tried to work this right into her pretend play, saying to the "dad" (played by her little brother) that they had to finish their chores before they could leave for their vacation. Dear Daughter then began to say a script along the lines of how their children never clean up their messes. Dear Son, in character as the "dad" then said with exasperation something to effect of getting rid of the kids because they are so messy. Dear Daughter, still in character, responded, "Well, we HAVE to keep them, because they're OURS!"

For some reason I found this conversation that I was eavesdropping on to be really funny. While I've never implied in any way that I wanted to get rid of them, I have joked with them (when they are being stinkers and then cute their way out of stuff) that I guess I'll keep them one more day. They always know I'm teasing and think this is really funny when I say it. So guess that was their own rendition of the joke, or something.

Don't BUG Me!!

2009-07-20T16:45:00.009-11:00

We are enjoying a nice bit of respite in the dog days of summer with highs in the low 80's. The windows have been open again for the first time in weeks and the chugging of the air conditioner has silenced, even if only briefly. We have lots of interesting sounds out here in the country surrounded by woods. As we were getting the kids ready for bed the other night, Dear Daughter asked me with great concern in her voice, "Mommy, WHAT is that noise I hear outside?" I listened and tried to hear what she heard, but I felt like I was missing something. "What's it sound like?" I asked her. "Don't you hear it? It's going 'waaaaa-aaaaaa, waaaaaa-aaaaa, waaaaa-aaaaa' and it sounds REALLY creepy!" I listened again before it dawned on me what she heard outside.

We don't hear traffic outside our home. We don't hear people outside our home. We don't hear the hustle bustle of modern civilization. We DO hear owls hooting and coyotes calling at night, the wind swishing through the trees, tree frogs and bull frogs and every other frog variety singing and chirping and grunting their little hearts out. There's one particular variety of frog that sounds a lot like a wild turkey. And in the summer time we do hear something deafening outside our home. Something as loud as city traffic in the backyard. We hear BUGS! Lots and lots of bugs! They drone on and on in their sing songy voices much like the way Dear Daughter imitated them. I knew then what she was talking about, because I noticed it, too, earlier that evening when I opened the door to let the dog out. In fact, I felt literally assaulted by the bug noise that seemed to literally scream at high decibels.

I pondered for a moment the reason my daughter is creeped out. She and I share our disgust for bugs. It's possibly the biggest drawback of living away from other human civilization and out in the midst of a corner of what some have referred to as the "boondocks." We have bugs out here. LOTS of bugs. Dear Daughter and I have once again survived the most horrifying three weeks of summer that happen each year around this time. It's the time when the ping pong ball sized shiny green kamikaze June Beetles come out of the ground to buzz around for a mate so they can lay eggs and produce millions more of their kind for next year. They are harmless, more than a few people have reminded me. Perhaps, but I still don't like it when they carelessly bonk into the side of my head because they are such miserably poor navigators. And they make the creepiest buzzing noises as they sweep by your head, missing you by centimeters. I get all panicky that they are going to get stuck in my curly hair the way that June Beetle did that summer night in high school when I ran around the woods in the dark at my friend's house lighting off fireworks and being generally stupid. That thing hung out in my hair for awhile, apparently, because I didn't even know it was there until I tried to wash my hair in the shower later that night and got the thing even more tangled in a web of wet curls and shampoo. It wouldn't stop buzzing and I don't know how I kept from screaming and waking the whole house up.

Before we moved out here to no-man's land where the beetles really are as big as Volkswagens, I thought the Japanese Beetles were creepy. We had become infested with those even when we lived in town. But they seem tame at about one half to one third the size of the big tankers we have now.

A couple weeks ago, however, I became desensitized to the big green flying Volkswagens much the way I became desensitized to the smaller flying Japanese Beetles. At least the Volkswagen Beetles (ha ha...get it?) don't STING!

*******************************************************************************************

As you know by now, I like to drive the big ass lawn mower. The buzz and drone of the engine and monotonous action of back and forth rows are a soothing escape. It's the only time I can seem to give myself permission to sit still and zone out the rest of the world. Dear Son likes to drive the mower, too, and begs to climb up on my lap and steer the machine around the acreage. We were not quite 30 minutes into the job a couple weeks ago when I thought I felt a Volkswagen Beetle stuck in my hair. I started to relive the summer of '89 before I stopped the mower and turned off the blade and screamed to my boy child to run for his life with me. We were chased all the way up to the house, but not by Volkswagen Beetles. In fact, I still don't know WHAT they were for sure.

My husband speculates they were Africanized Killer Bees or some sort of thing. I can't find a picture or description anywhere on the Internet that matches what those things look like. I'm guessing they had a nest in the ground somewhere and we mowed over it. Whatever the reason, I'll never know, but they were PISSED OFF! One DID get stuck in my hair and stung my head before it found its way out. And I was stung in about four other random places. Dear Son was stung twice on the back of his neck, and since they had chased us up to the house they were swarming around the driveway and garage threatening us constantly. After icing the stings until they stopped burning, and dodging more stings as I stood in the driveway, I looked across the acre of grass between me and mower that sat idling in the grass with a couple dozen black and white bumblebee mutants buzzing around it. I insisted Husband check my curls thoroughly before putting on a cap and getting up my nerve to go back out there to retrieve the mower. The husband, you see, is seriously allergic to bee stings. Allergic enough to potentially die from a sting.He handed me a can of wasp and hornet spray and gave me a pep talk and sent me back out there. Thanks, Hon!

I got within 15 feet of the mower and the mutants literally came after me again just for STANDING there! I got stung again as I bolted back to the house. This time husband decided he was going to have to get in the game. He grabbed the wasp and hornet spray and went in. I stood in the driveway feeling like a major wimp and praying he didn't get chased and stung like I did. We didn't need any ER trips. And that's when he started doing a crazy dance and running back toward the house. He got stung, but barely. I started to run after Benadryl and an Epi-pen and call 9-1-1, but he seemed to be okay for the moment. We stood there looking at the mower running idle with a full tank of gas while the bees swarmed around it, and scratched our heads. Well, Husband scratched his while I held ice on mine where the stings still throbbed. We decided to go in together this time. Moral support for each other if nothing else. He grabbed the wasp and hornet spray again, and I grabbed a bad mitten racket and slowly we made our way down again. I swung at anything that moved and Husband sprayed at anything that moved until he got close enough to jump on the mower and drive it the heck out of Dodge. Then we ran in the house and bolted the windows and hid the rest of the day. Just kidding about that last part.

Not that it hasn't crossed my mind.

Going UP!

2009-07-15T16:11:00.008-11:00

My blog...it's feeling neglected. For the first time in four and a half years, I can't seem to make adequate time for this blogging thing. It's not that my kids have become any less cute, as you can see by their little mugs. It's not that they don't still say just the cutest things, like the other day when we pulled into the local big name discount store. We decided to take the whole fam as we were out doing other things and needed a few this and thats from the big name discount store. It was Saturday night. Yeah, I know. That's how exciting thing are in my life these days. Stuffmart on Saturday night with the kids. Whatever. So we pulled in the parking lot at around 7 pm, and it didn't take long for me to start grumbling about how crazy it is that the place is soooooo busy even on Saturday nights. Apparently lots of people around these parts have really exciting lives.

Dear Daughter piped up from the middle row of the family mobile, "Maybe they are just attracted here because the sign says, 'Always Low Prices!'" I don't think I had consciously read or retained what the front of the store said on their signage. My little precocious one who began reading at age four certainly did, however. And then used the word "attracted" in her sentence quite effectively.

Life certainly is crazy lately. I thought summer would feel calmer, and I suppose it does to some extent. You will recall that last summer, almost exactly a year ago, the crap started hitting the fan around here. I think the dust has just begun to settle nearly a year later.

A year ago I decided to make a career change. Not in the practice of what I actually do as a private practice licensed psychotherapist, but just where I decided to do it. I had been providing individual, family, and group therapy services at an area group home for teen girls for 3 1/2 years. I did this consistently for those 3 1/2 years along with other varieties of work, which used to be teaching at a local university and then more recently doing office based community counseling. But in the past two or so years of my work at the group home, it had become the largest portion of my career, and at times the only work I was doing. These are girls that typically come with a very long list of issues. Girls who have been in the foster system for nearly all their lives with more foster placements than they can count. Girls who've been removed from their birth parents for a variety of reasons including parents' drug addictions, being beaten, raped, molested, and any other form of abuse you can imagine. Sometimes being prostituted by their own mothers to support their mothers' drug habits. They are 17 years old on average by the time I get a hold of them at the group home. Some of them come with histories of problems with the law from mild things like shoplifting to things like drug posession, running away, assault, etc. They often have severe conduct problems and severe emotional problems. They come by their problems legitimately as the result of a culture of parents who have failed to instill a sense of love, belonging, and value into their childrens' souls. As much as my heart breaks for them, their issues and the intensity of their lashing out exhausts me at times. I become a safe person for them over time, and this often makes me a person with whom they can express their anger. It's not unusual for me to become a mis-placed target for their angry attacks. I know how to compartmentalize this stuff and I can rationalize that it comes with the territory.

Last summer, however, was a turning point. Last summer one of my teenagers there decided to take her life by hanging herself. I think the combination of this experience along with the especially difficult caseload I carried there during that time wore me down to the point of needing a change for the sake of my own mental health. Little did I know that there was to be no rest in sight for me. Oh no...in fact, things were going to get MUCH MUCH worse over the next several months.

Unfortunately, the path I chose was a lot like when Alice fell in the rabbit hole, only much much more hellish. It appeared at first to be such a good move and turned into the worst nightmare of my life. I've never been treated so poorly. You wouldn't expect this from people in the human services field. It was insane, and I certainly felt at times like I was losing my mind! It was exhausting to phase out of my practice at the group home and my other small office based practice and move it to this new group in the first place. I partner with more than a dozen insurance groups and third party payors. The red tape to move and re-establish with new tax ids and national provider identifiers and addresses and the like is insane. Each of those dozen plus groups I partner with have their own set of rules. Two months into my work with this new group I started to see some really bad signs, and I started feeling uneasy. To add to the stress, we learned at this time that my husband was to be laid off (which never happened, despite the loss of certain benefits and bonuses). I only made it five months total before I ran screaming from that group. I lost more money in that particular decision than I care to think about, and forget about peace of mind. It was pure hell the whole way through. I'm TIRED! Really really tired!

Meanwhile, after running from the hell I'd endured for 5 months, I decided I was done contracting with groups. I have yet to find a group who can run a smooth business and have their act together. I realized after seeing this in multiple private practices that it took me more time and effort to babysit things to be done correctly than it would take for me to just do it all myself. So that's what I did. Within 10 days of terminating my work with the clinic from hell, I had my own private practice launched. I launched my practice March 3rd, and I'm just now at the end of all the red tape involved to uproot and move my affiliations with the various third party payers AGAIN! For now, I am managing all aspects of my business, including all billing, bookkeeping, and administrative duties along with the therapy duties. And I recently agreed to return to do ONE therapy group at the teen group home where I previously worked. Would you believe me if I said I missed those girls? So there's been no rest.

We managed to finish a year of homeschooling last spring despite all this insanity, and I've been busy lesson planning for the next year whenever I can steal some moments. I must be organized for next year in order for it to work. Dear Daughter will join a homeschooling group in the area where I can drop her off one afternoon a week and she will get art, drama, music, and PE classes.

In light of my current life circumstances, blogging has just not risen to the top of my list of things to do. My top priorities at the moment include getting that birthday party planned for my little girl who has coveted a party with little girlfriends for months now. Her big day will finally arrive in a few short weeks. She began inviting people to her birthday party since last December. Even random strangers she has just met in the park have gotten invited. *sigh* Next on my list are enjoying my family, getting the homsechool year mapped out, and managing my private practice.

This, my friends, is why I don't frequent this space as often anymore. I often think those days of round the clock feedings were so much easier than this. I can't promise I'll make it back more often, but I do expect the dust to continue to settle in my life as I work at forgetting the former things and moving forward into new things! It's been a rough year in so many ways with little room left for going "down," so I figure there's nowhere to go now but "up"!

We have managed to have some fun this summer, too. Here's the fam in front of the word's largest banjo. Dear Son has been completely potty trained for months now. WOOOHOOO! But he has developed this annoying habit of grabbing himself all the time. So glad it got recorded in a family pic.

And here's Dear Husband helping the kids with arcade bowling, which they both thought sounded like so much fun. Until they got a few rounds into the game and lost interest. Husband and I finished the game off, and I smoked him.

Death to Elmo!

2009-07-09T17:00:00.003-11:00

Dear Son was into Elmo oh so briefly. The sentiment was gone by the time Son reached the ripe ol' age of 2 1/2 years. While anything and everything Elmo has generally been banished from the house, a hooded Elmo bath towel remains. I grabbed it last night after Son's bath and popped it over his head before he knew what hit him. As soon as he realized, the protest began, "Ohhhhhhhhhhhh! I HATE Elmo! I hate Elmo because he doesn't involve GUNS!"

Transformers have LONG outlived Elmo in this little boy's favor. I think Transformers have enjoyed a year on the pedestal so far. At the moment, the boy (in his 3 1/2 year old big boy status) covets a Bumble Bee helmet and blaster gun more than anything else.

I think I should have at least kept that 28" Elmo doll around for target practice!

Dumb-o-crat!

2009-07-02T17:55:00.003-11:00

Dear Daughter (with disgust in her voice): "He's just being a DEMOCRAT!"

Me: "A 'democrat'? What does THAT mean?"

Dear Daughter: "You know...it means that he's DUMB!"

That's my girl!

I didn't teach her this. I swear.

Lunch Lady Land

2009-06-21T15:54:00.003-11:00

It was a family bonding moment. After enjoying a late Sunday lunch of chicken enchiladas, pico de gallo, guacamole, and the like, we had us a mess on our hands to clean up. The whole family pitched in, and we were getting pretty goofy and having fun. I suggested to Dear Husband that we needed some music while we cleaned up. Suddenly a few lines from an old song that I haven't heard in nearly two decades crawled through my head. "We need 'Lunch Lady Land'!" I exclaimed. "'Lunch Lady Land'?" Dear Husband replied with a what-in-the-world-are-you-talking-about tone in his voice. "Yeah! That old Adam Sandler song. Don't you know it?" He didn't, which I still find odd, but he quickly pulled it up on YouTube on the kitchen desktop computer and we listened while we worked. The kids found it hysterical, and while I couldn't remember the words when I first suggested the song, my memory came back after a line or two, and pretty soon I was singing "Sloppy Joe...Slop-Sloppy Joe..." into a big soup spoon. Dear Husband wasn't impressed. Amused perhaps, but not impressed. In fact, he refused to play it a second time, much to my chagrin. In addition to having the stoopid song stuck in my head all day, I've also been innundated with all kinds of odd college memories.

Apparently I'm not the only one who hasn't been able to get the song out of my head. Just before bed, Dear Son was wandering around humming the Sloppy Joe line, too. I seem to think this is a lot funnier than Dear Husband does.

Frumpy

2009-06-15T17:19:00.002-11:00

It's true that I used to be really thin (emphasis on USED TO BE). I once wore a size 3 nicely on my 5'9" frame and turned the men's heads when I walked by. A decade and half and two children later...well...let's just say I don't wear a size 3 anymore. Yeah, I still pine for my size 3 body many days, but it could be a lot worse. While I am pretty "average" now, I'm also far from morbidly obese.

All of this justifying meant nothing, however, when Dear Daughter ran to the kitchen the other day while I was preparing lunch and excitedly said, "Mommy! I just saw a commercial about something that might help you! It was something that will help you control your weight..." and that's when I tuned out. I looked at my husband, who knew enough to mind his own business and so did not say a word until I asked him to. And then he only shrugged as if to say he hasn't a clue where his daughter gets this stuff.

If I truly believed in Jenny Craig, my fat frumpy ass might have called her today for some advice about my "weight problem."

It's a good thing that daughter of mine is only five years old.

It's Gonna Haunt Me!

2009-06-14T16:17:00.012-11:00

For those who do not already know this, Dear Daughter is precocious. I hear she comes by it honestly, but I don't like to share that part often. She doesn't miss anything and asks those sorts of questions that stop you in your tracks because you hadn't really ever thought of them yourself until the moment that she asks them.

We indulged Daughter this weekend with her first visit to the community swimming pool. She's been begging for weeks. I personally am not a big fan of swimming in the first place, and certainly not in public pools. To me they seem a cesspool of public piss and spit with some chemicals thrown in. Like I really want to float around in that. Bleh. The whole family went, and as I was getting on my crocs and heading out the door, I spotted Dear Husband's chosen footwear lying in wait. It made me pause, as I had not seen these particular sandals for a couple years--not since we moved to casa de country. I snickered and snorted to myself at these really bad Addidas soccer slide knock-offs, compliments of Walmart. And then I immediately broke out in a version of "I'm Too Sexy"--adding in, "for my shoes" as I did an exaggerated hip hop dance around my husband in the kitchen.

Minutes later, as we pulled out of the driveway in the family-mobile, Dear Daughter asked from the middle row, "Mommy, what does 'sexy' mean?" I just about spit my Coke Zero all over the dash. I didn't think to screen my words amidst the mockery of my husband's fugly shoes and I wasn't quite ready to explain "sexy" to my not-quite-six-year-old daughter. Dear Husband twitched in his fugly sandals and smirked as he said, "Yeah, Dear. Tell your daughter what 'sexy' means." I stammered for the words before settling on the quick explanation that it means "looks nice." Then I changed the subject FAST, and silently prayed she wouldn't tell the pastor's wife at church the next morning that she looks sexy, which would be about as embarrassing as the time she randomly told the pastor's wife that there really is a bird called a "Booby."

********************************************************************************************

Tonight Dear Daughter and I were saying bedtime prayers, which included prayers for a friend's boy who went through a major life-saving surgery recently to remove considerable length of small intestine. He is now well and demonstrating a miraculous recovery, and as I talked with my daughter about how they had removed a length of intestine twice the length of my body, she asked me, "Mommy, where did they put that intestine that they removed?" I had to clarify what she meant to be sure I understood the question. It also allowed me some stall time to think about what the answer might be. Then I had to admit to her that I am not sure, but that I think hospitals have special containers for human tissue and body parts that are removed, which are called "bio hazards," and that they are probably disposed of in an incinerator. She digested this information for a few minutes (no pun intended!) before asking, "...but what if someone had to have their brain operated on?" She was kind of giggling when she asked it until I explained to her that sometimes people really DO have to have their brain operated on and brain tissue may end up in the same place. She was really serious as she studied my face in the dark. I was concerned she would have some wild nightmares, so I changed the subject again and tried to end on a lighter note before kissing her goodnight. When I walked across the hall a few minutes later, I heard her talking to herself in her room.

Somehow I have a feeling that both of these topics are going to come up again.

"I Put Trash in My Nose!"

2009-06-06T16:49:00.006-11:00

Dear Son doesn't like to miss anything. I reason that this is why he refuses to nap and why he wants to jump out of bed in the morning at the first notice of the sun peeking through the blinds. When Dear Daughter was this age, she would sleep happily away in her bed until 9:00 or even 9:30 each morning. She had not even figured out that she could get out bed by herself until she was nearly four years old. She would lounge in bed when she woke up and call out, "Mommy! I'm awake!" and I would have to come in and move the pillows and larger than life stuffed duck from the open side of her bed before she would climb out.

It doesn't matter to Dear Son that it is Saturday morning; if the sun is up, he wants to be up as well. True to form, this morning he jumped out of bed with the sun and wandered into the living room to turn on the television until the rest of the household decided to get up as well. Dear Husband was up next, and even though it was only 8:00 when I wandered into the living room to see if I was missing out on anything good (I wasn't), Dear Husband was just pulling out of the driveway with the 1967 Chevy pickup to go get some mulch for the yard. Dear Son was chomping on something and watching Sponge Bob, and he informed me rather nonchalantly at this point that there had been some "trash" on the ottoman, and that he had stuck it in his nose. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I wondered if it had anything to do with the screaming and crying I heard just a bit earlier, and which had awakened me from my slumber. I inquired a bit further for more explanation from Dear Son, but I didn't get anything new out of him. I decided that whatever the issue was, it must be over now, and I went about my usual morning business.

Dear Son followed me around still chomping on something, and I finally asked him what he was chewing on. "Gum!" he said with a grin, and then asked for a tissue. I noticed his nose seemed a bit red and drippy and I wondered if he was getting a cold or if he had some allergies the way his big sister does. I handed him a tissue and heard him sneeze a couple times and didn't think anything more about it.

I wandered to the kitchen, with Son following me close like a shadow, and cooked us a couple eggs while Dear Daughter continued to snooze in full ignorance to the rest of the household beginning their day. I sat by Son at the kitchen table, and we munched our toast together in silence until Son asked for a "wipe" for his nose. I handed him a napkin, and he snorted and sneezed and blew. I was focused on my egg and thinking about the chickens Dear Husband has promised me but that we haven't gotten yet. He says he needs to build a coop first and he doesn't seem to be too eager to get on that task.

Dear Son made another reference to the "trash" that was on the ottoman that he said he shoved up his nose and he giggled as he said that now he could "feel" it! That got my attention, and I'm pretty sure I asked with no small intensity in my voice what in the world he was talking about. He grinned and pointed to his nose and showed me how he could touch his nostril and feel it. I bent my head down to look into his nostril, and sure enough I saw something poking out of it. The pieces of the past 30 minutes began falling into place. "WHAT is in your nose?!!!!" I exclaimed with considerable concern and urgency in my voice. "Daddy said that it wasn't in there. He said he couldn't see it." I wasn't satisfied with this response as there most certainly WAS something in there! I was able to grasp just enough of the corner of whatever it was and yank it out of his right nostril. An entire Trident gum wrapper emerged, coated in snot.

"How in the world did a gum wrapper get up your nose?" I asked incredulously. "I put it up there," Dear Son casually replied, "and Daddy said it wasn't there anymore!"

What followed was the requisite speech about not putting objects up his nose--not even the "trash" on the ottoman. And then I quizzed Dear Husband good when he got home with his truck full of mulch. "I looked up in both sides of his nose, and I didn't see anything!" Dear Husband said in defense. "How could an entire Trident gum wrapper disappear up our son's nose?" I insisted.

Between Dear Son and Dear Husband, I never did get a satisfactory answer.

The Good Life Part II

2009-05-30T18:09:00.014-11:00

We were hanging out in the sunshine, enjoying the warmth on our bare arms and legs. Our tummies were full from lunch and there was the faint hint of a breeze in the air. The only sound was the happy chirping of the birds above us and the breeze rustling in the tress, now full again with leaves. I could smell the spring and sunshine in the air as we three sat facing the same direction, me slightly behind them. I looked at their content little baby faces from inches behind them, and I realized it was a perfect Kodak moment. I was desperate to capture the moment, but of course I did not have my camera handy. I took off into the house to get it, and I did my best to salvage the moment when I returned. I was only away for seconds, but the moment was gone when I returned. That is exactly what makes moments like this so worthy of being cherished: they are fleeting and fragile.

Dear Son realized by this time that I was looking for a good picture, and he made it clear he didn't want to be in it. I settled for admiring his towhead full of blond curls from the back. As his hair gets longer, his curls get wilder.

He couldn't stand it, and gave in to his curiosity about what I was doing behind him and why I wasn't arguing about looking at the back of his head.

Dear Daughter wanted to be in the picture about as badly as Dear Son DIDN'T want to be in the picture. So I indulged her. We had been picking strawberries in the garden just before this, and Daughter loves to wash them in the outdoor well faucet and eat them as quickly as I can pick them. The evidence is still on her chin.

As his big sister hammed it up, Dear Son began feeling left out and jumped into the game. And I decided right then and there that if I hadn't already decided it, that my life is as full and blessed as a life can get.

...and that's when Dear Son started getting cocky.

Got. To. Catch. Up!

2009-05-24T14:11:00.020-11:00

Dear Husband took Friday off to make this a four day weekend for us. So here we are, three days into the four day weekend, and I'm beginning to get caught up on Life. This is why I never get caught up on typical weekends. Two days is (SOMETIMES) just long enough to take the edge off. I never feel rested or caught up before the week starts again unless I get about four days to try.

And so...a month after Grandma and Grandpa M left from their visit with us, I am FINALLY getting pictures and narraitve loaded! *sigh*

Grandma gave Dear Daughter an apron that was hers when she was a little girl (made by her mother, Dear Daughter's Great Grandmother). So far Dear Daughter is the ONLY grandDAUGHTER on either side of the family, and Grandma never got to pass this down to her own children, as they were both boys. Dear Daughter got to wear the apron to bake cupcakes with Grandma, which was a pretty fun experience (for both of them, I think!)

Dear Son likes to make cupcakes, too. Look how he concentrates on the icing. If you look close enough, you can see some evidence of tasting on his cheeks!

This is the cow I posted about a couple weeks ago. I saw him munching in our yard when I got up and looked out the window one morning. We don't own any cows, by the way. He munched for awhile and then wandered into the woods and we never saw him again.

Of course, no visit is ever complete without a backyard bonfire complete with S'mores.

And the last picture is totally random. We've been seeing a lot of Cardinal couples at our birdfeeders. I actually saw the male Cardinal going to the feeder and getting seeds to bring back to his sweetie. He would pass them from his beak to hers and then go back for more while she stood nearby and munched. It was really sweet.

Daughter's Dance Recital

2009-05-21T17:43:00.015-11:00

FINALLY! The planets and stars all aligned tonight so I could manage to post a couple pics from Dear Daughter's dance recital. I didn't get any action shots as flash photography was not allowed. You know, so that you will buy the portraits and DVD's that the professionals are selling. Whatever.

It was a looooong recital and Dear Son got antsy before the intermission and began begging to "go home." He was only interested in what was going on on stage at intermittent intervals. The most memorable of these intervals was during one woman's solo classic ballet performance. She had on a very classic tutu and danced to a very classic piece of ballet music. Until this point, all the performances were groups and not individuals, and many performances had been modern or jazz in style. Dear Son caught on right away that there was only one performer on stage this time. As the spotlight centered on the ballerina and a hush settled over the crowd, Dear Son's voice piped up loudly in the otherwise silent auditorium. "Why is there only ONE?!" he demanded rather loudly. His Daddy and I shushed him sternly. He doesn't "shush," mind you, unless you provide him with an answer that he finds satisfactory. I whispered in his ear that there is only SUPPOSED to be "one" in this performance, and then I braced myself for his LOUD protest to continue to ring out over the silent auditorium. I was totally relieved that he was actually placated with this explanation. About two minutes passed before he piped up loudly again, "But why is she HAPPY by herself?" Indeed, she had a large smile across her face for the entire performance. Dear Son apparently thought it odd that a person could be happy unless joined together with others. His Daddy and I shushed him again and I quickly tried to offer him an explanation that would appease him before he continued his loud protest. It didn't work that time, and we had to continue to try new explanations in between shushes until he was satisfied.

As for Dear Daughter, she performed "Under the Sea" as a tap piece with her class, and "Once Upon a December" as a ballet piece with her class. She certainly doesn't mind being on stage, and she was pumped up on adrenaline the entire evening.

Milestones and Random Jibberish

2009-05-18T14:19:00.007-11:00

I dared not speak up until now for fear I'd jinx it, but Dear Son has now (finally!) successfully gone an entire month with only one or two poopy pants accidents. He had regressed back to peeing in his pants once he got the pooping in the potty thing down, but he has proven himself enough for me to now trust him wearing his superhero underpants all the time except overnight and on long outings. Who'd have thought that my second born would be three years and three months old when he finally reached this milestone after my firstborn had it down by 20 months? I've heard it's a "boy thing," so that's our excuse.

And Dear Daughter reached her own milestone today, which would be riding her bicycle without training wheels. She can make it all the way down our 250 foot driveway and back on her first day wihtout training wheels. If I can figure out how, I'll post a video. This milestone evokes a combination of pride and bittersweetness inside me. I don't remember if I was five years old like my daughter when I first rode a bicycle without training wheels, but I remember the day it first happened for me. I blogged about it a couple years ago.

I may have pics from Dear Daughter's dance recital last Saturday once I get them copied off Dear Mom's camera. We thought our camera was not working (which we discovered just before the show) and so we did not get any pictures on it. Fortunately we got some on my mom's camera. Now that the recital is over, our camera is working again. Go figure.

At five years of age, Dear Daughter has completed two years of ballet and tap dance lessons, a year of piano lessons, learned to ride a two wheeled bicycle, and completed the first grade in every area except Language Arts--in which she is working at second grade level. It's a bit overwhelming for me to remember that just 6 years ago she had not even yet exited my womb and entered this world!

I'm way behind on things like blogging, which is why my posts are so random and scattered and few and far in between these days. I've intended to post about Grandpa and Grandma M's visit from Oregon for a week or more now, but I've wanted to include some pictures with a post. The problem is, I do all my work from my laptop and most often from the upstairs level of our home even though the office is in the lower level of our home. The pictures are housed on the downstairs desktop and accessed via wireless network on my laptop. Whenever I consider getting the post done, it is usually late at night when I'm finishing some work in bed with my laptop. If I decide I can keep my eyes open long enough to do the post, I realize I still can't because the downstairs desktop is turned off. This means I cannot access the pictures. While I may have enough energy to do the post at that wee hour, I don't have the energy to walk to the furthermost room of the house on an entire different floor to turn on the desktop. I've even spent a couple hours here and there in the downstairs office a few times in the past week or two and not managed to remember to turn on the desktop and nab the pics while I'm down there. So, in the amount of time it took me to explain this, I could have gone downstairs to turn on the desktop to the get pics, but it wouldn't really matter because once again I do not have time right now to do the post. It's also getting late and I need to get the kids to bed.By the time I complete that task, I will either forget about the blog post again or I will have too many other things to cram in before I can go to sleep myself tonight, and blog posting will just not be a priority anymore.

I wonder what it's like to be bored?

Lock Her Up!

2009-05-15T16:14:00.006-11:00

Last week I brought my daughter with me to go clothes shopping. I instructed her to sit on the bench as I did a "fashion show" for her. She gave her thumbs up or thumbs down on each piece as I tried them on. When it came to the shiny, hot pink blouse and ankle length skirt, she exclaimed, "Mommy! You look like a hottie!" Hottie?! I quizzed my daughter as I implored her to tell me where in the world she learned the term "hottie." She was unable to tell me. I felt caught between flattery (after all, she's called me a Beluga Whale in the past) and dismay at my five year old.

Just as I was moving past this incident, convinced again of my daughter's five-year-old innocence, I heard her jabbering as we waited at the cashier's stand at a big name department store. She was playing with her toy flip phone and announcing that she just received a "text message." The elderly woman ahead of us in line was buying herself a new bassiere. She whirled around at my daughter's words and quizzed her on how old she is and what does she know about "text messages"? Indeed. I decided then and there that I am locking her up until she is thirty!

Later in the car on the way home Dear Daughter's voice addressed me from the back seat, "Mommy? What's a text message?"

At least she didn't ask me what a "hottie" is.

Dear God, send me help. FAST!

Life in the Country

2009-05-06T17:48:00.003-11:00

Top 10 pieces of evidence of life in the country...

1) The five deer that ambled into our backyard a couple weeks ago. The entire family sat on the floor of the master bedroom and admired them discreetly from the windows for several minutes.

2) The two mallard ducks that made our pond their home for a few days during the incessant rain.

3) The Blue Heron that decided to roost in front of our pond one afternoon, also during the incessant rain (I was beginning to feel like Snow White that particular day).

4) The armadillos that are digging up the lawn (All. Five. Acres. Of. It.) with odd shaped "pot holes".

5) The multitude of froggy noises that are erupting everywhere in our woods and can be heard through the open windows of our home at night.

6) The fact that we listen to frogs chirping at night instead of noisy neighbors or traffic.

7) The spiders that are beginning to show up around the house again.

8) The ticks that we are having to vigilantly try to control, but have nonetheless made appearances on our kids and dog a few times already this season.

9) The owl I hear hooting when I step outside with the dog for the last time each evening.

10) The gargantuan bugs that are beginning to appear again out of seemingly nowhere.

11) The tadpoles that Grandma M helped the kids catch out of the pond, which have become the kids' annual "science project" and which are now sitting in a mason jar on the kitchen island, gradually turning into little tree frogs who will grow up to chirp just as loudly as their parents by the time we release them to return to the pond.

12) The cow that I saw wandering about our yard, munching on our grass one morning when I awakened and opened the blinds in the master bedroom. Please note that we do not own any of our own cows, and neither do any of our closest neighbors. We watched him munch for about a half hour before he wandered off in the woods. We've not seen him since.

Supervision Required

2009-05-01T16:49:00.004-11:00

As many of you know, my Dear Daughter has long been known for her precocious vocabulary. I'm pretty sure she came out of the womb speaking in full, verbose paragraphs. I also think it's fair to say that while he is not quite as verbally precocious as his big sister, Dear Son doesn't deserve to live too much in her shadow.

Dear Husband recently had to work late on night. He optimistically expected to be home just in time to kiss the kids goodnight. Alas, in the world of computer geek-dom, glitches tend to happen that make the final goal take much longer than originally expected. I put the kids to bed alone that night. As I lay in the dark on Dear Son's twin mattress with the boy-child snuggled in the crook of one arm and the girl-child snuggled in the crook of the other arm, Dear Son yawned and asked if Daddy would be home soon. I've made the point strongly in the past that my Dear Son is very much a DADDY'S boy and Mommy only rates a step better than no one at all if Daddy isn't home. If Daddy is home, I can just forget about it. So, despite Dear Son's pining for his daddy, I was enjoying some second-fiddle snuggling with him. After several moments of silence, Dear Son yawned, and then pensively said, "I wish Daddy was home to supervise us."

After I clarified with my three-year-and-four-month-old child that he did indeed say "supervise" AND used the the word correctly in a sentence, I theorized that he was echoing a word I have used several times when Dear Husband is at home and I really need to get something done that the kids' are not allowing me to get done. This phrase is, "Honey, would you PULEEEZE supervise the kids so that I can get (fill in the blank) done?!"

Even if Dear Son was only echoing a word that he has heard me use, it was still precious to hear how he had retained the word as well as its meaning and demonstrated its correct usage in a sentence.

And believe me, by the end of fifteen solid hours of managing the kids all by myself, I too was wishing Daddy were home to "supervise"!

Silliness

2009-04-26T16:20:00.005-11:00

Those who know me very well know I'm a kid at heart. I get excited over things like going to the area big name theme park, making cookies, playing with Moonsand, and making tents in the living room with sheets and furniture. It would not surprise people who know me well that I included Flarp and Silly String in the kids' Easter baskets this year. It also would probably not surprise people who know me well that I suggested that the kids go out to the front yard with their Silly String and decorate the first tree they found. ...and it would probably not surprise people who know me well that I had a great time HELPING my kids decorate the tree in the front yard with Silly String.

As far as Dear Son's Halloween sweatshirt (which he is wearing on EASTER)...I had nothing to do with that!

You Can't Teach an Old Bra New Tricks

2009-04-22T17:24:00.009-11:00

I hate shopping for bras. Really really hate it. A couple weeks ago I took notice that the undergarments intended to provide me with "support" were no longer very supportive. Four years. That's how long it's been since I purchased new bras. Yeah. Bra shopping is a major undertaking as far as I'm concerned, and a total science project whereby a person has to have some knowledge of various scientific topics such as gravity, aerodynamics, and textiles.

So I walked into the local big name department store and straight to the over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders (pebble-holders, perhaps?). I stood in awe of the rows and rows of options before me, and I was immediately exasperated. This task is always hard enough for me, and MORE choices do not necessarily make it any easier. I took a deep breath and dove into the forest of cups and elastic of every shape color and pattern. I made it through the first couple rows rather quickly as it was obvious none of those would do; they were clearly for those who are more endowed than I. If I had wandered into this section by accident, I would have thought this was the perfect place to buy my next bowling ball bag.

When I got out of the boobs-are-us section, I finally began seeing some potential options. I began feeling fabric, stretching straps, and squeezing cups (and I hadn't even made it to the dressing room yet!) I held up random specimens and examined the picture of the model on the tags. "If only!" I thought to myself and dreamed that the right bra could actually make my own pair look like that. I read the sales pitches on the tags that were intended to convince patrons why they should buy that particular bra instead of any of the other 3,500 there were to choose from. "Smooth fit" sounded pretty good. Who wants bumpy boobs? "Convertible" sounded too much like "topless" to me. "Barely there" sounded good at first, and then I realized I already have that going for me. "Push up" reminded me too much of a drill sergeant saying, "drop and give me twenty", and "air lift" sounded like the emergency medics were coming to save my life (which may have been the better of my options at this point!) My eyes then fell on something that I had never seen before. "No more back fat!" the tag read. Back fat, huh? I was just talking about this phenomenon with a friend the other day. It was in context of pushing 40 and discovering fat on our bodies in places we didn't think about having fat ever before. Thinking I might need some back magic, I added it to the tangled mess of bras that were accumulating in my arms.

Seriously. How many ways can a garment be "re-invented"? I ruled out the ones with the paper thin cups (no need to tell the entire world when you're feeling chilly), and I ruled out the heavily padded ones that make your pals feel like you've attempted to wrap a mattress around them. I ruled out the leopard prints and super lacy ones. After trying on the first 20, I chose NONE of them and left the dressing room tangled in a mess of cups and elastic and those silly little hangers on which you can never get the bra to hang right again after trying it on. Suddenly the stretched out, four-year- old bra that I walked in with didn't seem so bad, and I was tempted to put it back on, sigh a satisfied "just right!" and go on about my life as if the previous hour of bra masquerading had never happened. I suddenly felt like the Bernstein Bear in my son's "Old Hat New Hat" book who walked into the hat shop with his old beat up, worn out hat and tried to shop for a new one. After trying on everything in the store, including that which borders on the inane and ridiculous, he spied the old beat up hat he walked in with, snatched it up and placed it back on his head with the satisfied exclamation, "Just right!"

In the end, I came home with my first "Wonderbra." I'm not sure it does "wonders" for me, but when I wear the thing, I can almost see a faint hint of cleavage, so I got that going for me. That and the hope that this new "Wonder" baby is my ticket to four more years sans bra shopping.

The Smelly Kid

2009-04-12T13:46:00.004-11:00

We started working on this when Dear Son was 2 1/2 years old. I've finally all but given up. The kid just insists, for some reason, on doing his "business" in his pants. I tried M&M's in the beginning. It worked for about two days. Then I tried stickers. He never did get into that. After a few months with only one or two successes, we gave up for awhile. After about a six month break, we tried again. This time I promised to get him whatever toy he saw in the toy magazine that he was dying to have. He talked about the toy nonstop. He dreamed about the toy. He begged for the toy. I enthusiastically promised it to him whenever he decided to stop pooping in his pants. Weeks and months passed and the toy he coveted changed again and again. I guess he gave up on each one when he continued pooping in his pants and decided to try wishing for a new one...as if the new one would somehow motivate him enough to figure out this toilet thing. Sadly, he's never earned a single one of them. I even promised him a million bucks once.

Then, about three months ago when I was at the public library with the kids, Dear Son got that look on his face. You know...THAT look. I had a fleeting thought about rushing him to bathroom and then almost talked myself out of it because I knew it would be like all the other times that I rushed him to the toilet only to find it was too late. Before I finished my thoughts on the dilemma, Dear Son announced, "I need to go poopie!" Okay. If he was going to ask, I was going to do my best to oblige. I rushed him to the toilet, and we met with SUCCESS! I praised him. I high fived him. I did a little happy dance around the bathroom. I handed out cigars to the other library patrons. I hugged him and kissed him and told him how proud I was of him. He was really proud of himself too, and I stoopidly thought that we had this thing figured out. Later, at home, he went back to informing me that he pooped his pants and would I please clean him up. Something about this is just wrong. When a child is old enough to demand having his poopy pants cleaned up, he's old enough to do the deed in the toilet, and since he had done it at the library, I now KNEW he was capable.

My expectations for him increased. I was inspired to really try again. This time I started handing out quarters for him to put in a jar and promised him he could spend them next time we went to the store or save them up for something really cool. He began dreaming again of what he would spend his hard earned coins on. I was cautiously optimistic that he would still get this thing figured out. And yet...he continued to deposit poop in his pants. Now it had become sneaky and defiant. He began running off to his bedroom to hide while he pooped in his pants. If I tried to come in, he would say, "NO! I need PRIVATE time!" Of course what followed was his plea for me to change his stinky britches. Other times I would wait 20 minutes to check on him, and then I would find him playing obliviously in the green cloud that had become the air in his bedroom. Sometimes he seemed completely unfazed by the squish in his pants and the stink in the air. Other times he would stand during whatever activity he was doing to avoid sitting in a squishy, stinky mess. You'd think that if he didn't like the feeling of sitting in poop, it would help motivate him to quit pooping in his pants, wouldn't you?

If I had not already had the experience of my daughter being a cinch to potty train at 21 months of age, I would most definitely feel like a failure.

I've tried being angry with him. I've tried showing no emotion. For awhile I even tried swatting his butt. Now don't go scolding me and telling me what a rotten parent I am. This child is nearly 3 1/2 and had taken to refusing to sit on the potty and instead stood looking me in the eye as he deposited a turd in his trousers, followed by a defiant grin, as if to say "So there!" He knew what he was doing! I had had enough. Alas, after a few incidents of swatting his butt for this behavior, I realized that wasn't helping either; all it seemed to accomplish was to make me feel like the worst Mommy in the world.

It had come to the point that Dear Son would poop his pants and then immediately ask "Are you doing to smat me?" Which translates into, "Are you going to smack me?" Of course "smack" only meant a swift swat on his butt, it's not like I was smaking him around or anything. I don't even know where he came up with the word "smack." It sounded so awful when he said it, and the guilt of the whole ordeal was about to push me over the edge. So one day I informed him in my best matter-of-fact voice that Daddy and Mommy were not going to swat his butt anymore for pooping in his pants. He could just decide to poop in the potty whenever he is ready to quit wearing diapers.

Later that evening, Dear Son deposited a present in his pants and insisted his Daddy change him (it's one of the perks of having a Daddy's Boy--whenever Dear Husband is home, he gets the "honor" of changing his son's drawers). Dear Son followed hi request of , "Daddy, will you change me?" with the question, "Are you doing to smat me?" I told Dear Husband I had a talk with our son and promised him he wouldn't "smat" him anymore. Dear Husband disappeared silently across the hall with our boy-child to clean up his mess. After the clean up was done, Dear Son emerged with great delight and excitedly told me, "Mommy! Daddy didn't smat me!" Meanwhile, Dear Husband did not look at all pleased as he took the bag of nuclear waste to the trash can outside. I responded to Dear Son, "I know child, I told Daddy we promised not to do that any....." Before I finished the sentence, Dear Son went trotting excitedly down the hall to find his Daddy. He obviously felt much more enthusiastic about the situation than his Daddy did as he stated, "Daddy! Mommy said we are not doing to smat me anymore!" I heard Dear Husband at the end of the hall respond flatly, "Great. That's fine. You can just keep on pooping in your pants....." Dear Son was already trucking back down the hall towards me as his Daddy finished, "...until you are 20, and then you can buy your own diapers." After hearing the first part that he could keep pooping in his pants, Dear Son didn't seem to care much about the rest. I was giggling uncontrollably at Husband's words while Dear Son said excitedly to me again, "Mommy! Daddy said we are not doing to smat me anymore!"

And so here we are. I've made good on my promise. No more "smats" and no more emotion about the whole thing unless there is "success," in which case I dole out quarters and act really excited for him. Mind you, "success" has only happened one time since the library incident three months ago. The rest of the time Dear Son makes daily diaper deposits.

I'm haunted with fears that my child will forever be the one Adam Sandler talked about in Big Daddy. You know...the "Smelly Kid." God help me, I think he really IS planning to keep this up until he is 20!

You Snooze, You Lose!

2009-04-11T08:22:00.005-11:00

Dear Son doesn't like to nap. He doesn't want to miss anything. The only way to get him to nap is to let him go and go and go until he crashes. We try to put him in his bed and do the whole power struggle thing, or try to "fool him" into a nap by reading stories until he can't keep his eyes open, or "tittle" his back as he calls it (he likes to have his back "tickled"). Sometimes any of these ploys work; sometimes none of them do and so rather than spending the entire afternoon fighting it, we give up and let him go until he crashes. This particular time he was so tired that he barely made it through dinner and never quite got that cookie to his mouth before he crashed. I guess it's true: "You snooze, you lose!"

Bi-Polar Weather Patterns

2009-04-06T17:27:00.012-11:00

Three weeks ago it was warm enough to crank up the A/C in the family-mobile. Daughter complained how hot she was and convinced me that it was bathing suit weather while we washed the car. I indulged the wee ones and dug out their bathing suits and we got out the garden hose, sponges, car-washing suds, etc. A couple weeks later, it snowed enough to cover the ground for a day or so. Several days after that it reached the mid-seventies again, we ran around with bare feet, and I had to open the windows to cool the house down. Today we had a high of 38 degrees.

Somehow, regardless of the Bi-Polar weather patterns, we've apparently had enough sun and rain and intermittent warm weather to make the grass grow. Saturday the kids played outside all morning and got sunburned faces, and the big-ass lawn mower made its debut for the season. We got it cut just in time for the thirty degree weather and snow flurries to return again.

In the years that I've lived in this part of the country, I don't think I remember another year where we reached a high of 38 degrees in the month of April. I can, however, remember April's when the temps pushed into the 80's.

We're not the only ones confused. Cooper had been getting some spring fever, jumping and twirling in the grass, chasing his tail and barking at the tree frogs and the donkey who lives a mile or so down the road (but hee-haws so loud that he sounds like he is our own yard). Today, however, Cooper had no interest in lawn games. In fact, he had no interest in going outside at all. I had to push his furry butt out the door in hopes that he would do his "doggy business," but he wouldn't leave the front step. He shivered uncontrollably as he looked through the glass front door at us sitting by the warm fire. Pitiful. I considered suggesting to him that it was impossible for him to freeze his nads off as we already took care of that, but I didn't want to add insult to injury. I think he decided that he'd rather just hold it for a couple days than take a wizz in the arctic air. Can't say I blame him. I only stood out there long enough to admire the fresh mowing job as the snow flurries danced around my head.

Here's hoping tomorrow is finally warm enough for the dog to poop.

"Back In My Day...."

2009-03-28T18:34:00.004-11:00

Dear Daughter (from the backseat): "Mommy, some day can I have a Rubik's Cube?"

Me: "...well, yeah, I suppose so...."

Dear Daughter: "Thanks, Mommy!"

(silence)

Me: "You know, I had a Rubiks' Cube when I was a kid. In fact, the Rubik's Cube was invented when I was a kid!"

Dear Daughter: "Wow! So you must be pretty old then, huh?"

*sigh* It's starting to look that way.

Tuba Lessons

2009-03-20T03:25:00.003-11:00

Dear Daughter: "Mommy...can I have tuba lessons some day? PULEEEEEEEEEZE?!!!"

Um...yeah. Tuba lessons. Whatever.

She Likes to Dress the Part

2009-03-17T17:27:00.004-11:00

Dear Daughter puts the P.A.R.T.Y. in tea party. Who cares if Diet Coke and bananas are a bit non-traditional?

More Dental Drama

2009-03-11T10:11:00.008-11:00

My oldest baby lost her first tooth last Monday, and it didn't happen the way I always assumed it would. She did not wiggle the little tooth out herself and squeal with delight at the idea of the Tooth Fairy coming. Instead, at her routine dental exam, the dentist decided that these two lower front teeth were not likely to work themselves out on their own. I posted a few months ago about Dear Daughter having a second set of permanent teeth coming in behind the two baby ones up front. At that time, the dentist office thought they would loosen up and fall out on their own, but that was nearly four months ago.

As I sat in the waiting room for what I thought would only be a routine exam and cleaning on Dear Daughter's teeth, the dental assistant came out to tell me the dentist's opinion and to suggest just removing them while Daughter was still in the chair. I was afraid this is how it would go, but I was surprised that they wanted to take care of it right now. It made sense, and it made things more convenient. Daughter was already in the chair. Why come back in a week or two when we could do it now? "How is she doing?" I asked the assistant. She replied with confidence that she was doing just fine and that she always does just fine with them. She was clearly proud of my girl. The assistant went back in to assist with the procedure of extracting my firstborn baby's teeth. I waited in the lobby and apparently experienced more anxiety than my daughter did over the whole ordeal.

Fifteen minutes later the assistant returned to me to tell me it was done and that my daughter was doing great and how proud of her she is...and she went on and on about how great my little girl is and how sweet she is and how she didn't even flinch or cry or complain or resist or anything and, and, and.... I was escorted to my daughter's side. I entered the room behind Dear Daughter, still sitting in the exam chair. All I saw was the back of her head. When I spoke to her, she turned and grinned at me with a wad of bloody gauze wedged in the front of her lower gum and said allk happy and nonchalantly, "Hi Mommy!" she was all happy go lucky and excited over the little trinkets she was given in her dental care bag to take home. She was completely unconcerned about the fact that she just had two teeth ripped out of her mouth and she was chomping on bloody gauze. The assistant again went on and on about what a sweet girl she is what a great job we're doing with her as her parents and she just beamed at my daughter. I was proud of my girl, to say the least.

Another change in the gauze wad and a moment at the reception desk to drop a chunk of change (we do not have dental insurance and apparently extractions are rather expensive), and we were in the car and on our way to Dairy Queen. I promised my girl a treat to "take the edge off." In the car I asked her if the shot in her gums hurt a little. She responded cheerily with a muffled voice through the bloody gauze wad, "It hurt more than just a LITTLE!" I looked at her in the rear view mirror. She was grinning happily and proud of herself as she added, "and I didn't flinch or yell or even shed a single tear!" I then asked if she felt anything when they pulled the teeth out, like a little tug or something. She said nonchalantly, "No... (pause) ...but I DID feel and hear like a CRUNCHING sound when they yanked it out...." I winced, and my stomach turned a bit. I was glad I was facing forward and Daugther could only see the back of my head. I looked again at her face in the rear view mirror. She was smiling happily through the bloody gauze wad and humming a little happy tune as we pulled into Dairy Queen.

As we got out of the car I asked her if her mouth was numb and if it bothered her. I checked the damage in her mouth and saw two gaping bloody holes in the gums in front of the two perment teeth that are pushing through. They had stopped bleeding, so I told Daughter she didn't need to chomp on the gauze anymore. Daughter responded that the numbness didn't bother her. I reminded her that that was the worst part for her when she had to go through her dental surgery a year ago. She said casually, "Yeah...but I'm older now, and I can handle things like this now!"

And so my firstborn baby has now lost TWO teeth and she's barely 5 1/2 years old. It's not how I imagined approaching this milestone in her life. Regardless, I'm all weepy at the thought that my little girl is old enough to be losing the very same teeth that I was weepy about her getting in the first place just five short years ago.

This parenting thing sure is an emotional journey!

Make a Joyful Noise?

2009-03-08T13:32:00.011-11:00

I began teaching Dear Daughter piano lessons a few months ago, soon after selling my "sentimental" acoustic piano (gifted to me by my grandparents when I was about 7 years old). As I've said in at least one previous post, parting with that piano wasn't easy. I moved it cross country at least twice and probably about a dozen times in between. We were inseparable from the time I acquired it. I even moved it into my apartment in college while I was studying piano and completing my music degree. I'm sure my neighbors all had "opinions" of their neighbor banging out Chopin and Bach, which I know they could hear through their walls. I had that piano in at least six different apartments over the years.

I considered going digital a few different times over the years, but could never bring myself to it until the point that Dear Husband decided to install a wood stove. Part of the deal was that if he installed the stove, I got a new piano. This was because the only place in our new home where the piano could live was in the same room where the stove was to be installed.
The wood heat would have dried out the soundboard and destroyed it.

I knew what I wanted to replace my acoustic with if I ever did it. I did my research years ago. Since that time, the model was upgraded. It is touted as the "flagship" of the digital pianos. Upon selling my acoustic to some nice young woman who was serious about her piano studies (I wouldn't let the piano go to just anyone), Dear Husband and I went shopping. Early last fall we came home with my very own Yamaha CP300. I was in love. It is the next best thing to a 30 foot Steinway grand, IMO. I've played on those monsters before in performance halls. This digital beauty has an amazing keyboard action that mimics a concert grand piano. It even has a vibration feature programmed into it that makes the instrument feel like a full size grand under your fingers. And it has a sound that I wouldn't be able to distinguish from a full size grand if I were listening with closed eyes. It also has some other great electronic features for MIDI and recording. I haven't learned those yet; I bought this thing purely for it's sound. It is the only digital piano I could accept in place of an acoustic because it literally feels like an acoustic in my hands, only much better than the little spinet acoustic I sold. It has much better tone and keyboard control than my little acoustic ever did. Have I mentioned that I'm in love?

It's a $2,200.00 "toy" that my children love to play with. Fortunately, they are gentle with it and aside from an occasional reminder to be "gentle," and sometimes a little trouble sharing, I am okay with them playing with it as long as I am close by to supervise.

From the looks of their faces, the kids were eating something chocolate before these pictures were taken.

This last one is my favorite. Dear Son is into whatever he is singing while his big sister plays along.

Good thing we live in the country now and the nearest neighbors are not so "near" anymore.

"What De Het?"

2009-02-28T05:25:00.003-11:00

All parents of small children know they need to be careful what they say, as their children are sure to repeat it. The first time I was faced with Dear Daughter repeating my words was when she was about 20 months old and just finishing her potty training. She started to parrot "Oh crap!" one day, and I decided that even though "crap" isn't such a bad word, I wasn't sure I liked my 20 month old child saying it.

And yes, I said 20 months old and finishing potty training. Before you revere me too highly though, I'll confess that my boy-child (now three years and two months old) is STILL trying to get the concept. He understands it. He can do it when he wants to. He has been known to tell me he needs to go (even number two) while in public and make it to the toilet in time without any accidents. However, for some reason he has still not decided that he is ready for this to be a permanent and full time arrangement. Lately he has been running to his bedroom and closing the door and pooping in his pull up and then staying in "hiding" in his bedroom. Apparently his reasoning is that somehow I will never discover what he has done and he can just hide it forever. This reasoning falls apart though when he gets tired of carrying turds in his pants and begs me to change him.

But I digress.

Somewhere along the way Dear Son has heard me, and prolly his dad too, say "What the heck?" Now there are certainly much worse words to be said and much worse things to hear your young child parroting back. And if you've read my spot for very long, you know that my language is not always especially "refined" despite the fact that four letter words are not common place in my vernacular. You'll remember that phrases like "pissed off" do not offend me, nor do words such as "ass." It would stand to make sense that "What the heck?" does not bother me either. It is, however, amusing to hear my barely three year old son in the back seat of the car seeing something intriguing outside his window and stating with great incredulousness, "What de het?"

I've been a bit absent in the past weeks (months!). The drama in my professional life had become all consuming. But fortunately I am stepping out of that now and into something new. The new direction has also been a bit consuming as I have had an incredible amount of redirecting and reorienting to get in order. My feet have still not quite landed, but I'm seeing more clearly and feeling more centered. I can best sum up the past six months of my life in the words of my boy-child: "What de het?"

Social Faux Pas

2009-02-21T17:28:00.013-11:00

My kids aren't afraid to speak their minds. I'm pretty sure I know where they get that. You're probably pretty sure, too.

Yesterday I was unloading them from the family mobile and there was a very elderly lady standing nearby, within ear shot. She leaned on her cane and fished a cigarette from her purse and lit up. Dear Son piped up loudly, "Why does she have a smoker, Mommy? Why?" I tried to casually shush him, silently hoping the lady didn't hear. If she did, she ignored it. She was grinning at Dear Son and waving at him. No doubt he reminded her of her own great grandson or something. As she grinned at him with her "smoker" hanging out of her mouth, Son scowled back at her and said loudly, "Why is that lady waving at me, Mommy? Why?" I shushed him again. This time I was pretty sure she heard him.

Meanwhile, Dear Daughter had climbed out of her own door of the family mobile and we all began to walk past the woman, who was still leaning on her cane and puffing on her "smoker" and grinning at the kids. Dear Daughter skeptically sized her up and said to her, "Why are you smoking? Don't you know that it's bad for your lungs?" I was mortified as the woman's smile faded a bit. I offered the woman a nonchalant smile as a sort of peace offering, desperately hoping the woman was hard of hearing. Nonetheless, I waited until we were out of earshot before I informed my Dear Daughter that what she said was absolutely correct. However, it is not appropriate to say it out loud. She protested, "But Mommy! Why would she smoke like that? Doesn't she know it is bad for her?" Her little brother piped up in her defense, "Yeah! Why was that lady having that 'smoker'?" I reaffirmed again that it is indeed bad for a person's health to smoke. Then I reasserted that it still is not polite to try to "correct" a grown up...even if they are right.

All the while I was wondering to myself how someone who puffed on "smokers" like that could live to be the estimated 85 years of age that this lady looked, and I thought that perhaps if my children had only met her sooner, she could have been better educated on the effects of smoking and in quitting, perhaps could have extended her life to about 120 years or something.

First Signs

2009-02-12T18:14:00.003-11:00

Spring is clearly in the air around here. A couple days ago it rained sheets all day long. When I came home from work that night, there were about eight or ten Spring Peepers clinging to the front door and porch. I hear their continual screeching in the distance around the pond, but most especially late in the evening and after dark.

This afternoon I played outside with the kids and the pup in our shirtsleeves. As we made our way across the front lawn towards the backyard, Dear Son stopped suddenly and exclaimed, "Ohhhhhhhhhhhh!" in an awestruck little toddler voice. He squatted down to look, and I realized what he saw as his chubby little fingers reached down and plucked the first bright yellow dandelion of the season.

This would all be fabulous and uplifting if I liked spring, but I really don't. Spring means that in addition to frogs coming out, but so do the bugs. And we have a lot of bugs out here in the country. And spring is also a constant reminder that summer comes next, and I hate summer more than any other season. Summer means hot, muggy weather...and of course...BUGS!

I think I liked spring and summer a lot more when I lived in the Pacific Northwest. The weather was generally much nice, and the bugs were much much fewer and much much smaller.

Going Forward

2009-02-09T18:11:00.002-11:00

I heard it a few evenings ago for the first time this season. We've had an unseasonably warm and spring-like week, and the days are getting noticeably longer. I stood in my shirtsleeves on the front lawn waiting for the pup to do his business and breathed in the fresh country air. It was dusk and the sky was growing dim. I looked across the treeline over the pond noting that despite it beginning to feel like spring, the trees still looked awfully dead. That's when I heard it: the telltale screeching of the Spring Peepers! I remembered last year when I began hearing them and I thought aliens were in our woods waiting for the perfect moment to abduct my family. The sound was odd and eerie as it filled the air.

Shortly after the Peepers quit their peeping for the season, we can fish tadpoles out of the pond and watch them grow into little baby tree frogs.

The snow of the previous week has barely melted and the first sign of Spring has arrived. I suppose it's as good a time as any. Some of the drama of the past six months of my life is finally beginning to fade and I can see a light at the end of the tunnel. I am absolutely positive that the past six months of my life must be quite like how Alice felt when she fell in the rabbit hole. So, as the drama subsides and I pick up the pieces, I look forward with optimism. I am sure that good things lie ahead.

If you've never heard a Spring Peeper, follow this link to the Wikipedia entry and click on the sound byte at the end--the one titled "Collective Spring Peepers Calling" and subtitled "a few hundred in a single pond." That is EXACTLY what our pond and surrounding woods sounds like right now.

Metamorphisis Re-Post

2009-02-04T03:33:00.003-11:00

I've been gone dealing with some stuff that I couldn't make up even if I tried. I probably won't share about any of it here because it has nothing to do with my family, and because I prefer not to record it. I would really prefer to simply "erase" it.

At any rate, in my absence, I thought I might re-post something from the past. Feel free to check it out here.

Maudlin Moments

2009-01-26T06:46:00.012-11:00

A few mornings ago, I woke up to find my boy-child in the bed between his daddy and I. This is his early morning routine. I have no idea when he comes in, because I sleep through it. What I am about to say next will surely make every self-proclaimed parenting and child-rearing expert shudder: I LIKE waking up to his peachy soft babyish head on my pillow, gazing at his chubby cherub cheeks, listening to his baby sighs as he sleeps. Yes, I know he is three, but he is still my "baby," and I cherish him as such because I know I will never have another. I can still cradle him in my arms like an infant--nevermind the fact that his legs hang over my arms ridiculously. I can still hold him against my chest and rock him--as long as I'm sitting down. I can still kiss his soft baby skin and smell his baby head--whenever he lets me. Day by day he is growing, and one day he will leave those cherub cheeks and that baby smell behind, and it will be gone forever.

As I laid in bed pondering these big thoughts and wondering how my daughter got from baby stage to little girl stage in the blink of an eye, I began to feel all weepy and nostalgic. Dear Son had already hopped out of bed to be his daddy's shadow when Dear Daughter entered the room with her clothes crooked and her hair wild from her tangle with her blankets all night. Her eyes were still puffy with sleep. I invited her to snuggle with me for awhile, while I stalled against facing the reality of the day. She climbed into bed with me, and I scooted a bit to let her have the warmest spot. She told me all about her dream the night before while we cuddled and giggled. I was painfully aware of her long body, no longer chubby and babyish like her little brother's. I studied her face as she jabbered, and I felt comforted by the fact that I could still see some chub in her cheeks and a round button nose. She still looks like a little girl, and for this I was deeply relieved. I felt an ache burning deep in my belly as I tried to push away the thought that I could not stop Time from transforming my babies. We had fifteen minutes together, and then my dear child went skipping off to beg her daddy for some breakfast. I continued to lie there as her spot in the bed next to me grew colder.

At the end of each day, I cherish those bedtime moments that both my children still require. The routine is the same each night. I snuggle with my daughter under the blankets and the white tulle canopy with the pink and purple bows as we read stories together. When the lights go out, I linger. She begs me to stay, and I always do. A few minutes later I hear the tell tale sound of toddler feet in the hall followed by chubby hands pushing Daughter's bedroom door open. Dear Son parts from his own stories with his daddy and climbs into the bed with his sister and I, and we lie there together for awhile--Daughter pressed between the wall on one side and my body on the other, me in the middle, and Son against my other side with my arm holding him close so he doesn't slip off the edge of the twin mattress. They both curl into the crook of one of my arms and they both lay their head on either side of my chest. I hold them each close to my heart and listen to their sleepy sighs.

Last night was like any other night. But this time as I held my babies close to me in the dark, the tears snuck out of the corners of my eyes and rolled down the sides of my face as I thanked God for the treasures He has entrusted with me, and I tried not to think of the day when my babies are grown up and I will no longer snuggle between them on a twin mattress and hold them until they fall asleep.

Not All Empty Scrotums are Sad

2009-01-18T17:08:00.005-11:00

Cooper got a "nad-ectomy" last week. It was necessary, not only because we are responsible pet owners and there are more than enough pups running around already that need homes, but because the dog was hell bent on inappropriate sexual behavior. One day Dear Son was sitting on the floor minding his own business and I caught the dog hunched over him from the back having such intense pelvic seizures that I'm surprised he didn't throw his doggy spine out of joint. I was horrified, and I couldn't get the dog to put his stuff away quick enough. That was the last straw. The nad-ectomy was still ten days away, and I was heading for the scissors because I couldn't deal with it any longer. Fortunately I cooled down before I followed through.

And we finally made it (no pun intended) and Cooper has been "de-nadded." It was all good until he came home from the vet completely agitated because he was apparently certain he needed to urinate despite not being able to get his plumbing to cooperate. It was cold that night and he wanted to go outside every five minutes. I finally resorted to huddling over him in the dark and shining a flashlight on his doggy genitals as he strained to do his business. I was watching to see if anything was coming out. It wasn't. This odd behavior (on both our parts...but only literally on the dog's "parts") repeated numerous times before I called my mom (she is a nurse, after all). My mom, of course, got me all worked up with her talk of swelling and the urethra and not being able to eliminate, and bladders bursing and such. So I finally called the emergency after hours vet clinic to get the reassurance I needed that this issue could wait until morning when I could contact my regular vet. We put the pup in his crate for the night, I took some Tylenol PM to destress (the dog's condition was only one of many issues last week) and zonked for the night. The husband proceded to puke his guts out all night long while I slept blissfully unaware, but that's another story (one that I promise not to tell you any more about). When I woke up to take the dog out the next morning, he peed a nice long gratifying stream and we both breathed a sigh of relief. He was probably about as happy to have me stop shinging a spotlight on his personals as he was to be able to relieve himself properly.

Sometime between that late night anxiety over my dog's inabilty to pee and the morning relieving of the same, I hopped onto Google and did a search that I would have never guessed I would ever do. It was something like, "dog can't pee after neutering." I didn't get a whole lot of information about that, but I did stumble onto a site promoting fake dog testicles. Really. They're called "Neuticles." You really MUST click the link to read it for yourself. Oh, and there's even pictures! I can't make this stuff up. Apparently implants are not just for human breasts anymore. Now our culture apparently feels the need for our dogs to have asthetically appealing genitals. According to one consumer, “One of my reservations about having my dog neutered was that it’d be sad to just have an empty scrotum.”

Ummm, yeah. We wouldn't want our dogs to have sad empty scrotums now, would we? Incidentally, I'll vouch for the fact that not ALL dogs are sad about their empty scrotums. Cooper apparently feels light and happy and liberated. He has been running and bounding and leaping and playing like never before. I'm certainly no expert on dog scrotums, but it seems pretty evident to me that my own pup's scrotum is happy not being weighed down anymore.

Incidentally, I just happened to take this pic a couple days before the nad-ectomy. Contrary to Dear Husband's jovial mockery of me, the pic had absolutely NOTHING to do with me wanting to preserve a memory of his pre-surgery dog nads; I was simply amused at his choice of sleeping positions.

Three-Year-Old Testosterone

2009-01-16T13:57:00.003-11:00

I was doing an Optimus Prime LightBrite picture with Dear Son, and when we were about a quarter of the way through with it I pushed the light-up button and asked, "Isn't it pretty?" Dear Son responded with a surly expression and protested insistently, "Robots are NOT pretty!"

He just turned three and his tetosterone is already raging.

I Guess He's on "Boy Time"

2009-01-09T17:59:00.003-11:00

Before I explain, I have to admit that I got confused by the instructions (no big surprise there, huh?). You see, I was tagged by Ed at Zoe's Dad for a really fun meme. Only, I couldn't figure out what the sixth file in a person's "documents" had to do with the sixth picture. I didn't have a sixth picture in my "documents" file, and I couldn't figure out what to do with the sixth document either. Sooooo...instead, I went to my "pictures" file and chose the sixth one. This happens to be a pic that I considered blogging about a couple months ago, but decided against it. That was apparently a fortunate choice at the time, or else this post would have been redundant. First of all, here are the rules of the meme:

Go to your documents
Go to your 6th file.
Go to your 6th picture.
Blog about it.
Tag 6 friends to do the same.

Here we go....

I did not realize how easy my Dear Daughter made potty training seem until my Dear Son reached his own right of passage. Dear Daughter sat on the potty relatively patiently by 18 months of age. She was fully potty trained in a single day by 20 months and never had an accident. Really.

As most things go, I did not fully realize the precociousness of my daughter until my son entered the picture. Since I had not spent much (ANY) time around babies or small children until my own came along, I did not know what was "normal." Apparently whatever "normal" is, it is NOT my daughter. She spoke in clear, full paragraphs well before two years of age. She knew her entire alphabet and counted to 20 by twenty months of age. She also knew all her colors (including brown, peach, and other more "exotic" shades), and shapes (including PENTAGON and OCTAGON) at this age and could sing several nursery songs correctly from beginning to end --including Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, the ABC song, and Jesus Loves Me. Really. I am not exaggerating. I have many witnesses who will vouch for my honesty in this, and lots of video footage to back me up as well.

Dear Son is not dumb by any means, he's just not precocious like his big sister. He knew all his colors (especially BROWN, which he originally defined as "turd") by two years of age as well as all his shapes (the standard fare here...I'm pretty confident he does not know pentagon and hexagon), and somewhere around two and a half we was able to count to 10 correctly. At just-turned-three years of age, he can sing the "ABC" song and get it mostly correct. He's no dummy...but as far as I can tell, he's much more in line with typical developmental abilities.

This, I dare say, is also apparently true about the potty training thing. Around two years of age we began the training thing.... I figured we were late to the show as his sister had this mastered well before two years of age. We gave up relatively shortly with Son, realizing he just wasn't ready yet. I started reading books about how to train boys and asking LOTS of people how they trained their boys. Nearly EVERYONE told me that their boys were not trained until three and half years. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" was my response. When the first mom told me this, I just thought her child was an imbecile. When the second mom told me this, I figured she didn't pay enough attention to her child or get involved enough in his little life to train him properly. When the third mom told me this, I began to get very worried.

At two and a half we tried training Dear Son again. He would not always agree to sit on the potty, but after several attempts one day with no luck, Daddy arrived home from work. I suggested Daddy put Son on the potty, and wouldn't you know it. Not ten minutes after Daddy walked in the door from work, there was a turd in the potty chair. Dear Son has been a die-hard Daddy's boy for the past year and a half, so it made sense that Daddy got the turd and not me.

SIX MONTHS LATER we are STILL trying to wrap up this potty training thing with him! We are at the stage now where Son will pee in his Peter Potty training urinal every time we ask him or require him, but he has only ever ASKED to go about twice. His code is usually, "My ding dong hurts." What can I say? Yes, I am responsible for teaching him to call his boyhood a "ding dong," but I didn't necessarily MEAN to. I called it that once in some conversation we were having regarding his parts, and it apparently stuck. In that split second, I just couldn't bring myself to say the "p" word to my child. I have no idea why, but it just felt wrong (not that "ding dong" feels quite right either). But I digress....

Son got into a rut. While he would pee in the potty and frequently stay dry in between, we could not seem to get him to sit through the symphony long enough to complete the second "movement." Going into Halloween we started to get all these junk mailings with costumes and Halloween paraphernalia in them. The kids loved to study them. Son loves to play dress up and has an infatuation with costumes. So I stashed a few magazines in the bathroom and bribed him with these when I wanted him to sit long enough on the potty. Sometimes it worked. Other times Dear Husband and I simply grew weary of sitting in the bathroom for long periods of time analyzing Halloween costumes while waiting for the elusive turd to finally show up to the party (it rarely did).

The picture? Don't blame me, it was the sixth one. And anyway...doesn't every doting parent snap at least one pic of their potty-training child on the potty?

Who's up on my tag list?
1. M&M at Maternal Mirth
2. CaraBee at Land of Bean
3. Serena at Zip 'n' Tizzy
4. Riahli at My Life with Boys
5. Nyssa's Mommy at Julie, Cameron, and Nyssa's World
6. Whoever reads this and would like to play along (insert your name here)

Take a Pill!

2009-01-04T09:14:00.004-11:00

Dear Husband woke up on the wrong side of the bed or something this morning. By the time I got out of the shower Dear Son was sitting in the middle of the floor with his shirt neither on or off--just stuck around his chin and the top of his head. Apparently he couldn't get his big Gates' noggin' (family joke) through the neck hole. He was screaming that Daddy wouldn't help him. Dear Daughter was also in a tizzy about something, which is nothing new, but she was blaming it on Daddy, which is prolly also nothing new. Dear Husband had that grouchy look about him as we went about the task of making his morning coffee in the kitchen. He had apparently left a wake of grouchy kids and chaos in his path and was now disengaging to find his Zen in a morning coffee mug. I came out dripping wet in a towel to see if I could discover who was dying and why. After I surveyed the circumstances and asked Dear Husband "What the heck?" he offered some half-assed explanation about how Dear Son wouldn't cooperate so he had left him to his own to figure out how to get dressed. I asked Dear Husband something to the effect of what crawled up his...only a tad nicer than that. As I headed back to the bedroom to finish drying my still dripping body, I heard Dear Daughter say, "Daddy, what time are you supposed to take your 'pill'?"

I was in hysterics. First, because Daddy doesn't take any "pills," (hmmm...Dear Daughter may have a point) and second because no one in our home has ever said this before. When I could catch my breath again, I asked Dear Daughter where she had heard that, and she said nowhere. I am sure she had to hear it somewhere because she's only five and this kind of humor is way too sophisticated for even her, but we still don't know where she heard it. Also, she couldn't possibly understand the concept of taking a "pill" to manage moods. Notwithstanding each of these points, she still used this quip in a most appropriate way. Even Dear Husband couldn't stop a grin and a swat to my butt as he blamed me for teaching this quip to our Daughter which she then used against him. (I'm innocent...I swear!)

Dumpage

2008-12-29T16:49:00.006-11:00

Somewhere amidst the constant "go" in our lives is a blog post or two. I know there is. I just have so little time to pause and reflect these days. I'm tired a lot and busy a lot. And yet, it just seems there is not a tangible lot to show for it all. Today was a fine example. I'm showered and dressed and ready to face the day by 8 am and standing out in the yard by 8:01 am waiting for the fur-child to poop. Thankfully it is Spring in December right now and reached nearly 60 degrees today. A week or so ago windchills were in the negatives and I was dressing the dog in fleece and myself in anything and everything warm that I could find, and begging the fur-child to do his business super fast. As in, POOP ALREADY, wouldya??!!!

By the time I come back inside, the boy-child has finally stopped whining about wanting his daddy and accepted the fact that Daddy is at work. I have him dressed by 8:20 am and the girl-child is dressed by 8:30 am, and I am frying "white and yellow" eggs for the boy-child, who will not eat "cheesy eggs" (scrambled with cheese), which happens to be the only kind of eggs the girl-child will eat. I make a mental note, for the eleventy-seventh time to buy another small skillet at the Stuff Mart today so that I can multi-task even more and make two different kinds of eggs at the same time. The boy-child is famished and has talked me into bringing him cereal while his eggs are cooking. And "bread" (not toast, mind you...and no butter either--just bread). And yogurt with blueberries. All the girl-child will eat is Rice Krispies, and I have to manipulate her into eating some yogurt before I will allow her the second bowl of cereal. Meanwhile, I am scoping the grocery ads. It's THAT day today. We are all kinds of off-schedule with the holidays.

I'm checking for great deals at all the area stores and making my list. The Stuff Mart price-matches, after all. Then I'm thumbing through the coupons. I pull out about 100 outdated ones. I typically have $20 in coupons to use per visit. I haven't done my job for a week or two and the coupon collection looks a bit thin. ...pause to flip an egg and pour another bowl of cereal. It's pushing 9:00. I can't find Dear Son's favorite cup despite a brief canvass of the entire premises. Son is whining in the background that he wants his "blat cup!" which means he will settle for none other than his black Klean Kanteen. I'm at a loss, and so I do what I frequently do when I can't find stuff: I call Dear Husband. He suggests the cup is still in the family mobile after coming home from Grandma's birthday party last night.

I almost have my list ready and coupons are scattered everywhere when the phone rings. It's 9:15 am now and it's my secretary. I have a message to call back the psychiatrist that is treating one of my more crazy clients in an inpatient hospitalization. I ordered this patient back to the hospital ten days ago because she wanted to kill herself again. The kids are now done with breakfast and it looks as if the entire kitchen has exploded. I send Dear Daughter to brush her teeth while I search for a washcloth to wipe the blueberries off Dear Son. I make the quick decision to call the psychiatrist back immediately. If I don't do it now, I will be busy and distracted until 5:00 pm at which time I will realize that it's too late. I park the kids in front of the t.v. and admonish them that they better keep quiet while I'm on the phone or there will be heck to pay. It's amazing how they can turn into demon-kids the second I get on the phone--especially if it is a work related call. They are amazingly obediant and allow me a good 15 minute phone chat with the psychiatrist. We agree on a game plan for the release tomorrow morning of said patient.

Now I'm running way behind. The kitchen is still inside out, I have to figure out how to fit twenty tons of recycling in the family mobile before we can pull out of the driveway, Dear Son needs my constant supervision and assitance to brush his teeth and go potty, the dog needs to go potty again too, because he never went the first time, and despite Dear Daughter claiming to have brushed her hair, it looks like she took an egg beater to it. It's 9:45.

I put the dog out on his lead in the yard while I brush Son's teeth and help him elminate in his Peter Potty. I give the kids the choice to finish watching their t.v. show or play in the yard with the pup while I attempt to fit the recycling tonnage in the family mobile. The more I pull out of the garage, the more I find. I keep shoving, and shoving, and shoving, I pray for the sake of all that is good and holy that the recycling center is open today or I will not be able to fit the groceries in the car.

Dog in, kids out...after the whole jacket and shoes ordeal (that's an entirely separate post). 10:20 am and we are finally on our way. Bank deposit first, followed by brief meltdowns that the teller at the drive up didn't offer a lollipop. I pull a couple from my secret stash in the car to keep the monsters quiet. It works like a charm through the entire recycling ordeal. The parking lot is crammed. Everyone who lives in a 20 mile radius is parting with their Christmas trash. I wiggle into the fold like a piggy at the trough and proceed to part with my own Christmas trash. Thankfully there are two cardboard dumpsters now, though the paper dumpster was packed to the brim. I stuff and stuff and stuff handful by handful. There was no way I'm dragging this crap back home again. Apparently I wasn't the first to come along with that attitude. By some miracle I get every last bit shoved in.

It's nearly 11:20 and we've just reached the front doors of the Stuff Mart. It takes a ridiculous amount of time to do the shopping deed. It always does with the kids in tow. The next hour and a half is filled with bickering and arguing and bribing and scolding. Two different people comment how well-behaved my kids are during the entire ordeal. Each of these people happened upon us during the only two moments the monsters shut up and quit antagonizing each other and myself.

We make it through somehow and I pile the stuff in the family mobile next to the recycling bins, thinking of how we will consume it all and discard the wrappings, and in a couple weeks I'll be packing more crap into the family mobile to recycle again. I try not to pause too long on the futility of it all, lest I find myself in a full blown depressive episode.

It's nearly 1:30 and I have groceries to unpack and lunch to prepare and a dog to take out (he STILL didn't go) before I can get the boy-child to bed for a nap. He is exhausted, as am I--only I know I won't be getting any naps and I'm only hopeful that he will. He is not fun to be around when he's tired and cranky, and even less fun to be around when BOTH of us are tired and cranky.

At 2:30 lunch is done, most of the groceries are put away, half the dishwasher is unloaded, and the kids' lunch dishes are still on the table. I have to take the pup out again--he STILL hasn't done his thing. The kids don their shoes and jackets and come out with me again. This time the pup does his thing in relatively short order. I hand the leash to Daughter while I assemble the new single-handed super dooper pooper scooper I just purchased at the Stuff Mart. The kids and I go on a turd hunt. I know he did it near the Tulip Tree somewhere. Despite the five acres of yard, I know the approximately 20 foot radius where the poop occured. I think. I warn the kids to step very carefully so they don't land their feet in the poop, only to have Dear Son point out to me the squished poop pile. Too late. I angrily ask which of them stepped in it only to discover it on my own shoe. I use the super duper pooper scooper anyhow and discovered it does well even with squished turds.

By about 3:15 we are finally in Dear Son's room to read a couple books. Lights out at 3:30 followed by thirty minutes of non-stop begging and pleading to "get up." I don't allow it. I lie next to him wishing he'd quit waking me up with his nagging so I could get a little cat nap myself. He finally falls asleep, but I'm wide awake with all the stuff in my head that I need to get done in the next hour and 45 minutes before I have to leave for work. It's 4:00.

I take a twenty minute breather next to my daughter on the couch who has found the t.v. again. After vegging for 20 minutes I allow myself to notice the disaster that surrounds me. Puzzles, games, toys, dolls, transformers, dog toys, and more litter the living room. Christmas was just the other day, after all. In the next room I can still smell the remains of breakfast, and now lunch. The task appears daunting, and I yawn before getting up to strip the king size log bed and throw the sheets in the wash. It was a chore I never got done over the weekend. It's getting chilly in the house and so I start a fire in the stove. Dear Son wakes up from his nap extremely grouchy and insists I hold him. It's 5:15. I leave for work in 30 minutes. I'm not dressed for work yet and my own hair now looks like I brushed it with an egg beater. I manage to correct these issues all while holding my fussing 35 pound just-turned-three-year-old, and I still have 15 minutes to spare. Good thing "messy" is in as far as hair goes. Mine is right in style.

The dog wants to go out again and Dear Daughter wants to play outside before it's dark. She keeps asking if it's Spring and apparently doesn't believe me each time that I tell her no, and that acually Winter just officialy began a few days ago. We all go outside until Dear Husband arrives home just in time for me to leave. I have two sessions scheduled tonight. It's 5:45.

I make it back home at 8:10. Dear Daughter is parading around the house buck naked after her bath (when exactly does modesty set in, anyway?) I change my clothes and put clean sheets on the log bed while I wait for Daughter to get dressed.

By 9:30 the kids are tucked in and I survey the house. Kitchen is still a mess. Dishwasher is still half loaded and half unlaoded. Puzzles, games, dog toys and the like are still strewn all over the living room. Various holiday messes STILL linger about the house. I have a long day tomorrow. Two sessions before lunch, then just enough of a lunch break to come home to let the dog out (I'm seeing theme here) followed by seven more sessions, all back to back over the next seven hours. All in all, I will deliver the kids to Grandma's tomorrow and do nine sessions before I return home to tuck the kids in bed. The house will really stink by then, as I will have another round of breakfast remains to clean up by then.

I'm too tired to care any more tonight. Good thing we are on break from school. I'm not sure where I would fit in the homeschooling right now. Despite not doing school today, I reflect on the feeling that it sure seems like I did a lot today. And yet, a quick glance around my home would argue otherwise.