Indulging in a Mommy Moment

He is just so unbelievably CUTE!  Lucky mommy, me.

Caritas in Veritate

“when a society moves towards the denial or suppression of life, it ends up no longer finding the necessary motivation and energy to strive for man’s true good”.  -Pope Benedict XVI, from his new encyclical, Caritas in Veritate.

If I Were A Better Mom–Or A Mombot

If I were either a better mom or a mombot, it wouldn’t drive me crazy when the kids want to help me make bread in the bread machine.  I would giggle when they grabbed the salt to throw more in, or the honey to test its texture and viscosity, weighing its potential to be used as glue and ant bate.

I would chortle quietly to myself as they screamed at each other in somewhat unintelligible toddler speak, trying to get dibs on pouring the next ingredient into the pan.

It wouldn’t bother me at all as they He-man their step stools directly into the place where I am standing, taking all the prime cooking property.  I would simply adore their angelic faces while reaching over their heads to calmly instruct on what to do next.

I would not sigh deeply, as if the task were taking up every last ounce of my patience.  I would not scream, “Don’t touch that!”  six times and try to tell them I’m all done before I really am just so they would get out of my hair.  I would relish the perfect mombot moment, taking the opportunity to teach my 2 and 3 year old about measuring and cleaning, and about the amazing properties of yeast!  Without it, we wouldn’t have wine or beer either!  Then we’d all be in trouble, little ones.

So Much For That

Who was I kidding anyway?  That whole Nablopomo thing, posting every day for a month?  I’ve tried it a few times and always flake out in the first few days.  My blogging commitment is very poor indeed.

It is a finite amount of computer time that I have to work with.  I don’t like going on line for more than a few minutes on the weekend, ’cause I’m diggin’ all that family together time.

Sean and I slept late today, so I woke up to chaos.  I don’t know what happened last night, it’s all a little bit blurry.  I see that the dinner dishes didn’t get done, but I don’t really remember noticing that before I went to bed.  I must’ve been tired. 

So far today I’ve made several runs back and forth to the toaster to make mini bagels for my mini people, changed one poop that almost made me lose my cookies, changed one trash bag that almost did the same, and tried to tidy up the kitchen area so I don’t feel like I’m going crazy. 

Now Ryan is doing his favorite thing, vacuuming the living room.  Especially the places where they were eating those giant Granny Smith apples.  It looks like wild gerbils got to them.  More on the floor than actually went into their mouths.

One more diaper to go and I’ll be caught up for a few minutes.

To The Biggest Star In The Solar System–A Remembrance

That would be the sun.  It’s big and it’s bright and it’s light and heat are life sustaining–and I miss it.  Come back home, sunshine!  So my kids don’t have to stay inside all day long, finding far too many creative ways to destroy the house.

Here are some photos, as a tribute to the Sunshine that I used to know, only less than a week ago:

Fishing in the yard with Sean

 

Love That Hair!

 

In the Hammock With Mom

 

Butterfly Net From the $ Store--Best Investment Ever

 

Looking at these photos makes you reflect on what it was that made the Sun so awesome in the first place.  Life won’t be the same until it returns.

Routine–Or Anything But

July theme for nablopomo is routine or habit…I’m going to try again!

Today was anything but routine.  It was not routine for me to wake up at 11:30 AM to a quiet, empty house.  The kids were away for the night with their grandmother for a mid-week getaway, leaving me to sleep late in the dark of my room and the quiet of the house.

It was not routine when my husband came home from work at 11:45 AM to accompany me to a doctors appointment.  He spent the extra time we had before we leaving to clean up the garage.  The old couch and rug that are out there have taken on a bad odor since all of the wet weather we’ve been having.

Being out of the routine continued as I took a shower in peace and quiet, without having toys thrown at my feet from small people gathered outside the curtain.  There was no screaming from downstairs, no cries for mom.  I got dressed and dried my hair quickly and quietly. 

We arrived at my appointment uncharacteristically early, for an not-routine level II ultrasound of our definitely out of the routine baby girl.  Just ask her three brothers.

Leah Rose

They took a look at her unusually large belly, saw nothing too alarming other than it being large, and told us to come back in six weeks for another look.

We then headed to the mall for rare mid week shopping and a bite to eat at the food court.  Now we’re back home, still childless, and the husband is outside talking to a man about converting our garage into a family room.

So far, July has been completely out of the routine.  What comes next, I cannot say.

Jon and Kate + The Whole Damn World

Okay, I admit it.  I’ve watched.  I mean, I haven’t sat through an entire boring episode of someone else’s kids getting free stuff, but I’ve channel surfed and have admittedly paused.  It was facinating to see the way Kate spoke to Jon even before their troubles hit the tabloids.  

After all, I would never get away with talking to my husband the way she does, and wouldn’t want to in the first place.  Funny, but I actually don’t like the idea of making him feel like an idiot man-child in front of the entire world.  But to be a doormat, you really have to volunteer to throw yourself down and quietly allow everyone to wipe their feet.  To each his own.

It is with increasing discomfort that I watch their personal disaster snowball into a more and more loathsome scenario.  The family is imploding, while cute but oblivious children run around collecting their freebies, living in their freebie house, getting their freebie haircuts, all while the parents get their freebie divorce.  They seem to have forgotten one of the most basic principles of economics.  There’s no such thing as a free lunch.  Or a free Crooked House. 

My husband and I have had our children one at a time, with fourth child pending.  That doesn’t qualify us for any free stuff.  We pay for our own haircuts, clothes, and vacations (or lack thereof).  We also have to be careful to treat each other with respect and dignity because we are entirely relying on each other to raise these kids.  Our family nurtures a mutual fondness that’s based on a mutual need.  It’s not romantic, even though it’s the fondness that brought us together in the first place, but it’s real and it’s the truth.  When you take away the mutual need, whether it be financial or something less tangible, the work of nurturing mutual fondness starts to feel too  much like, well, work.

The price has been high for the Gosselins, and perhaps this is how they would’ve ended regardless of their money and fame.  But I would bet, if Kate were a stay at home mom relying on her husband to put food on the table (as she was after the six were born), she might have thought twice about treating him like a moron.  And if Jon knew his children were relying on his responsibility and his income for their security, he probably wouldn’t have been running out to bars and staying out all night with other women.  Those eight children might have forced them to learn something about being descent to each other, and insisting on descent behavior from themselves.  You know, discipline and maturity, that sort of thing.  The sort of things that make happily staying together possible.

So there it is, my take on something that ought not to be any of my business.  Only one of millions.  But I sure would like one (just one) of those Crooked Houses in my back yard.

That Wasn’t So Hard

Pregnancy always makes me feel like I’m suffocating.  I’m not, actually, it turns out that my body, in the midst of all the pregnancy hormones and readjusting itself to accommodate a growing baby, is actually forcing me to take deeper breaths.  Somehow this translates into my feeling breathless. 

I’ll just have to learn to ignore it because it only gets worse as the baby gets bigger.  Then it becomes aggravated by the feeling that I can’t quite empty my bladder.  Can’t empty the bladder, can’t fill the lungs.  What next?  Don’t ask.

Yesterday I spent two hours washing my floors.  Two hours.  My knees are all bruised up.  Needless to say but I’ll say it just the same, they were disgusting.  Changed the muddy water three times.  I’m trying to catch up on all the things I would have been doing right along had I not been sick, but I am waaaay behind.  Last week I washed the upstairs carpets and cleaned my room so that I don’t have to hate, you know, being in there.  The kids rooms are clean, Tommy’s mattress has been washed so it doesn’t smell like pee in his room, I’ve started sorting through clothes, getting rid of what’s too small or too destroyed or too wintry, making room for all of the summer clothes.  But that project is only in baby phase.

The laundry is almost caught up, but that only last so long.  The kids are back to getting ready for bed before 10 o’clock, and they’re actually wearing clothes that are clean and fit them.  Never underestimate how necessary mom is.  If I’m not functioning, this home quickly devolves into the toddler version of a frat house.  It ain’t pretty.  We don’t fling poo and we wash our hands before meals. 

I’ve talked to the two older boys about rearranging bedrooms, giving the three boys my big room, moving Ed and me into Ry and Sean’s room, and making Tommy’s room the baby’s room.  So far, everyone is on board with that executive decision.  We aren’t really a Democracy around here, but I like to give it that appearance.  Hmm, that sounds eerily familiar…

We had a guy over on Saturday to have a look at our garage and to give us some ideas about turning it into a big family room.  He’s going to give us an estimate some time this week.  We shall see…

Now we just have to wait for our level II ultrasound on July 1, at which we will find out that our daughter is perfectly healthy and all systems are go.  No problem.

Fun Monday Food

Fun Monday is hosted this week by M is for Misanthrope, so you’ll have to go visit to play along!

Here’s her choice of topic:  If you could choose one main course and one dessert that could be free of calories and cholesterol for the rest of your life, what would they be?

This was tough, but I think I would go with the following:

The Porterhouse Steak

The Ice Cream Sundae

It doesn’t get much better than that!  You would never know I spent two years of my life as a vegetarian.

I Feel A Little Dirty

I joined Facebook yesterday.  Well, apparently I joined some time ago, did nothing with it, and deactivated my account.  I guess that’s ambivalence for you.

After being urged by two different people this week, a cousin and a friend who lives across the country, I signed up for real, pictures and everything.

Which is fine and great, really.  It’s what happens when you do a curiosity search on someone you went to high school with, check out their “friends” list, and realize that everyone you went to high school with has each other listed as friends in their facebook accounts. 

I know, I know, this is the whole point of facebook, right?  It’s just that it makes me feel so exposed.  Sounds stupid since I have this blog, but I have relative annonymity here.  A few family members know about it and some fellow bloggers, but it just feels different. 

I guess it really has to do with how I feel about the people I went to high school with, and high school in general.  Not a good time for me, not a place I look back upon fondly, for a whole myriad of reasons.  Seeing all those people on there, all linked up to one another was simply unsettling.  I know if I “friend” even one of them, I’ll eventually have the same list of faces in my own account.  So–I didn’t friend any of them.  I’m safe for now, only one of them knows my married name.

This is definitely probably a case of “it’s not you, it’s me.”   After all, these people are likely just as normal as the average person, are generally pretty nice, and don’t really overly care what’s going on in my life.  However, I still happen to have a recurring nightmare that they won’t let me out of high school.  So yeah.  Me, not you.

It’s kinda like that episode of 30 Rock where Liz Lemon goes to her high school reunion and finds out that she was the jerk, not everyone else.  Boy did I laugh at that.  Here’s a clip from that episode, if you can get through the commercial, and some other Liz Lemon faves (does anyone else love this show?):

Clip from reunion episode