Sunday December 6, 2009

The l o n g version

Liam and I are both home from church. My body has been trying to be sick all week and my brain went into overdrive convincing it that’s not an option. It seemed to be working until we got home from cleaning the church house yesterday and Liam had a food reaction. He’s been sick with a cold all week long which meant he fussed a lot and stayed semi-attached to my hip and refused to eat anything but soft-solids for two days. It was a flashback of this summer and I quickly realized why I cried so much with despair in August. So while he refused to eat supper and ran around the room like a wild child, I tried to pull together the scattered segments of my sanity only to see Liam find a bite of cheesecake that Adam accidentally dropped to the floor and before I could even yell it was in his mouth and on it’s way to his stomach. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I thought. Until we were cleaning up dishes and I found him over by the kitchen trash where he’d mercilessly pulled out a butter wrapper and was licking it. Ok, Mr. Glutton for punishment.

His cold is definitely on it’s way out but rather then take him out into germs while his immune system is already taxed, I thought it wise to keep him home with my train wrecked self and rest us back to health. Liam did not appreciate this idea. He caught on about ten minutes before David and Adam left when he noticed that they were both dressed for church and he was getting handed over to mommy and the bathtub. He pitched an enormous fit which did not in the least subside until we went downstairs and he briefly got to be with daddy. Just like that the tears stopped rolling. The screaming vanished. And when I hugged David he leaned over and started in with his little, “I love you,” coo. Halfway through David just transferred him over to me and just like that we were back to mouth wide open and screaming as loudly as a generator. Usually he settles down as soon as they actually go out the door. Not today. He threw a perfect temper tantrum for the next fifteen minutes. I do not like dealing with temper tantrums but dealing with one because my child does not want to be with me instead of his daddy has got to rank about the lowest of all lows.

His communication skills are improving otherwise, too, although there are still very few distinct words. On Thursday he suddenly surprised me with a serious, drawn-out, scolding kind of “Nooooo.” I laid him down to change his diaper. “Nooooo.” I asked him if he wants a toy. “Noooooo.” I tried to get some sweet potatoes into his mouth. “Nooooooo.” Yesterday he saw David and I hugging in the kitchen. He marched right up, pushed us apart, and said, “Nooooooo.” When we moved apart a little in surprise he flapped his arms and grunted at David who picked him up. Immediately Liam wrapped his arms around him and cooed a quick “I love you” before leaning toward me to hug me, too. Apparently he’s the only one allowed to give hugs around here. And apparently we are entering the, “Hi, I’m a big boy now,” stage around here.


Adam has decided to be an astronaut. I haven’t seen him take a fire call in weeks. This is problematic only because I gleefully purchased a real fire man costume for him and tucked it away for Christmas. It has a yellow coat and hat with a face shield. I couldn’t wait to give it to him because his hodge podge collection takes forever for him to put on and usually requires assistance from me. Plus, he always thought he would die in the fire because he didn’t have a face shield. Now he wants to be an astronaut. What are the chances he’ll still like the gear? He has been diligently saving every penny of his allowance since April to buy a big fire truck. I’ve got to say I think the fire gear looks a lot more comfortable then this “space suit.”



The other day when everything was going rottenly anyway I decided to help him make a paper chain counting down the days til Christmas. The problem with projects like this and a mom like me are many. One, I don’t do well with delegating. It’s easier just to do it myself. Two, I do NOT DO WELL at all with helping one child do something I don’t really enjoy in the first place when there is another child pulling at me and crying and grabbing things they shouldn’t have. Three, I don’t know what the next reason is. I just know that thinking about doing stuff like this is about enough to make me feel claustrophobic. So why I do them when things aren’t going well is exceptionally odd. I think it’s because when the day falls apart too badly I feel a super load of mommy guilt and then I remember all the super moms who do these nice things with their kids and kids are more important then things and what will you really remember in fifteen years and on and on.


All true. But doing a project like that out of guilt probably negates its merits. And starting out when things aren’t calm to begin with isn’t “calming” either. All said, it didn’t go too badly. But that was mostly because instead of being super mom and letting Adam cut all the strips in his own fun way, I quickly cut them and wrote inside them while he and Liam were playing. That way I only had to deal with the gluing and he could cut the scraps any old way he wanted to without me getting all frustrated at him a.l.w.a.y.s insisting that whatever way I said we were going to do things was definitely not the way he had in mind. How do you know when to draw the line and work on obedience and respect to authority versus allowing them to suggest things? I am quite sure we need to be more on the former right now; but this has been a super tough call for me as Adam has gotten older. Sometimes he has great ideas and I want to encourage him to think and to see into things instead of blindly accepting everything at face value. But he also has this completely dogmatic personality that makes him say he wants the opposite of whatever we want that is not socially pleasing at all. I know this for a fact and have occasionally used it to my advantage. I know. That is not a good way to play the game but when you have a child with this many battles, you tend to pick and choose which ones you are up to fighting. At any rate, I hope Adam will know that I love him even if I don’t do all those messy, crafty things with him at the drop of a hat.

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I can’t believe it’s only been ten days since Thanksgiving. It feels like everything happened all at once. My books appeared and knocked me senseless for awhile. David’s family hosted his uncle and aunt and family for Thanksgiving. I was a little torn about Thanksgiving weekend. We switch off holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas) every year so that everyone has time to make arrangements and we actually all get to be together for at least one holiday. This was my family’s year for Thanksgiving; but since David’s cousin, Ellis, was here from Belize to work for a few weeks, his family wanted to spend the holiday here. For a little bit I thought we might be able to switch holidays; but it didn’t work out for everyone so we opted to be with David’s family Thanksgiving Day and I could spend the rest of the weekend with my family and we’d celebrate on Sunday. The half full version is that it was the best of both worlds and the half empty version is that we missed out on half the fun.

Thanksgiving Day we joined James’ family at the cabin they were renting. The most atypical part of the day was the fact that my generation of ladies was cooking the food. The night before as I was nervously calling my aunt Frieda to see how long to bake the turkeys, I wondered how in the world I’d grown up without finding out about it. I thought I was still in that teenager stage where we go to Ohio and hang out at Frieda’s house late Wednesday night watching cool movies she rented for us and sleeping til late the next morning while the aunts made all the food. I was feeling just a little grumpy about getting up so early on a holiday and David looked at me like, “Get over it. That’s really trivial.” But the next morning as he went to get ice and loaded the pack and play, the 5 gallon igloo of iced tea, the two turkeys, and load after load after load of paraphernalia and food, he got a little grumpy himself. When I heard him muttering about us needing a mini van, I snickered. Finally he admitted he wasn’t ready to be this grown up and responsible either. ☺ I think we’re both spoiled.

The day itself was a ton of fun. I love hanging out with David’s family and felt sad at missing them the rest of the weekend.

Friday Christy, Mom, and I went Black Friday shopping. Christy and I have been wanting to do this for years but always someone is either pregnant and sick or breastfeeding and way too tired all the time already or then it’s not our year to be together at Thanksgiving. To say it was fun would be a huge understatement. Finally I had my fashion adviser with me instead of calling her on the phone and trying to describe three sweaters to have her tell me which one to buy. Beth met us around 11 and we all enjoyed a late lunch at McAllisters. Meanwhile our phenomenal husbands took care of the kids and gave them lunch.

David and Adam went home Saturday to help re-shingle his dad’s roof. Liam spent his entire day complaining about that. My dad took us all out to the Old School House restaurant to eat that night ~ definitely one of the nicest gifts of the weekend. When you have eight children in one small house and seven of them are three and under … well, lets just say that you REALLY appreciate sitting down to food that is ready without effort and better yet there are no dishes to clean up. I got to the end of that weekend and realized I had not taken one single photo of our time together. In fact I did not touch my camera except to take a quick profile picture of Steve and Christy. But when I get a video clip from Mom, you will perfectly understand why there was never any time to take pictures. ☺

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Definitely the highlight of this past week was Edenali’s Christmas Banquet. Typically the guys take everyone out for dinner and the past two years they’ve chosen a Mexican restaurant downtown with a fun banquet room upstairs that includes a pool table. It’s great because the kids can run and be loud without annoying other guests and everyone has a great time.

This year, for something different, we ladies offered to pull off a formal banquet. The pictures are pretty self-explanatory (even if they were taken in candlelight without a tripod).

Steven & Janelle and Ryan & Tury came to serve the food for us. They did a great job but I could hardly keep myself out of the kitchen. I think I like to serve food better then eat it. ☺ David kept grabbing me and dragging me back out to the dining room. Glen suggested he put me on a leash and David “sternly” told me we’re supposed to be having a romantic dinner here. But hey, if you had run 90 mph for three days trying to get this pulled together you’d have a hard time sitting still, too!

Oh, and in case you ever think about appetizers two hours before an event, try this. Dump about one cup of my mom’s wonderful red raspberry jam over one bar of cream cheese and serve with ritz crackers. The sweet and salty combination is perfect and no one will know someone stopped at Harris Teeter on the way home from work unless you tell them.

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Oh, and just for the record, it snowed. But not at our house. Well, just a few thousand flakes at our house; but not enough to go sledding. When we went to clean the church house it was white there. When we got home, it was green here. With grass and with envy in Adam’s heart. Especially when my mom sent pictures of their SEVEN inches. She lives one hour away. How can that happen?

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Oh, and PS there are more photos in my photoblog in case you aren’t completely overwhelmed already by my very windy post.

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