Sunday September 28, 2008

Random

That’s kind of what my life feels like right now.  Or at least, that has a nicer ring then something like, “about to fly apart.”  It’s not that anything huge has happened, just a lot of things piled all together until they are completely jumbled in my mind and some days I just say to myself, “breathe in.  breathe out.  breathe in.  breathe out.” as I keep trudging up and down the stairways.  Don’t ask me what I’ve been doing the last two weeks.  I’m not sure I could remember five things unless I sat down and remembered for quite awhile.

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The day the bears hung out at the neighbors was also the day we left for South Carolina for the weekend and the day after the night the company took us out for supper and the day after Ruth came to help me so that I could sew a dress for myself so that maybe, just maybe, I would have something to wear to church that didn’t require a jacket to cover postpartum issues for the first time since Liam was born.  (told you my brain is on overload)  Never mind how old he is now.  Back to that day.  I was still sewing instead of packing or cleaning because I really wanted to finish it.  And about the time I was putting the sewing machine away David Lee called to let me know about the bears.  And so, being the very good mommy that I am, I took the boys to see the bears.  Except only Adam was interested of course.  In retrospect, I don’t think the parenting magazines would put this on the quality time lists after all.  It was hot, which meant I couldn’t risk leaving Liam in the car so I hauled car seat and camera with me and held Adam’s hand with the hand that wasn’t quite free.  We plopped Liam in the shade halfway across the yard and tried to get pictures.  But since the zoom on my otherwise wonderful lens is nearly non-existent, I realized something was going to have to happen if I was going to get any pictures that showed more then a black blob.  Adam and I quietly maneuvered around the fence and out to the road and within 15 feet of the tree the mom was hanging out in.  Two of our neighbors had been there for quite awhile and were obviously not worried about being eaten.  I kept glancing at the distance between the car and us and mentally calculating how long it would take for me to race around the fence and snatch Liam and growing more uncomfortable with each swing of the cub’s paw.  Surely mama bears chase testosterone before estrogen?  Nick said “mom” had been sacked out for over an hour.  Maybe so.  But one mom knows well enough another mom isn’t going to be but so “sacked out” when her baby isn’t.  And then after trying to jump the ditch in my flip flops and seriously twisting my ankle in the process, I hobbled us back to the car and loaded us up.  By the time I’d said good-bye and eased onto the road, mama bear was on the ground.  I sighed happily at us all safely seatbelted, drove home, and looked furtively towards the very tiny woods between our house and Nick’s house before scrambling toward the house.  And now, it’s ten days later and my ankle is still swollen and painful and Adam never mentions that very cool day when his mommy took him to see the bears.  So much for that.

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Liam got his second round of vaccinations Tuesday.  It’s the same four shots he got two months ago.  Thursday he was fussy.  Friday he was more fussy.  Saturday he was much more fussy until I gave him a dose of Tylenol and he slept for three hours (completely unheard of on the best of days).  Today he is still fussy.  How long do vaccinations make a child fussy or is something else going on?  I cannot lay him on his beloved gym mat.  I cannot sit and look at books with him.  I cannot show toys to him.  I can sometimes distract him with a tickle.  But mostly we just walk around the house and around the house and around the house and mostly we just fuss and fuss and fuss.  Except for when he sleeps.  He’s not eating right.  He makes multiple messes a day.  But mostly he is just unhappy.  Poor baby.

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Adam is begging to go to Cafe Europa.  He says he wants their “red soup.” He just “likes it like crazy.”  He says I can’t make it as good as they can.  I think he’s right.  I think I want some, too.

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David Lee visited Bald Eagle Boys Camp in PA on Friday and Saturday where he spent two years as a “chief”.  He is chairman of the committee recently put in place to explore the possibility of developing a similar camp in Virginia or West Virginia.  I am so excited about this work.  I love camp and the way they give boys a second chance at life.  I love the attributes I see in David Lee because of his time there as counsellor.  They say, “Once a chief, always a chief.”  But I also love Miss Joann who bluntly warned David Lee before we got married, “Don’t ever try to chief your wife.”

One of the boys who was in David Lee’s group recently won in a writing contest with 1,400 entries.  He has dreams of going to college to major in Spanish.  One of the other boys is now a couch potato with no desire to change.  Camp is not a miracle.  It is an opportunity. 

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I really wish someone would invent a noise-free blender.  Smoothies are not worth waking the house.

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