Just Another Day in . . .

Wow, has it really been so long. I am sorry--and not just to the handful of you who read this, but to myself. Strangely enough, this blog is good for my soul. But then again, so are a great many other things--several of which have been occupying my summer. It's been a soul-soothing summer so far. When I dubbed FairyLand FairyLand, it all just sort of made sense. Here, in this rural paradise, I'm at a loss to capture and name it. I considered Never Never Land, but Michael ruined that context for me. Originally I gravitated toward Arctic Tundra, but to experience this magic land right now, the name would not fit. Perhaps you can help. Let me roll out a typical day in my life right now, just for a glimpse into my summer.

In the morning, I get up early and work for a couple of hours. When the boys roll out of bed, we make pancakes and plan our day. Mornings are lazy--maybe a little cleaning, maybe a movie or books for the boys. Ethan was working on his airplane in the play room this morning.

As lunchtime approaches, we decide whether to bike over to the dining hall, or drive, or pack up the bikes and swim bag to go with us. Today we drove and brought Ethan's bike and Elliot's tricycle. After lunch, I sat in a rocking chair enjoying the warm breeze while the boys ran around and talked to me on the walkie-talkie. Then we strolled out to the teen-camp with Matt, Ethan darting ahead on his bike. While Matt met with a co-worker, we strolled down to the waterfront, dipped our toes in the lake and walked on the dock watching for fish. We headed out exploring a new trail, stopped for a few minutes to pick sweet, ripe mulberries from an overhanging tree before stoping in a forest clearing to let the boys play FBI for a bit (hiting trees with sticks, throwing "bomb" sticks and so one). We then strolled back, jumped in the car and headed home for a little "down-time". I took a 20 minute power nap while the boys put the finishing touches on the airplane.

In the late afternoon we threw the swim bag and an empty bucket into the bike trailer, buckled in Elliot, and biked on over to a friend's house with a more hospitable lake access (ours is all reeds and mud). I read a bit while the boys' played in the water. Then we spent an hour wading in the shallows under a low-hanging mulberry tree, filling our bucket with berries.

At the sound of the dinner-bell we loaded up the bikes, road over to the dining hall for dinner. After dinner I sat and rocked and read while the boys played in the field. After a quick good-night trip to Dad's office and a few final black raspberries, we got back on the bikes and headed for home. I watered my garden, pushed the boys on the tire swing, PJs and stories and bed. After a warm shower I find myself at the computer, a little Corinne Bailey Rae in the backgorund, ready for a little reading and my own bed.

I say it often, it is a rough life I lead . . . you should come visit.

Bubble Wrap

You shouldn't report me to CPS--at least I don't think you should. There have been moments this week when I have wondered. Am I a neglectful parent? Or is my child just plain accident prone? Here is my week in review:

Monday, 3rd degree burns: We're having guests over for a BBQ. I'm in the kitchen making a salad. Matt goes out to light the grill. Elliot wanders out a few minutes later. I assume Matt is out there. He is not, he has gone back inside for something. One of our guests brings Elliot in to me a few minutes later, screaming with blisters on four fingers. The upside is of course that he probably won't ever use his fingers to check the status of the grill again.

Tuesday, near drowning: I take the boys to the pool. I'm playing catch with Elliot while he stands at the railing on the ramp in water to his waist. He throws the ball way past my head. I swim 6 feet away to grab the ball and turn to watch as he swings himself under the rail and sinks into the 4 foot deep water. I reach him just before the lifeguard does and drag him to the surface sputtering.

Thursday, head injury: We're taking a couple of neighbor kids home, everyone is attempting to pile into the minivan. An older boy opens the auto door slider on Elliot's side just as Elliot rounds the back of the van at high speed, crashing noggin first into the edge of the slider. Fortunately just barely splitting the skin over a nice raised goose-egg.

Saturday, double knee injury and near suffocation: I may have mentioned that bad knees run in the family. But it generally does not manifest itself until at least the teenage years. However, Elliot seems prone to twisting his knees constantly. Today we went to the Big Truck Event downtown to check out all the trucks the had on display for little boys to climb in and honk the horns--loudly and repeatedly. We were just about ready to go and I let the boys go in one of the blow-up jumping house things. All was fine until I heard crying and dragged Elliot out complaining of two twisted knees. As I was tending to him, someone pulled the plug out of the thing and the whole inflatable collapsed on the kids inside (Ethan included) as we frantically extracted them before they could suffocate.

I don't think they're too much worse for the wear. We wrapped both knees and he recovered enough to want to participate in the square dance tonight. Hopefully we've got all the accidents out of our system for a little while. Maybe I should wrap him in bubble wrap.

Seeing Double

Do you see the humor in the following items I happened into recently? Or do I just have a strange sense of funny?

A sign that reads:

"Cosmetic Surgery
The Vein Center"


An ad for an airline seat belt extender had this at the end of the ad:

"These extenders add an extra 24" of length. Rated to 3000 lbs and conforms to FAA TSO."

I'll post a comment explaining why I find these funny. Lemme know if you thought so too.

My Happy Place

I've been occasionally attending an old-lady water aerobics class. At one point in the class we need to spread out and find a suitable depth to stay at for a bit. The instructor always says "Okay Ladies, find your Happy Place". I think I'm already there.

Do you ever feel guilty about being happy? I mean I hate to even mention it because there's a little superstitious bit of me that thinks that if I talk about how happy I am, maybe it'll all come crashing down around me.

Don't get me wrong, I have good days and bad days (case in point, I'm running on about 2 hours of interrupted sleep today due to a nasty cough), sometimes my children are very trying, sometimes I'm grumpy and things certainly don't always go my way, and sure, I could lose a hundred pounds or so, but all that stuff so doesn't seem to matter when I consider just how blessed I am.

This evening, I was sitting in our big plastic primary colored Ikea chairs (we need to invest in some outdoor furniture) with my boys, eating the pizza we'd made together and relishing in the gorgeous lake view, our lovely big grassy, tree lined, yard, discussing just how blessed we are. I feel compelled to remind my children that this life we lead is not typical. I want to somehow make them realize just how lucky they are so maybe they'll cherish their childhood more. Although really, it'll probably be well into their adulthood before it truly hits them. I don't mean to beat them over the head with it, but I suppose I do.

Do you boys realize that not everyone gets to live on a beautiful lake and roam around a camp all day?

Yeah.

Do you know that lots of kids don't have moms that can stay home with them, but have to go to work?

Yeah--we're lucky because you can do your job on the computer.

Do you realize . . .

Lately I've been having many gratitude days. You know, where you just sit around and count your blessings (The Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ, a beautiful place to live, a righteous husband, the peace that comes from living within our means, my children, my children, my children, lilacs, tomato plants, Indian food, a good job, and on and on). It makes me want to sing praises from the rooftops. But I suppose that would be a bit gratuitous wouldn't it?

It also makes me wonder what challenges lie in wait, but then I remind myself to enjoy the present and deal with the future when it gets here. It also makes me feel a little bit guilty, that perhaps I should have more children with whom to share this. But not guilty enough to consider pregnancy and infancy in any real terms--as if that were still feasible. But it does make me take more notice of ads for foster parents. But then I selfishly wonder if my idyllic days might come to a crashing halt if I were to upset the balance in such a dramatic way. And then I feel a little bit guilty about that.

But those little bits of guilt and wariness are swallowed so wholly in gratitude as I watch my children laugh out loud as they run through the sprinkler on the eve of summer. Right now, I think I'll just enjoy it.

Be Nice

I have always struggled in getting through Alma in the Book of Mormon. Which is unfortunate considering that Alma constitutes a very large portion of the book. Why Alma you might ask? Well, there are obviously some very good bits throughout there, but when you get into the latter chapters there is just so much war and carnage that I begin to become dismayed and disinterested. Not so for my children however. The blood and carnage portions are their favorite parts. Perhaps Moroni included all this with the understanding that the Priesthood of the latter days may be more readily persuaded to study the scriptures in their youth with a heavy dusting of violence. Just a theory.

Last night I was reading the scriptures with my boys. Ethan likes the pictures in the Book of Mormon Stories, but I like reading the actual scripture to them. They like to flip through the pictures, select the most interesting (read most bodies, blood and carnage) ones for me to read. Then, while they looked at the pictures, I read aloud from the actual book. We discussed the Lamanite army destroying the city of Ammonihah and Elliot points at the picture.

Is dat da army?

Yes, the Lamanite army.

Do dey have missiles and bombs?

No, this was a long time ago before missiles and bombs.

Do dey have bullets?

No, they didn't have guns or bullets either.

Mom, you're wrong and I'm right. Dey have missles and bombs and bullets.

Okay.

So how does my three-year-old know so much about armies and missiles and bombs? Oh yeah, I did take them to the air zoo after all. I do have to admit that gratefully, either by nature or by constant maternal vigillance, my boys are very nice--relativley speaking.

We wento the park yesterday and it seems we were constantly surrounded by boys of all ages being rude, inconsiderate or downright mean. I even had to break up a physical fight between a group of kindergarteners--me being the only parent on the playground. I am happy to say that my children were not involved in the fight. Hopefully this is not just due to my presence. On our way home we had a conversation:

Is Nathan always that mean?

No, he's pretty nice at school.

Really, so he's just mean at the playground after school?

How do you feel when kids are mean?

Bad.

Does it make you want to play with them?

No, I just walk away and play with someone else.

Good. Do you think kids would want to play with you if you're mean?

No, I'm nice.

Glad to hear it. Is it just me, or does it seem that it's somehow become acceptable for boys to be mean? I hear it, I sometimes think it--boys will be boys. And that is true. Boys are rough, boys are sometimes rude and inconsiderate. But this does not mean that becaue it is natural, this behavior is acceptable. This is also not something they will learn on their own. Someone must stand up and correct inappropriate behavior, not just excuse or discount it. My Grandfather's advice to my husband and I on our wedding day was Be nice to each other. There is infinite wisdom in this counsel. I'm doing my darndest to teach my boys to be nice. And to their credit, they are. Most of the time. Even though they like to read about people not being nice.

Good Enough

On Memorial Day I got up and took my boys to the Air Zoo; a pretty cool air and space science museum nearby. As we were getting ready to leave, I began to panic a little at the pile of dishes and general state of disarray of my house.

I knew a woman once who said she vacuums every day because she likes the lines. Okay. Somebody shoot me if I ever have enough time on my hands to vacuum every day--just for the lines. I admit it, there are things that I frankly find to be more pressing and more important than immaculate housekeeping--though I do find value and import in a clean home. Or clean enough.

I'm coming to terms with my attitude toward housekeeping. There is this little voice inside me that yells: How will your boys ever learn the value of a clean dwelling place if the home they grow up in is a disaster?

Likewise there is another voice in my head that screams: These children will not be children for long, enjoy the here and now, enjoy them, enrich their lives, housekeeping can wait. And I imagine long years of having plenty of time to clean my house.

Then, lest you think I just might not be schizophrenic, there is yet another often louder voice that yells: Hey you! Slob! How dare you go to bed with dirty dishes in your sink! And check out that toilet! Wow, wish someone would vacuum around here! Because you and I have both been in one of those houses--you know what I mean right? Where you can't get out soon enough, where you don't dare let your child off your lap, where the countertop has not been visible in some months. And it's not so much that I want to judge the cleanliness of someone else's home, it's just that I fear that I have reached that point unawares.

But then, there is another voice that quietly soothes: A day or two of clutter is easily rectified and is not so important as the time you spend with your children. A wise man said: If you are still in the process of raising children, be aware that the tiny fingerprints that show up on almost every newly cleaned surface, the toys scattered about the house, the piles and piles of laundry to be tackled will disappear all too soon and that you will—to your surprise—miss them profoundly.

So, my new philisophy on motherhood and a clean house--Cleaning will wait, childhood won't. I do my best to keep up with it all, but frankly, some things are more important and although those voices still scream at me, I'm learning to ignore them--or at least drown them out.

A wise woman I knew once said that housekeeping partially done, still blesses my family. I like to chant this to myself (and to the voices in my head) every time I quickly, but partially clean the bathroom, or do enough dishes to fill the dishwasher and (heaven forbid) leave the rest to another load in the morning rather than staying up to spotlessly hand wash every last dish. I've learned from too much experience that staying up too late to complete some domestic duty on the pretense of blessing my family actually results in marked detriment to my family in the form of my exhaustion and complete lack of patience the following day. So nowadays, I go to bed, regardless of the dishes sitting in the sink. Oh, and sometimes, I neglect my blog too. Sorry. Oops, look at the time. I must to bed.

There was an old lady

So when does one become officially old?

When your eyes fail? Your ears? Your knees? Or perhaps when your doctor prescribes high blood pressure medicine?

I never had high blood pressure until I was eight months pregnant. Since then I've been in denial. Until today. Damn babies.

Perhaps she'll die . . . unless of course she takes her high blood pressure medication as directed by her doctor.