Endeavors

For some reason I am lacking in gumption these days. Perhaps all of it has evaporated in the summer heat, I dunno... but by golly I am gonna fake it for a while. I would tell you that in the interest of faking it, I am writing this post. Only that would be a big, fat lie. In the interest of avoiding a bunch of smelly, dirty dishes I am writing this post.

What? YOU can't smell them from that side of the computer screen. So hush.

So... we've done a few things this summer, and this is show and tell day. First off, LaLa has this thing for instructive video clips on the D!sney version of y0utube. She gets ideas for cake decorating and crafts, and then she wants to do them. I have caved on a few projects and treats. The flipflops were one of them. I thought to myself... "some cheep flip flops and a little frippary, how much can that cost?"

I'll tell ya. Plenty.

The flip flops set me back a total of four fifty total, for the three of them. The frippary, on the other hand, cost a titch over twenty five bucks. Geesh!

Birdie's flops

Pearl's flops.

LaLa's flops.

There has also been some artwork happening... and sadly, LaLa is gonna get short shrift here. Most of her stuff has actual Chaos Names embedded IN the pictures themselves, and I forgot where my image editor has gone. Is probly on Dadguy's laptop, but if I try and get all particular right now, this post will never get writ. Besides... Henry's gonna get slid on by in the artwork department altogether, as his creations are of a "treasure rock" variety, and nobody wants to see THAT!

Birdie kinda knocked my socks off with this one.

This one too! We are on a Star Wars kick lately. She wants to be Qui Gon Jinn for Halloween. I am delighted with her costume choice once again.

This is LaLa's rendition of Aipom, a Pokemon... would be a little more impressive if I could find the picture she referenced when she painted it. Still, I love that she is another artist!

Here... found this at least.

Pearl expresses herself with a paint brush, and honestly, I cannot fathom how she manages to get such lovely and vivid colors out of her scabby and muddy box of overmixed pans of watercolors.

And she expresses herself with some of my lip gloss... most of my lip gloss.

I draw some too, mostly for the amusement and instruction of the kids, but still...

Henry mostly just works on being dang cute.

...and we all of us just sing our way through the days. Some of us louder than others. Poor Henry. Welcome to your childhood with three older sisters.

And lastly, Dadguy has been working on another iPhone app... this time a little game that is already a huge hit in the Chaos household. Is called Meeps... check it!

Oh-Kaaaaay Maaamaaaaaaah

It's a fact... Dadguy has written five posts to his iPhone developer blog since my last post. And five to his new "Meeps" blog. This is wrong on soooo many levels. Not that he is posting to his blogs... but that I am not.

School starts in three weeks, and I am very excited for this, but I think that I have begun to put everything off till that time.

Sighhhh. This is not working so well for me. I feel out of control.

Because. Oh yeah. I AM out of control.

Still, there is fun stuff happening and the kids are growing and going and doing. The Art work, for instance. It's a little unnerving the quality of the creations around here. Like I'll be fixing dinner and the kids will be drawing at the table and I take a glance over a shoulder and I'll have to stop and pick my jaw up off the floor. That good! Sadly I have lost track of the example of the "Power Pup Girls" that LaLa drew... but I will be posting a gallery of various masterpieces. Soon.

At this rate? Expect it next year.

And reading. Birdie is off and reading the first Harry Potter book. I started reading it with her, but I guess I am just not fast enough.

LaLa is so ready for school. She will be reading pretty fluently by the end of Kindygarten... I can tell. In most ways she is farther along than Birdie was.

Pearl. She reads too. But to her, everything reads as follows: "Dear, dear, dear Pearl!" Ask her. She'll tell you!

Home

So about that last post? It's hormonal. I remember now that I get super-freaky-hormonal when I quit nursing and start mensing. This time I was caught off guard by the "panic" aspect that my personal brand of freak-out took, but in the end, it's just more of the same. Perhaps because I am mensing and nursing? Nevertheless...

It's hormonal, and progesterone cream takes care of it.

So yesterday was pretty landmarkish for me. Only the signposts I was passing were subtle, and I am not sure if I understood what they said. Or where I am.

Perhaps I am in Belgium. But no... the chocolate would be better in Belgium, don't you think?

Yesterday Dadguy and I went in to Orem to sign the papers for our refinance. We are moving from a 30 year FHA to a 15 year conventional loan. I find this strangely titillating. That too must be my currently unbalanced hormones.

huh.

Anyways, the gal who was doling out papers to sign pointed out that my driver's license had expired on my birthday, a week or so back. Did I tell mention that I turned forty on the twelfth? No joke! I did! Forty! Perhaps THAT'S why everything seems so strangish and new. Maybe I am now dwelling in FORTYLAND; home of the mid-life crisis and shifting hormonal balances!

But I digress... since all the kiddos were at home with a babysitter, I took the opportunity to run by the DL Renewal office on my way home to get a new one. Thankfully, I had actually put on make-up that morning; I don't always. But I had not wanted to go into some posh financial institution with the normal glob of spit-up-on-the-shoulder and snot-wiped-on-the-pants-leg look that I usually sport nowadays. The picture of the lady on the new card was a lovely representation of forty years old. With make-up.

That was when I noticed that the address on my old license is my current address. Another landmark right there. Since the day that I started driving and toting around a card with my picture on it that says I get to... this was the first time that had ever happened to me. Heck... I have now lived at my current home for longer than I have ever lived anywhere, either before or after the advent of my license to scare the crap out of my parents and send their insurance premiums soaring.

All four of my children have come home from the hospital to this house.

This is the little house, that when Dadguy and I discovered we were pregnant with Birdie... we chose the lot and picked the floor plan, colors and carpets for this house. We caused this house to be built, and then we put in landscaping, fencing and finished the basement over the past eight-years-this-Thanksgiving.

And now, we have just refinanced, digging in for the next umpteen years. I spent the better part of my thirties living in this house, I could conceivably spend the entirety of my forties here. It feels like this means something... but I have no idea what.

There is some sort of meaning at a tectonic level here; that I have surpassed even my childhood in terms of stability, and I had a stable and good childhood. Not that simply not moving from apartment, to house, to house means "stability," only in this case, to my heart, it sort of does. It is some sort of metaphor for my life as a wife to Dadguy and a mother to his children.

Like it is a physical manifestation of the haven that we are building for the Chaos family. How interesting. I think it is no coincidence that this Sunday I teach a lesson based on the talk "Sacred Homes, Sacred Temples" in Relief Society.

And isn't it great, this "blogging" thing. After having written this post I think I can now start to decipher the signs and markers of yesterday that stirred me so. Home. Progression. Thriving. Growing. Nurturing.

Panic In The Streets

Well.

Something has happened to me. Is happening to me?

I am afraid that if I write about it... what? It will be real, finally? I will have to do something about it? Somehow, that writing about it will make it into a big fat fuss when it's really nothing? Will it offend people who suffer from panic attacks to read my recounting of a couple of episodes of I-don't-know-what-but-it-might-be-panic-attacks, because really, I am just being a schmo?

I have probably not been having panic attacks. But I have been having... something. I have had a bit of tightly wound something that has been noticeable since I went into the mission field (I served a stateside LDS mission in my late 20's). Tightly wound. And that's the nice way of putting it.

The summer after Pearl got out of the hospital I got a little taste of an all new something though; a something that has hit me rather hard the past few weeks. I remember that Pearl still had her g-tube in, so it was probably in June, and we were at an amusement park just North of Salt Lake City, they have this big Ferris wheel that had extra-large, round baskets that easily held our whole family. A person would have to try really hard to get hurt on this thing, and we were there to have fun, and while I don't love heights, Ferris wheels seem pretty tame to me. But I fully freaked out on the ride.

I had my kids there, so I didn't get all screamy and outwardly freaked, but my heart was pounding, I was sweating, gallons of adrenaline were being dumped into my system and I cried steadily and quietly for most of the ride.

I'll buy that it was just some PTSD from the whole experience of the close call with Pearl, followed by her grueling recovery, and I hadn't much worried about it; till now.

This past spring we took the whole family plus my eighteen year old niece to Denver to visit my sister and her family. It was around the middle of April, so when my sister called the morning were we leaving to make the drive, to express her concerns about us making it through Vail Pass safely, I took it seriously, only sort of not. How bad can it get in April?

I'll tell you.... bad. Really, really, really bad.

And we were in our brand new (to us... it's a 2008) van. A Kia Sedona, that for as nice as it is, has this feature called ESC... a sort of equalizing traction thingy that is it's default mode. A default mode that, while I am sure it is great for keeping you from hydroplaning or slipping in a patch of sand on the highway, has the unfortunate side effect of undermining the power the van needed to make it up an icy, snow covered mountain road. We know that this feature is called ESC now, because after 20 minutes of slipping about and physically pushing the van up the mountain a few inches at a time in the dark, with other vehicles slewing about past us... we pushed the button that said "ESC off" out of desperation (inspiration?).

It must be stated here that, as we were driving off the lot with our new van, we spent over 15 minutes pouring over the owner's manual and pushing that button trying to figure out what it did to no avail.

Now we know.

Once we were finally to a safer place, my hands started to shake and I started to cry. I don't mean a tremble in my hands, I mean I would not have been able to hold a glass with a half inch of water in the bottom of it without giving myself a shower. Which, you might just think that this was perhaps a warranted reaction to what we had just been through... I would like to point out that no one else was having this kind of reaction. Just me, and it took every last bit of my will and determination to not make a big scene out of it. I think that I should also say, I am not having visions of disasters replaying in my head while this is happening. I am not obsessing myself into freak-out. This is a physical thing and it's pissing me off.

Most recently, Dadguy and I have been looking at some mountain lots for possible purchase. We want to eventually have a cabin, and Dadguy has stumbled onto this area that has what we want... and we can actually afford some of it.

Only it's been really rainy lately. And apparently I have developed a "thing" about muddy dirt roads as well as icy roads. Because really... y'all... I have been stuck in the mud before and it is not the end of the flippin' WORLD!

And I mean really stuck, in some world-class, mud-season mud in Vermont's puckerbrush back of nowhere, in what the truly erudite would call "bee-eff-ee." Solidly stuck in the snow in New Hampshire in a whole bunch of places. I have been spectacularly high-centered in a sandy wash in the tooley-bops outside of Farmpit, New Mexico in the middle of the night, and I, those who were with me, and the vehicles involved in each case, survived. This is not a Zombie Apocalypse we are talking about here.

But lately the adrenaline starts coursing, my hands start shaking and I get this note in my voice that I cannot stop.

I cannot stop.

And I hate this. I cannot stop it from happening, and it sucks down vast portions of my energy and personal reserves. Leaves me feeling wrung out and weepy.

I am not excited about being this way. I am not this way. Dadguy says that this is uncharacteristic of me, and frankly, he's only seeing the bit that is slipping through the cracks. The rest is a slavering, rabid dog tearing huge chunks of my insides out. But I am not really sure what to do. These episodes are so spread out, I'd hate to spend all of my regular non-panicking life being medicated for these relatively isolated instances. And really, I am still moving and sort of functioning while it's happening.

Only I have had two in the past two weeks, and this scares me.

...And By "We," I Mean "Me"

So here are some pictures of the tile in the kitchen/entryway. The tiles are 16"x16" Montagne Belluno tiles from Home Depot. The grout is Mapei brand in "Chamois."


Do I love it? Why, yes... yes, I do.



When we put tile in the bathrooms- more Belluno in the main bath, and slate in the master bath- we discovered that the sink vanities no longer fit. The things were not high-quality, and I have never loved them, so when it came time to decide if we were gonna pay to have them fitted in, leave them skee-whompus-but-functional or replace; we decided to replace, especially since the one in the main bathroom had water damage, both at the base and in the counter top. We are trying to manage our pennies, so I hit the local Craigslist type website and found a gorgeous hardwood and granite, vessel style sink/vanity that I loved. I talked the lady down $200... and went and picked it up for a measly $450 (kof kof!).

And then I realised that I needed to cut down the top to make it fit, my pretty counter top that I had measured over, and over, and over again. It wouldn't fit because where the hot water came out of the wall. So another $75 to get it cut and the edges refinished... and here I will put in an unsolicited plug for a great company in Orem called "Marble and Granite Solutions." They rock, har har har! Seriously though... they took the time for a teensy job like mine without once rolling their eyes or making me feel dumb. Kudos, guys! You will get my business if I can ever afford the lovely counter tops you make!

Then the drainpipe wouldn't fit... so some pretty chrome plumbing... $30. My next door neighbor, the guy we hired to do the tile work got it installed snugly and pretty (involved saws, chisels, drills and the like to make it tight): $100.

And then it became apparent that we needed to paint before all this went in. Can of paint, Ralph Lauren in a pretty grey called "Polaris." Approximately $30.

Yeah... I managed our pennies right into brokesville, thank-you-very-much. But it looks really pretty.





Still needs some shelving above the toilet, and something like this for the bottom shelf (as Dadguy will point out, the only shelf )of the vanity. But I think we will just love what we have for a while.

This next week I hope to get around to painting the main bath and taking pictures of my farrrrr more reasonably priced solution in there. Stay tuned.

Henry's Hamburgers

Yesterday I took the girls and myself down the street to our hairstylist to get gussied up for our TV appearances. The TV folks were great, the interviews ok... but I am left with the regret of having said too much and not enough at once.

Yep, it's a little like blogging in that way. That oversharing sort of a way. Only I cannot go back in and edit any of it. That's a crying shame too... because at the last, when I they asked me if I could go back in and handle any of it differently, I responded in a way that I wish I had tempered with more gratitude for the awesome, dedicated and concerned doctors that we had along the way in figuring out what was up with Pearl. I am hoping they edit in such a way that I come off as less of a harridan.

Back to the hair. My friend who does my hair has a little girl who is just a month older than Pearl, but far more articulate. No one seems to know where she got it, but she started calling Henry's fat rolls on his thighs, his "hamburger's," a term I find screamingly apt. They LOOK like the fat and delicious layers of sandwich that make a good hamburger.

My friends, I invite you to enjoy....

HAMBURGERS!

And how's about a yummy serving of the whole thing!

Beauty

"Mama, I am going to be really beautiful when I grow up, aren't I?" Birdie asks as she is brushing her hair for church.

"Ummm, well yeah. You are going to be beautiful." I say, because she will be.

"Most girls are beautiful, you know. Because they want to be, huh." She adds thoughtfully.

Oh baby, that's truer that you know. We are beautiful when we want to be.

repentance

I was talking today to one of the producers for a TV show about kids who swallow funky things, she was asking about "why did we do such and such," and "what was the timeline for..." and I was able to answer her questions coherently because I could just refer back to the bloggy and whup!  there it is.  No having to thump my noodle trying to come up with what I thought might have been going on at the time.

How sad that I have not been blogging worth a hoot lately.  Eeeesh.  What has disappeared into the morass of my mushy head and mushier memory?  

I repent here and now, I repent of blog-sloth.

So.... this coming Tuesday there will be a television crew out here to interview us and get some footage of Pearl for that TLC show about kids and the ghastly ways they age their parents by eating awful stuff.  A half a week away.  A time that is NOT GOOD to be caught up in the middle of a remodel;  and yet, here we are.  

What started out as Dadguy coming home one day and announcing that right now would be a really good time to upgrade and buy a new house, has turned into us deciding to stay put and save our money.  Only we were already replacing our floors in preparation to sell.  And now, for various reasons, our old bathroom vanities don't fit very well without investing more money to make them fit.  Only I don't want to invest more money in these vanities because I don't like them to start with, and the one in the girl's bath has water damage.  And getting all this stuff out of the bathrooms really showcases how badly they need some paint.  

Oh, it goes on and on.  All I can say is that it all made sense at the time.  And now I have a film crew coming in the middle of my chaos.   I could just DIE, and now, on top of it all I realize that I have been depriving y'all of some sweet, sweet home-improvement porn.

Er, am I the only one who gets a thrill to watch a room take on new prettiness?  

Wait till I tell the tale of a second hand pedestal sink for the kids bathroom, and a repurposed section of a high end modern vanity and a granite counter top for the master bath.  Green glass vessel sink.  Ooooooooo!

The kitchen floor is pretty much done.  Just tonight I finished sealing the grout, but the carpet still has to be restretched and secured.  We decided to move the book case/cabinet to the end of the hallway in the basement where it fits beautifully.  The thing just collected and clutter and was messing with my tile-floor-racetrack-curve-feng-shui.  Later when I get everything put back and prettied up I'll post some more shots.  But now it's late.  Sleep good.

Sunday Pic: Everything

The yard work has begun in earnest.

Henry in all his chubby glory.

Before pic: the floor in the kitchen and entryway. We are getting the linoleum ripped out and tile put in.

Birdie in her usual spot.

Pretty soon they will all weigh about the same. Like maybe next week.
(Plus, do you want this chair Lins?)

The book case that sucked down my life for about a week. Hello Ikea!

Did I promise you guys some pics?

Last week?

Oh. Here they are.

Price

Creation comes with a price.  The cooler the creation, the steeper the price usually.  For the boys reading, y'all can just skip the following till ya hit the asterisks; is gryll talk.

I started my monthlies again today.  I think it's the solid foods that Henry started on about a month ago.  He's a big fan of the spoon, and his nummie intake must have dropped below the specified hormonal level... cuz umm, yeah.  

For some reason this surprised me.  The visit from Aunt Flo and all.  I knew it was coming eventually, but after my snip-snip I had just written off all things "procreation" except, umm.. for the recreational parts.  Belatedly, I am reminded that I will have this reminder until I hit the "change."  And while a bit of cramping and PMS is no great shakes when compared to the living hell of actually being pregs, it is still uncomfortable and inconvenient.   I still think that it is bizarre that over half the human race will not ever carry and bear a baby.

I think that it is due more to the PMS than impending Mothers Day, that I keep thinking  about all the things that I have done as a mother (sleep deprivation, privacy deprivation, clean-up on aisle 12, etc...) and all the things I cannot do anymore, at least for the time being.

***

So in case anyone was wondering... we are maxxed out over here in Chaos-land.  Four is for shore the magic number for me.  The number four and the number forty.  

Four kids.

woooo.

I promise... I will post some pics in a few days.  Kids, new shelves, flowers WEEEEE!  Spring is really starting to pop 'round here.

Attack of the Kids

It is late, the kids are all finally asleep. I walk through the house admiring the mess, but too tired to do much of anything about it. On my way to the kitchen to get a glass of water and inspect the dishes that I will not wash until tomorrow, I see a funny flesh-colored-something stuck to the far living room wall.

"The heck?" I mutter, "is that a band aid stuck on the wall? Why the heck would they stick a ..."

I reach out a hand to touch the mass. Gum. Freaking pink bubble gum. Well craaaap.

Catch My Breath...

Pearl pronounces the word volcano as "puh-kay-no," she calls DVD's, "DV-doh's." Like, a cross between a DVD and a Video.

LaLa this morning came in to the kitchen while I was eating my breakfast and told me, "Mama, you are the bossiest person in the whole world. Why are you soooo bossy?" Pffft. She should get a load of MY mom in full swing.

Birdie. She is killing me. She tries so flipping hard to be the best good-girl she can, I would worry she will blow a gasket... only she does have her little outlets. Tonight for instance, about one minute after her daddy went downstairs she crept into our room to play "My Little Pony" internet games with the sound off. The only reason we know this is that Dadguy had been downloading some files that stopped when she closed out his user and opened her own. This, when she was supposed to be asleep in bed. The stinker.

Henry. He is still a baby, and oh mah CRAP that boy is a chubba. No joke, I should prolly take some pictures.

Last night I went through a boatload of videotape footage from back when Pearl was having her strider (loud breathing) from the sequin stuck in her throat. Holy CRAP, my kids are loud, and they never shut up. Ever. Birdie even talks in her sleep. I was trying to find a clear representation of the sound she used to make, but you can barely hear it in between the shrieks, squawks and singing of her older sisters. Relentless.

I don't think I will ever get any sufficiently representative video footage of the "Bacon Shakin'?" shtick that the girls give Henry. There is a reason they have developed this activity; I am busy doing something else and cannot get to the kid to help him be happy, let alone shoot some footage. It is to the point that if he starts screaming while I am cooking dinner, I might distractedly ask LaLa to "go ask Henry about his bacon." Works darn near every time. I am still 100% in the dark about it's origins.

Duuuuuude!

I think the word "dude" is pretty funny.... a lot funnier than it is in reality. Like, my use of the word has lost it's irony, and now I just use it. All. The . Freakin'. Time.

Fact is, I think that swear words are even funnier. But I have been putting lots of effort into not swearing now-a-days... so that just leaves "dude."

Think about it. I now have a boy to call "dude"!

Cutie Patootie Dude. Little Dude. Doodster. Dude-icus Rex. The Dude Man. Round Dude. There is some unapologetic overuse going on over here.

Back when we had no kids, Dadguy and I went to see "Dude, Where's My Car" at the dollar movies. Have you seen it? Whoah, was that a baaaaad movie, but, whoah, we laughed our cans off! One particular line has made it into our all-time family in-jokes.... the old Chinese lady saying "...and theeeeeeeeeen?" Last night Dadguy pulled out that old-moldy at the dinner table for the first time in a while... using a gravelly voice and really drawing out the "theeeeen."

It's one of those bits that has been there for long enough that I wasn't 100% where it came from and had to ask if that was from the movie, and all Pearl heard in between bites of dinner was the title. So she laughed and said "mama! It's in the garage!"

Enjoy!

Ten Things and a Few Pics

1.  One of the main problems with posting so infrequently is there is so MUCH to post that I don't post anything... then there is even MORE to post and I don't post that either.  Today you will get ten cheesy summary bits and we will reset this blog.

2.  I have strep throat, and have now been on antibiotics for almost ten hours.  Other than my throat being gross and hurty I don't see much difference in the way that I feel right now (headache, body aches, tired and generally like crap) and the way that I feel when I am pregnant.  Actually I feel better than when I am pregs, I do not regret getting myself nuetered.

3.  The girls LOVE to sit in front of Henry and say over and over again with large amounts of inflection..."What's your BACON shakin'?!"  They will say it to him until he tires of it, and it takes a very long time before he tires of it.  As a matter of fact he will coo and grin and laugh out loud when they do it.

4.  I need to just get used to he idea that until the warmer weather hits, a sick baby is actually the default setting.  He's got a new cold and a sore throat.

5.  It's not like being sick is setting him back any though.... he packed on a whopping four pounds this past month.  This puts him into his 6-9 month outfits, and a size three diaper. He is 17 pounds y'all.  That's an awful lot of baby to lug around.

6.  My parents called and asked what Birdie and LaLa would like for their birthdays a little over a month ago... I told them that if they would like to be the hero's they could get them a "My Meebas."  They had reaaaally wanted a "My Meebas" for Christmas, but not even Santa could stomach the idea of shelling out twenty bucks a pop for these insipid things.  Apparently grandparents don't mind.  The folks sent them, and although they girls were THRILLED to get them, they left them on the shelf for a few weeks until Birdie finally figured out how to play the various LCD screen video games and "evolve " her Meeba enough to get the tube thingy to pop open, and get her amazingly cheap and dumb looking Meeba out.

7.  LaLa got hers to it's next-to-the-last evolution, got frustrated and then just used a butter knife to spring hers.  Same diff.

8.  Those awful things are truly the toys du jour, every single du jour ever since.  LaLa was just the other day bemoaning the fact that she had no My Meebas coloring book.  Hmph!  Coloring book, shmoloring book... have you seen those dreadful things?  They are freaking amoebas, I think I can draw an amoeba with eyeballs and a grin.  I got out a marker and made a slew of coloring pages for the girls.  I just wish I had made copies before they got colored in and then cut out.

9.  Poor Pearl was feeling left out, and even though Birdie generously gave her permission to  play with her Meebas every day while she was at school, that left all the rest of the day and the weekends.  I figured I could make her one, same as I made some color sheets... so I did.  For the "tube" I used and old facial cleansing sheet box.  This thing is every bit as loved as the real thing.

10 Obeseve: the "Mommy Bas."

Sunday Pic: The Cookies

Two and a half months, birthday cake and numerous cookies do a chub-ola baby make.

She Turned Five

This once a week posting is for the birds, but I have been excessively busy, so suck it up and eat birdseed my friend.

Seriously... another birthday and party, Valentines Day, Pearl with her usual double ear-infection plus sinusitis, Birdie and Henry down with RSV, all the attending doctors appointments, meds, and love and care for the sickies, a trip down south to St. George for the weekend, and now with the serious focus on potty training for the Pearl-girl... lucky any post of any kind is comin'! And oh yeah, the computer bought the farm and this post is coming to ya via the laptop; stupid Safari and blogger don't play well together, and I don't know how to mediate.

If anyone ever tries to tell you that there is no significant difference between three and seven kids, take your thumb and forefinger and flick them soundly upon the nose for me. They are lying to you.  Is load of crap.

Lala  wanted a "Littlest Pet Shop" themed birthday party for her fifth birthday, so I planned a cake and drew a cat poster which the girls color in the day before the party, a day that turned out to be a sick day for everyone anyway (ref: the RSV and ear crud and nose crud) .  Then I drew some tails on papers so the guests could color and cut out their own tails for the game.... an activity in itself.

The poster turned out better than my Turtle debacle.



Cake was great, and the kiddo was happy too.



The thing that really slays me though... with all of my generous eating of birthday cake, Valentines chocolate and cookies, and the vacation crap food extravaganza, I have lost three pounds.  This mysterious loss of weight baffled me until I looked over and realized that somebody now has cheeks that bear an uncanny resemblance to cookies, and there are a few thigh rolls that I swear look like buttercream frosting.  Doesn't he just look like a white chocolate bonbon, all wrapped up in a Sunday suitie?! I promise you...that little button up shirt under the sweater vest really does have a collar.

Happy Bird-day!

huh.... this is my 400th post.

These days the Chaos family is exploring the realm of "good 'nuff." Nothing is getting any elaborate treatment, nothing is 100%, nothing is perfect... but it sure works OK, and we have a good time balancing a larger family. Mostly.

My days of spending hours decorating a cake (or writing a post for that matter) are over, but in my opinion, the cakes that are resulting are still fun and cool. The kids dig 'em so... even if they weren't and aren't, big whoop-tee-do.

Birdie wanted a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle birthday party, so we got the invitations, a few TMNT themed party goods, and went on a search for a good cake; as per usual we found a great, do-able cake on this site, truly a website filled with the coolest amateur cakes you have ever clapped eyes on. Birdie hit on the one that I was interested in trying, a cake that used some fondant, but not enough to cover the whole cake.



I had never worked with fondant before, but it was much like working with a sticky Sculpey or Fimo. As far as taste? I think it is accurate to call it "chewy frosting," kinda gross, but it looks cool. Plus Birdie had the TMNT mini's that she had gotten for Christmas, so it was kinda a no-brainer to try it.



Two very satisfying comments/squeals from guests: "Look! It's two cakes STACKED UP!" and "Look! There is FROSTING in the middle!"

The part where the balancing act collapsed was in the party-games department. I figured with the extra time used in eating pizza as well as the cake, we would only have time for a few short games. So Birdie came up with a Duck-Duck-Goose game called Turtle-Turtle-Ninja, and as she was running out the door for school the day of the party, she asked me to come up with a "pin-the-tail-on-the-Turtle" game. I was running short on time, so when I finally grabbed up a magic marker, paper, and one of those Ninja Turtle minis and saw that they had no tails... I just decided to add one and call it good.

Y'all... there is a reason that the creators of the TMNT franchise did not give them tails.

Observe.




...and I am here to tell you that when we added the little green construction paper tails that LaLa designed for the project, things did not look any better. I did not get a photo of that bit of risque business, just suffice it to say that it was in no way my finest hour or judgment call. Really, I didn't realize what I had wrought until I was taping the stupid poster up the the wall, and by then I had zero time and just hoped for the best. Luckily, most of the guests were of the seven year old girl variety and if anyone saw anything to comment on, at least no one did.

Happy Birthday little Bird!

Snuck Up On Me

This has been a busy week... Saturday morning a beloved nephew was Baptised, followed by a family gathering. Sunday morning at church Dadguy gave Henry a name and a blessing, followed by a family gathering (at OUR house no less). Monday Henry had his two month old doctor's visit and immunizations, followed by Tylenol and exacerbated by all the snot and misery he and I are sharing; A cold to beat out all colds.

No. Really. I am SURE that my misery far exceeds your misery.

Good news is, he's up to 13 pounds and is hitting all the milestones that he should. Bad news is... there still isn't a cure for the common, wretched cold.

Then on Tuesday was Birdie's seventh birthday with the cake and attendant party to accomplish... an event that I promise to cover in a post tomorrow. Ish. Tomorrow-ish, unless all hell breaks loose... and it may.

All of this with my head so full of snot it feels like... choose your own @%$# metaphor, simile or otherwise... whatever.

I am concerning myself with the blessing of the boy-o in this post. Three things have occurred to me, with this blessing of my last child, and they came upon me in this order.

1. There is a Catch 22 in preparing a house for a big event that will take place first thing in the morning when that house is inhabited by a number of the small minions. It is as follows... it is useless to clean any earlier than after the kiddos go to bed, the night before the event. However. If you WAIT till the night before said event... at least ONE of said minions will wake up a-puking, thereby foiling your cleaning. Catch 22, sux 2 B-U.

2. While I am perfectly aware, and have been, obviously, that I have a boy baby as opposed to my myriad girl babies, it has been just that in my mind... my boy baby. We call him boy, and I refer to him as a boy, kiddo, brother or baby, but Sunday night it occurred to me that we have a son. For some reason the semantics make a difference. I now have a son.

3. Don't know why, but I have been completely without sentimentality in viewing the ending of my procreative period. Rather than any feelings of grief or sorrow at the end of any portion of my gestation or giving birth my feelings have been more along the lines of "good CRAP! Thank heavens I will never have to do THAT ever again!" and "if I can just gut my way through this, it'll be the last time... I can do it just this last time." I have been wondering if I am especially cold hearted or callow as I have watched these many "lasts" with glee. Then late Tuesday night as I was pulling Henry's freshly laundered blessing suit, that had been provided by my MIL, out of the dryer and placed it carefully with the exquisite blessing dresses that my MIL had hand made for each one of my daughters. I was thinking to myself where I could purchase archival quality boxes or bags to keep these treasures in, until each child would be ready to claim them when they were old enough (read: married and having a child of their own).

...and then it hit me. This is my last.


oh, wow.




I am going to be that mother who is crying as she sends her "baby" off to school.

Sleep Sucking Death

This is why I haven't been blogging. I am tired, and tired-brain equals stupid brain... and annoyingly, pathetically WHINY brain. I get started with a post and I cannot get farther than two sentences because I want to put myself in time out, I am SOOOOO wah-wah-wah-everything-sucks-I-need-sleep. Only I really just want to punch myself in the face... but we are trying to use our words and our problem solving skills aren't we?

Which is funny, because I never mind it when I read other people's blogs about the sleep deprivation. Maybe it because I have to hear my own unfiltered whining in my self-pitying brain rather than experience it in it's cleaned up format on a blog. Maybe it's because of that funny thing about how even when your own life sucks, you wouldn't trade with anyone else... 'cause you know the suck that you live with and it seems more live-withable than someone elses suck. I have that in spades, I HAVE lived someone elses life before, I have lived another version of suck and I am more aware than many, just how good my suckitude really is. Because in some ways I have it all. All of it that really matters to me anyway.

I would tell you the specifics about how good I have it... but it would just come off like bragging, or else you would just look at what I think is so great and think "wow... she thinks that's so great and I think that's just more of the suck that she lives with!" Just trust me when I say that most everything is going my way and translate that statement to the things that YOU would think are great.

Didja do it?

Good. Now picture yourself sniveling about some small hitch in one aspect of your truly awesome life, possibly a hitch that is part and parcel of that aspect. Like being bitter about the security checks you have to go through to get on the plane for your two month long dream vacation to the Bahamas. Perhaps you get frustrated to tears with the Paparazzi trailing you every where cuz you are such a famous, sexy thang and you are dating whoever it is you happen to think is the uber-hottie celeb.

That's me with the sleep deprivation that comes along with the behbehs. Except for the small fact that sleep deprivation is it's own little world of misery. It is a multiplier of misery. It, by it's very nature, causes every irritation and sorrow to appear to increase and deepen in the mind of the sufferer. Seriously, I thought that I had re-jacked my knee, it hurt so bad... then I realized that everything hurt. My head hurt. My back hurt. My hands hurts. My heart hurt a little.

Henry is mostly a good baby... he just didn't sleep so good at night for five nights straight, and I don't get naps. I had to abandon my work-outs this week, and that is annoying AND humbling because I know many women who woulda gone anyway. But I guess it comes down to me knowing myself, and I had to scale back.

and you would get more of the pissing and moaning except HEY! He's awake again and I either click the publish button now, or give up and post a stupid blurb on Fecesbook.

TA DAAAAHHH!

edited to add... Meredith... I am gonna answer your question, and everyone else? Don't blame me when I do, cuz she asked!

Square One

.... only not.

Today was day one for me going back to the twice a week workout group, lovingly referred to by it's victims as "Bootcamp." I was there in the genesis; as a matter of fact I was the one who gave the instructor (also my hairdresser) the last push into teaching it. Is brutal. Her cop husband, a former BYU football player came once, tried it, and proclaimed all of us insane and hasn't been back since.

I knew it would be tough going back after almost seven months of doing nothing more physically taxing than toting a ginormous belly around. It was. Plus Pearl spent the entire first hour prostrate on the floor at whatever station I was at, sobbing her face off. Henry was less than pleased as well, so I packed it in before the end run. But I was pleased that the warm-up run was not as evil as I thought it would be. Strangely I seem to still have a bit of wind left in my lungs... well, enough wind for me to do a very slow, test jog without panting.

Trust me, after a brutal pregnancy, c-section and jacked up MCL... I am being careful.

I am delighted to find that my memory of being sore after a workout is not a fantasy. Hurts, but it feels good too, in a weird sort of a way. Of course, I may be whining a different tune tomorrow. The worst part? The worst was being the slowest, weakest, and wussiest of the group. Apparently I have enough pride that I am bugged by this, but not enough pride to be kept away by this fact.

Nine months out and nine months back: This is my mantra. I have a number months to get bad a@@ again.

On an unrelated note, and not likely to mean much to those of you without a working knowledge of the LDS church, I forgot to mention that shortly before Henry was born Dadguy was released from his church calling as Executive Secretary to the Bishop. We were thrilled. I cannot stress how thrilled were were to hear this, and then delighted that he had gone so long without a new calling. Was like a little vacation. Only not, since his extra time was sucked into Christmas stuff, baby stuff and oh yeah... World of Warcrack released an expansion in November.

Vacation's over now... he's now first counselor in the Elder's Quorum Presidency. A fairly time intensive calling like his last, but now that we are used to it (now that I am used to it) it doesn't seem so daunting. Sez the wife, who doesn't have to do the calling! Am now nervously eyeing my own calling as Relief Society teacher... it's been over two years for me doing the Teaching For Our Times bit, and a recent change in RS presidency. I suspect that I am soon to be ousted from my comfort zone into a new calling. Ah well.

Sunday pic:Henry and the Dresses

What? You need words after that?

Blog?

Did I have a blog around here somewhere? Cannot quite remember, and it's not just the new addition to the Chaos around here, though Henry certainly keeps me hopping. It's not just the shiny, new toy of Facebook (the memories, the schizo nature of it and the occasional train wreck you can witness)... although it IS a proven fact that I only have so much writing in me per diem, and a little blurb about what I am doing/thinking on FB, apparently passes for a whole blog-post worth of writing nowadays.

Part of it is that "Blog" is almost a language. When I am in the groove I actually think in Blog as well as English. I am living my life, but I am also storing up tidbits and seeing events through a lens of blogability.

Haven't been doing that lately.... thinking like that.

My only regret is that the funny, exasperating and milestone-ish things that are happening around here are sliding by and slipping away. Like the fact that Pearl is a HOOLIGAN these days. My sweet little baby girlie that was so angelic I feared for her life; some beings are too sweet to live on this earth very long. Well, I don't worry so much anymore. She is a beast.

Example? Last night she nipped me on the arm, cracked her baby brother on the head with Birdies new little digital camera and then promptly ran upstairs and emptied an entire box of breakfast cereal on the kitchen floor. Right in front of Dadguy, on purpose. And the sad thing is that we are breaking our backs to make sure she is getting as much attention as we can manage. I am thinking that our best is simply not enough, and so she is spending half her days in time out.

Fibblety crap-sticks.

I suspect that Dadguy had the right of it when he observed that four is just too many. "We have more than we can handle here, but hopefully we might be able to grow into it." Crossing my fingers, and thinking that maybe we will grow into the new dimensions of the fam. Something hurts anyway, so I am praying that it's growing pains.

Speaking of something hurting.... guess what Yours Truly did to ring in the New Year? Did you guess "drag her sorry butt into the ER?" Cuz if you did, go ahead and award yourself the "I Am a Freakin' Psychic" button, and pin that bit of flair on your vest.

Before you worry too much, let me esplain. After doing a little too much, I will sometimes feel extra-sensitive on my incision site the next day. But last night after wracking my brains and being unable to recall any lifting or heavy duty activity that would account for my increased tenderness, I decided to check. Without going into the TMI details here... let's just say that a portion of my incision had become infected, something I wasn't aware could happen after the outside had healed and was sealed off. By the time I checked, it was after nine o'clock and a simple office-visit-worthy problem had become a trip to the ER, simply because nothing else was open or would be open until Friday. The on-call physician was pretty adamant that this could not wait. "Blah-blah-blah septic blah." So I rang in 2009 with some double strength Bactrim. Whee.

And hoo-rah... tape on the girl-parts revisited, cuz you can never have enough of that action.

And, umm.. Oh yeah. HAPPY NEW YEARS!