Redneck Too-tor-yul

Now, I b'lieve I promised y'all some foe-toe-bloggery. Guess now's a good-a time uz inny to give y'all a too-tor-yul on th'care an' maintenance of a ring stacker whatsit.

First off... y'all gotta take iss business perty serious-like, no jackin' round. You screw the pooch on iss baby, ain't NO stackin' goan be happenin', and that jiss ain't FUN.

Getcher self a grip on th' whatsit. Now some folks think y'all kin be jiss grabbin' atcher toys all willy-nilly in a one hander grip. M'self I don't recommend it. Naw. Y'all gonna wanna give this step some real consideration.

Jiss one thangs fer sure... Not. Like. Iss.
Take a good look y'all, this is what's known in th' business as "bass-ack-ward." Ain't nuthin' goan stack on a tumped over bit o' crazy like iss bad-boy here, and on top uh that? The yaller stick part come half unscrewed from the base of the whatsit, ever time ya grip it like iss.

Don't do it.

Now, if ya'll have loosened up yer yaller stick part from the base, jiss grab that sucker like iss and give 'er a righty-tighty. Don't be stingy with the torque now. I'll wait while ya git 'er done.

Once ya git that yaller stick all snug as a bug, ya shift yer grip and shaZAM! Y'all are good to go!

An at's whatcha call ring stack ready! This yere's my fav-rit grip, the two handed straight-up-n-down! And yer ready to stack.

An' that's what ya call a redneck too-tor-yul.
Yee-haw!

LaLa Goes To Kindy-garten

So wow, yeah... LaLa is at her first day (half day?) of Kindergarten right now. I dropped her off at school and then took Henry and Pearl in the double stroller for a walk. Finally.

It is so liberating to just have the two. I can just walk. And here I am, posting on the old bloggy; Pearl is downstairs getting reacquainted with Diego, and Henry is visiting the Sandman. And I am glad for these small mercies, but today they just underscore how low my standards have sunk. How little I expect from myself or for myself outside of the realm of motherhood and wifery.

A few of my favorite bloggers have posted recently and I find that I cannot even comment on their posts because everything I have to say is self-pity slop. And envy; envy when I know better than to compare my reality with the teeny slice of reality that I see of another's life.

I also recently read this really stupid feminist rant about an equally stupid anti-feminist article and the parts of it that stuck out to me (other than the fact that both sets of folks were giving us all a good view of their posteriors) was a bit about how babies give their mommies a sort of narcotic high. Oxytocin I believe was what the more scientific-minded called it. While I am as google-headed as the next mommy over my fat friar of a Henry-boy... I think I am getting gypped in the contact high department.

Have you seen Phoebe in Wonderland? It's a beautiful movie, thoughtful and well done, and well acted... there is a part though, that resonated in me so much that it hurt. The mom and the father are talking while raking leaves, and the mom character is explaining that she is angry that she isn't writing, and how she is afraid that when she is 70 that she will be going on endlessly about her children because she won't have anything else, because she won't have done anything important. And then she is mad because sometimes she isn't scared of that at all, because her children make her live.

Only my children don't make me live. I don't think so anyway.

I find myself with this carrot of "in six years" dangling in front of my mental nose... like some holy grail of motherhood. This "when they are all in school" fantasy that I will be able to do creative things again. That I will be able to write then. I tell myself that I cannot write now because I am so tired and distracted... that perhaps if I had the energy of a younger mother I could do it.

Sorry LaLa... don't mean to steal your thunder. I am so very proud of you, and you are so ready for this time in your life.

Just that some days I wish that I was ready for this time in my life.

Photobloggery?

Naw... this jist filler til the REAL photobloggin' starts. Purely infer-mational.

First off... TLC 9:00 PM on Sunday August 30th, for the "Your Kid Ate What?" thingy. Again, while I must be fair in stating that the story of what happened with the Pearl-girl really was pretty convoluted... what you will see has couple of facts glaringly wrong, so wrong in fact, that they (the production company) cannot even change them KNOWING that they are wrong. As in the footage is shot and cobbled together and they can't really tweak anything they have to fit the truth. Apparently they make heavy use of actors doing dramatizations of what happened. I can only surmise that the people who wrote the script, never got within five feet of my blog, any of the endless footage that I sent, OR the hours of taped interview of both Dadguy and myself re-hashing the details ad nauseum.

Whatever.

We never had an ambulance come to our house.

And not that it matters (though obviously it matters to me)... you will never hear the phrase "Thank God" out of my mouth. As in, "everything turned out OK, thank God!" I am not saying there is anything wrong with saying it, only I am super, super careful about how I use the name of Deity. Is a personal choice that I have made, fueled by the many years that I was very care-LESS about what I said or how, and I just want to make that clear. Kinda like in the Book of Mormon how there was that batch of Lamanites who, when they were converted to Christianity and realized that murder was so wrong they buried their weapons of war and vowed never to take them up again... and then they didn't. Not even to defend their own lives, to the point of kneeling before those who would slay them and offering their lives, and then being slaughtered until not even their enemies could stomach it any longer. Like they went super extreme the other way. So yeah, it's kind of like that only not as dedicated, or meaningful or cool or anything.

Anyway, it's just this thing I have... and they have the gal who plays me say it at one point, and I would never say that.

I know, I know... get over it already woman!

Look at my beautiful Bird on her first day of second grade!

She is LOVING the Potter.
(I edited out her RL name that she had originally put into this drawing)

Grandpa sent the girls a book on How To Draw Baby Animals... this is LaLa's baby bunny. These kids! They KILL me!

This is pure Pearl... and if I know her, this bug is named either "Twilight" or "Sara-tee."

*Edited to add: I just asked Pearl what the human bugs name was, she floored me by replying "Eee-ook." There is a new name in town.

The Bag

Walking home from the school playground this evening, Birdie and LaLa have ridden their two-wheelers on ahead and are waiting for us on the front lawn. I am pushing Henry and Pearl in the double stroller as Pearl and I chat companionably about the things we see. Pearl does a sharp intake of breath and turns around in the stroller to look me in the eye and says, "Mama! Today is the day that the earth worms DIE!"

"They die?"
"Yes, they die and then they go up to worm heaven!"
"Worm heaven, huh? Is that a beautiful place for worms to go?"
"Yes. But the bad-guy worms... they go in the bag."

Seriously though, check this out




and then look over here.

Stuff

With four kids, one of them a baby, ya own a lot of stuff.

Correction: We own a lot of stuff.

There are clothes, and toys, sparkly stickers, and dishes, and food of all the various sorts that all the various and bizarre eaters eat in this house. And then since we are LDS, there is also the food storage and 72 hour emergency kits. There are DVD's, bandaids, computers, tools, magazines and books. Artwork, pencils, rubber bands, papers, mail, bills, ribbons, documents, bedding, toiletries, cleaners, laundry, boxes, furniture...

THINGS.

And the incomprehensible little people of this house moving these things, all of these things all of the time, around in inexplicable patterns and for no knowable reasons. Things that it would never occur to my adult brain to do or to move or to use to play a rousing game of Power Puff Petshop Potter Menace.

It is this aspect, the stuff-management part of my job description; this aspect of being a mother of four children that is sitting on my brain and making my chutzpah scream "uncle!" Today I took LaLa and Pearl to the local department store sale to choose a new backpack each. Later this evening after enjoying being in the audience of our own "pajama/backpack fashion show," complete with catwalk soundtrack and much swishing and posing by three little girls, I gathered together the three backpacks in one place and looked around my front room for a good place to put them. These packs will, after all, be in play nearly every day this up coming school year. But they are pretty darn big, the backpacks... and I already have valuable space taken up by the coat rack and the shoe basket that will also be getting lots of action come cold weather and (gulp) the snow. Plus the paperwork; the blizzards of papers and art projects and flashcards and memos that I can count on from a second grader, a kindergartner and a pre-schooler, these storms of paperstuffs that are soon to grace this home.

Then it dawned on me... in three short years (and the years are getting shorter and shorter lemme TELL you!) I will have four backpacks to shuffle. Holy permission slips Batman, I am feeling dizzy.

S'cuze me a minute...

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.