To The Love of My Life

Happy Valentine's Day to my amazing husband.  And because our anniversary was almost 2 weeks ago and I still haven't given you a card, Happy Anniversary, too!  

I know it's cliche' but we've been through a lot together.  And I feel like this picture about sums it up.  

Seriously, though, I am completely surprised by how things have evolved so far, but at the same time I can't imagine any way life could be any better.  I distinctly remember telling my mom and dad soon after the wedding that we probably wouldn't have children until we had been married about 5 years.  Ha!  So here we are 10 years, 2 apartments, 3 houses, 3 dogs, 5 kids and 3 cities later...  And I don't think it's possible to love you any more than I already do.  But then again, I think I've been proven wrong once before and this time I'm actually excited to see it happen :)

And in closing:

I love you, Kyle.  Thanks for everything.

It's A Good Thing Somebody's Paying Attention

Today was a preschool day for D so we were out the door and on our way to school pretty early this morning.  D climbed into the van and started doing her seatbelt, I buckled V into her seat, closed the door, walked around the van, got into my seat, did my seatbelt, put the van in reverse and as I was backing out of the garage I heard a small voice yell at me "Hey!  Buck-a!  Buck-a!"  (That's 2 year old for buckle, in case you weren't sure)  Turns out I neglected to strap E into her seat.

Like I said, it's a good thing somebody was paying attention.  

Everyone but the Dog

A sweet family picture so you, too, can be amazed by how innocent they look and how crazy they are! Don't let those adorable smiles fool you! These are the very same children who are responsible for my fast-emerging gray hairs.

Job Title, Part 3: Janitor

So, bodily fluids are, unfortunately, a pretty big part of what I do all day.  I used to joke that I spent all day walking around our house turning off lights and flushing toilets.  I now see that I should never have joked about that.  I am paying for it now.  I am paying for it by cleaning up things from places they shouldn't be at all hours of the day and night.  But, like the blog's name says, you either laugh or go crazy and luckily this time I am able to laugh about it.  Here's what happened one morning last week:

I woke to the sound of yelling and general merriment coming from the "Big Girls' Room" at about 10 minutes to seven, but since they are supposed to stay quietly in their beds until seven a.m., I went to investigate.  (Really, I went to chew them out, because if they wake the twinkies up before they're ready to be awake it makes for a bad day for all of us.)  I walked in to see D lying naked on her completely stripped bed, yelling "I smell like pee!" repeatedly and A changing her underwear in the middle of the room.  Only L is a. quiet or b.  in bed.  I talked to D and found that she had had an accident in her bed, but was fine except for some slight paranoia about a pee smell and moved on to questioning A.

It went something like this:
me: "Anna, what happened to your underwear?"
A: "Nothing."
me: "Then why are you changing them?"
A: "Because they smell like potty."
me:  "Well if they smell like potty, then they must have potty in them, and that's not nothing.  That's something."
A: "No.  Nothing happened."
me:  "Get back in your bed."

The morning progressed. The twinkies miraculously slept through most of our noise until at about 7:55 I heard them.  Since we were right in the middle of getting snowpants etc on and shoving A and L out the door and towards the bus I decided to wait a couple of minutes to go get them.

I opened the door to their room and the first thing I thought was how terrible it smelled, but I figured it was just a smelly diaper or two and I'd get them cleaned up when we went downstairs (we keep all their diapers in the living room because we are hardly ever in their bedroom.)  I walked across the room, opened the curtains, pulled up the blinds and as soon as I turned around I saw it.  V was standing naked in her crib looking at me while her footie pajamas and dirty diaper were on the floor next to her crib.  The top half of her body was clean, but her bottom half, her sheets and the beautiful hand crocheted blanket in the crib with her were another story.  E was fine, but apparently a bit disgusted by how filthy her sister was.

Doing damage control is what my life is about right now and I started in quickly.  I got E out of her crib so she'd stop crying and could play with D.  Then I went into the bathroom right next door and started filling the tub; it was clear Vivi would need more than just a wipe down with a washcloth to get her clean.  I walked into their bedroom, picked up V as carefully as possible so as not to get anything on myself and carried her to the bathroom.  This took 30 seconds maximum.  I walked into the bathroom and what did I see?  A fully clothed E sitting in the bathtub.  And me with only two arms!  What an inconvenient problem when you have more than one child.  I set V down, told her not to move and fished E out of the tub and stripped off her clothes amidst great torturous screams.  I turned around and started working on some of V's filth with a disposable baby wipe, in the hopes of keeping some of the chunks out of the bathtub, but quickly discovered that it was too cemented to her skin to come off with anything that flimsy.  (This is where it gets really gross, you may want to stop reading if you haven't already!)  Keep in mind that it is now about 8:15 a.m. and I (what a way to start my day) wiped dried poop off my daughter's skin with warm water and my bare hand!   Eeeeeeew.

That's not actually the end of my incredibly disgusting day, but that's a good place for a break.  Sorry if you are completely grossed out now.

I Am A Broken Woman

So, back in early November, my laptop died.  Right in the middle of using it the screen went black and it has not been seen nor heard from since.  That alone would be cause for sadness here, but as long as we still have the desktop we'll survive.  About three days after that as I was (literally) running around getting ready to take Darby to preschool I moved a partial can of Kilz primer from our back hallway to the basement stairs.  It was an attempt to keep it from getting spilled.  But you guessed it; it spilled.  A quarter gallon of bright white, heavy-duty primer on our shag carpeting 5 minutes before we should be walking out the door.  Then, a few days later, let's say one week later to be sure not to make this more dramatic then it already is, we had a rainstorm.  Which in November in Minnesota means there was ice.  My van was parked outside (there wasn't room in the garage, a problem we have since remedied) and when I tried to open the driver's side sliding door (coincidentally, on the way to preschool again), the handle came off in my hand.  Damn!  In the house I went to get a blow dryer because I still needed to use that door, frozen or not.  So, I ran upstairs, got the blow dryer and on my way back out to the garage my leather shoe ripped/tore.  I stayed amazingly calm, changed my shoes and we were on our way.  Somewhere in there was a hole in the tire of the van and the monitor of the desktop died.  Yesterday the washing machine was draining out the bottom as fast as it was filling and today our central vacuum wouldn't turn off.  I unplugged it from the wall, but could still hear the canister running in the garage, so I went out and pushed the main power button which did exactly nothing and finally had to unplug the canister from it's power supply.  

Whew!  Do you think it's possible that the universe is actually conspiring against me, or does it just feel like it?

So, lately I have been feeling like the "laugh" part is not coming as easily to me as the "go crazy". Actually it has been for quite a while now and I really don't feel like delving into it too deeply right now, but suffice it to say that things have been feeling pretty dark. So that's my explanation of why I haven't been writing anything. I was already worn out from pretending to be ok when I had to speak to people in person and I didn't have the energy to pretend here, too.

This post isn't funny, or even about the kids per se, but it is for the kids. Today I found an old journal that I used to keep full of quotes and poems and other things that I found inspiring. I had been thinking about this poem for a few days now and finally was able to put my hands on it. I'm happy to say, it resonated with me in just the way I remembered it doing 9 years ago. At that time I was newly married and trying to figure out what to do with my life. Now I have 5 kids and I am still trying to figure out what to do with my life. The conclusion I come to whenever I read this poem has not changed, though; it's not the details of your life that matter, it's the way you live your life amidst the details.

The Invitation

by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn't interest me

what you do for a living.

I want to know

what you ache for

and if you dare to dream

of meeting you heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me

how old you are.

I want to know

if you will risk looking like a fool

for love

for your dream

for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me

what planets are

squaring your moon...

I want to know

if you have touched

the center of your own sorrow

if you have been opened

by life's betrayals

or have become shriveled and closed

from fear of further pain.

I want to know

if you can sit with pain

mine or your own

without moving to hide it

or fade it

or fix it.

I want to know

if you can be with joy

mine or your own

if you can dance with wildness

and let the ecstasy fill you

to the tips of your fingers and toes

without cautioning us

to be careful

to be realistic

to remember the limitations

of being human

It doesn't interest me

if the story you're telling me

is true.

I want to know if you can

disappoint another

to be true to yourself.

If you can bear

the accusation of betrayal

and not betray your own soul.

If you can be faithless

and therefore trustworthy.

I want to knowif you can see Beauty

even when it is not pretty

every day.

And if you can source your own life

from its presence.

I want to know

if you can live with failure

yours and mine

and still stand at the edge of the lake

and shout to the silver of the full moon,

"Yes."

It doesn't interest me

to know where you live

or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up

after the night of grief and despair

weary and bruised to the bone

and do what needs to be done

to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me

who you know

or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand

in the center of the fire

with me

and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me

where or what or with whom

you have studied.

I want to know

what sustains you

from the inside

when all else falls away.

I want to know

if you can be alone

with yourself

and if you truly like

the company you keep

in the empty moments.

So even though it is not funny, I am including this because I want the girls to see it and someday I hope they read this blog. It is, after all, for them that I am writing it all down.

The Story of Lucia's Lost Tooth

Ok, so this story is actually from a couple of months ago, but I am just finally getting around to writing it down. Better late than never!

A little background; It was an unusual day to start with because it was "Pet Day" at preschool which meant that Samantha got to go to school and I was there to pick Luc up. Except for a handful of times I have been exclusively the drop- off mom this year while our neighbor has handled all of the pick-up duties. So you have to picture Darby, Lucia and Reilly (our neighbor) in the far back of the van, Vivi and Lizzie in the middle row and Samantha, our 100 lb. St Bernard in the middle aisle between the twinkies.

We get everyone buckled in and I am about to start the van when Lucia holds out her hand and says "Look mom! I lost a tooth!" "What?" I reply, thinking I must have misheard her. But no, she says it again and there in the palm of her adorable, 5 year old hand is her tooth. So I ask her about how she lost her tooth and she tells me, in great detail. Apparently she and her friend, Joey, were playing Pachycepholasaurus when she accidentally hit the side of her head on the climber-thingy. She told me that the teacher came over and checked her out and there was a lot of blood and she (the teacher) reached in and pulled out a molar from the back of her mouth. I sat incredulously listening to her until she stopped and then I asked her if she was ok. "Yep!" was her only reply. Ok, then. Still in shock that she

1. Could have hit her head hard enough to knock out a molar
2. Wasn't bruised and battered looking
3. The teacher hadn't mentioned anything when I picked her up

we drove home. I spent the rest of the day saying things like "Really? Tell me again how it happened. I just don't get it, Luc." and "Can I look in your mouth? I want to try and see where it came from." and she let me look, but it was so dark I couldn't see much of anything.

Later Kyle came home and she told him all about her tooth, too. We talked about it a little, but dinner time was crazy, as usual and nothing more was said until bedtime. We went through our bedtime routine and as I was brushing her hair I said to Lucia again, "Luc, it just doesn't make sense. How do you hit yourself hard enough to lose a tooth, but not have a bruise or a sore mouth?" and Kyle looked at her tooth again and said, very calmly, "That's not a tooth, is it? It's a rock." and without even one second of hesitation she replied "No. I just wanted to see if I could fool the tooth fairy."

And then she proceeded to leave it under her pillow for the next three nights so that the tooth fairy could come pay her for her "tooth". She persisted until the tooth fairy finally stopped by one night and left a note under her pillow that said "That is not a tooth, it is a rock! :( "