Maybe tetanus would be better

Just a snapshot of a moment in time for you today.

This morning I cut my finger on my washing machine.  I've had my machine a little over 10 years and the paint on the lid has peeled off the inside rim and the metal has rusted.

My two big kids were in school today, but while they were there, I proceeded to do more laundry, and I forgot about my finger until about 40 minutes before I was to go pick them up.

So I called my nurse:

Me:  I cut my finger on some rusty metal - do I need a tetanus shot?
Nurse: yes, and the doctor will need to examine your finger too.
Me:  ummmm, okay, can he see me like right now?
Nurse:  How about 2:10?

Me (mentally) - okay, but it'll be me and my whole family.  Are you sure I really need the shot?
Me (actually):  okay.

I go pick up my kids.  They are hungry, so I get some juice and apples at the McDonald's down the street from the doctor's office.  I tell them that they are taking me to the doctor because I cut my finger.

Princess:  So we are not going right home?
Me:  No, we are going to the doctor.

We get to the office, exit the car, and enter the office.  Here's what goes down:

I fill out the "I'm here" form, then some other papers, and my kids look at a book.  Then they want me to read it, and that's when I begin to smell the all too familiar odor, coming from my supposedly potty trained children, not from the diapered baby, but from one of them with underpants on.  Great!  I suspect the odor is coming from Princess.

Me (whispering):  Do you need to go poo-poo?  (I am hoping it is not actually poop at this point.)
Princess:  No
Me (whispering):  Do you have poop in your pants?
Princess:  No, but giving me that "I'm guilty" look.
Me (thinking): Let's read the book.

I read the book. 

Me (whispering):  If I look in your pants, what will I find?
Princess:  poop
Me (thinking fast):  Let's go to the car everyone.

To the receptionist:  I'm going to the car, so in case you were going to call me back, you'll know where I've gone.

Luckily for me, I don't trust my Princess not to have accidents and have placed extra clothes in her backpack.  I clean her up and change her and back in we go straight to the bathroom.  At the same time, the nurse is calling me back.  She lets me take the kids into the bathroom first.

Speed Racer:  good - I've gotta go potttttyyyyyyyyyyyy!
I lift him up, but he is already peeing and it is not going into the potty.  Now, although he's tried to tinkle in the potty, he's successfully tinkled on his underpants and pants.  To the exam room we go with wet pants.

Nurse:  Okay, even though you cut your finger on your own washing machine, I'm going to have him look at your finger because sometimes you have to take antibiotics.

She goes out and back in with my shot and gives me the shot.

The doctor comes in:

Doctor:  Did you want me to look at your finger?
Me:  No, but she (the nurse) did.
Me:  But she didn't look at it.
Doctor:  Well, it's good to look at it.
Me:  Okay, here it is.
Doctor:  Here's a band-aid for you.  You can go.

Oh, joyous me, I paid $35 and got a shot for this. 

I call Daniel on the way home.
Me:  You wouldn't even believe our trip to the doctor's office.
Daniel:  Oh yeah, it would've been better to get tetanus!
Me:  Laughing monstrously, why yes, maybe it would have.

BTW, I came home and did the same thing all over again with Speed Racer with an almost poopy pants situation.  I keep a poop chart because the children get constipated easily, and yet, this still happens sometimes.  Despite my best efforts to prevent it, it's especially worse after school starts and I don't know if, when, and where they are going and how they are drinking.

The End of Summer

I'm having a sad day today.  It's the last day of summer.  On Tuesday, Princess starts back to preschool and Speed Racer starts preschool for the first time.  Next year, Princess will be starting Kindergarten, and I am already mourning this.  I hate it so bad.  It's a year away and I am already a crying fool, I can only imagine the heartache I will feel on the first day of Kindergarten.  It is days like today I feel so lonely and lost as a mother.  Into your hands, Lord.

Glamour Mom

When I was delivering Doodlebug, my obstetrician's cell phone rang a couple of times. His ringtone/song or whatever it is called these days is the James Bond 007 theme song. I had forgotten about this, but Daniel brought it up again yesterday. I thought of it again this morning. I could just see Dr. A on a secret 007 mission or him thinking that he was on one. I mean, he went from delivering one baby straight into my room to deliver my baby, and as he entered my room, this funky music started playing. It was just funny to see him enter the room with covert music beginning to play. I began to think that he sorta has a glamorous job. He gets to be on a mission and deliver babies and "save the day."

When I was little, I liked mysteries and spies and thought maybe I could be a detective or lawyer and solve cases like Matlock, Perry Mason, Nancy Drew, or the Sweet Valley High Twins (they were my favorite!). There is a small part of me that likes to be sneaky. I probably had a million and one dreams of different things I could be, but this was a pretty intriguing idea back in the olden day.

In general, I am not someone who likes to be in the spotlight. As I've gotten older, the spotlight has bothered me less. After all I blog and I seek readership of my blog, which tends to put you in the spotlight. But, if you can imagine the quietest, shyest person you've ever known, I was that girl in the past and still have tendencies toward her. :) I step out of my comfort and share for the glory of God, hopefully.

Anyhow, even though I never liked the spotlight, I did make good grades, and one does not make good grades and try to be the best without hoping to be recognized as the best. So I did like recognition and being in the spotlight for a moment (as long as the light shone on me and I didn't have to talk).

I grew up and forgot most of my childhood desires of things to be when I grew up like detectives on secret missions, and instead, I became an engineer, which was not anything I had ever dreamed and was not a glamorous "dream job" either. In college, I felt called to missions. There is a lot of glamour and appeal and on occasion recognition in being a missionary. Maybe this is partly why it appealed to me. But though I waited, God did not send me down that road of glamour (I'm still waiting though). In many jobs, there can a small amount of glamour and a small amount of recognition. So whatever glamour I had as a civil engineer who occasionally oversaw drill rigs, played in the dirt, wrote reports, and made recommendations, I gave up when I decided to become a stay at home mommy.

There is very little glamour in motherhood. I have yet to hear about the red carpet rolled out for the mommy awards in Mommywood. My kids are very rarely going to thank me for disciplining them and making them do and learn things they really do not want to learn and do. As the parent, there is rarely anyone else standing on the sidelines completely cheering me on driven by the same desires and opinions. I will rarely, if ever, be wearing fancy gowns and traveling to exotic places. In fact, my wardrobe may include baby spit up, dirt, food, pee-pee, and poop from whatever secret mission my little ones have been on during their day.

But, mommyhood is a dangerous job. It requires creativity and sneakiness and covert operations. It requires investigations and solving mysteries - the mystery of who your child is, what drives them, and how can you get them to be who God wants them to be. God has given you the clues, you get to solve the mysteries. You get to be your own 007 agent. You might be blessed like me and have a cute little husband to help you along the way. I hope you are. If not, as a single mom, your assignment is even more treacherous. Every day I get to save the day - if only with a kiss, a special treat, a hug, or a kind word. I'm a secret agent too, and I was thinking of making the James Bond 007 theme song MY theme song too. I may not get recognized, but this girl has got secret glamour too. And as a mommy, so do you!

"You will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving." Colossians 3:24

A Trip to Alfredo's

I stink at meal planning and am even worse at it when I'm pregnant. I'm frankly not good at much of anything but being pregnant when I'm pregnant and in the final stages. Hubby has been improvising on meals a lot of nights. Last night we went to Alfredo's Pizza Cafe in Pelham. It's inexpensive and if you know what to order, you can get some pretty good food too. But that's really beside the point.

Hubby gets Baked Ziti. I get a spinach and meatball calzone. Princess gets a slice of cheese pizza, and Speed Racer gets a slice of pepperoni pizza. Unless we have a coupon, these are the things we would always get. Very often the kids are forced to try things out of their comfort zone due to our frugality. Last night we had no coupon, so no forcing of new things was endured.

Hubby very often likes to use his straw paper as a projected missile towards my cleavage. He very rarely rings said target, so it is always a fun game for him. Last night, he launched the missile, and Princess saw the paper being hurled toward her mommy. She said very adamantly:

"DON'T THROW THINGS AT MOMMY! SHE'S YOUR GOOD WIFE, AND YOU LOVE HER!!"

Then she proceeded to ball up her own straw paper and hurl it at hubby and said,

"NOW. IT IS FINISHED!"

We got a good laugh at her defensiveness of mommy.

I didn't realize I was about to encounter another bloggable moment, BUT I did.

The food arrives, and hubby grabs a napkin and begins to blot Speed Racer's pizza. Unfortunately or fortunately, I'm not sure, this is one of hubby's quirks. He always blots the pizza before eating it, especially if said pizza is of the pepperoni variety. So he was thinking that it was an act of kindness to be blotting of his son's pepperoni pizza. Then Speed Racer grabs his own napkin and begins to blot his pizza on his own. Daddy lies and tells him it was only to help cool down the pizza. All of the food is piping HOT, so then Princess decides to grab her own napkin and begins blotting her pizza to help cool it down.

I am literally just staring in amazement at what is going on. Hubby is slightly embarrassed, and I have to explain that no blotting does not really cool down the pizza. Hubby then explains that he just wanted to get the grease off of the pepperoni - that Princess really has no need for blotting. It was a very strange moment. I'm not sure if I would like my kids to follow in the blotting tradition, but they were very blindly doing what daddy does, which had some sentimentality attached to it.

{My brother in law and I are known for ribbing Hubby for his practice of blotting, even though I do understand that sometimes it is necessary with pepperonis.}

My Own Toddler Fit

Yesterday, I had my own toddler fit. I wanted to go out for breakfast. The kids however had other plans, which included eating cereal for breakfast. My favorite. (in case you didn't know that was written with loads of sarcasm). Getting me to eat cereal is like getting me to eat dirt or something similar. Lately, I have been eating it. But I didn't get "my way," nor did I feel like making the kids do it my way. Instead, I just felt like making everyone miserable. I mean, I was miserable, so surely my 4 year old and 2 year old should be miserable too. *sigh* Yes, I would not have won the mother of the year award, but I did not care.

So my toddler fit did not include throwing myself on the floor and flailing my arms and legs around. Instead, it included angrily putting dishes away and whining, "wah, wah, wah, poor, poor mommy, she didn't get to eat breakfast" only in different words that I don't really remember. So yeah, I was on a breakfast strike, meaning I refused to eat anything we had in the house. (And I wonder where my children get their stubbornness from). Everybody was unhappy, and words where even said like, "I thought this was going to be a good day. This is the worst morning ever!" And they were not only said by me. Yikes!

At some point, I decided to attempt to turn this day around and make things right by my children. I looked in my trusty coupon book and found a coupon for Pump It Up, which we had never done, so I decided to take the kids there, and off we went.

On the way, I thought I'll get a drink at Dunkin Donuts and maybe a bagel or muffin or something small, because I'm 33 weeks pregnant, it's 10 am, and I haven't drunk or eaten anything yet. I went through the drive-thru, and they were out of tea! I said, "Great! This is a great day! No tea!" as we drove away. (which by the way, this was the second time I attempted to order something from Dunkin Donuts that they happened to be out of - not impressed) Princess said, "You can get over it, mommy!" Yes, sweetie I can. Out of the mouths of babes, right? The rest of the day was as good as gold.

Blog 340

I think I may have lead you astray when I said I was at 300 posts, whenever that was, because I did happen to have a few random drafts in my folder, but this time I looked at the actual post count on my dashboard, and if I post this one you are reading, well then I've made it to 340.

I don't have a clean home. I think I have established that more than a few times. But I wish I did. I am reading, "The House that Cleans Itself" by Mindy Starns Clark, and it feels like I've been decluttering all my life now, since I was doing it before I started reading the book. When I first started the book, I tried to clean everything all at once despite the book's advice, but that just left me in failure and in tears.

Anyhow, if I had unlimited monies or when my kids are in school and I am still staying at home (not sure this will happen), I would love to give all pregnant moms a gift, and this is what it would be. My cleaning services or the hiring of a maid. Why? Because when you are in the first trimester, you are so tired, nauseated, or throwing up, you are unable to get a house very clean. Add in x number of family members that you pick up after and the mess only gets worse. By the time you are in your second trimester, you feel fine, but the whole time you are cleaning up the mess left in the wake of the first trimester and you are trying to make room for the baby. Then the third trimester comes along, and your body feels tired and big and it is really hard to get down on the floor and clean the tub or try with all your darndest to reach all of the hidden toys under the kid's beds. So even though you have a "nesting" period, your home is still not a clean as you would like it to be.

And then if you are me, you have a baby, and babies come with a lot of clutter in and of themselves. It takes you about 2 years to finally get over the clutter of the new baby, and if you are me, by this point, you are pregnant with another child, and the battle is beginning all over again, not to mention that this time around you have little hands to help undo the work you've so diligently slaved over. This could be one of many reasons to stop having babies. hmm, we'll see.

The Heathens Strike Again

If you remember this post, you will know that my children were using the dresser as a jungle gym. Speed Racer had actually broken the drawer he had climbed in, and so that left an empty hole in the dresser, which also left easy access to the clothes and easy access to climb on in. This is how I found him one morning.


For a whole week I battled the children and the dresser. Please know that it was not without discipline, but discipline that seemed to go no where fast. So finally Daniel got the drawer fixed, and we installed childproof safety locks on the drawers, which helped to solve the problem. I say helped because they can still, if they want, pull the drawer slightly open, and stick their grubby little hands in and pull clothes out onto the floor to make a mess. Thankfully, it seems to have lost its appeal.

A few days later, this is what I found them doing instead. They had moved into the bathroom and had taken every washcloth they could find, placed each one in the sink, soaked each one, and then sloshed them into the bathtub. Thankfully, that only lasted a day, and I actually got up before them on that day. It still did not help. Now, I am left to wonder, "What will they dream up next?" Obviously they are somewhat smarter than me....

Proof that I Have Heathens

Generally, this is how my day goes. My hubby gets up first, showers, and goes to work, and I am still in bed when he leaves. He kisses me goodbye, and I get up when I hear my kids begin making noise on the baby monitor. Today I did not hear them on the monitor. BAD! BAD! There was destruction going on that I did NOT know about. So I got up and took a shower. When I got out of the shower, I heard the kids singing, "Go tell it on the mountain." This made me smile, and as I was getting dressed, I heard them playing "Jonah and the whale." Princess was telling Speed Racer that the boat was going to crash. Again, I smiled, and I didn't think much of it. Then I went to get the kiddos ready for the day. This is what I saw:

only before I took the picture my son was nested inside of the top drawer that is open, pretending to be Jonah in a boat. And yes, every stitch of clothing that was in that dresser was now on the floor.

Only a few weeks ago, during the holiday break, we had put Speed Racer in his bed for naptime. And then, a little while later, we heard a great big kaboom. We can only guess that the following happened: 1. He climbed onto the dresser. 2. He fell behind it. 3. He pushed said dresser over. Yes, you read it right; he pushed the dresser over. Daniel spent the rest of the evening securing the dresser to the wall so that there would be no next time and that he would not kill himself with the dresser.

What used to be just a storage area for clothes has now become some sort of jungle gym since we put twin beds in the bedroom. I placed Speed Racer as the ultimate culprit, but when I began investigating, Princess said that it was her idea to take all the clothes out.

The culprits:

So my mission for the day: to get the kids out of the house we've been cooped up in to run wild and free somewhere. My mission for the rest my life: to get up before the kids.

Mommy Skills

I think there is a unwritten rule that if you are a stay at home mommy, you are supposed to have superior mommy skills of some sort. Up until recently, I did not have any such skills. Some mommies are super chefs, some are thrifty shoppers, some are spiffy cleaners, some are exquisite seamstresses, some are supreme teachers, some are top-notch organizers, and some are profound photographers. While I can cook, shop and save, clean, teach, organize, and take a photo, I am hardly an expert of any of those things. (Notice I did NOT say that I could sew.) The only mommy skill I think I could possibly claim is that of an excellent reader of books. Otherwise, although I have all these other responsibilities too – my skills are just so-so or average. For example, I clean and do laundry, but my house will never win a prize for those lackluster skills. Recently, I decided that I would try to become an expert in the areas of knitting, crocheting, and baking.

For Christmas, I knitted and crocheted many things to give as gifts. I’ve been knitting since I was in 3rd grade, but I just learned to crochet this past November. It is much easier than knitting and a whole lot faster too. I started off with a scarf and a hat for myself, then an alligator for Speed Racer, then a teddy bear (knitted) for my nephew, a monkey for another nephew, and three additional scarves (one of which was knitted) for my mom, sister, and mother-in-law. I was extremely proud of the blue, crème, and brown one because I came up with the pattern for it all on my own. I also made a seal for Princess, but it is still under construction, meaning since Christmas I have taken a break from my new hobby. Here are some pics of my completed projects.

Speed Racer’s alligator

My first attempt to crochet – my hat and scarf

Knitted teddy bear

Crocheted monkey

Crocheted scarf – same design as mine

My favorite scarf – my own crocheted design

I think she loves it!

Knitted scarf – takes a lot longer to make,

but easier to do with this kind of yarn

Also, I have always loved to bake, so I baked many cookies for Christmas goodies. I also made caramel-chocolate covered apples as gifts. Today, I decided that in order to become a baking extraordinaire, I needed to learn to bake bread and rolls, so I made cinnamon rolls from scratch using yeast and all of that fun stuff. I think they turned out really well, especially for my first try. Here are some pics of the Christmas goodies and cinnamon rolls that I made.

Chocolate covered cherry cookies

Sugar cookies

Sugar cookies and peanut butter brownie cookies

Peanut butter brownie cookies

My apples – I think these may have been the favorite treat

Cinnamon rolls – before baking

Cinnamon rolls – after baking with icing

Things to Remember

Being a Mom is Hard. These are a few of things I hope I can remember when I get to be an older mom or a grandmother:

1. Potty training is extremely difficult - just when you thought it was over, someone has an accident or a potty problem. It takes a whole lot of time and patience. It may be extremely easy for some, but not for this momma. I hope I can remember something about how to help Princess train her kids when she is a mom.

2. Your kids are not young forever. I am only assuming that at some point they learn to obey and actually want to obey when they are asked. I need to cherish our time together despite how difficult it can sometimes be. It is important to remember humor in your day or despair may occur.

3. Despite the absolute joy of spoiling the grandkids, I want to remember how much extra work it was for me when they were spoiled, so that I aid not hinder my children when they are parents. I am sure I will forget this one as all grandparents seem to do, but with any hope I will not. I do not believe this is some rite of passage for both parties as seem think we all deserve this "punishment." And whatever rules mom and dad instate, I hope to abide by.

4. Parenting never ends despite what one would like to believe, even when you grow up and the relationship changes. I hope I will be there for young moms to mentor them and teach them from things and experiences I've learned as a mom as in Titus 2. I hope to always listen and be there for them, no matter how old or what kind of problems they have. I hope that at that point in time, I actually have some wisdom to offer.

5. I also hope to be like my granny and instill a genuine love of Christ in my grandkids. I will sing "Jesus Loves Me" all my days, and I hope they will see me serving others and passionately living for Christ. I will take them to church with me and support them at their church (hopefully).