The Reality of Communication

My Hubbs is amazing. Tonight when he came home I was literally a ticking time bomb. I had about 6-dozen things I was ready to rant and rave about. I was planning to unleash only 3 or 4, but they were going to be doozies. By God’s grace I held my tongue letting my complaints roll over in my head like giant tumbleweeds. Of course by that time the children were so insanely crazy we could hardly talk even if we wanted to. They were exhausted and ready for bed, this was at 6:00!
Fearing complete explosion, I calmly told Mark I needed to go for a drive while he bathed the kids. Poor guy, he took it all wrong, and then I took him taking it all wrong, all wrong. Usual PMS miscommunication was alive in the house just as the bacteria that caused the flu in the kids.
Neither Mark nor I like to fight. We do not thrive on drama or hurt, so we both shut our mouth for a bit to reflect on the exchange. He came in Lola’s room a short time after and apologized for ??? He attempted to understand why I was so mad, but also fully appreciates the un-rational of my behavior. I told him how I felt, why I felt that way, and there were parts that were irrational, but if you read my blog you can understand why I was so stressed out by 6:00.




Usually by this time of the day I am not stressed, but instead focused on getting the kids bathed and to bed. My poor babies are fare more tired then I, so I need to stay focused. As I have said before today was not the usual day.
After I said what I had to say, he kissed me and boy did I feel better. He understands me. He listens to my words even when they are veiled in complicated woman issues. He digs past those issues and tries to see what is upsetting me and how he can best soothe my pain. We are every movie with a happy ending, every love story about "the one", we are perfectly matched. I need him and he needs me. How great God is to gift each of us with the perfect person. Now, I know once you are married, that is technically supposed to be the "perfect person" for you. We have a freindship that surrpasses marriage, we are truley bestest friends. I like him... a lot!


When I went to our doctor recently he asked how Mark was doing. He said, “That man thinks of you as his Sheba, his queen. I have never had a patient with a husband so concerned and in love with his wife.”
Anybody that knows us, knows that to be true.

Please and Thank you

How is it possible that 29 days of the month a woman can be as sane as a brick wall, and one day, a stark raving lunatic?
I swear today, I feel as if I was somehow misdiagnosed and instead of having hypo thyroid, I have hyper-hysteria.
Where is my Prozac? Shove the Advil and gimme the good stuff, Vicatin.

Today is my one sure-fire day to send the kids to Rita’s. To tell you the truth it is as much for their safety as it is for my rest.
But no, they are recovering. If you have ever had children you will know that “recovery” far out weighs the stress of kids actually being sick. In “recovery” they are physically better, their energy is up, way up, and the parents are forced to contend with every rule that has been broken for the last 7 days. Every extra hour, or two…whose kidding 5, that you let them watch TV, they are begging for an extra 5 more, pretty much in hopes that entire day can be spent with the television on, even if not watched. Every piece of broccoli that was swept off the plate or meal skipped is now a regular routine; instead of not eating, all they want is popcorn or cheese crackers. Talking back, hitting siblings and mis-behavior in general is accepted in their little minds, The New Rule. Lets just say they have been the center for so long, you spend the next seven days reprogramming them to the correct center. That being you and your FREAKING CRAMPS!

I love you kids.
Please don’t shove each other to see who can lay across-on top-sideways over mommy more then the other.
Please don’t throw your full cups of milk on each other at the table.
Please don’t later spit milk in each other’s faces and think it is really fun game. It is not a really fun game.
Please don’t steal the chocolate syrup out of the refrigerator, lock yourself in my bedroom and drink half then poor the other half all over mommy’s sheets and bed frame.
Please don’t completely fall apart screaming and kicking at Wal-Mart because I will not buy you cotton candy pink pumps. (That was Moses by the way)

I love you kids.
Thank you for loving me so much that you fight over me.
Thank you for fighting this Flu/Pneumonia and recovering at home and not the hospital.
Thank you for laughing when I fly you in the air like an airplane.
Thank you hugging me two minutes after I scream at you for stealing the chocolate syrup.
Thank you causing me to grow on a daily basis because I am at a total loss as to what I am doing most of the time.
Thank you for causing me to go to the Lord and say, Help, I need Vicatin…just kidding!

All in a Days Work

I cleaned the pantry out yesterday. What a job. After I woke up at 6:30, and pondered the condition of human existence I started itching to do something productive.
Prior to having my second child, I was the most organized well-put together person. My refrigerator was always cleaned, my life always recorded in a neat calendar, and my sock drawer looked like a picture. (Ok, that may be a stretch)
My mom instilled a deep need to purge clothes, shoes and junk from every part of our life. Of course that could have something to do with the fact that we moved about the country with the ease of a band of Gypsies. A family cannot have too much on its back if your only mode of transportation is a VW Rabbit, circa 1980.
Since the birth of my dear Mosey, things have changed just a bit.
Laura reminds me, in a nice way of course, that I should be growing veggies in my garden, not at the bottom of the refrigerator. My poor little calendar sits closed at my bedside. The first month I got it I entered the first 5 months with a day or two off. Now I can’t even bear to pick it up. My sock drawer, lets just say there are items of clothing in there that were worn only in the last week or two of pregnancy…ladies, you got me?
Yesterday I said ENOUGH! I will gain back control of my home. Lets start with the pantry.
Now I know why I never do this kind of stuff.
It started out ok at first. I began by pulling out spices that were in complete disarray due to the fact that there is usually four small children in my home and at one point or another have all taken a swipe at the many culinary condiments hanging on the wall.
As the process really started getting more involved, the children inevitably noticed that mommy was doing something unusual, and there were many things that are usually out of reach right in front of them!!!!!!!!
I decided to sit them at the table and let them play with pots and a couple cups of dried beans. They were great, at first. Slowly one bean, then another would bounce to the floor. They paid them no mind until one bounced right back up on the table, SCORE! Pretty soon it became a game to see how far each of them could throw a bean, then 10 beans. I was so entrenched in my project I could not bear to pull myself away and end the beaning. Anyway, I rationalized I started it.
I am not sure what came next, the dried oatmeal all over the kitchen and dining room floor, or the honey squirts all over the carpet? Needless to say, Mark spent about as much time cleaning up from my cleaning up as I did cleaning the pantry.
All in a days work.

Ps. Camera is MIA. To bad!

Africa

I woke up this morning at 6:30. Amazing how early ones body will wake up when one had a good nights sleep. A good nights sleep is a true rarity in our house these days. Of course, it could have had something to do with the fact that there was a tropical storm beating down our windows. Not a true tropical storm of course. Having lived through Tropical Storm Allison, I do know a thing or two about real tropical storms. But, Houston has the most amazing regular run of the mill thunderstorms, or so they seem to Houstonians.
I crept out of a warm bed occupied by my darling daughter and poor hubby. She was curled up to him as close as a cat. He had somehow positioned himself so far on the edge of the bed I could not figure out how the laws of gravity could so obviously be defied. I shall let them sleep in peace. I thought to myself.

The truth was I was wide-awake and could not wait to curl up on the couch alone with a hot cup of Joe. (Another rarity in our house these days, solitude, definitely NOT coffee)
As the coffee brewed I pulled up all the shades up on our windows. I left the lights off and let the brilliant show of lightning cascade through the windows. About every 10-20 seconds I could see the entire span of the living room as if someone has shined a spotlight in our windows.
I was thinking about how grateful I was to be in this huge room with a kitchen filled with food.
I recently finished a tremendous book about Africa; more then once the author referenced storms that seemed to put Allison in the dust. The harder it rained outside the more my heart went out to the actual people living in the horrors of Africa. It was a spiritual moment. The Lord came in and allowed me to open my soul to our starving, beaten misused brothers.
It is such a good thing to be put in your place. To be humiliated by your wealth and circumstance is not bad from time to time. I could not believe that I was complaining only yesterday that my kids could not be sick one more day or I would go crazy.
Today, I thought, how many African mothers would long for their babies to suffer only from the flu. Instead diseases so horrible rack the lives of themselves and their children, I can’t even associate myself in the same world as the maladies that plague those poor babes.
So were does that leave us? Am I to sit in my home in desperation and guilt? No, the only thing I can do is pray. Pray for the darling children dying, pray for the grieving mothers, and pray for the fathers that are and are not.
Christ is bigger then that. He understands their pain, my own self-hatred at being born white and woman.
How to pray? They want do not my life of democracy and easy goods; I do not want their life of work and tumultuous terrain. I pray that they understand something greater then the pain that is inflicted on them and loves them. I pray that one child is spared, and woman is not violated. This is never enough. But, Christ died for all sins, that of the “savage” and that of the “white concurring savage”. It is hard to pray equally for both. As for one I wish to burn in all the fire of hell and the other I wish to rule in heaven. I am not so easy; we humans want to kill even when the law sanctioned the killing.
This was supposed to be a funny blog…..

The Flu

Moses has the flu.
“The flu?” I ask the doctor
Since Mose is prone to playing in the ashes of my fireplace, I ask about that flu.
“No, your little chimney sweep has the flu”
One Mommy Flu Over the CooKoos Nest.


Turns out the flu is what Lola had to start with and hers turned into pneumonia. How utterly hopeless and helpless we are as parents. The constant rhetoric of, do this, don't do that, we dare not enter the danger zone of the play park in the mall, is everybody well at this party or that play-date?

The hand sanitizer, gosh, we use could fill up a bathtub on the amount of that stuff we subject our children to, not to mention our own wrinkled hands.

No control, is the only way to describe having kids. All the organic dairy products and organic locally grown fruits and veggies in the world could not save my little ones from the flu and pneumonia. Sad. Good thing our life is covered by the grace and mercy of Christ, other wise I might go crazy.

BFF

Countless times someone at a grocery store or a friend will say, “It is so great they are so close. They are going to be best friends!”

I have actually laughed in their face. So many fights, so little reward, or so it seemed. Oh sure, those early months when they were napping together and they were too far apart to care about the other, were easy times. Then Moses grew up, and Lola got cranky.

Going out in public is always an abundantly tiring affair. That does not stop us, no way. We are three on the move! I do it because I want to teach them how to behave together in public and I want to learn how to manage my troop with ease and care.





There are the usual “2 children in public scares”, no amount of preparation will stop; being terrified they are going to drown when I take them to the pool by myself, losing Lola at the Children’s Museum, (that was a scary day) or Moses eating poop at the petting zoo. It is all worth it when they come home and try to tell Daddy every incident that happened on these many excursions. Our favorite to date is when Lola came home from the zoo telling Daddy all about the "stinky snake" We are not real sure what made him stinky...

With each outing I become more confidant, more daring and dare say, less stressed. I guess it is time to have another one…hahahaha!

Now, now they are friends. Best friends, even a group of girls at a birthday party were unable steal Lola away from her Moe Moe. Of course if anyone with one child mentions having another before the first one turns 2, I scream, "Are you out of your MIND?"

Ode to a Shower

Every other day you are my friend.
I get my children herded for your bend.
Pre-dawn hours I rush to bloody my legs.
Every day would be nice I beg.
When there was 1, there were naps.
With 2, there could be coronary bypass.
I grew my hair long, no everyday wash needed.
No style has the tresses heeded.
Hot, warm, steamy.
My dear shower you are my McDreamy.