The I’m a Bad Mother Post

We’ve been sick here for the past 2 weeks.  Well, really more, but I can’t stand typing fractions so we’ll just stick with nice, even, plain 2 weeks.

Fevers, coughing, running noses, sore throats.

Times 9.

But here’s the thing and I know that this is gonna sound all horrific and terrible to you moms out there but I’m going to admit it anyway.

I love when my littlest ones are sick.

Why, you Scary, Freaky, I-Can’t-Believe-God-Let-You-Have-Nine-Whole-Kids Woman, you may be asking?

Well, it’s because when they’re under the weather, they spend hours sitting on my lap.

Just sitting there, all still and chubby, blinking pitifully and quietly filling their diapers.

And I get to pet their arms and squeeze their thighs and kiss their fat little cheeks, like, 100 MILLION times an hour, and study their chubby toes and adorable cow-licks and basically think how stinkin’ blessed I am to have the cutest kids in the universe.

Even cuter than yours.

Because usually, the only times I get to get this up-close and personal is when I’m maintaining their personal hygiene or being their milkman.

See, my two littlest ones are boys so there’s not much snuggling going on with them.  They’re too busy driving cars off the dining room table and throwing sand at each other in the backyard and pounding on the piano when I’m not looking.

So you can see why I love it when they get sick.  Not ventilator-sick or even antibiotics-sick.

Just plain ‘ole runny-nose-small-pitiful-coughing sick.

Come on.  Admit it.  You can relate, right?

 

Oh. Brother.

If you’re a mom, you know that exactly the moment you go into the bathroom, needing to take care of business, lock the door, and get down to said business, one of your children will appear outside the door, crying or screaming or yelling about some emergency or another and, apparently, he will be invisible to any other child in the house who normally would be encouraged to help him.

That happened to me today.

I called through the door that I would be out in a few minutes and Screaming Child would live until then, but he kept it up.

For a long time.  Even though, every 30 seconds or so, I’d yell out to him, reassuring him of his okay-ness.

But he wasn’t having it.

By the time I opened the door and came out, there were major tears and gasping and general, blatant pathetic-ness.

And when I asked him what was wrong, he (Three-Year-Old) held up a Beanie Baby moose and told me that it was scaring him.

So then I blinked a few times, trying to figure out why he didn’t throw it to the floor and run, crying and screaming from the room (and away from my bathroom break), and after I decided that I just wasn’t going to understand 3-year-old-ness at this point in my life, I told him to go put it back in the Beanie Baby crate and he did.

And that was that.

Weird, cute kid.

This Morning’s Phone Call

This was a conversation I actually had with my mom on the phone this morning……

Me:  “Hey!  Whatcha doin’?”

Her:  “Oh, we’re just working around the house.  I’m trying out a new color of lipstick and I just don’t think it’s going to work out too well for me.”

Seriously.

That’s what she said.

Now, you have to know that my mom probably works harder than I do.  She is excruciatingly organized.  She spends most of her week carting around her mom to doctor’s appointments and doing stuff for my dad and generally running a house that has two grannies living in it and all their accoutrements plus my dad and all of HIS guy-ness.

And she is NOT high maintenance or trivial.

At ALL.

That’s why this was so funny to me.

But maybe not so much to her after she reads this.

Interpretation

Three-Year-Old is in this stage where his speech is…….um……challenging, shall we say.

Really?  We can understand maybe every sixth word.

Which makes things kinda hard when he wants to tell us something.

And he’s got all the facial expression and voice inflection and his eyes just plead with you to understand him and the vital ideas he is trying to convey.

It breaks my heart.  Because he so WANTS me to understand him and most days I just don’t.

Last night, he was standing in the living room, telling me the same phrase over and over.

And over.

“Liteoing.”

“Mommy!  Liteoing.”

“LITEOING.”

We still weren’t getting it, so we started our guessing game.

Us:  “Lights on?”

Him:  “Mommy!  Liteoing”

Us:  “You want the gate down?”

Him:  “Liteoing!”

Us:  “You want to play the piano?”

Him:  “Mommy!  Liteoing!”

Us:  “You want a puppy?  ANYTHING!  We’ll give you anything if you just stop saying ‘liteoing’ and just forget about it!”

Him:  “MOMMY!  LITEOING!”

Then 5-Year-Old wanders into the room so we enlist her help because she USED to know the language that 3-Year-Old now employs although I think it was Girl dialect but I’m not sure.

And we were hoping she could interpret.

So we asked her if she would listen to what he was saying and tell us what she thought.

Then we looked at 3-Year-Old and asked,

“Can you say it again, buddy?”

And he yelled, “MOMMY!”…..and was taking his next breath to say the “liteoing” word when 5-Year-Old looked blankly at us and then said,

“Mommy.  He said ‘Mommy’.”

And she really didn’t understand what the problem was.

New Blog

If you are interested in my new running adventure you can check out the new tab at the top of this page.  I have created a new blog to chronicle my thoughts about running and the actual implementation thereof.

If you are just interested in reading about my mommy adventures, then it’s perfectly okay ignore the new tab.  I’ll still be writing here about our large-family life.

So.

Mommy of nine life and running mommy life.

You get two for one if you’d like!

‘Cause I’m multi-talented that way.

I’m Just Sayin’

I really don’t understand the whole Halloween thing.  I mean, what gets into people, you know?  How is it that plastic parts in the shape of a man’s arms and legs and head, stuck into the ground so that it seems like he is being buried alive……..how is this considered decor?

“Classy” and “Halloween” certainly do NOT go together.

It’s amazing to me the sense of tackiness that attacks people come October.  Here are a few examples that come to mind……

Wooden crosses stuck into a yard in various places with a hoe like a grave is in the process of being dug.  Huh?

Orange lights on a tree outside which is kinda Christmas-y, but not, so what’s the point?

Flashing strobe lights in the front yard, POINTED TOWARD THE HOUSE.  I’m thinking the neighbors must all be either deployed or blind for those residents to be able to get away with that monstrosity.

Huge, dangling spiders or skeletons or ghosts.  I mean, it’s no wonder that our society is so violent.  Why not just put a bunch of strangled kittens hanging from a tree in your yard?

Or how about a 6 foot jar of formaldehyde with a dead guy floating inside on your front porch? 

If anyone on our street is reading this, it is entirely possible that they may be thinking……

WHAT A FANTASTIC IDEA!  NOW, WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT?

 

 

A New Thing

So I turned 40 a few months ago and my brain started doing weird things.

Like thinking about how old I am and how many gray hairs I have and the general state of my I’ve-had-nine-kids body.

And I decided to do something about my newfound oldness.

I started running.

Growing up, I used to be the fastest kid.  I kicked everyone else’s tushy in my entire elementary school in any sprint, hands-down.  In high school I had slightly more competition but not much.

Of course, it helped that I weighed, like, 75 pounds.

Whatever.

Then, in college, I decided to try to run longer distances because I come from a long-distance-running family.  My dad ran for 35 years before an injury sidelined him.  Two uncles have been off-and-on runners and marathoners over the years.

But I stunk at long distances. 

Or is it “stank”, or “stinked”?

I just couldn’t do them.  I huffed and puffed and whined and complained and basically hated every stinkin’ second.

When we first moved to the lovely state of Arizona (can you say “facetious”, anyone?) I started going to the base gym because we lived a mile from it.  And I got all into the elliptical machine and the free weights and started feeling fitter and fitter.

But then I started thinking about how inconvenient the whole gym thing was, and let me assure you that it had nothing to do with the fact that I was the only woman there who had gray hair.  Of COURSE it wasn’t something as shallow as THAT.

It was knowing that one day in the future, I hope to live in Europe in a thatched-roof cottage on the moors like in “Pride and Prejudice” and raise sheep. 

And gyms and moors don’t go together.

So I knew that I needed to find some sort of exercise that could go where I go.  And that got me started walking.  And I walked and walked and got faster and faster to where it just wasn’t fun anymore because I was going the fastest I could and it just wasn’t a challenge anymore.

And now would be a good time to tell you that any mom who voluntarily has a bunch of kids, likes challenges.

So I knew that the next step was running.  And I wanted to really GET it this time.

So I got some running books that inspired me and made me want to run and run and run. 

And then I convinced Yummy Man to run with me a few times and he helped me run an entire mile-and-a-half without stopping, although I was begging for an epidural that last quarter-mile.  (I TOLD you I’m not good at long distances!)

The big news is that I’ve found that I love it.   Running makes me happy.  It gives me confidence.  It makes me feel stronger and better.  It gives me more energy and motivation for my children. 

I’m addicted and I’m irritated that it took me 40 years to get here.  

I know that this blog is about my life as a Christian, homeschooling mother of nine.  Now it’s about a Christian, homeschooling, RUNNING mother of nine.  I don’t plan to blab and blab about my running.  If I feel the need to do that, I’ll start another blog.

And I’ll make sure that it is included in the Running Mothers Who Have Nine Kids blogroll, ‘kay?

Nursing. I Know. It Sounds All Boring and Educational But Really IS Worth Two Minutes of Your Day.

Many babies ago, I began calling the nursing experience “nu-nu” which sounds all mushy and gushy and irritatingly cutesy but isn’t really because “mushy” and “gushy” aren’t words that I generally use.

At least, not in the context of cutesy-ness.  Perhaps, however, in the context of diaper contents. 

(My mom LOVES when I post things like this!  She wonders WHAT happened to the lady-like manners she taught me long ago when I was young, moldable, and hadn’t met Yummy Man yet, who definitely led me astray manners-wise.)

Anyway.

I start this nu-nu thing very early when the babies are still small and only making gurgling noises so that when they get a little older and want to nurse, they can tell me.

Pretty smart of me, huh?

But the problem is that I am in a strange juncture in my life wherein I have gone the longest time yet between pregnancies to where it’s almost looking like I won’t have anymore babies (which is not something I want to discuss right now, thank you very much).  So my littlest man, who is still nursing, literally hangs off my lap when I nurse him……THAT’S how big he is.

And when he wants to nurse, he walks up to me, takes my face between his two fat little hands with the indented knuckles, turns my head so that I am looking into his eyes and then says very emphatically and in a surprisingly-deep-for-an-18-month-old voice, “NU-NU!”

And there is no getting out of it, let me tell ya.

I’m thinking that very soon, he will be asking for nu-nu after shaving in the morning and before heading off to work.

Barbie Hair

Very recently, I’ve read a blog post about being a cancer survivor, one about adopting 2 babies from Rwanda, and one from a woman who lives on a farm in Canada, who can make you just ache with her descriptions of gratefulness and love and utter faithfulness to the Lord.

This will not be one of those kinds of posts.

Why?  Because I don’t know how to write about noble stuff, apparently, since all my posts seem to be about projectile vomiting, 3-year-olds with lisps, and Yummy Man’s legs.

Nope.  Can’t do it.  My talent is trivial humor, I think.  The few times that I have attempted noble prose, it began by sounding good in my head, but when it actually hit the blog, it was dripping with sappiness or some other word they haven’t made up for people like me who want to be known for more than just writing about how to stop elementary-school-age boys from leaping from the tops of 20-foot-tall playsets with Walmart bags strapped to their backs.

So now I am going to write about my hair.

(See?  I told you there would be no depth or nobility.)

Before I got pregnant eleven times and ended up with nine babies, I used to have curly hair that generally behaved itself.

But then I got pregnant eleven times and ended up with nine babies and my hair decided that THAT was just ridiculous and how is a head of hair supposed to deal with the avalanche of hormones each time that woman gets pregnant again and it was just too much so my hair decided to boycott my head.

Which means that now?  I have frizzy, fly-away, curly, fluffy hair that generally does NOT behave itself.

Especially in a church full of women who possess the genetic make-up that allows them to have what I call Barbie hair.

You know the kind.  In fact, you probably ARE the kind.  Those women with the heavy, stick-straight hair that falls down their backs and swings when they walk and that they absent-mindedly flick over their shoulders during the sermon so that it hangs over the backs of their chairs within my personal space, virtually hypnotizing me with the perfection.  And then, when I bring up how beautiful their hair is, they usually sigh and tell me how difficult it is having SO.  MUCH.  HAIR.  TO.  DEAL.  WITH. 

And then I want to physically assault them because you know what I did when I was smaller?  And let me just preface this by saying that yes, I do realize how utterly vulnerable this makes me…….I used to put pajama pants on my head so that I could pretend that I, too, had Barbie hair.

Yes, I was that pitiful.  Still am, as a matter of fact.  Ask Yummy Man how often I lament the state of my hair.  It entails a lot of eye-rolling on his part.

Every few years, I delude myself into thinking that maybe NOW I can grow that kind of hair.  But then I try and I end up with scraggly, see-through hair that dies and falls out before it even reaches my shoulders.

So I’ve stopped fighting with it.  I have resigned myself to the fact that I will never have the hair I envy and so I went and got it cut into a short little bob that lets my curls spring forth.

So now I have a little halo of curls around my head that make me feel like I should be wearing a princess sleeper and sucking my thumb, but that’s okay.

Because when God was handing out Long, I just happened to be in the legs line.

 

Perspective

Have you had those days when you’re just irritated but you don’t know why?  And then you figure out that it’s because you’re a selfish, whiney pig-of-a-woman who just needs to be content and joyful and all those other nauseatingly perfect-sounding character qualities that take a lot of effort and you really don’t want to DO effort at this point in your life?

Yeah, I have this friend who told me about this problem that some of you probably have.

Ahem.

Okay.  I admit it.  I’ve been slightly grumpy lately.

And irritated.

And non-perfect.

Imagine that.

So today, when I read the most recent blog post of an old friend from high school, I kinda felt a little sheepish.

And ungrateful.

And basically cow-pie-like.

We kinda found each other on Facebook and she has ended up being one of those people that you thought you’d never hear from again, but then, when you do, you just want to jump in your car and go spend the weekend with her?  Or a month?

Except that you live, like 8 trillion miles apart.

Anyway, she is a cancer survivor, and I don’t mean the skin kind.

I’m talkin’ the extremely-sick-and-bald-and-emaciated-and-spending-months-in-the-hospital-and-almost-dying-from-it kind.

And she has 4 boys and a husband and a house in the country which I really can’t hold against her because she is just a lovely person all-around.

Plus, she’s a really fantastic writer.

And today, she helped me get things into perspective in my life.   She wrote about people thinking she looks good for almost being a corpse.  And that kinda took care of the whole perspective thing.

You know, IF I happened to be one of those people who has a problem with that kind of thing.

So thank you, Dana.

Write on!