What Bird?

Yesterday as I was sitting at the computer doing bills and balancing the checkbook I heard a commotion in the bathroom.  Max was at school and Lily and Molly were asleep, so it could only be the cat, Oscar. It wouldn’t be that unusual for him to knock something over trying to get a drink in the sink, but the noise continued.  Several things had been knocked over by the time I went to investigate.

When I went into the bathroom, I saw a small bird on the floor and the cat, who had apparently been trying to get the bird out of hiding, about to pounce.  In this rare moment of quiet in the house, I really didn’t have time to chase down a bird. I needed to get some work done.  So I grabbed the cat and closed the bird safely in the bathroom.  And promptly forgot about it.

Later in the day, when the kids and Jay were all home, Ben went to use the bathroom and was surprised to find the bird, calmly sitting on the floor.  Jay came to the rescue and carefully moved the bird to a safe spot outside, and our little wildlife excitement was over.

But today brought a funny little sample of how our family communicates, sometimes poorly, but we always seem to know what we mean.  While Paisley was preening in the bathroom she came upon a little something left by the bird… poop.  She puzzled over how or why or even if it was in fact bird poop on the bathroom counter, because she had not been around during the excitement of the previous day, and finally asked Ben, “Why is there bird poop in the bathroom?” To which he replied, “The bird pooped in the bathroom?”

We don’t have a bird, so this response didn’t make much sense to Paisley.  So she asked Jay, “Why is there bird poop in the bathroom?” And he said…

Wait for it…

“The bird pooped in the bathroom?”

“WHAT BIRD?” Paisley wanted to know.  So we let her in on the whole situation, which really wasn’t a big deal.  But we all had a good laugh over the somewhat nonsensical answer that two family members gave her when she was trying to find out what happened.

Mass Hysteria

Last week Sunday mass went very well.  The kids were slightly less squirrelly than usual and I actually heard the homily.

I should have known that couldn’t last.

This week was an adventure.

It began as we started to get out of the car in the parking lot.  It was a cold, rainy Sunday and none of my kids brought coats.

So we got inside, only a little damp, and got seated.  Mass began and Molly decided it was time to fill her diaper.  Loudly.  So I made my first trip back to the bathroom, luggage in tow, and changed the baby who had miraculously not soiled her beautiful outfit. (Yet.)  Back up the aisle, seated again, I fought with Lily who was in rare form (in a bad way) and was making me wonder exactly how to discipline her in a very quiet way in mass.  I seemed to alternate telling her to GET DOWN (from climbing the pew in front of us) with GET UP HERE (as she tried to slink away under the pew to get behind us) throughout the whole mass.

Then at one point she decided mass was over and just LEFT and started to walk out.  I chased her down and brought her back.

Soon after, during the consecration, Tessa turned to Lily and said, “That is Jesus’s blood.”  Lily said, “JESUS’S BUTT? That’s not Jesus’s butt!  It’s Jesus’s BLOOD!”

While all of this was going on Molly was nursing on and off and crabbing about life in general and sucking her fingers.  Which is all par for the course UNTIL she gagged herself with her two fingers and threw up all over me.  And I mean ALL over.  There were puddles on the pew and on the floor and – and this is the grossest part – in my bra, and it just kept coming.  I was soaked.  SOAKED, I tell you.  Thankfully I had two blankets with me, one cotton afghan and one receiving blanket.  So I wiped up everything I could with the afghan and covered myself up with the receiving blanket and back we went to the bathroom.  Just for reference, we sit in the front, the bathroom is in the back.  So I make my way, luggage, baby, puke, and all, back to the bathroom.

I changed Molly and wiped myself off as well as I could and got back to mass, which was thankfully only a moment or two from being over.  I zipped up my jacket over my wet shirt, because we were not going home, we had a breakfast over in the hall to attend, and I was not going to miss it just because I smelled like sour milk.

And breakfast was lovely anyway.

2010

Is it Twenty-ten or Two thousand ten?

Either way it is a new year and time to put in an update around here.  As is my custom, I have slacked off entirely on writing for a while – some four months to be exact, which is a bit of a record slack off around here.  But I have lots of lovely (and a few not so lovely) excuses.

1. Molly Catherine was born at home, in the water, on November 4th.

2. Molly is a handful.  She started out with a bang by sending us to the NICU for her first day with some heart arrhythmias that needed to be figured out.  Thankfully all was well.  But she has kept us hopping by being very vocal about her needs.  I suppose one has to be vocal, being an 8th child.  But she is beautiful and healthy and is now settling nicely into life outside the womb.

3. Besides taking care of a newborn, we have 4 schools to contend with this year.  I may have mentioned it before on the blog, I’m too lazy to go back and check right now, but this has been just as much work as I thought it would be.  And then some.

4. And this one is the doozy: When Molly was just a month old, I was involved in an accident that resulted in a fatality.  We are all physically fine, and I was not at fault, but it has been a lot to grapple with and I didn’t feel that those details belonged on the internet.

And now, as a reminder list to me and to give you a teaser of what may be to come look for posts on a few of these things:

And plenty of other stuff, I am sure.

To Clean a Shower

Twice now I have bought some super-high-powered, fairly expenseive (in my mind anyway) cleaner to get my disgusting shower really clean and twice now someone has knocked it down and broken the nozzle and made it unusable.

So I found a bottle of Tilex in the kids bathroom (that, incidentally was bought so long ago that it is covered with soap scum.  Is it just me or is that a little ironic?) and dumped it out to replace with one of the broken-nozzle cleaners.  Done.  Spray shower.  Leave to sit and let the nasty chemicals do their work.

Later on, I walk into the bathroom and see my reflction in the mirror.  Two big, white bleach spots on one of my favorite maternity shirts – one of the few that is actually long enough to cover my entire basketball sized belly.

Argh!  I can’t win.

A Sad Day

I have been enjoying Lily’s misuse of pronouns lately. There are few things so cute as their exploration of language and playing with the proper words. Mostly she has just been replacing the word “I” with “my” with adorable results.

For example, when I told her yesterday that I was taking her to Nana’s house, she replied, “My love Nana! Oh yes, my do!”

Another one that has been common for her is that when she wants to show something to me she will grab my hand and lead me to it saying “Show me, show me, show me…” all the way there.

But today she brought me a book and said, “See the spiders? Let me show you!”

One more stage of babyhood left behind.

A Monday Success List

“Things to Do” is so depressing. Today we are going with “Things Done!”

1. Ate breakfast, make iced tea
2. Bible study
3. Start load of wash, start load in dryer
4. Give bowl to Max BEFORE he threw up
5. (And I get major points for this one!!!) pile up things in garage so that the VAN ACTUALLY FITS! Now granted, there isn’t enough room for anyone but the driver to get in and out, but at least it is in the shade. I can pull it into the driveway to load up kids.
6. Sit on couch like a zombie for 20 minutes
7. Reboot laundry, it’s now 8:30am
8. Load/start dishwasher
9. wash other pots and pans, put them away
10. Bleach sink, wipe of counters and stove, ignore nasty floor
11. Make bed, pretend that makes my room clean
12. Clean out puke bowl, watch a little Zaboomafoo with Max
13. Shower and get dressed, FINALLY
14. Reboot laundry, fold 2 loads
15. Snack time, hummus and pretzel chips with a side of Iced Tea
16. Move boxes in from garage (4 of them) and fold up table, now you can access all sides of van when in the garage.
17. Go to grocery, remember as I am checking out that shopping while hungry was probably NOT a good idea. My Amy’s Organic Burritos are bagged with my Hershey’s Chocolate. I won’t even tell you what the marshmallows got bagged with.
18. Reboot laundry
19. Hang picture
20. Eat lunch
21. Make a kid empty the D/W, I pile dishes on counter, run James to a friend’s house (and the van was so nice and cool after being in the shade!)
22. Put Lily down for a nap
23. Take a nap myself
24. Awaken to disgusting virus problem*
25. Start more laundry – I had stopped for the day, but am restarting now. How can it be almost 4pm?
26. Try to disentangle my registration for CPST course so I can pay and be official (it worked!)
27. Get mail – put on new blender blade
28. Hand out popsicles
29. Move last (Please???) load to dryer, fold two more loads of clothes

And here – at 4:53pm – is where I am going to stop today’s list. Not because I am done or anything, but things are about to get much more busy as we move into evening. Still to come: Make dinner, clean up kitchen, take kids swimming (except the sick one!), shower everyone off, feed bedtime snacks, put away a few stacks of clothes (maybe…), brush all teeth, put everyone in bed (which is a major process in and of itself!), and stay up until Posy gets home.

*Just a note: I left out various stomach virus related details from the list because they were too gross for even me (and that is saying something!) and I left out the several times I sat down to update this list and blew a few minutes on Facebook or whatnot. Also not mentioned, taking Lily potty about 150 times. But so far today she has stayed dry.

Checking in

It has been a while – in the flurry of baseball season, summer swimming and every other thing in the world, I have been lax on updating around here. I am not going to write out a huge, long update post now – it is Sunday afternoon and naptime is calling. But I do plan to jump in a little more here and there.

Oh and baby number 8… is a GIRL.

Aquaphor

When I started figuring out that the skin rash that Lily fights all the dang time is probably eczema, I got lots of suggestions here for aquaphor. But I resisted. I was trying really hard to avoid petroleum based products and just generally had good and healthy intentions.

Her skin has gotten particularly bad over the last few days and last night was really bugging her. So I put her on the bed and slimed her up with her usual stuff (Burts Bees Body Butter) which had been miraculous when we first used it. Suddenly she was WRITHING all over the place, grabbing at her skin saying OWIE OWIE OWIE. Yikes – right into the shower she went and we washed (just water and a soft cloth) all of that off her body. We’re done with that one! Gee, I wish I hadn’t JUST BOUGHT that container YESTERDAY! Anyway, I had a tiny sample of aquaphor laying out so I slathered her up while she was still wet. This morning she woke up and her skin, while not clear, was at least 75% better than last night.