Maggie(3): Mom, you’re up! I drew a picture of you!

She has the biggest smile and hands me a rolled up piece of paper.

Maggie: You’re pink!

I unrolled the piece of paper to see a very small person-like scribble drawn in pink marker and my first thought was, It is way too early to scrub marker off the walls.

My second thought was, this reminds me an awful lot of the portrait Matthew drew of me 10 years ago when he was 4.

I gave Maggie a hug and an enthusiastic thank you because I love it when she draws things for me.

And bonus, I didn’t find any new marker on the walls.

I failed to write the last few days. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was that I woke up late or had appointments or my coffee isn’t strong enough. I don’t know but I’m going to try to wake up my brain and recap this last week.

Matthew got braces again.  This happened on Tuesday. His mouth hurt pretty bad for a couple of days but he seems to be feeling mostly better. He still has trouble chewing though.

Also happening on Tuesday was Florida completely flipping out. Kait texted that gas stations were running out of gas already and my friend posted a picture of an empty water isle and mostly empty canned section at Walmart because Floridians go cray-cray when a hurricane may or may not be possibly coming close to where we are. Hurricane hitting the keys? PENSACOLA MUST BE NEXT BUY ALL THE THINGS.

Wednesday we went to the library. Turns out we had a late book that I didn’t know we had and when we went to check out we couldn’t so we had to run home, find said book, then come back and return it to check out the books my littles had picked out. After that Matthew and I went to the grocery store for meat and eggs and then went back to the orthodontist to have a wire fixed.
Then we filled our gas tanks and made sure we had oil and wicks for the lamps and made a plan to either evacuation with pets, or ride out the storm here, depending on the severity of Irma’s strike to NW Florida. It doesn’t look like she’ll be visiting us at all now, but I’m glad we’re prepared just in case.
I’ll also add that if you have not stocked up on your water yet, Publix in Pace has a bunch. But they are just about out of sweet tea. Apparently southerners have their priorities.

Thursday Lanie woke up with her right eye stuck shut. Normally we just ride out eye goop but Lanie is different so I called her eye doc and he wanted to see her. We spent the afternoon at the ophthalmologist, then the pharmacist, then the other pharmacist, then at home, then at the pharmacist again. I feel like I could start a whole new blog just on going to the pharmacy.

Yesterday some friends came over and brought the one day a year pumpkin spice doughnuts from Krispy Kreme. She has three little girls who my little girls love and they had so much fun while she and I talked about foster care and doughnuts and…
Pretty much that is what we talked about the whole time.

Those doughnuts were good.
Then I took some of the kids to the book sale at the library. We found some good, cheap books to add to our shelves, the kids checked out some more books, and then we came home and I realized that my house is a disaster because I haven’t cleaned it at all this week.

I know there is stuff I missed in this recap. Probably important stuff but Lanie just woke up and she is coughing and I really need this lingering cold to just go away.

Also, my older boys’ alarm has been going off for 10 minutes now and neither is waking up to it. I wake up to the sound of somebody rolling over on the other side of the house so I’m not sure how they can sleep through that incessant beeping sound.

I guess I better go get them up.

Anytime my family goes to a friend’s house to swim there are too many kids in the pool for me to feel comfortable. Add in some more friends and their kids and grown men with beer and you suddenly have this perfect storm of chaos that can make any mom’s heart lodge firmly right in her throat.

On Monday we spent the day at a friends house watching the kids swim, eating good food, and trying to keep everybody from drowning.  Taking the kids to a pool is always a somewhat stressful venture for me but I really did have a good time and Kait got some great pictures with her fancy shmancy new camera.

Lanie is doing so much better at wearing her glasses so I was able to leave her contacts at home so she could get into the pool. She absolutely loves the water and smiled the entire time.

Jesse has completely overcome his fear of getting his head wet. He’s well on his way to learn to swim but it’s hard when you have lead for bones. The boy is quite slim but he is incredibly dense and sinks like a rock so learning to swim is a little more difficult for him.

And what’s with all the pool noodles?

There were tiny cans of soda and best good friends and life jackets that saved my sanity.

And sweet love birds who are THISCLOSE to being husband and wife.

And Lucy with her freckles and those incredible eyes that are a milky blue one minute and green the next.

Even though there were 14 minor children running around and almost as many adults, we had a pretty relaxed and safe Labor Day. There are so many more pictures and we had so much more fun but we’re headed out to the library and I’ve gotta go.

I wrote this post this morning but I needed to add pictures but Lanie woke up cranky and with an incredibly stuffy nose and I wasn’t able to get the pictures uploaded.  Now it is almost 8 pm and I fixed Lanie’s nose and ran and went to a Labor Day pool party and came home and put Lanie down for a very late nap and made dinner and got the pictures uploaded and the moment you have all been waiting for has arrived. You’re welcome.

Today is Labor Day. and while Labor Day is just a day off for many people, for my kids it’s the highlight of the year or something because all the little ones came running up to me shouting Mom! Happy Labor Day! when I got up this morning. I have never heard anybody say happy labor day before so this was unusual.

We are going to a friend’s house to swim and maybe that has something to do with it.

Over the weekend we had many plans to work on the kitchen and finish the table and clean out the closet but none of that happened.  The kitchen has been put aside in favor of getting our table done so we can use it again because all these kids eating on the floor in the living room is no longer working for me.

The table is almost finished. I’ve been saying almost for about 2 weeks now but I think almost is finally actually here. Just a couple more coats of urethane and it should ready to use.

The kitchen will get there. It’s just not happening as fast as I had thought it would because every time we get back to it something else needs to be done.

And I completely ignored the closet in favor of…  I don’t know. I don’t remember what I did instead.  Maybe I was cooking or something.  I feel like I am always cooking.

After church Rabbit washed the cars yesterday and that was super awesome and then he took the kids to the ball field.

We’re more of a football family and have never really played much baseball so Rabbit spent some time giving pointers on how to pitch and bat.

The boys were all like, Woah, Dad, you’re really good! Did you play on a team when you were younger or something?

Rabbit puffed his chest out a bit and answered them.  Yeah, I played a bit of Little League back in the day.

We only have three gloves so while some played ball, the others went to climb around and swing at the playground.

If you ask Maggie what she’s doing she’ll always, always, always reply, not swinging high enough!

I wish I had been able to go but Lanie was sleeping. Also, cooking food without children asking me 100 questions about what I am doing and why I am doing it and will there be mushrooms in it again… The opportunity to cook alone was just was too enticing.

Today’s tip: My kids like cauliflower rice better than actual rice so I make fried rice with cauliflower instead of rice. Last night we had bacon friend cauliflower rice and today everybody has gas.  I don’t know what my tip here is but I’m just saying, if you feed your kids cauliflower rice watch out.

I’m not quite sure about what to write about this morning.  I woke up a half hour early because a cat was staring at me but I am about 45 minutes late on my morning so far and I’m not sure how that happened. Maybe I accidentally made decaf or something.

Hahaha.
No.
That would never happen I was just kidding.

I don’t have anywhere I have to be today and I’m hoping that I can shake the frustrations of the last couple of days off by grocery shopping. I don’t know why I think going to the grocery store will help. It’s not like it’s ever been therapeutic for me.

I have more to say about the orthodontist because I have another kid that is ready for braces. This is in addition to the Wednesday morning debacle.  This is my Thursday afternoon story.
Ben is my 3rd kid to need braces and he’s been in pre-treatment for 2 years waiting for some teeth to come in and some growth spurt and he is now ready for his braces, which apparently must happen RIGHTNOW. But since we just shelled out a surprise $600 for Matthew’s metal on Wednesday, and we have a wedding coming up, I told them that I wanted to wait until after the holidays to get Ben’s treatment plan started. I was subtly accused of putting Ben on the backburner in favor of Matthew’s treatment. We really need to get Benjamin started very soon. I understand that you paid a down payment just yesterday for Matthew’s treatment but we really don’t want to see this guy put on the back burner.

Really?
I don’t know. Maybe I’m being too sensitive here but I really don’t think so. I would also like to add that the billing gal talked in very hushed tones about our not being able to afford it and mentioned that she wasn’t supposed to talk to Dr. Brooks about it but she would just for us even though I never implied that we needed help, I just said that we were going to wait. It was all very patronizing. And weird.

I normally really like the kids’ orthodontist. He was great with Kait’s wonky mouth and has been pretty good with Matthew’s up until recently. I’m going to call a different ortho today and get Ben in for a consult because I’m really irritated right now and why are all these little flies all over my house? We’ve completely cleaned out the pantry and all the cupboards and the boys’ rooms and where the heck are they coming from?

It’s been a hard week.

On a brighter note, literally and figuratively, our main bathroom has been changed from a brownish yellow color to a soft white (thanks, Matthew!) and scrubbed clean (thanks, Rabbit!), and has new knobs and it looks great.  We are going to refinish the cabinets eventually too but we have a gazillion other projects in line ahead of that one. Like the never ending kitchen redo.

And Lanie has turned a bit of a corner mentally and physically. At physical therapy yesterday she showed increased muscle strength and then in occupational therapy she was making an effort to interact and tried to mimic what her therapist was doing. It was the first time that it didn’t seem like Lanie was just in the room with the therapist, but actually participating with her. It is a really big step.

Here’s a blurry picture.

This is how Lanie reacted to me explaining my week.
This girl just gets me.

You know how you start your day out early, in a good mood, after a decent night’s sleep, and then everything falls apart about 3 hours in when your kid’s orthodontists surprises you with a $600 down payment for a set of braces he has already had but needs again? Yeah that happened.

Here’s a rundown of my day. It’s a little ranty. I’m sorry.

• Matthew’s mouth was somewhat complex to sort out and he’s had an expander, braces, a holding arch thing, a couple different kind of retainers that weren’t doing their job. With all the things he has needed to have done I think I was just confused about all those layers and when I took him in because the holding arch had broken and to ask for a better retainer they said, New molars! Looks like he’s ready for his phase 2! Braces again to straighten things out! We’ll need $600 to start this phase! Thanks!
  I took a couple of deep breaths and went about the rest of my day.
• Lanie had two appointments together at the same place. They called a few hours before hand and asked if I could come in an hour early. I said sure. What I didn’t know was that they wanted me to come in an hour early for the first appointment, and then sit for an hour and a half and wait for the second one. Lanie became restless, I didn’t bring a stroller because I didn’t think I’d need one, and I couldn’t reschedule because it took 3 months to get this appointment. I became what you might call very put out.
• They want to put tubes in Lanie’s ears. Recent studies have suggested that in most cases tubes are not really all that helpful. I’m going to do some research and see if we can reduce the fluid in her ears here at home before we resort to cutting into her eardrum.
• She most definitely needs surgery to remove her adenoids and tonsils. This was not what I wanted to hear but Doc did say we could wait on the surgery for a few months and try two meds to try to shrink her oversized adenoids and tonsils. I said yes please.
• Went to get her prescriptions. Turns out, Tricare won’t cover one of them or its generic. Great. We had to pay for that sucker. But that was okay because if we could keep her from needing surgery I was willing to try it but I was still not thrilled with another surprise payment in one day.
• At home later I was reading through the pamphlet for Lanie’s meds. The expensive one, a nasal spray, says not to use if you have had cataracts or glaucoma. I’m not even kidding. If you want to know why this is an issue read here.

Now that I’ve done all the complaining. I should add that there were a great many positives that really did drown out the frustrations.

• Rabbit has been on leave and has a nice salt and pepper beard that I find quite attractive.
  
• Sam made me a crown with Rubies on it.
  
• Deep fried peanuts. What will the south come up with next? Also, this is why I love the south. Also, DEEP FRIED PEANUTS, PEOPLE!
  
• Ben kept me company at Lanie’s forever appointment yesterday and Lanie was incredibly cute.
  
• My table looks fabulous. Rabbit had to sand it again because of a problem with the stain and we loved the look so much that we’re going with it. It’s so unique and really gorgeous.  I’ll get a picture and blog more about that later. but for now I’ve gotta go because I’m already an hour later than I like to be starting my day. We have therapy and more ortho and groceries and I need to run and Tropical Storm Harvey is still making the rounds.

It’s going to be another fun day.

This is a re-post but it’s my brother’s and sister’s birthday again and I just couldn’t resist.

My brother and sister were born when I was just 17 months old. Not old enough to understand what a toilet was for, but definitely old enough to know that these two monsters were going to destroy the little world of selfish power I had been working so hard to build. And they were cute. Too cute for their own good. It was always the twins this, the twins that.  I would have packed my bags and run away had I been able to reach the door knob but I couldn’t so I was trapped.
But then the two rugrats grew on me (a little) and I realized that having another girl around wasn’t so bad and the boy made for an excellent scape goat. I got really good at saying, That boy did it.

I don’t really remember any of this exactly, but I imagine that it’s probably what went through my head based on evidence found in old(er) pictures.

See:

My brother, Matt, was completely over-dramatic about everything. Really. He would fall down and pretend like you had broken 2/3 of the bones in his body if you even looked like you were maybe thinking about pushing him. Yeah, he was that kid. He was also a big mouth and completely asked for it.  And yellow “frightened” his eyes, whatever that means, so he always got the blue cup. The blue cup that I wanted.

And my sister, sweet Carrie, used her freckles and dimples to fool most everybody but me in to thinking she was an angel sent from heaven to delight each and every person she came into contact with. But she stuck her tongue out at me and told on me for EVERY LITTLE THING, including putting an extra teaspoon of sugar on my cereal in the morning like she didn’t do the exact same thing. I think she had a plan from the start to make herself an only child.

Just look at her sly face. HELLO? How was I the only one that knew? But a picture speaks a thousand words and if you look closely you’ll see that my brother’s and my faces are blurry. Carrie was already trying to erase us.

This is how I wish a happy birthday to people who tormented my childhood. So happy birthday Dramatic and Sly. Glad to see you’ve grown up. And I’m glad your antics didn’t send me to the loony-bin in the process.

Also, I made you each a cake so just go ahead and stop by sometime today to pick yours up.

Seriously though, I love you both tons. I miss that we don’t get to hang out like we used to when we were younger but I still value my relationship with you both more than you know. I hope you both had a great birthday and look forward to seeing you in November.

A few things this morning.

-I mentioned yesterday that I wasn’t sure if I should include Kait and Joe when I say that I did something or whatnot with 10 kids because neither of them are kids anymore. In fact, Kait doesn’t even live here anymore and will be a Mrs. in 2 months. However, it feels weird to not include her in my kid head count when I’m writing about our day because even though she isn’t a kid anymore, she’s still my kid.

This same thing goes for Joe but he still lives at home and so it isn’t as weird for me yet. Hm.

-I had a weird dream where all my hair fell out and, while I didn’t like that it happened, I wasn’t alarmed by it at all. This alarms me.

– The rest of our sod was delivered last night right as I was finishing up cooking dinner. The guys got to working and I served dinner outside on the patio table. It was a nice, cooler, 78 degree evening and everybody seemed to be much happier laying sod than on Friday. My backyard looks amazing.

– Rabbit has finished sanding and the table has been stained, praise God from whom all blessing flow.

We’re using this dark brown gel stain. I like it so far. The color is rich and reminds me of a chocolate bar but it leaves these paintbrush lines even though Rabbit doesn’t put it on with a paintbrush. It’s weird.  I’ve read that it just needs another coat, or that the wood was sanded too fine, or that it wasn’t wiped off quickly enough, or that gel stains just do that, or that or that or that…  We’ll get it figured out.

– My kids have adjusted to not watching movies or playing video games every day. I know they are over the withdrawal because they have become happy to find other things to do. They have now formed a club and it is very important and intense and there are passwords and disguises and drawings from a hat. It’s quite entertaining to watch.

– I cleaned out the pantry.

It was a crazy mess of expired baking products and empty granola bar boxes. There were three opened jars of peanut butter, 3 open containers of raisins, 3 opened containers of corn starch…  apparently we open things in threes.  Ben and I filled more than two trash bags full of unnecessary junk. I should pay attention to the pantry more often.  Rabbit asked how long I thought it would stay this way. I said about 24 hours.

– The reason I cleaned out the pantry was because we have had all these gnat-like bugs flying all over our house and they are making me crazy. I wanted to make sure there wasn’t any spoiled food attracting them. There wasn’t. We’ve cleaned and bleached and sanitized but they still show up in my coffee if I don’t drink it fast enough. I’ve decided that they must be coming in from outside because my kids don’t know how to close exterior doors. They are really good at slamming interior doors though. Go figure.

– I’m getting rid of our microwave. Probably today.  It is very small and we rarely use it and what we do use it for can easily be done on the stove or in the oven, which makes more sense with the number of people in our family anyway. I’m the only one who cleans it and I don’t even like it so it’s going away.

– This post has become much longer than I originally planned so I will go for now. It’s almost 8am and time to run.

Yesterday we took the day off from doing projects and chores and took the kids to see a baseball game.

It may seem like some kind of crazy chaotic thing to take 10 kids to a ball game because it is.  This is not for the faint of heart but with good kids and a couple of adults constantly counting heads it is doable. Also, should I still count Kait and Joe when I say 10 kids because they are both adults? It just feels weird not to include them in our number.

Kait’s fiance, Vince, works for the Blue Wahoos and he sprang for tickets for the whole family because he’s awesome and we all had a great time even though the home team lost when the Wahoo’s game fell completely apart in the 8th inning.

But that’s okay because Kait got pictures!

Lucy and Maggie were glued to Vince.  I have warned Kait before that she needs to keep an eye on these two because they are out to steal him out from under her. I’m pretty sure this is why she was adamant about a short engagement.

I was reminded once again that Lanie is not heat tollerant.  It was warm and humid but it wasn’t unbearable but she was super red and sweating like crazy and all she wanted to do was nurse, which made her sweat even more because I had to cover her to keep from being exposed.

I had thrown a jar of frozen baby food into the bag on our way out of the house and that seemed to help and then the weather cooled as evening approached and she was in a great mood after that.

This little blond haired, blue eyed baby doll turned into a red headed, green eyed girl in the sunlight. I love how her hair and eyes seem to change colors depending on the weather.

Kait got pictures of everybody but I don’t have time to put them all up right now so I’ll just end off this post with this one of 3 of my daughters being completely themselves.

We’ve moved across the country numerous times and we’ve always had young children with us.  We’ve found that while it is fairly easy to keep one or two kids occupied enough, it is more difficult to do this with multiple children who are all bored at the same time and asking where we are and why we are driving in circles and did mama leave her wallet somewhere again?

Notice that while it looks like we are in an airplane, we are actually in our 15 passenger van that actually only holds 14 people and really only 12 because we have 2 seats out at the moment.

Anyway, we’ve had to come up with some pretty creative ways to keep the kids content on long car rides and I have found that these 88 cent trays from Walmart are ingenious for child entertainment.

We initially bought them to serve food while we were on the road. Because they are small, light weight, and stackable, they were easy to stow under a car seat when not in use. We quickly discovered that they had many, many other uses, however.

• They are great for holding paper and crayons for easy drawing and coloring.
• They are magnetic so these cheap magnet letters work perfectly.
• Grease markers wipe right off so they can draw, erase, draw, erase to their heart’s content.
• They make playing card games and other travel games much easier. Rolling dice isn’t quite as frustrating.

Another thing we have done is print off Mad Libs and laminate them. We bought ultra fine tip grease markers and they work perfectly on them so we can reuse each Mad Lib indefinitely to create new humorous stories.

We fill those little snack baggies with cereal and crackers and whenever somebody is hungry we just pass those out.

I readily admit that Fruit Loops and Cookie Crisp are not the healthiest snacks we’ve ever fed our kids but it’s a vacation and there are 12 people in the van and can’t everybody just please calm down for a minute? So this is what I do. I think we filled more than 60 of them and they were gone by the time we returned home.

To counter said unhealthy snacks, I have this little gadget that allows me to make those squeeze fruit pouches at home and then I freeze them. On travel day we pull them out and toss them in the cooler.

This allows my kids to eat fruit and veggies and counter all the less-healthy snacks without making an incredible mess.

Another thing we do is always try to stop at rest areas to use the bathroom so that the kids can get out and run around. The younger kids really look forward to this for some reason. They really seem to enjoy running in half dead grass at rest areas while I sit on a blanket and picnic with Lanie.

I still have so much more to write to catch up from the last couple of days. Ben has asthma. Gabe got new shoes. We have a new fire extinguisher.  And there are ten pallets of grass sitting in the backyard. The last few days have been a little bit crazy.

Gotta go.