Rain-out Hotline

We have Isaac signed up for soccer. We had to sign him up for at least one season of some form of athletics to blend in with the locals. It is an unstated rule that every suburban child must participate in a sport of some fashion from pre-school age on up. Our choices were narrowed down to tee-ball and soccer. We were given the options of going through the city, the county, or through some private school. We opted for the city.

Isaac LOVES playing soccer. With the rain and working around recent scheduled camping trips and funerals he's attended one practice. The forty-five minute practice was life changing for him I'm sure. I know my life has changed - from a stay-at-home mom to now a soccer mom. What does this mean for me? It means that on a rainy Saturday morning my kid has a game scheduled at dawn. Since it is raining I have to call the all important "rain-out hotline". I call for half an hour solid. I get a busy signal three hundred and twenty-four times so I turn to the internet after I get Noah resettled in his crib. Noah slept through the night for the first time last night so he was starving and was passed to me as Brian headed out for work - B's getting in a little overtime today. So, I have a starving baby that wants to eat and I need to know if this game is on or not but every suburbanite in the area is calling the same stupid number. The one single phone line with the say on how my day will go on this rainy, overcast Saturday is locked in a busy signal. Why is there only one rain-out hotline? WHY?!?!?!

I managed to quick-feed the baby and finally make it downstairs to check the website. You know what it says? "Call the rain-out hotline"!!! Forget it. I called the coach at dawn on a Saturday. I woke the man up. You know what he said? "Call the rain-out hotline".

As he read off the number for the hotline I'd been calling since the first bird was tweeting this morning I was thinking to myself that this stupid. "The game has been rained out by the way..." I mumbled a polite thank you and apologized for waking the guy up though he's the coach and was holding out on me. Who knows, maybe someone tried to call us as the first rays of sunlight were coming through the scattered rain clouds. But, I didn't get the call. You know why?!? I was calling the rain-out hotline like every other suburban mother in our city!

Now, I will be known as the mother that calls in the coach in the early AM. That's one step worse than the mother that calls after 10:00 pm and during dinnertime. That's even worse than the mother that forgets to bring the team's snack on her scheduled weekend. Crap, when is my weekend??? I bet the coach isn't back asleep yet. I'll just give him a quick call...

How did you spend your first hour and a half today?

Earthquake Tremors and Personal Ramblings

I woke up early this morning (4:37 AM to be exact) wondering how my house ended up on a railway. Our bedroom was shaking side to side and our bed was going along for the short ride. Brian and I looked at each other with our heads still on our pillows. Shock. "An earthquake," my husband stated and we bounced out of bed to scramble for the kids who amazingly enough stayed asleep. If I stand outside their bedroom doors and look at them they wake up. An earthquake shakes our entire house, and they snore away. Amazing.

Brian made better time escaping our bedroom than I did as I had to find my glasses so I'd have the ability to see and the ability to grab a child rather than a large stuffed animal - man, imagine making it outside to safety only to discover Sophia was actually a fuzzy Easter Bunny about her size. That would be devastating - and nearly impossible to do as anyone who has ever picked up Sophia knows. I got my glasses on, threw Noah under my arm and headed for the bedroom door after Brian to get the Easter Bunny, I mean, Sophia. The tremor stopped.

What would you do at 4:37 AM after experiencing an earthquake for the first time? The Weather Channel. We turned the TV on just in time for our local on the eights. Nothing earthquake related. Crap. Well, should we to get out of the house, and grab survival supplies on the way out? Or, sleep? Hey, the kids were still out - we would be stupid to waste an opportunity like that.

Before we hit the bed again, Brian searched online and learned about the quake miles away. A 5.4. Not too shabby for a first earthquake. Wouldn't mind it being my last. We faced each other on the bed. "We need some sort of plan, don't we?" I asked. "I'll get the boys, you get Noah and Sophia," Brian said with eyes already closed. "Yeah, and you grab the filing cabinet, too." I have my life neatly organized in that cabinet - my memory files filled with cards, drawings, keepsakes and lots and lots of papers I should toss but insist on keeping so I don't forget what the kids were like at age blah, blah, blah. I was only kidding about the cabinet for all you serious types reading this blog. Brian and I have a standing joke about emergencies no matter the situation: terrorist attack, fire, flood, earthquake or a midnight craving for ice cream. The plan is we'll grab the kids and the cabinet that weighs a million pounds. So simple and so perfect - unless of course, you are being tossed like a rag doll from the earth shaking. Hmmm, we need to improve this plan in some manner. But, again, the kids were sleeping and I was wasting precious time thinking when I could have been in restful bliss. Brian was already snoring.

Aftershocks came mid-morning. So surreal! It was one of those "Did that really just happen (again)?" moments. I watched the garage door rattle and saw the lights flicker - and it was done. I had just enough time to stand to my feet nearly dropping nursing Noah and tell the kids to "get up!, no sit on the couch, no...wait, it's over...sit down...where's the phone...?" Yeah, there is a reason I'm not a volunteer firefighter. I freak out mildly when my house shakes around me (AND when the kids choke momentarily on food they didn't chew properly and they make that "I'm choking" face with their mouth wide open and tongue sticking out and you know something really gross is about to come up in whole form, slightly chewed). Big houses shaking are scary. This is another good reason for living simple in a hut somewhere. A little grass and hardened mud never hurt anyone. But my ceiling falling in on me would cause a bit of pain I bet.

After the earthquakes, I spent the remainder of the day cleaning up poop. The kids have had yet another round of a gross virus this week. Jack had a fever this morning, Isaac is bouncing off the walls more than usual and Sophia has had her finger in her mouth nearly all day sucking away her upset tummy. We've flown through a full box - not a container, but a BOX - of wipes this week. How, oh how, did I survive before baby wipes? Expensive, yet so versatile. I see a bunny trail and I'm going to follow it...I really should get back to cloth diapering. With my overuse of baby wipes this week I made a discovery. I think I just may be allergic to something in our current brand of baby wipes. I've been testing different things to find what on earth I developed an allergy to after Noah was born. It would be a lot easier to go to a doctor, but who the heck has time for that?!?!? Maybe a switch back to cloth is in my near future. Or, maybe I'll make due with my swollen hands and occasional banana lip so I can avoid diaper pails and washing diapers.

Well, I'm rambling and Noah is very unhappy in the baby swing yelling "Bababababaaaaaah!" at anyone who makes eye contact with him so this post is over.

I will be posting about the older three kids in greater length soon, but for now, they are all just about the same...just taller and less baby chub on each of them. My babies are big kids now and life is so full...and really, really busy. Sometimes I feel like my head is spinning...or is that an earthquake?!?!?

She's Got Personality

My grandmother holding Mom as a toddler. I think that's Aunt Mildred behind them.

This weekend I found myself asking Mom about my grandmother. I wanted to know what her personality was like.

"She was a lot like me," Mom said as she showed me her latest sale finds now displayed in her China Hutch. "She wasn't very learned. She wasn't exposed to much (small town life)."

"So, she had common sense?" I asked, not knowing what a small town mother in her sort of home environment would be like from day to day.

"She knew how to survive. She wasn't giddy, maybe more serious."

Mom told me about life lessons her mother had passed on to her:

When my grandmother's eighteen year old sister died six weeks after having her baby girl, Vera, the dying girl's husband promised to never marry again. The young mother passed away leaving baby and husband. Vera was raised by my great-grandmother and her father moved to Kansas City but visited often. He stayed involved in his daughter's life and he remained alone for years and years. He eventually married when he was in his fifties, but he lived most of his life with that promise to never marry again. "Never make promises to someone who's dying," my grandmother said.

Because small towns are at times difficult places to live if you are poor and "live on the wrong side of the railroad tracks." Cruel words can be a heavy weight if you carry them. "Like water off a duck's back," is how to react to such words according to my grandmother. Let them slide right off. This is useful for any weight someone tries to place on you with their words or judgments. My mom has often asked me, "Lori, have you ever seen water on a duck's back?" And, I know she's telling me to just let it go. People say unkind things but we don't have to carry them. If we do, we'll drown in them. It is best to stay above them.

My Aunt Mildred, Mom's older sister, was a "scrappy" child and would often find herself in a fight of some sort. One day while Mildred sat at the end of the long table in Mom's childhood home my grandmother was trying to explain to her how to "say what you got to say, but with tact." Mom was observing Mildred talking over her mother not listening to the gem she was trying to pass along to her daughter. Mom was sitting on the step at the kitchen threshold taking in her mother's words though they were not directed at her. She's told me this story many times. Hmmm, mabye I need "tact" as well!?!?!

After gleaning these stories, Mom told me about her cousin that had seven or eight kids and a rather vocal mother-in-law who thought her grandchildren were unruly. In the MIL's opinion there were too many kids in the family. The family was Catholic and this cousin's view on family life was "you get married and you have children". Many people think Brian and I are Catholic with our turn around of children! Anyway, this cousin was fed up with all the comments about her many children and their behavior so she asked her MIL, "Just which kid do you think I should have never had?!?! Show me and I'll just knock them in the head now!" Mom heard this story from an aunt when she was a child. Years later when my sister was getting married an engagement announcement was put in the local paper. An elderly woman who lived in the area called Mom saying, "I think we're related!" Mom in the midst of the chaos in her own life at the time went to visit this older lady. While there she heard firsthand about her aunts from this cousin and was amazed when the woman said, "And, so I said, 'Just which kid do you think I should have never had!?!?! Show me and I'll knock them in the head now!...'" Mom had met the woman she heard about so many years before as a child. I told Mom next time we get an ugly response to our little crew of children I'll tryout this response.

So, it was getting really late as Mom and I were standing in front of the China Hutch talking. She said I was falling asleep standing up, but I was totally awake. Totally. I told her I wanted to write all these stories down. She said we wouldn't get to it. HA! There you go, Mom. I wrote it down.

The next morning I asked Mom whose personality I have. She said, "You have your own. You're just greatly influenced by your mother."

Family Update Part I - Noah

As promised a week or more ago - here's a start on an update on our little family:

Part I: Noah -

Our smallest guy is now crawling. Actually, it is more like hopping on his belly. He gets his knees under his tummy and then throws himself forward, usually planting his face right into the carpet. But, as unusual as his first crawl is, Noah is moving from toy to toy on the playroom floor without a problem...other than a mild carpet burn on his nose. I'm glad he's crawling - I think. He's been breaking out of all our bouncy seats for months now. He wiggles and twists backwards out of any sort of strap or buckle that keep less motivated babies safe and snug in their seats. Noah is all arms and hands these days. He reaches for and attempts to grab everything around him - from toys and clothes to Sophia's hair if she sits close enough to his exersauser. He's a talker with all sorts of sounds and very emotional squeaks and grunts. Keeping him quiet during the other kids' naps is nearly impossible unless he's eating. And even then he's figured out as of last week that he can make noises while eating. The kids love talking to Noah and getting such energetic responses from him. I love watching him explore and interact with the older kids but the best is when Brian gets home from work. Noah yells, squeals and reaches for Brian until his gets picked up and then once on Brian's shoulder he dives his head into the small of Brian's neck. I LOVE baby hugs! My most favorite thing with Noah at this age is having him grab my face. He laughs, smiles and kicks just over his new found ability to grab my nose. And kissing his chubby little neck to hear him laugh is another favorite. The boy is so ticklish it is unreal!
Noah's second tooth just poked through yesterday. The first came through on Good Friday, so it wasn't such a good Friday for him. He is a great baby all around. Happy as long as he's fed, has a clean diaper and snuggled a bit. He's six and a half months old and I can't believe half a year has already gone by since his arrival. The newborn phase really, REALLY does go by too quickly...but I'm enjoying my adventuresome, chubby baby just as much as that tiny newborn I had just yesterday.