The Sounds We Hear

They bound off the bus and over to me.  The boys still fall into me as I give them hugs and plant kisses on their tousled little boys heads.  When will that end?  I wonder when will they feel too big to hug me in front of their friends…

They run all the way home…can’t slow these boys down. 

I made brownies this afternoon…the boys cannot sit still while they eat them.  Wiggling.  Kicking their feet.  Bobbing their heads.  Giggling.  I don’t understand the need for constant motion.  But now and then I like it.  Right now, I like it. 

The house is quiet.  The normal sounds…

the washing machine…

the children playing football in the basement (even though they know they’re not allowed to)  Blue 42…

and someone crying because he was playing football in the basement (even though he’s not allowed to) and ran into a wall…

Ella, taking out all of our cups and spoons for tea…

footsteps thumping up and down the stairs and through the house on hardwood floors that echo more than I ever would have imagined possible…

Ella screeching because someone took away the DS (that she’s not allowed to play with)…

little boy whispers about spying…

and complaints from little girls about little boys who are spying on them…

and laughter.  There is a lot of laughter, too. 

Those normal sounds are hushed. 

I hear instead the dreams of a little boy.  Remember when we dreamed of what we would be? 

William says

Hey Mom…  This is what I’m going to do.  I’m going to retire from football when I’m 38 and then I’m gonna be a secret agent.

Then he slips on his secret agent sunglasses (which remind me strangely of a pair that I had when I was about 15), gives me a hug, and sits down to do his homework. 

So I write, while he writes.  And I answer questions like “Hey Mom, how do you spell nocturnal?”

I hear Henry in the basement playing with his friend.  Ella sleeps upstairs.  And Kate is at Art class. 

This is just how I thought it would be–motherhood.

My life.

Monday

Well, it was a weekend full of yuck.  I felt miserable.  Luckily The Man came home early on Friday to help me make his birthday dinner.  I started on the dessert and realized that there was no way it was going to be ready to eat with our supper–it had to chill for 4 hours after cooling to room temp (which took three hours).  So we had brownie sundaes instead, and told ourselves we would eat the pumpkin cheesecake with gingersnap crust for breakfast on Saturday.  Which we did.

Then Ella threw up because I gave her a bite of shrimp and I forgot that I think she’s allergic to shrimp because she always throws up when she eats it.  Brilliant deduction, right?  So we were both up half the night with vomit and vomity laundry. 

Saturday morning the weather was gorgeous.  I went to Henry’s t-ball game (picture to follow), and felt gross.  It actually took my mind off of being sick for an hour though, watching Henry instruct each of his teammates to throw the ball to him if they got it, so that he could get an out.  He’s nothing if not confident.  Good for him.

I came home, ate some lunch and put Ella down for a nap.  Then I watched the Hokies online because the game wasn’t televised.  They won.  It wasn’t the best performance.  But they won. 

Then I took Kate to a party where they did her hair all cute and funky with twists and braids and sparkles.  And there was some blue eyeshadow involved.  A little thick, imho, but it was cute for a little girl playing dress-up.  I was exhausted.  While the party was going on, I did a little shopping.  And I coughed a lot.

Sunday morning I felt gross.  Or gross-er if that is possible.  I did some laundry, made a grocery list, hung a fall wreath and took a nap.  (It wasn’t really a nap.  It was more like rest.  And it wasn’t even very rest-y.  Because I couldn’t breathe.)

Then I went grocery shopping.  That was un-fun.  I have to do it, though, because I’m a freak about the food we buy, and I get annoyed when The Man shops because he gets the wrong stuff.  I make life so easy for myself, don’t I?

Then I came home and did more laundry and read books with Ella while The Man made supper.  We ate, showered the kids, read more books and tucked them in bed. 

I searched for about an hour on this computer for a folder of pictures that is apparently gone.  (Did I mention that I have a new computer?  Yeah.  I have a new computer.  The other one croaked.)  I read blogs and went to sleep.  

Today, I woke up with a headache.  I’m tired.  I don’t feel well.  And I have a full week of stuff to do, not the least of which is restoring a bunch of accounting programs.  Which I have been putting off because I dread it.

Before school, William argued with me about wearing a coat.  It is 52 degrees.  I said wear a sweatshirt or a light jacket.  He couldn’t find his sweatshirt.  So he had to wear a jacket.  (I guess that is another instance of how I ruin all the fun around here for him).  This was like a repeat performance of Friday morning.  Only this time I kept it together and hugged him and told him I loved him and completely ignored his anger.

Then I got home from the bus stop, and the first thing I notice is Kate’s homework folder that she was supposed to bring to school.  And I think very briefly about bringing it up to the school for her.  But then I decide that she has to take responsibility for her work.  And it makes me almost cry because she is typically so responsible.  And I think she left it out for me to sign so it’s half my fault.  But she should have completed it before this morning, 5 minutes before we’re supposed to leave. 

Now I’m sitting here, and the reality of it being laundry day creeps in and I know I have a lot of laundry to do.  The washing, the drying, the folding.  The piles of laundry everywhere.  I am swimming in the every-day mundane tasks of motherhood.  Normally, I feel joy in the mundane.  But today, it just feels overwhelming. 

Ella is beside me.  I watch her squeeze her bagel and make a complete mess of the cream cheese and think she is just the most precious thing in the entire world.  And my.heart.leaps.  Wow.  I am lucky to be her mother. 

And then Henry asks me if I want to see his muscles.  How glad I am that I am a mother of boys. 

That was what I needed.  A God-sighting.  Right there.

What Part of “It’s time to sleep” Don’t You Understand?

Just in case I ever forget what bedtime is like with a two-year-old, I compiled this lovely list of things Ella likes to do (in lieu of sleeping) at bedtime.   

Talk to Yow, the cat formerly known as Jellycat.

Rifle through her drawers for her Hokie shirt.

Get naked.

Try to get the Hokie shirt on.  Which she cannot do without getting an arm stuck in some wierd position.  Which leads to panic and shrieking. 

Poop.  (Could she not take care of this personal stuff 10 minutes before I leave the room?)

Take the cushions off the rocker and ottoman.

Lay on the floor and peek underneath the door.

Bang on the door.

Open the shutters.

Close the shutters.

Open the shutters.

Slam the shutters closed three times real fast.

Dismember her Madame Alexander dolls.  This is mildly disturbing.

Pull 50 baby wipes out of the brand new package. 

Tear each and every book she owns to shreds.  She is stealthy.  You can’t hear a thing until it’s too late.

Anything other than sleep.

Actually, it rather amuses me, these things she does.  Except for the book ripping.  Totally not amused by that.  At all. 

Oh Ella.  I’m going to miss you when you’re big.  Truly.

Tickled

Kate, after her first day of school.  Just tickled to be back. 

And yes, I realize I’m 15 days late here.  Whatever.

For more WW photos, go here.

Bedtime

We set up the toddler bed this weekend.  I’m not sure how I feel about that.  The Man kind of took the ball and ran with the idea, and I pretty much stood there, like in one of those dreams where you’re trying to run, but your legs won’t move.  Knowing it is the right thing, but knowing what it means…the baby is gone.  The last baby is gone. 

(Of course the last time I thought that, I gave all the baby stuff away and promptly became pregnant.) 

But really this time, the last baby is gone.  Really.

So we have a toddler bed now.  And bedtime with Ella?  It’s always interesting. 

We read books together.

We snuggle.

We sing.

We kiss.  And kiss.  And kiss.

And then I say good night, and close the door.

After a couple minutes, the door handle rattles…she tries to open her door.  It’s late.  I’m exhausted.

So now, admittedly a teensy bit annoyed at her blatant disregard for the stay-in-your-bed rule, I open her door intent on plopping her right back in bed. 

I see her dolls–all of them nude and lined up on the chair. 

Her socks lay in a crumpled mess on the floor.  As does her diaper.  And her jammies. 

And then I see her, behind the door.  Completely naked. 

“Ello” she says, and then she bursts through the door and streaks down the hall, laughing and screeching and smacking her buns. 

Our laughter does nothing to discourage her, I’m sure.

I pick her up, and scold her gently for getting out of her bed.  I put on her ladybug jammies and the Hokie jersey that she simply insists on wearing to bed tonight (I can’t say I blame her–did you see that come-from-behind win against Nebraska?).  And some striped socks.  She’s two.  She has some very definite opinions on fashion.  And they’re questionable, imho.  But whatever, it looks cute on two. 

She settles into my shoulder, and we stand there, rocking back and forth.  Moments like these are fleeting, I know.

“It’s time to sleep now, Ella”  I tell her.

“Oh” she says. 

“No more getting out of bed.”

“Oh.”

“Ella, you’re my baby.” 

“Oh.”

“You’ll always be my baby.”

“Oh.”

“I love you, Ella.”

“Oh.”

 Good night baby girl.

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Sunshine, Sandcastles, Ice Cream, Laughter

It was a ten hour drive to the beach.   A Ten.Hour.Drive. 

That was sucky. 

And as we entered the Outer Banks, mother nature blessed us with a downpour.  Wind.  Torrential rains.  

So to recap:  trapped in car for ten hours;  rain. 

Then we arrived at the house.  We let the kids run around for an hour and then tucked them snuggly in their beds.  Luckily, we brought the pack-n-play for Ella, because the crib that was supplied was not assembled.  Isn’t that useful?  So I layed Ella in the pack-n-play, and closed the door.  Fifteen seconds later I could hear her screaming at the door.  Because she just climbed right on out of that pack-n-play.  The pack-n-play was also, clearly, very useful.   

So she slept in the bed with me that night.  And to be honest, I’m rather thankful for that crib being disassembled that night.  Sleeping with that little redheaded cherub by my side was not really restful.  But lying there watching her sleep and feeling her curled up next to me was nothing short of wonderful.   

I awoke to the sound of that little girl, two inches from my face, saying “Mommy.  Hi.”  She makes my heart come all undone…      

Then The Man put the crib together. 

And it rained some more.  And was cloudy.

But on the third day, the clouds parted and the sun fell on our faces and warmed the sand.  We did very little but play all day.  And eat ice cream.  All week. 

(Look at his round belly…he’s just all sorts of cute…)

This week was sun-bleached hair, freckles, pink shoulders and pink cheeks. 

And sandy little feet.     

And building sandcastles. (Which William takes very.very.seriously.  Don’t mess with his castles). 

We collected shells.  We chased sandpipers.

 

We played in the surf.

 

We laughed. 

(There may have been a couple tiny little tantrums.  Or something.  But whatever.)

Four little children, drawn to the swirls of foamy surf.  Squealing with delight and fear and anticipation of the sea, crashing on their little feet.    

This past week at the shore reminded me what childhood should consist of…sunshine, sandcastles, ice cream, laughter.  

It was lovely.

____________________________________________________

The Sprinkler

 

Summer. 

For more Wordless Wednesday photos, click here.

The Thesaurus Is Not Terribly Useful.

So yesterday was s.t.i.n.k.o. pretty much.  I think it started off with the coffee. 

We’re out of cream, so I had to drink it black.  Which I can do, but I don’t prefer it.  In fact, I don’t really like it at all unless it’s paired with a bowl of ice cream.  Or chocolate.  But I’ll drink it just to avoid the certain headache that I will get if I don’t drink it.  (And yes, I know I’m an addict.  Leave it.)  Now that Ella drinks skim milk along with the rest of us, I can’t even use whole milk as a back-up to cream.  And I ate all the ice cream, so there’s none of that, either.  (Once I used cool whip as a substitute for cream…not good, just fyi.  I do not believe there is anything dairy about cool whip.  ((Which would explain the “nondairy topping” label I guess.))  Anyway, the cool whip melted into an oily looking substance which floated atop my coffee.  So instead of black coffee, I had black coffee with oil.  Which imho is decidedly worse than just plain ol’ black coffee.  So I won’t be doing that again.) 

After the bad coffee, we did a science experiment where I was an idiot and took a piping hot glass out of the dishwasher and put ice into it and actually said (yes I did) “I hope it doesn’t crack.”  And then it cracked.  So I said “wow kids, look at that, bla bla bla.”  I taught them all about how to crack a glass.  Enriching their lives, that’s what I do.

And then one of the children, who shall remain nameless, was a complete pill for pretty much the entire afternoon.  The source of frustration?  A duplo lego window.  After several hours of fretting over this duplo (I do not even want to elaborate on the ridiculous nature of the problem) we tried to sit and do some enrichment activities.  I told you, I am all about the enriching.   

Anyway, for one of the activities, we were working with colors.  Two colors to be specific, garnet and fuchsia.  Which incidentally, fuchsia was misspelled as fuchisa.  (I find it ironic that “enrichment activities” sent home from school for summertime fun would have misspellings in them.  But anyway…)  Fuchisa was humorous.  For the rest of the activity, I called it fuchisa (foocheezuh).  And Kate thought I was just terribly funny.  But the other, aforementioned child did not.  Moving right along…)

So the aforementioned child didn’t know what garnet and fuchisa were, and I wanted him to figure that out–I didn’t want to give him the answer.  So being the very clever person that I am, I decided to teach them how to look a word up in the thesaurus.  Oh yes, Roget’s thesaurus!  I love the thesaurus, seriously.  I use it nearly daily, to be honest.  (I’m actually not kidding).  So anyway, we couldn’t find garnet in the thesaurus, so I figured we would try fuchisa.  So I go to the index.  And I’m looking up fuchsia…and I get to the fu words and lo and behold what do we have but no fuchsia. 

Let me tell you what they DO have, in lieu of fuchsia.  They have “f*ck.”  They have “a f*ck.”  They have “f*cked up.”  They have “f*ck off.”  They have gathered together what seems to be every single variation and expression you could come up with that includes the f dash dash dash word for our reading pleasure.  (Really Roget?  Seriously?) 

I tried to strategically place my hand over the queen mother of all cuss words, but Kate was standing there with her nose about three inches from the page all engrossed in how you look up a word (she is so much like me) and I couldn’t cover them all and I quick closed the book and said “well this thesaurus is useless.”  And that was pretty much a big fat “F” in the Good Mom Department for me.

Then Ella woke up screaming which is always fun.  So I drank some wine.

The end.

Pretty Stories

Henry set the table on the patio that evening with an assortment of placemats and mismatched napkins.  I liked it that way…nothing matching…and little seashell napkin rings.  The six of us crowded around that table, enjoying the grilled steaks, and shrimp cocktails, and corn on the cob and tomato-basil salad.  And then we had rootbeer floats in those fancy soda fountain glasses. 

I looked around at one point, and thought what a pretty story it was…the six of us, together, on the patio on Father’s Day.  The sunshine was warm.  There was a breeze ruffling the leaves in the trees.  It was like one of those snapshots in your mind…how you think your life will be but rarely ever is.  Peaceful.  Happy.  Pretty.

The Man and I put the kids in bed that night, and then sat on the front porch with a glass of wine.  We watched the fireflies.  We listened to the crickets.  (We came inside when someone began blasting the crazy indian music.)  ((Not that I have anything against crazy indian music, per se, but it doesn’t really go with the crickety-firefly kind of evening we were having.))

We went to bed feeling like the day had been a really good one.   A really pretty one. 

And then the barf started.  (Do you see what I mean when I say it always comes back to the barf?)

It was the two year old this time.  (Their aim with the barf is real bad.)  ((Actually, they have no aim.  It just bursts forth.))  So I cleaned her up, The Man changed her sheets and I rocked with her for a while, then put her back in her bed, where without delay, she barfed.  Again.

So I bathed her while The Man changed her sheets again.  And I rocked with her again. 

We sat there in that rocking chair with the sour smell of barf still lingering in the room.  Her soft ringlets fell on my neck as her head rested against my temple.  I could feel her breath on my cheek and her tiny little body curl up into mine, just the way she had done when she was an infant.  Me and Ella, there in the small hours of the night. 

And right then, in the midst of all that ugly barf, I remembered how pretty my life is. 

“our lives are made
in these small hours
these little wonders,
these twists & turns of fate
time falls away,
but these small hours,
these small hours still remain” — Rob Thomas

Just a Bunch More of Nothing

I should really start a Miscellaneous carnival.  Because I seem to have a lot of miscellaneous things to share.  Things that, on their own, cannot make a story, but taken together can be rather entertaining.

I’ll do that later.  In the meantime, you might not want to hold your breath.

Moving right along…

1.  Onna at toddlercraft has inspired me to make these with the kids.  They all LOVE painting, and I love this kind of craft.  We’ll put them in the butterfly garden.  (The one that I still haven’t planted yet.  I’m going to do that later, too.)  Thank you Onna!

2.  Molly at The Bumbles Blog honored me with the Splash Award.   Because I allure, bemuse, bewitch, impress and inspire them.  And what do you know, it had to do with a booger.  And a black booger at that.  Thank you, Bumbles!

 

3.  V-8.  Spiced up with a little tabasco and a heavy coating of pepper.  I always feel healthy when I partake of the V-8.  So I bought a bottle the other week. 

Guess how many glasses of that bottle I drank?  Zero.  The Man drank the entire thing.  So the next time I went for groceries I bought two bottles. 

Guess how many glasses I got this time?  One.  O.N.E.  One.  When I need the V-8, I need the V-8.  And not only is he hogging all the V-8, but do you know what he pairs it with?  Cinnamon oatmeal squares.  Or today, pumpkin-chocolate bread.  Isn’t that just wrong?  

4.  Max and Ruby.  Where is the mom?  Is Ruby the mom?  Ruby appears to be the sister, but then where is the mom?  I thought maybe Ruby was a teenager, and therefore old enough to care for a toddler, but she’s in the bunny scouts.  And “bunny scouts” doesn’t sound too teenagerish. 

5.  This right here, I just don’t even know what to say.  Other than perhaps we have exposed the children to too much American Idol. 

You can’t read the caption at the bottom, so let me just fill you in.  It reads: “I fell in to a burning ring of fire.” 

Right-e-o. 

Please note the thought cloud of the poor soul on his way down into the burning ring of fire.  And also the words his associates speak – ”See you later!” and “bye bye!”  And I’m not sure, but it appears that as he is spiralling to his fiery death, the other two are flying around on trapeses, without a care in the world.  

I’m not sure whether to laugh hysterically or be concerned…

6.  I’m feeling the kids slip away a little. 

I watched Henry sleep the other night, and I realized that in one month preschool will be over.  Forever. 

And I don’t really remember it.  I don’t know where all that time went.  

I’m afraid I’ve missed some of the best times with him. 

And that really, really hurts my heart.