They Put Salt in My Chocolate Pudding and Other Odd Conversations

On Monday last week I didn't have anything schedule. I shouldn't have said anything about the fact that we didn't have ANY appointments for the whole week because the Universe found some appointments for me at my least favorite place to go. The doctor. Four times in a row.

I read this article about how adults see things and how kids see things. For instance: we see a nice, friendly looking doctor. 

Our kids see: 

On Tuesday, Joshua starts to feel under the weather. I think, oh, it's allergies. I treat him with some essential oils. He gets worse as the day goes on. That night he was so out of it, he was sitting up in bed, asleep, and coughing and his fever is rising. I give him some Tylenol and some cough syrup, treat him with some oils again and he goes back to sleep. Wednesday rolls around and he's complaining of his throat, so I take him in to see the doctor. Strep throat. They prescribe some Zithromax and we go on our way. 

Thursday morning Joshua was feeling a lot better and so he was playing in the backyard. He comes in and he looks like he had mosquito bites under his eyes. He is still kind of coughing, but not bad. I gave him some more Benedryl and the bites/hives go away. Later that day we were running some errands, including taking Simeon to the doctor because he had Strep Throat too. I happen to look over at Joshua as we were finishing another errand and his eyes are swelling and he's coughing and wheezing. Instantly, that mother's intuition kicks in...something is very wrong. 

We rush to the Emergency Room. By now his eyes are swelling shut and he was wheezing even more. Everyone agrees it is an allergic reaction to Zithromax and so they call for an epinephrine shot, Benedryl and something for his stomach since he started complaining his stomach hurt. I haven't had much luck getting my kids to swallow pills until about the age of 7-8. Josh is just 5, but they thought he would be able to swallow these pills with a Sprite. It wasn't going to happen, so the nurse thought she would hide the crushed up pill in chocolate pudding, serve it up and let him drink Sprite right after. This completely backfired. With his throat still raw and sore from the Strep, the soda burned, the pudding was bitter, and mixed together they fizzed up. Joshua gagged, all of it came back up and out, down his front, and all over the blanket they gave him. They tried again, managed to get it down this time and then rolled him over for the shot in the rear. Poor Joshua! I could see why he did not see them as the friendly medical staff and saw them as executioners. The shot did work and the swelling in his throat started to go down and he stopped coughing so much. By bedtime the hives that were covering his entire body were mostly gone. Sick and disgruntled, he complained to Curtis when we got home, "I got a shot. They put salt in my pudding!! I'm never eating pudding again!" 

On Friday we had a follow up appointment for Joshua who seemed to be doing just fine with the Zithromax out of his system. Again he complained to the doctor about salt in his pudding and getting a shot, and looking at this doctor with eyes of suspicion making sure she didn't have any needles before she came near him. 

This got me thinking about some of the other things my kids observe or try to communicate back to me.

Dill on the green beans is met with, "Why is there grass all over the food?". Bumps in the road that make the van rattle are met with, "Mom! Mom! The van is out of gas!". 

Yesterday I found a stuffed penguin on my closet shelf. Simeon has such a collection now that I figured the other kids hid one from him and here I had found it. Simeon walks in, I had him the penguin and he asks, "Who's is this?" I looked at him for a moment, then replied, "It's your's. You got it for your birthday." He replied, "I did?! Wow!! He's so cute!". Then I got confused. Surely he's seen this penguin before. He knows them all and he can usually keep track of them. Why was he so excited about this one? ....Think..........think..........doh!!!! He hasn't seen this penguin before because it was for his birthday which is NEXT week!!! Happy Birthday Simeon! Enjoy that penguin I was trying to hide for another week from you. FAIL on Mom's part. 

One day we left the house and Isaac and Jesse and I started in on a conversation about our homeschool topic of the week: Indian tribes. I asked and answered questions, and then out of the blue, Jesse says, "Yeah, like how cannon balls eat their babies." What? You could have heard a pin drop. We had no idea what he was talking about. After a few minutes of questioning and describing, I figured out he was talking about cannibals, and then quickly corrected him that I didn't think they at their own babies. At least, I hope not. I hope cannibals don't eat other babies. Why are there cannibals? 

Then tonight. Isaac is not a very good speller and he tries to use the spell check when he's typing, but that still sometimes throws some things at him that he just can't quite get. I get on Facebook and I'm scrolling down through the new posts of the day and here is one from Isaac. "I wish I could play sports. I don't like doing nothing. Incest on Wednesdays." WHAT!??! I scroll down some more. I see he put "Eye exam today." I try to figure out what he was trying to say..."instead of Wednesday eye exams?"...."except for activities on Wednesdays?".....But all I could see was the word incest and then, "Oh my gosh...who else read this?!" I go get him and have him translate for me. Exasperated he says, "I wish I could play sports except (not incest) for when I have Scouts on Wednesdays." Thank you, Autocorrect, or Auto Suggestion. How do you get incest out of except? I deleted the comment and just left his comment for the day about an eye exam. Then I had to explain what incest meant after our discussion. After he thought about it for a few minutes he comes back and asks me, "Why would anyone commit incest? That sounds really gross." 

Sometimes, I feel like everything is a mine field. You just can't say anything without there always being a second (often times offensive) meaning. Is it necessary he know what that is? I mean, we are studying a time period in which it was common for relatives to marry relatives to keep the royal hierarchy going, and we did study some genetic diseases that come from relatives having children with other relatives so it wasn't an unfamiliar definition, just I hadn't used that word before. Why do we have to have so many words in the English vocabulary?  We have one word to describe Love, and yet there are so many different meanings for love. Other languages have different words for different kinds of love. I could say, "I love chocolate" and "I love my son" and it has the same meaning, essentially. Trying to teach the English language to our kids is even more confusing what with the synonyms and acronyms and homophones. No wonder Isaac has problems keeping it all straight. Anyway, the crisis was averted and we have all moved on. 

I still find it funny to listen to my kids talk. Three of them have speech delays so it is funny to me to listen to them as they figure stuff out. All last summer Ammon pronounced "frog" as "fock". Sometimes it sounded a little more off and came out as the f-word, to which we would all gasp and try to correct as quickly as possible. He would just give us this look like, "What's your problem? I was just talking about this frog!" Of all the words Ammon picked up on, dead was one of his favorites. If the cat was sleeping, "Kitty dead?" or if something fell over he'd ask if it was dead. 

So, that's my life lately: laughing at my kids over some of the conversations we have, trying to follow Simeon in one of his many tirades on penguins, dinosaur eggs or things he is mimicking off of TV, and calming children down when there are no words in their vocabulary to describe what they are seeing. It really makes it difficult to talk to someone with a normal vocabulary later because I'm almost always asking, "What? Could you say that again?", because it's not in kid-speak. 

Writing is Like Visiting with Your Girlfriend

I’ve had some writer’s block of sorts and I recently realized why. I have been changing my life so much in the last six months for the good. I’ve identified so many old negative patterns and personality traits that all of a sudden I didn’t know what to write about anymore. Many times I would have somewhat slightly negative topics to put down on paper and somehow I would turn it to a positive, but still I felt that the negative thought or problem in my life was necessary to be inspired for writing to begin with. Why? I really couldn’t tell you, but now realizing what this core belief is enough to switch it around to the positive.

I think part of this past hesitancy to write all flowery, positive things is my aversion to seeing blogs or articles that only talk about positives portraying that their lives are seemingly perfect with absolutely no problems whatsoever. My life is anything but perfect, but I’ve really switched my focus to all the positive things that do grace my life and that include the blessings. I have my fair share of frustrations, but dwelling on them enough to write about them only leaves me feeling more negative and many times without a solution.

I see now that in this modern techno world we live in not writing for a time is like not showing up to your girlfriend’s house for an afternoon of visiting. Online writing is the way the majority of us communicate today. In the last few month of introspection I’ve emerged renewed and ready to get back in the game- the writing, friendship-making, social networking game.

I’ve recently gone to a few fellow mommies blog’s to see that they too have been remiss in writing frequently. I miss them. Are they okay?

Last month, while in a self-education class, the lecturer was encouraging blog writing. Another student brought up he had read about three mandatory S’s for all successful blogs. He wanted to discuss them as he is not currently a blogger and wanted some feedback. After some debate and discussion we came up with three S’s of our own. They are: Substance, Spirit, and Structure. It’s not the quantity of the writing so much as the quality. I try not to write until I’m feeling some spark of interest or passion stirring within me, otherwise it’s just a lackluster article or post. A good structure to a blog or site is essential to avoid confusion. There is a lot of verbal vomit on the web because everyone today has a voice, but more importantly there is also so much valuable wisdom and ideas to improve your life or inspire greatness within you. It’s time for another reevaluation on my part to be sure that that is what I’m offering you. Most people don’t want to waste their time reading things that will not help them in some way.

It is passion that moves us. What boils down to my quietness then is a lack of passion in writing. Whatever the reason it began I’ve emerged more centered, more experienced in life, and most importantly I’m ready to share and learn from you, dear reader. After all, it is you that I write for. Thank you for following!

Tell me what you think....leave some comment LUV <3

The No Good Very Bad Day

This was one of my favorite books as a kid. As the picture implies, I should have never left my bed yesterday.  It was one of those days that you just ask, "Why?!". As a kid I romanticized my adult life. There wouldn't be these bad days that occur that make you want to run away or question your fertility. It was all going to be lace curtains and peaches, us living in our pristine house with our pristine children, days just filled with beautiful moments and smiles. No one told me that those days occurred maybe 10 days a year, and yesterday was NOT one of those days. 

My day started out waking up from a dream. In it, I was approached by a friend that was trim and fit and told me about this great diet and exercise program he joined. Then he served me baby animal meats, insisting they were the key to the weight loss. After quickly processing the amount of money of these meats in my head, and the fact that I just can't bring myself to eat veal and lamb, I declined the "diet", but woke up motivated to do something, anything, for exercise. This was an obsessive thought I couldn't get out of my head. I even went so far as to tell Curtis to take pictures of me before I started on this exercise routine. For the record, these are pictures that the public will NEVER see. I threw on my old maternity sweats ('cuz they are all I have in the way of exercising clothes...not that I exercised while I was pregnant), a t-shirt, and searched out the P90X program Curtis had downloaded to our computer. 

Looks legit, right? Well, after killing myself with multiple sets of push ups and chin ups (that I did with a weak rubber band), I lost use of my arms. I couldn't hold a phone without shaking from exertion. My shoulders were killing me. My knees had rug burns from doing modified push ups (that I once swore I would never do after pridefully finishing Basic Training). I couldn't even lift my arms to wash my hair. 

Which brings me to my next point. While I was painfully taking a 7 minute shower, my three year old was raiding my closet. He found great enjoyment in pulling down most of my clothes. This wasn't just letting them slip off the hanger. No. He was hanging on the shirts until the hanger snapped and the clothes ripped through hanger and came down with it. As I picked up my clothes to rehang them, I found one of my favorite shirts (ok, so what if it was 13 years old and a little out of shape?), impaled with a hanger through the shoulder. Destroyed. Ruined. Never to be worn again. On the bright side, it was one less shirt I had to hang up, seeing how it wasn't without excruciating pain hanging up each shirt. 

I yelled at the kids about how not to disrespect other people's property. I yelled about the state of our house, which can never seem to stay clean longer than 30 minutes. I yelled about poop in the bathroom and poop on the baby. I yelled about how it seems everyone just lives in their own little world without regard for others, or their feelings. And then I sat down and cried. Cried over my shirt, over having to change the 4th poopy diaper that day, over my room being stinky from the diaper, over the pain in my now useless arms, and over having autistic children that I assumed because they are 12, 8, 6 or 3 should be acting like 12, 8, 6 or 3 year olds. In a moment of great maturity for him, Isaac, with a broken hand, did the dishes, cleaned up the upstairs, and then came and gave me a hug. Which started more crying for me. Then he reminded we had a doctor appointment for his hand. In two hours. 

We struggled to get everyone out of the house. Shoes were missing, socks had vanished, clothes were mismatched. Ammon continued to scream over everything and anything. This was fantastic; I already knew how the appointment was going to go. Somehow we showed up 30 minutes early for the appointment. I turned around an looked at my 6 children taking over the waiting room. They have a turtle aquarium and a Lego play area. Oh no, I think, the Legos. This is going to be a fight. 

Ammon finds a little Lego wagon and fills it up with about 10 Legos, and pulls them over to show me. He toddles back, seemingly in a really good mood. The other boys have encircled the Lego table that sports three individual sections, and a bucket that drops down in the center of the table for extra Legos. Ammon decides he needs ALL those Legos. He didn't touch any that were on the three stations, but the ones in the center was his and he was not going to be happy until his wagon was heaped. Complaints start coming in from the other kids. I try to reason with Ammon. I try to split them. I try to convince him he has enough in his wagon for a wonderful creation. No. Nooo. NOOO! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! And the screaming commences after that. I pick him up, carry him to the receptionist desk to try to tell her I will be right out front until he settles down. She can't hear me because of the screaming. No one else in the office can hear. I use hand gestures to tell her where I will be, muffle Ammon's cry into my very sore shoulder, and lug him outside. 

We sit there for about 10 minutes until he gets himself under control. While I was trying to tune out the screaming, I note how perfect it feels outside. How perfect the mountains look. How beautiful all the flowers are. Then I look back to my screaming, tear stained, red faced child. I try to take pity on him by rubbing his back and am met with a punch than lands on my arm. OWWW!! I feel like crying again. 

Finally, he stops and we go back in the office. I open the door and hear Joshua now screaming. Someone  hit him in the eye. When everyone is quiet, I notice I'm now surrounded by all six of my kids in a little kiddie waiting area. Even when things are so bad that we want to all run away from each other, somehow they all gravitate towards me. I purposely avoid any eye contact with other patients in the waiting room. I sit in a kiddie chair, scrunched down behind the wall. "Please", I pray, "Please let this go fast." Then I text an SOS message to Curtis. Mostly to vent, half hoping he would be my knight in shining armor and arrive before the end of this appointment so I don't look like the lunatic with the 6 kids in the waiting room. 

I get called back to see the PA that was treating Isaac. She looks at me and smiles. She shakes my hand. She sympathizes. "I hate going to the doctor when I have all my kids too". She said this as 3 of my kids rotate in and out of the room and Ammon stands like glue next to my leg with his flushed face and death grip on the Lego wagon heaped with Legos. When we finally left the building, my kids charged across the empty parking lot like a pack of ravenous wolves. And I lugged Ammon, who had started screaming again that he needed the Legos and wagon to live at home with him. 

By the time Curtis was able to leave, it was too late for him to come to the rescue at the doctor. Curtis and I got home at the same time. Dinner was served to the kids that they didn't eat. Clothes were changed and socks found that they didn't want to wear. We piled in the van again. It was date night...for the first time in 6 months, Curtis and I were going on a date and the kids were going to be with a sitter. 

One slight problem: it was Cinco de Mayo, and traffic was insane. Of the three hours we had for date night, 1 hour was spent just trying to drive 15 miles. Dinner was good and we decided to go to Thanksgiving Point to see the tulip festival. Half way there we both come down with a headache...mine reaching migraine status. I didn't care. We WERE going to do this date. I was not going to give up. So what if I can't move my arms or carry a set of car keys, I was going to see the flowers! 

The park is lovely, and it is sunset, my favorite time of day. Curtis snaps pictures while I walk. I thought we should have been having some kind of deep, meaningful conversation, but I can't form any logical thoughts. My brain is fried. My body is tired. My spirit feels defeated. The headache grows worse. Too soon its time to go and pick up the kids. 

When the kids fell into bed exhausted and done for the day by 9:30, it was like we were in the Twilight Zone. They hadn't gone down for us so easily in weeks. Maybe it was angels helping me out. Maybe it was God recognizing a weary mother close to running away from home that needed just a few minutes of ease. Whatever it was, it was needed. While I woke up with the same pesky migraine, the kids were good today. Ammon screamed most of the morning, but went down for a nap this afternoon. The other kids have obediently did chores, watched out for each other, patiently taken turns on computers and did their schoolwork, and generally been quiet. For today, I don't quite feel like the mother ready to plead insanity. For today, my kids are beautiful, helpful kids. For today, I had a good laugh with my husband and my own mother. 

Maybe its after days like this that the saying, "Take one day at a time" was said. 

Saturday Night in the Parlor

When I was at my grandma's house one afternoon, she handed me a book. Steven Caney's Kid's America. I think this came out in the 70's, but it wasn't until I was about 10 when I finally realized the real gem this book was. It was a sort of all around activity book for kids. Recipes, tent making out of newspaper rolls, dress up, how to write Valentine's, how to dance (tap dancing, the waltz...not that those helped me when I got to go to my first dance), things to do on a boring summer afternoon. My dad also used this book and together I remember making potato chips and the best ever pretzels. I would still be making those pretzels if I could eat them. 

My favorite was the Saturday Night section. These were considered "Parlor Games", and they entertained us for several slumber parties...even late evenings spent in the company of good friends as adults. They had some lame ghost stories in it that when we were younger were just terrified of reading. The authors labeled them as scary, a little more scary and scariest. They made for some good Halloween stories on the nights it rained. The most interesting to me was the palm reading. This was my first introduction to the mysteries of astrology. 

Did you know that they taught astrology in medical school in medieval days? They firmly believed that since Sagittarius' ruled the legs, obviously people born in that zodiac sign would have problems with their legs. Or that Pisces would have problems with their immune system. Leo's rule the heart...gives new meaning to Lionheart, doesn't it? It is probably not very far from the truth, using our zodiac signs to diagnose us, if you look at how our emotions can also affect us physically. 

I once told my supervising officer in the military I was going to get out of the Air Force and set up a corner shop reading hands. I deadpanned it so well she actually believed me. It was always just a hobby for me, but it also helped me to understand some of the reasons people acted the way they did. It kind of took the blame off of some of their actions to say, "Oh yeah. She's just ambitious because she's a Capricorn".  I know that astrology can get into the crazy stuff, like Tarot cards (scare me), Numerology, and even the Feng Shui stuff can get a little weird too. After pouring over the Kid's America version of palmistry for so many years, I still can read things about people's hands that are often true for them. I don't think any of my friends, including some boyfriends, got away without getting their palms read. 

I moved onto reading handwriting after that. If your o's are open, you can't keep a secret. Do you close your o's? Small writing shows an analytical mind, reserved and likes to attend to details. Large handwriting indicates adventurousness, generosity and sociability, but it can also mean that person is arrogant and temperamental. Conformist and adapting to situations is reserved for medium handwriting. I  always sat up a little straighter when watching true crime shows and they brought in a handwriting expert. It's been awhile since I analyzed my own writing as an adult. Letters within a word that are written close together indicate a critical, economical, introverted and cautious personality. That's me! I clip coupons, I don't speak up often and I question people before I touch something they are offering. 

I never put much stock in the zodiac signs, Chinese calendar signs, or in the whole crystal ball thing. It was to me a purely "Saturday Night Parlor Game". Every now and then I would run across a horoscope that was interesting, like the month and year my son, Jesse, was born, it said he was preparing to greet family and friends with love. My daughter is a horse in the Chinese Zodiac. They say "horses" are very beautiful, and most people I meet in that sign are beautiful. 

When I got into Feng Shui it was more common sense to me. Who doesn't want to live in a cleaned up room, or have some organization to your office? I knew that some of the stuff could get really hokey, and there are some methods I came across that got into a more spiritual side that cut out God and brought in some weird rituals (like throwing limes in a river until your debts were paid off). So, just like with astrology, numerology, etc, it can get into some weird stuff, but I would think it was safe to view it as a parlor game and laugh when there were coincidences. If some of the things worked, great. Curtis and I refuse to live in east facing houses. In all the east facing houses we have lived in, bad things have happened. Things like the roof caving in, loosing a job, feeling unsettled, making bad decisions, and bad health. You could also call that superstition, and I think we all have some things we are superstitious about. 

There really wasn't any point about me writing this post today, just some things I had rolling around in my head that I always thought were fun. That Kid's America book is full of other stuff to do, and I've done at least a couple things out of every section. I even lost the book somewhere in the many moves we've made and found it again on Amazon.com. They had art projects, historical information, even how to have a proper tea party, things that get kids away from TV's and computers and electronic games, two of which I didn't have as a kid. I just had to be the weird kid on the block that wanted to read your hand. 

But I think I turned out ok. Really.