Maybe Oil and Water can mix, after all.

In a rare moment of sharing without finding a way to be upset with one another, Oil and Water were reading a look and find “Where’s Waldo” type book together the other day. I had to take a photo, just to remind myself that it can happen. They play together on a regular basis. They just usually find a way to fight about it too.

I’m having flashbacks…

Pierce was having fun with my and Blaine’s boots the other day.

It reminded me of photos of yesteryear, with a similarly aged Eden…

Funny how things change, and yet, stay the same. Looking for these photos of Eden was a ton of fun… with six kids crowded around to see photos of the former them. Just fun.

My work is not done.

Pierce still wears a diaper to bed. All of his sisters except Charlotte regularly pitch in and put his (cloth) diaper on. Tonight, Sterling offered to help Pierce get ready for bed. Sterling headed to the place that I keep pull-ups reserved specifically for co-op. He grabbed one. I reminded Sterling that those are NOT what Pierce wears to bed. He asked me what Pierce wears, then. I stared at him.

Really? Same routine for all of Pierce's life, at the very least, the same thing we've done for the eight months since Pierce stopped wearing diapers during the day. I pointed him to the diaper shelf... in another room entirely.

He came back with a newborn diaper. Uh... no. Try again. He came back with just a diaper cover. Still, no. Charlotte headed to tell him which diapers Pierce wears to bed. Let's be fair here, though: 80% of the diapers on the shelf are the ones he wears. Sterling was totally set up for success. And yet. His three year old sister had to show him.

When I told Sterling he really ought to pay more attention, he told me it wasn't his fault. "The girls play with dolls and stuff. They know how to do this because of that." Yeah, sure.

I have a lot more work to do before his future wife thanks me for teaching him how to be helpful with the baby. He's been sharing under the radar, it would seem.

After he put the correct diaper on Pierce, with an extra liner for whatever reason, he headed to brush his teeth... and I tightened the snaps on the diaper that failed to cover Pierce's hiney and was headed for his knees instead.

Nope, my work is not done.

Cleanly confused.

I've been making my own soap for nearly two years now. I was cleaning out the bathroom cupboard a few days ago and found half a dozen bars of Irish Spring from before my soap making days. Charlie was in the tub when I stuck a bar of it into the tub to use it up.

"Is that ice?"
"No, it's soap."
"When did you make green soap?"
"I didn't make it. I bought it, a long time ago."
"You can BUY soap?! WHERE?!"
"Wal-Mart. Lots of stores sell soap."

She was amazed. What a strange life we lead. She doesn't remember anything other than homemade soap. What other misconceptions am I unknowingly teaching my children?!

Pierce was in the shower with me the other day, and I was sitting in the water spray, rinsing his hair when he apparently decided the water was too hot. He marched over to the faucet and flipped it to cold. Ice cold. There I am, big pregnant body trying to scramble up while taking a now cold shower. If I could have seen it instead of experienced it... It would have been hysterical. I share this story so you all may laugh instead. I'm still trying to recover.

And... back to my misery. I can't remember the last cold I had that kicked my behind quite this bad.

Shopping battles, missing ribs, and toy invasions.

Life has become mere endurance. At 32 weeks pregnant, I’m miserable beyond words. I. Hurt. Everywhere. But, baby kicks and rolls and from all appearances is doing fabulously. I was warned by my midwife to expect this one to be bigger than all my others, since he/she is already larger than most. My heaviest was 9 lbs. 2 oz. so I’m rather expecting to birth a three month old at this point. The constant question is whether I’m positive I’m not carrying twins, how sure I am of my due date, and if I’m done. Oh, and one particularly fun comment about being like one of those prize pumpkins that never stops growing. I hold onto the knowledge that I won’t be pregnant forever.

I bought new fabric for pillows. We might, by the end of tomorrow (because I need another pillow form, so that’s been added to today’s grocery list) have matching pillows on our not completely mismatched couches for the first time in history. I’m rather excited about this. No, it’s not nesting. I purchased the fabric the day after Christmas. Christmas sewing and dread for getting on the floor to cut out fabric had me putting off the sewing until now. But if my living room could be more intentional, that would be fun. Of course, the Lincoln Logs, the train set, the car basket, the Legos… it’s a toss up on whether I can win this battle.

Pierce got a handful of Tonka toys for his birthday last year. Sterling has had a dump truck since he was about two, so when I found a bunch of them on Craigslist, Pierce got them for his birthday. He loves them. They had, however, been used in the sandbox and lived outside or in the shed. Sterling begged to bring them in for Pierce when it got cold, willingly put them in the tub and scrubbed them until no sandbox remnant remained, and made his brother one very happy boy. My living room/school room now looks like this on a continual basis:

 

I’ve decided Sterling is just trying to balance out the boy toy/girl toy ratio. Or kill me, tripping on large wheeled toys in the night. Take your pick.

I told the kids to get ready for the day. The day consists of school and grocery shopping. Sterling feels like he’s headed into battle, apparently. This is what he came up with.

Last night I made barbecued pork ribs and baked potatoes and our own canned green beans for supper. I got all the kids’ plates dished up, and Ruby went to the garage fridge for more milk. She plopped the brand new gallon of milk down… on the edge of Sterling’s plate. Just like that, potato, beans, and pork rib went flying, catapulted toward nearby Pierce and the floor. Some of it landed on the table, some landed on the floor, but that rib simply disappeared. Brady (the dog) was not so very far away, and the fear that she’d snatched the meat was voiced. Even if she had, a pig rib vs. an eight pound dog seemed like an unlikely match. Surely something would be left. She can’t eat a bone that big that fast. And so the search continued. Everyone’s plates were checked for the extra portion, but no one found it.

It struck me as awfully funny. Eight people, searching floor, plates, counters, and curtains for one catapulted rib.

Finally, I spotted a bit of the sauce on the back of Pierce’s chair, and his chair became the focal point of the search. The rib was behind Pierce, on his chair. Supper was saved, Brady was innocent, and the idea of catapults was discussed.

Pretty sure I’m not going to forget the food flying through the air, plate and all, anytime soon though. Supper around here is never dull… but that was a new one, even for around here.

Strong willed child vs. Tired Moma

After a hard day of mothering children who were refusing to conform to my will, I got out a few of my favorite parenting books. Skimming the pages, I vowed to do things differently, better, more consistently. My consistency flies out the window to a large extent when I’m pregnant. I’m tired. I’m sore. I don’t feel like it.

Feeling encouraged, I determined it was starting with bedtime. Five of my children march off to bed and go to sleep without issue.

One, not so much.

I bet you can guess which one.

So I give the dear boy a stern talking to, march him off to bed with a warning, and minutes later, hear from him again. After a brief conversation, he’s back in bed. All is quiet.

Wow! I should have done that a long time ago! That was too easy. Half an hour passes – silence.

And then. He got up. And got up. And got up. And got up. And it was 10pm, two hours past the time I’d laid him down, and I was losing my patience. I put him in my bed instead of his, shut the door, and went back to my relaxing. And he got up. And up. And he begged for his own bed. Really? One stern talking to later, I tucked him into his own bed, and didn’t hear from him until… the wee hours of the morning when he apparently bumped his head on something. And so he sleeps… in my bed.

I’m determined. I’ll persist. But after all of that… I’m starting to understand why I’ve often giving up fighting the fight as consistently as I ought. I. Am. Exhausted.

Pierce: 1. Momma: 0. For today.

I never imagined this.

These days are hard. School seems to drag on forever, co-op has become a stress like no other and keeps me awake at night, it’s all I can do to keep up with the house somewhat and laundry, Pierce is tearing the house apart as fast as I can put it back together and refusing to take naps many days, and my belly is bigger and causing me more pain than it’s ever been at just shy of 23 weeks.

It’s funny, as a kid, picturing motherhood didn’t include absolute exhaustion. It didn’t include frustration or anger or sticking to the floor when I stumble into the kitchen after consoling a child with growing pains at 3am. It didn’t include repeating myself over and over and over or searching for lost objects that I didn’t lose or potty training a single child for six months with limited success.

Strangely enough, I pictured lovely children, well-behaved, without all the work. I imagined clean, pressed (HA!) and smiling children. This just wasn’t what I imagined.

Messes. Oh, the messes. The laundry, the mountains of work without the energy to climb anything more than the path to the couch. The pure exhaustion and achiness that pregnancy brings. The unending meal preparation and the inability to feed my children one helping of anything that fills them up.

But.

I didn’t picture the discussions either. The talks of sin and Christ’s love. The discussions of those painful growing up moments that are inevitable.

The laughs. Oh, the laughs. The hilarious things that a child comes up with. The heart stopping moment when you find your two year old standing high in the air, perched on a tiny patch of instability. The baby kissing “his baby” in Momma’s belly, loving someone so unconditionally that they’ve never met, don’t fully understand, and who is taking up more and more of “their” lap space.

The different personalities. The ones I see myself in clearly, and the ones I don’t understand in the slightest because they are so unlike me. The ones who are word oriented and the ones who crunch numbers like nobody’s business. Outgoing. Shy. Energetic. Quiet.

If I had to describe them each in a word…

Liberty… perfectionist

Eden… scattered

Sterling… mathematical

Ruby… passionate

Charlotte… imaginative

Pierce… hungry

Yeah. I never pictured any of this. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The hardest thing I’ve done, and the only thing I can’t quit. Day after day, new struggles face me in the lives of these children. I never imagined this. But I’m having the time of my life – on the good days and the bad.

Mr. P.

My dear youngest son is giving me gray hairs.

 

Last night, he asked for a banana. Sure. He chewed it up and spit it, systematically, all over the kitchen floor.

This was after he went grape stomping. All over the kitchen floor.

I set to mopping up his mess, and sent him to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Bedtime needed to happen. Soon.

I found him, minutes later, sitting in the bathroom sink. The water was running and he was drenched – clothes and all.

Near tears in my exhaustion and frustration and anger at this point, I sent him to bed.

I don’t typically mop on Sundays. I was left no option. Entering the kitchen wasn’t an option until the whole thing had been scrubbed.

Today, he dumped the crayon box. Then he dumped his milk – that he’d gotten out of the fridge and poured himself - on the mopping job of yesterday, of course. Then he played in the dry oatmeal and ate it. Twice. He dug through the candy drawer in the fridge. Twice. I was running from one disaster to the next, unable to keep up or slow him down.

You know those kids you see in the store, and you wonder why on earth his mother isn’t DOING something about his behavior?

I have one of those. I’ve DONE a lot of things about his behavior. Some days it helps. And some days, I just count a few more gray hairs at the end of the day and wonder what lesson God’s trying to get through my thick skull that I’m not getting.

The only sacred place is his bed. For now. I get approximately one and one half hours a day to catch up on the messes he’s made before he’s back out, feeling like a new boy and ready to go again.

I’m worn out, huge pregnant, (and keep getting comments about being due any day. I’m 22.4 weeks.) exhausted, and praying my stubborn streak outlasts his.

Just when I think we’re making progress…

The UPS delivery truck pulled into our yard Friday. When the kids went out to get the package from the driver, he’d already put it on the porch and left. They came back in, telling me there was poop on the porch. The man had walked around it to deliver the box.

I asked them to please tell me it was rooster poop. No such luck.

My son pooped on the porch, and the delivery driver walked around it to get to the door.

Complete personal mortification, complete.

Potty training Pierce score: Pierce: 235, Momma: 0.

In other news, I’m doing far better after my week and the kidney infection. Our church had a ladies retreat this Friday/Saturday, though, and I found out I’m not exactly 100%. Staying up late, going for a walk, and I’m wiped out and sore. Slowly, things will get back to normal. I hope.

Today:

• Pierce threw two new rolls of toilet paper into the toilet.
• Someone left the toothpaste, uncapped, on the bathroom rug. Charlotte stepped on it.
• The rug’s in the washing machine. Fourth load for today.
• I took the kids grocery shopping at two stores and to the library.
• A random man asked me when I was going to be done having babies. I sputtered but remained polite.
• I found out Liberty had a huge amount of homework to do for co-op. Due tomorrow. It’s still half done. Three maps to color and label takes a long time.
• I found out Eden had a report on Laura Ingalls Wilder to do, among other things. Also due tomorrow.
• I remembered once again that I’d rather homeschool than deal with daily homework.
• I took the kids to the library. I’d borrowed Courting Cate by Leslie Gould and liked it so much I went to see if she had other titles. None were there. Read Courting Cate if you like Christian Fiction. It’s really good.
• I didn’t have to throw even one kitten out of doors. They seem to be learning. I took Theodore Roosevelt’s advice to speak softly and carry a big stick to heart.
• Floppy rulers qualify as big sticks.
• I counted four gallons of milk in the fridge when we got home and sighed, realizing we’re not going to make another week. I thought we had six.
• I sprayed the tub down with Comet spray at 9 am.
• I finally got the tub scrubbed at 9 pm.
• The tub soaking for that long doesn’t help out anymore than soaking for three minutes.
• Pierce made it to 8 pm before he pooped in his pants. I was just thinking that we’d had an accident-free day.
• Sterling couldn’t remember what lines of symmetry means on his math assessment. Seconds later, he informed me that 22 x 10 = 220. I don’t know what to do with that boy.
• Ruby maybe, just maybe, has caught onto reading. She’s getting faster. It amazes me what personality and a little bit more time means at the ripe old age of five. Thinking back, the older the child was, the easier it was to teach them to read. The oldest one was 5.5 years old. That beats 4.5 any. That’s nearly a quarter of their life difference.
• I stayed up way too late typing this, because I walked into the bathroom and saw the two rolls of tp in the garbage and it was just enough aggravating to write about.

Dreams, projects, and the messes they can make.

I woke up with a start at 3:00 am with a dream. My dear son, having been potty training since June, still has a LOT of moments. In my dream, I was sitting on the floor folding laundry and he decided to relieve me of my chore, relieve himself on the laundry, and save me the steps of folding and putting away.

It actually made me jump.

While Mr. P has had accidents in a multitude of places, on clean laundry, thankfully, has not been one of them. But I couldn’t help but laugh. I got a three hour nap yesterday, went to bed at 9pm, so a total of 13 hours of sleep later, mostly uninterrupted, I was finally sleeping hard enough – and long enough – to dream. (Uninterrupted until 7:18 am when Pierce hit me in the face with a cheese stick and asked if he could have it. Hello, morning.) But what do I dream about?

This motherhood thing is getting to me.

We’ve had sick kids this weekend. It started Friday afternoon with Liberty, Eden started complaining Saturday, and today, they’re asking if co-op is still on for tomorrow. We shall see. From the sounds in the kitchen, Liberty’s eating real food again. Hooray for the small things. Eden never did get it very bad – I’m still not sure if she got it or she just wanted the opportunity to read all day. When I dictated it would be only toast and no books during her illness, she felt better quite quickly. Amazing recovery.

I spent Saturday sewing. I’ve decided that’s my spend-little-to-no-money method of not shopping when stressed. Of course, looking around the house and seeing my sewing mess and the mess made by many small children while I didn’t pay them 100% attention is enough to send my stress levels back up to where they were. But, for a little while… I sewed a maternity dress that turned out a little less fabulous than the photo in the pattern. I’m trying that again, a little differently. I shocked and amazed my children at my ability to twist fabric strips into rosettes. Sew for hours and make slings and dresses and blankets and doll panties? No big deal? Make a flower with a strip of fabric in 32 seconds? Now that’s amazing.

After that, I sewed doll clothes for another review. Liberty’s doll got two new items. Liberty joked her doll hadn’t gotten two new things in one day since the day I sewed a heart on her behind to patch the hole and sewed a patch nearby to patch an even larger hole. I love it – my daughter has quite the sense of humor developing these days.

Then… I looked at my house and had the brief thought that it might be easier to just move than to clean up the mess that had taken over every inch of my home. But, after an hour in the kitchen trying to find my tile floor under the dirt, and an hour in the living room, putting things away and cleaning that floor, it started to look manageable again. And then Pierce woke up from his nap. It was nice while it lasted.

Pierce: self entertainment.

Pierce dumped out his shoes this morning, then started cleaning them up.

Then he realized I was laughing and taking photos, so he dumped them all out so he could start again.

Cheap entertainment. Unfortunately, as soon as I put the camera away, he gave up, walked away, and left the shoes everywhere. We’ll get there… one day at a time. In the meantime, I’ll marvel that he can actually use a broom and dust pan rather effectively.

Liberty's making pancakes - from a mix. She's over an hour in and I just heard the first oil spray hit the pan. I can teach them how to cook… but how on earth do you teach them speed?!

Sterling asked me how big a yard was. My reply was, “3 feet. 36 inches. A yard stick. You know, that’s why we call it a YARD stick.”

My son just snorted at me. In that brief second, he realized he’d asked a very stupid question. I love it. (If you saw how they play with yard sticks around here, you’d understand better. We have about 10 of them, from the farm show and from Blaine’s parents’ hardware store. They frequently become swords, roads, and, with the help of bread twist ties, bridges. Yard sticks are something he knows VERY well.)

Yesterday Sterling learned about nickels. We sorted out 2 quarters, 10 nickels, 5 dimes, and 50 pennies into four piles to make a point on the value of each coin. What Sterling got out of our piles? “We have $2 here!” I’m not the least bit math minded. My son is scaring me.

Pierce is back to his normal self. Temper tantrums, requiring lots of correction, and eating everything in sight normal Pierce. Thankful. Even for the exhausting job of the constant need to correct him. Funny: I dropped a butter knife onto the tile floor with a crash that sounded worse that it really was. Pierce took the opportunity to correct me back. “Momma! No no!”

Ruby was told that today at co-op she has PE and needs to wear jeans. She came back with five jean skirts for me to choose from, insisting that a jean skirt with leggings is really easy to run in. She just can’t stand it.

Eden is the first child I’ve ever had to tell to write out her math answers using numbers, not words. She had an entire lesson that she wrote answers like “five hundred twenty six thousand nine hundred fifty two” – in cursive. I’m sorry. I’m glad you know place value and how a number reads in words. But my brain does not want to convert that to numbers, so you’ll have to indulge me and use numbers next time.

Charlotte insists she’s three now, so she’s big. Until last night. When asked why she wasn’t helping to clean up supper, she informed me she’s not that big. It went into a several-minute dissertation on why three years old is pretty big, but she’s not quite big enough to do work, because she’s still pretty short. With the ability to have a discussion like that, she’s being recruited into service. She’s a fabulous “Crawl under the table for any runaway cups, silverware, napkins, or large pieces of food picker-upper”.

The pancakes were worth the wait. If you have the chance, the pecan-glazed mix from Aldi is pretty darn fabulous. And a ten year old can make them. If they have an hour and a half.

Projects while the sickie sleeps.

Pierce has been sick this weekend. It started Friday night. About the time he was sent to bed, he started crying. And crying. And 16 hours later, he finally quit crying and fell into an exhausted sleep. Ibuprofen didn’t even slow him down. Teething tablets did nothing. Discussions were made as to whether to take him to the doctor, not having a clue why he was crying and he refused to talk or point what hurt or anything to indicate what the problem was, but in the end, we stayed home. Hard decisions. He’s recovering, sleeping a ton, mostly on me, and now says his teeth hurt. Hello, am I glad I didn’t take him to Urgent Care over teething. “Yeah, we have a mom of six here who can’t figure out her son is getting a new tooth. You’d think she’d have figured this one out by now.” Nope. Not a clue.

But, on that note, I stayed home from church today. Blaine teaches Sunday school, so there’s not much choice. I’m the dispensable one. So, while Pierce slept, I sewed. Rough morning, to be sure. I made this:

While I had visions of it being, oh, about twice as big, (It’s 8”x10” finished.) I made one true to pattern and now, I’ll attempt to double it, I think. I used fabric leftover from other projects (a few slings contain these fabrics) so it cost me nothing. Kinda fun. I went to a popular bag company party a few weeks ago and found myself looking at the catalog thinking, “I could so make that – and it wouldn’t cost me $65.” I walked away feeling horrible for buying nothing, but inspired to get out my sewing machine. Fun.

Underthings proclamation and other short stories.

I was in a dressing room, trying on a purple maternity dress. Charlotte tagged along.

“Mom! That dress matches your glasses!”

Yes. Yes it does.

“It matches your…” she searched for the next purple item she could name. “PANTIES, TOO!”

Could you say that a little louder, dear? I’m not quite sure the cashier at the front of the store heard you. From the chuckles outside the dressing room, the other ladies shopping nearby certainly did.

One dear boy helped his big sister lick out her birthday cake batter bowl. I’m pretty sure he got some in his mouth. Wouldn’t know it by looking at him though. I’m going to take heart between the two faces, and remind myself at the difference a year makes.

Today: Three grocery stores, six children and I, 1.5 hours, a week and a half worth of groceries, tp, and cat food, $200. That might be a new record for time. Between that, and Pierce actually holding onto the cart the entire time he was instructed without failing to obey (down to almost walking away to get in the van and remembering, saying “Oops!” and heading back to his post) it was a day for record-breaking. Maybe that’s why we got done so quickly, come to think of it!

One of my dear children, to remain nameless, was questioned this morning regarding MIA daily 100-problem math timed tests that had been assigned. Turns out, this dear child opted not to do them, pulling the perfectionist card out of the repertoire of bad excuses. “I can get a good score, so I didn’t want to do them. So I didn’t.” How didn’t? 14 lessons didn’t. Between those, the extra lesson that had been assigned but not completed, and the four chapter tests also mysteriously opted out of, one dear child has roughly 1,400 math problems to make up. It makes my head hurt just thinking about it. Today: half done. I’m scared to correct them, for fear said child’s brain opted out of complete operation after all that. Sometimes being the parent and the teacher just stinks. It’s stinking hard to leave the frustrations of our school day during school hours and move on in the evening.

Liberty was conjugating verbs. “Have boughtended?” The sad part was, she looked at me, waiting for my nod of approval instead of realizing her error. She realized it shortly after, however - when I snorted.

I told Sterling to grab his math book today. “Why?” he questioned.

“To do your lesson,” I replied.

“I already did it,” I was told.

“Yeah, fine, but we need to do your lesson. You’re learning about measuring today.”

“That math book is weird, Mom. I already know how to measure. They want to teach me things I already know. I did that page too. Why are the people that wrote that book so weird? That stuff is so easy.” And he had done it. All of it. To perfection.

Tomorrow, we work on humility.

Firsts. Embarrassing… just a bit.

I hired a babysitter yesterday. First. Time. Ever. I’m not sure if it’s a sad fact or a testament to something else entirely. I’m not sure.

As a kid, I babysat. A lot. Often, it was 5-6 nights a week. I loved kids, and once I started babysitting, I had a steady stream of families calling for a sitter.

But, I have never had one. Chalk it up to generous friends and never going out, but I’ve never had to. Never tried to afford it, really. Our closest relatives are 650 miles away, but we have a great church family willing to serve if something arises. We’ve left them with friends quite a few times, but last night, when a friend from co-op offered her daughter, I took her up on it. Blaine had planned to stay home with them while I went to my meeting, but instead, he came with me. We came home to our children, many ready for bed, and I had enough energy to read them a book before bed.

Amazing.

While I’m sure we won’t be able to do it again anytime soon, it was pretty awesome.

And all today, I’ve heard about Charity. Turns out, she’s pretty awesome. She got a good dose of normal around here, from the sounds of it. Pierce took his pants off… multiple times. She just kept redressing him. She got here as the kids were finishing up supper, and got a firsthand look of my version of potty training. I’ve always used the potty as their booster at the beginning. It was uninterrupted time. Pierce has taken this to new heights. He always does his business at the breakfast, lunch, and supper table. If I don’t put him on the potty… I clean his pants. Poor girl didn’t know Pierce was on a potty until she picked him up. To hear Liberty tell it… she took it in stride. I can only imagine.

Poor girl.

Updates.

Remember the day I met my neighbor in Walmart? I made an update later and, well, nothing much has happened since then. I called to see if I could bring them a meal shortly after Christmas and was told, quite firmly, by the wife that they did not need my help. Uncertain what to do after that, I did nothing.

Last week, after six months of not seeing or hearing from them, the neighbor pulled into my yard with a bag of vegetables from his garden and the request that we take the rest of his green beans when they were ready. Awesome. Then yesterday he brought us 15 quarts of beans and asked if we could use a few things he’d found in his attic, asked Blaine if he could hire him (after vehemently denying that Blaine could do anything for them for free and insisting payment would be made) to wash his house. It would seem, after all that, the neighbor relationship is still there. It rather fell into my lap, but it seemed like it was for a reason. I’m thankful for the vegetables, to be sure, but I look forward to seeing how we can serve this elderly couple in the coming months. Pretty cool.

I’ll be eight weeks along tomorrow. I’m feeling better today than I have in a month. It’s good; I was starting to question if I could endure many more months without losing my sanity. I’ll have an ultrasound next month sometime. After my sister having twins, and twins elsewhere in my family history, it always eases my mind to see one little heartbeat. Why my belly has gotten so big, so fast has me a little worried, but since we’ve had six singletons so far, it’s probably just the, well, six singletons! Twins added to this chaos might just do me in.

Sterling got to work in this movie a few months ago. The trailer is out! Check it out, it’s pretty awesome.

Disconnected.

Here I sit, typing a post that can’t be published for another two days – I hope it’s only two days, anyway. Life without internet seems strangely quiet. I rather expected to have a bunch more free time, but I don’t. I have a bunch more nauseous and tired time instead. Something about a rolling stomach doesn’t encourage a clean house. Shocker, I know.

Life moves on. Liberty has rather mastered the doggy paddle and is having a great time in the deep end. Fun skills to master. Eden remains the flailing octopus, doing her best to drown herself and anyone trying to keep her afloat. She’ll get there. Pierce though… he thinks he can swim. He kicks and swings his arms and I haven’t completely gotten the nerve to let him go, but it would seem that he might have some ability to keep himself above water. Funny boy. Sterling and Ruby and Charlotte love their lifejackets.

Ruby wants to know why she can’t feel the baby kick yet. Charlotte wants to know why it isn’t born yet. Pierce just wants to know why my belly is getting bigger. It’s rather fun to watch them look forward to the new sibling. As the youngest child of two, I never experienced anything like it. I’ve had fun watching them experience it. Watching Pierce become a big brother though – I’m a little scared of that. It’ll be interesting how he handles it.

Ruby came in from a trip to the outside garbage can for me. She was blowing out of her nose strangely.

“Is there a bead up my nose?” She sticks her nose in my face. Is this a trick question?

“Why would there be a bead up your nose?”

“Because I stuck one up there but now I can’t find it.”

Wavering between laughing and scolding, I opted for the latter. I plugged one side and told her to blow. Nothing. I told her to blow again. And with that, a pink pony bead flew out and hit me in the face. I’ll have to work on my defense strategy next time. Although, should there ever be a next time, we’re quite clear on the consequences.

I’ve never thought to tell them not to put things up their noses. I don’t ever remember encountering this problem before. I’d have thought that at 4 years 10.5 months, she’d have been past the point of seeing that as a good idea. Leave it to Ruby.

Sterling was told to get the clothes out of the dryer and bring them to me. I was halfway through folding them when an obviously food-clad shirt was drawn up for the folding. Then I found two kids cups in the load. Really? Upon questioning, Sterling wasn’t sure where the cups came from. But he was QUITE certain he brought me the clean clothes. He was sent to the laundry room to check. He came back empty handed, adamant they were the clothes he’d taken from the dryer. Liberty went to investigate. She came back with a laundry basket of clean clothes. They’d been sitting in the laundry room.

They were whites. All whites. My dear six year old son took all-white clothes out of the dryer, put them in a basket, then grabbed the basket next to his clean basket and brought me a basket of dark colored clothes instead. And he never noticed the discrepancy.

Oh. My. Word.

I was headed to a meeting the other night and the kids were all in the yard. As I drove along the front of our yard on the road, the kids were waving like crazy in the yard. What was a mom to do? I waved back, hand out the window, hollering my goodbyes. Right then a car was coming towards me, and he was waving like a maniac back at me.

Excuse me while I feel like an idiot. That guy must have thought I was the friendliest neighbor ever.

Hello, welcome, yes, and excuse me while I find some clothes.

The flag keeps falling off of our mailbox. In trying to fix it without making a sharp edge (ie. using wire) I used two bread plastic bag clips, clipped onto the peg of the flag that sticks inside. I haven't decided if it was clever or trashy - but it worked. Hello Mrs. Mail Lady. We're the people at the house with the giant white van, children who love to get the mail before you’ve even pulled away from the mailbox, and the bread clips inside our mailbox. Aren't you glad to know us?

I finally got Pierce to answer with an actual affirmative answer. For the longest time he grunted. It was anybody’s guess whether each grunt was a ‘yes’ grunt or a ‘no’ grunt. Now, he answers “NO!” quite clearly and “mmm hmmm” for yes. It’s just about cute. (Okay, not the “NO!” part. But neither was the screaming when we responded contrary to his desires. Getting a word – and a warning – is a good thing. It’s one step closer to getting the boy to conform. I think.)

The AT&T truck pulled into my yard this morning sometime in the 8am hour. They weren’t supposed to come until Friday. I wasn’t dressed. I was sitting at the computer, working on a blog post in my pj’s with less than appropriate underclothing in which to meet strange men at the door. I haven’t gotten dressed that fast EVER. I didn’t even know what I put on until after I looked in the mirror later. It took ten minutes AFTER I was dressed for my heart rate to slow down. After all that, they never came to the door. Instead, they opted to climb the pole in the yard. Whew. Talk about an adrenalin rush. Not nice.

I’m sitting at #3 in the Circle of Moms contest for Top 25 Big Family Blogs. I’d be honored if you’d click over here and vote for me. There’s been a lot of talk (ahem, me, begging for votes) on Facebook, but I know a lot of you aren’t on there. You can vote every 24 hours. I’d love to maintain my spot!

I found out yesterday, when I took Pierce in to see the pediatrician for a bug bite gone wild that there’s such a thing as “Chigger Weed”. Turns out, chiggers live in the stuff. Not being a native to the state, I had no idea. My children have been picking the flowers of the stinking thing and putting them in cups all around the house. It’s like we hung out a big welcome sign, inviting the bugs in to make themselves at home, and offered our bodies up as breakfast, lunch and supper. Perfect.

If you don’t know what a chigger is, thank the good Lord and pray you never find out.

The story of us. Part fifteen.

Read part one here.
Read part two here.
Read part three here.
Read part four here.
Read part five here.
Read part six here.
Read part seven here.
Read part eight here.
Read part nine here.
Read part ten here.
Read part eleven here.
Read part twelve here.
Read part thirteen here.
Read part fourteen here.

I kept waiting for Pierce to get easier. All of my kids are pretty even tempered, and while it feels like I constantly correct, obedience is something all of them are capable of. Pierce thinks he’s exempt from that expectation. He went through a phase of holding his breath when he didn’t get his own way. He’d crumple to the floor in a purple heap, so deprived of oxygen that he couldn’t even throw his fit anymore. We got through that one, and he started hitting his own head on the floor. One time he did it in the kitchen on the ceramic tile instead of the living room’s slightly more forgiving hardwood floor and that behavior was cured all on his own. He’s unlike any of my others, and has taught me that I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. But, we persist.

Pierce was born in October, and the following January Blaine went, again, to California. And when he came home, shock of all shocks, I did not have pregnancy news to share, as I had the two years prior. Life fell into a routine, and slowly, as Pierce got older and we found a new routine, things slowed down to a more manageable pace. Sundays are the hardest of my week, spent outside of the church sanctuary with a child who refuses to be quiet. Days at home though, life feels pretty normal.

Pierce walked at 14 months, and life got easier still. Still very high strung and now prone to biting, (Only siblings, thankfully. But still… I have one of those.) Pierce has changed my view on parenting. He’s humbled me, made me more compassionate to other mothers, and I have a challenge: to see who this little fiery spirit can become. He’s got loads of potential – if I can convince his that’s what he wants to have. It’ll have to be his idea though!

This spring, I found out I was pregnant, but just days later, I miscarried. Not long after, I found I was pregnant again, but again, I miscarried, this time a little bit further along. I’ve had friends who have mentioned miscarriages, and I have to admit, I didn’t have a clue. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t possibly. Now, painfully, I know. My miscarriages were both early, and that seems easier than later on, but easier isn’t really a good word to describe any of it. It’s awful. It made me realize, all the more, how sacred life is. How privileged I am to raise these children I've been given, how incredible the time God gives us is. Hard, hard lessons to learn.

But there’s more. And our story is still being written. Next Saturday will bring my story up to now, and will be the final installment, at least for a while, of the Story of Us.