The Kid that STEALS Your Parenting Skills!

Have you ever had "one of THOSE kids?"  It's that kid that does it all right, goes to bed on time, does homework when told, asks for a "healthy snack", says "yes ma'am and yes sir"....it's that kid that you don't have to constantly tell NO too, or "stop that" or "don't look at her"!!!

Well having 8 kids I was actually blessed with one of those early on in my mom career.  I struggled raising the first one, he was my guinea pig, the one I had to figure everything out on, the one that was smarter than me.  He was fast at everything, walking, talking, climbing out of the bed!  He would bite me on the back of the leg after he would sneak out of the bed during nap time,  just to let me know he was there.  I started to rethink this mommy thing, I just wasn't sure if I was cut out for it being an only child myself, I thought that maybe, just maybe I could not do this thing called "being a MOM!"  

Somehow I got through his baby-ness and made it to the next one, another try at it...just to see if I could outsmart one of these little beings.  She was pretty easy, starting out life with casts on both legs, she couldn't get very far.  She dragged her little body all over the floor with her arms and was quite happy doing so!  She was a happy kid with a brother that did everything for her.  He talked for her, he got whatever she wanted, all she had to do was to point it out and he ran for her every want!  She was pretty easy, but still tested my parenting skills on more than a few occasions.  She was an avid hair puller, and an incredible scratch-er!  She could gouge out skin from her brother's arm faster than he could flush an entire roll of toilet paper down the toilet!  She was good, yet savvy.

THEN there was baby number 3!  AH yes I had finally figured this out!  This...was....the....kid!  He was sweet, hardly cried, slept almost all night every night, he actually asked to go to bed as he got older!  I was getting good at this!  I was mastering this thing called "Mommy".....I just knew if I kept trying I would finally figure it all out!  Yep, I was so good at it by now, I could have written a book on how to fix these little humans..how to make them perfect!  I had mastered "Parenting Skills"!!!  I could finally pat myself on the back!....I was so cocky about it all, I was sure that if just one parent would come to me for the answers I could give them all to that person, I could just tell them how to do this!  It was easy now, I did a run through, I had two test kids and now my time was ripe, I WAS THE PARENT OF THE YEAR!!!  I had finally produced the "PERFECT KID".... I was good at this!!!  TA-DA!!!  Mommy take a bow!!!!!

I got so cocky I tried my hand at another one, yes another boy, I was sure this was going to work!  Remember!!  I told myself!  You've figured this out!  You've got it all down pat now!  You...are...THE...mom!!!!  You are Jane!!! You and Tarzan have got all the answers now....you made the perfect kid last time, this time will be a piece of cake!!!  THEN I took "it" home!!!!  ACK!!! it acted like the first one....it cried, it screamed, it climbed out of the crib during nap time....I was sure "it" wasn't mine!!!  I must have left mine at the hospital....I needed to go back and get the right one....this one must have been someone else's first one!  So I asked my pediatrician if he was sure this was the right one?  I just had to know!  He said "YES" he's yours....HE'S normal!!!  HE'S WHAT??!!??  he can't be...this isn't right....remember I had figured out how to fix these little ones!!  No the doctor said...he is a normal kid, he picks his nose, he poops, he wakes up at night, he cries....OMG!!!  Could it be?  Could it really be that kids are different?  You can't just "fix" them with perfect parenting skills?  OR had I just lost my touch?  Maybe I got blindsided with that number 3 kid...maybe I let my guard down!  So onward we went...we had another one!  This time I was NOT to let myself get too comfortable, I had to press on with THE perfect parenting, I was sure this one was going to be like "3", this one had too!  This was easy (remember?) .....NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO it happened again, number 5...cried, woke up all hours of the night, wouldn't eat the strained peas....never asked to go to bed!  I figured it all out now!  The moral of my story is one in every eight kids are uber-obedient, uber-compliant, uber-dutiful....so enjoy them while you have them, squeeze their toes, smell their feet, blow farts on their bellies, love them unconditionally and you'll have a wonderful time in this life!!!

WHAT happened to my Hair??!!??

I was in my office doing some billing when Hunter ran downstairs with his hands covering the top of his head.  He was crying hysterically yelling, "what happened to my hair, what happened to my hair?"  I was so afraid to pull his hands from his head for fear of seeing a gapping hole, blood, or anything totally disgusting.  He had his hands clamped so hard to his head, I was sure there was something terribly wrong with him.  So I finally unclamped the two hands and carefully un-squinched my eyes and took a peek at the top of his head.  To my great surprise, he had a long bald line from the back of his neck to his farhead, I started to laugh so hard I couldn't seem to stop myself.  So I asked him if he had cut his hair?  He said, "NO!!!  I just fell out in the bathroom upstairs!"  I told him that hair just does not fall out like that, he must have cut it, again he told me that it had just fallen out!  Then with a bit more examination, I realized that he had cut several bald lines into his head, it became more and more hysterical as time went on.

So I left him downstairs and I went up to see what he had gotten hold of and how he had cut his hair.  I found a pair of electric clippers in one of the bathrooms with lots of hair in the trash can...exactly what I had expected.  I went back downstairs and started to do the "mommy fix"!  I tried to do an old mans comb over, that didn't stay,  so I got out the trusty mousse and glued it into place!  It looked a bit suspicious, but it kind of looked ok to me.  Then my oldest son came over and I told him the story.  He looked at his brother, then at me, and asked me "MOM really????"  "just cut it all off!"  I really didn't want to, but Greg just grabbed him and the clippers and hung his head over the garbage can and shaved him clean!  Hunter ran to the mirror in the hall and started to cry, he yelled out "Oh my!  It doesn't even look like me!"  And he was right!  It didn't!  but oh well, better not to look like "you" rather than look like you have mange!

So that afternoon I took Hunter with me to the grocery, not to punish him, but because he wanted to come with me!  As we were walking through the store I noticed people looking at Hunter with sort of a weird look on their faces!  Finally I went to the check out line, and the lady at the counter was a good friend of mine...she asked, "well well Hunter, what on earth do we have here?"  I told her the story of the "hair JUST falling out" and she laughed and asked him if he would ever do that again!  He said , NO, he hated the way he looked without hair!  Then I realized why so many people were looking at him in the store, because as I told that story to the check out lady, one gentleman leaned over to me and said, "OH thank God, I thought he was a little cancer patient!  I felt so bad for him and you!"  I said no thank God that's not it at all!  The man then told Hunts a story about how one day when he was little he was blowing bubble gum with 2 or 3 large pieces of gum, the bubble had gotten away from him and popped all over his face and his hair, his mom was so mad at him that she didn't even try to get it out, she just shaved all of his hair off, but that it grew back perfectly fine and all was ok after that!  Hunter looked at him and in his infinite wisdom tells the man, "OH NO!  I sure hope mine doesn't grow back all curly and grey like yours did!"  (OH geeze!  you just can't take freshly shaven little boys anywhere)

Gynecological Disaster!!!

Since I have a lot, and I mean A LOT, of experience at the gynecologists office, you can imagine that I may have a story or two about being there.

There are two types of visits, first, the classic check up visits to the gynecologist, and then the second,  the ever lasting pregnancy visits.  Most of you know that when you go in the office their first request is for a urine sample, then of course "undress from the waist down" so that they can measure and listen to the heartbeat and sometimes maybe an exam is in the works.

So this particular time I was there for an exam and a typical pregnancy checkup!....I needed to offer up my urine....and the ever popular waste down disrobing was in order.  In this office each exam room was equipped with a toilet behind a drape, so that you could easily do your duty before the exam, I was never very comfortable with this set up, but so be it, that's how they worked and I had to accept their idea of comfort.  So as I was doing the sacrificial urine sample, I decided to do the disrobing too, BEFORE I flushed the toilet!  What a big giant mistake!  I took off my maternity pants and hung them on the hook behind the toilet grabbed the sheet that was on the ledge beside the toilet and proceeded to flush.  OMG!!!  to my great surprise instead of "going down" the water began to rise, and not only rise, but rise at GREAT speed!  More like  a water spout than a typical toilet overflow!  I stood there in amazement!  And of course, the thoughts of "WHY ME?"  and  "WHY NOW?".....then I realized "WHY NOT ME? AND WHY NOT NOW?"

So I ran and jumped onto the exam table, so as not to get toilet water all over me, and thought "OK how am I going to get out of this one?"  In the meantime, I saved the pee sample!

I leaned over, because thankfully the door was very close to the exam table, and began beating on the closed door.  All of this time, I am laughing my naked ass off!  I heard someone say, "have patience, the doctor will be in in a minute!"  GREAT!!!  That's not what I want!!!  So I yelled, "please come in here NOW!, your toilet hath runneth over!"  The nurse yells back "WHAT?"......geesh, I can't believe it at this point!  yelling back and forth from a room with an attack toilet, to a nurse that just thinks I'm being "one of those impatient pregnant women"....so again, I yelled, "PLEASE come in here, your toilet is overflowing!"  So finally she walks through the door and to my great surprise SCREAMS!.......REALLY???....a screaming nurse!  I just sat there half robed, laughing, and since I was enormously pregnant, had to pee again!

I looked at her and asked her to please help to "GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!"  So she started to throw any spare towels and paper towels on the floor to create some sort of bridge for me to walk on to get out of that room and into another!  Surprise, surprise!  All of the rooms were taken at this point and I was still half robed with a plastic bottle of PEE in my hand!

She asked if it would be a bother to wait in the bathroom until she could wade through the toilet water and get my clothes.....UM???  not a bother at all,  standing in the middle of the hallway half naked with pee in my hand was sort of a bother!  So there I stood in the bathroom waiting for my clothes so that I could head to another room to do the same damn thing all over again.  Hopefully this time without an attack toilet!

I know it seems unbelievable that this sort of thing could happen to little old me, but it did, and yes if nothing else the moral of this story is, NEVER TAKE YOUR CLOTHES OFF BEFORE YOU FLUSH THE TOILET!!!!

Ultimate Story of Survival.......

Since I've graced you with a Katrina Poop story, I figured you should know how we got there!

So here's the ultimate story of survival:

On August 29th, 2005 we woke up to a storm of enormous proportions. We were awakened by a phone call at 4:30am by my cousin, our original intentions were to just board up the house and wait it out, we had plenty food, water and a generator so we were ready. But our plans were altered but the shear size of the storm. This was the "big one" , the mother of all storms, our worst fear living on the Gulf Coast. And it proved to be just that.

We packed up 7 kids, 2 dogs, 1 ferret, 1 cat and 3 adults and we were ready to go. We had been given reservations at a hotel in Houston that took animals, so that's where we were headed for the classic three day storm vacation. Once on the road, but not very far out we decided to take the cat and the ferret back to the house and put them upstairs, they would have plenty of water and food and of course the company of each other. They weren't the best of friends, but they weren't the worst either. So off we went, 3 cars and everything else we could possibly fit, bye, bye New Orleans.

Once on the road, we realized that this was going to be the longest trip of our lives. We stopped as little as possible, sang, laughed, listened to the radio as much as possible and laughed at the radio announcers as they chronicled each and every minute as the storm started to bear down on New Orleans. The analogies they used were getting to be a form of entertainment for us. "Storm of biblical proportions", "on the razors edge", "catastrophic event" and the list goes on and on. I know that doesn't seem funny right now, but while driving with 7 kids, 2 dogs, 3 adults, and 3 cars for 18 hours it was hilarious. We laughed so hard at times we could hardly breathe. But on we went, for miles and miles and miles at the break neck speed of 15 mph on the highway. At one point I had to go to the bathroom, so I told my cousin to drive and I jumped out of the car, ran to the mini-mart alongside the road, went to the bathroom and ran back to the car, they had only passed up the store by about 20 or 30 feet. Since that seemed to work, that was how we all went to the bathroom, because we didn't want to loose our place in the car line.

We finally arrived in Houston at 5 am on the morning of the 30th, checked into our rooms and immediately started to watch the television to see what was happening to our city. Wow it was beyond imagination, the wind and rain were terrible, but most of all the people that had stayed were in great danger. We felt very blessed at that moment to have had the greater sense to leave.

We tried to make this a vacation for our kids and not let them know how very worried we were, so we started to look around to see what there was to do, and we found tons of stuff.

But in the meantime, we figured out our sleeping arrangements. Since there were so many of us they put us in 2 separate rooms, but also on 2 separate floors! John and I and some of the younger kids were on the 3rd floor and the older boys were on the 2nd floor. Ouch, I knew this was going to be trouble. On the first night I got a phone call at around 2am from my oldest son, one of his brothers threw up on him, I ran down the stairs, the dog following, and tried to clean up the mess. I called down to room service, and they pretty much laughed at me, extra sheets? clean up? What? There were so many people in the hotel there were no extra sheets, so being a mom of 7 at the time, that was no problem, we made a new bed out of the bedspreads. This is an easy task for a busy mom, I have to do this all of the time at home, sheets are not washed and an accident occurs, mom has to get creative and make a new bed. So that's just what we did, made a new bed. After the major clean up, I had to take the dog downstairs to the bathroom, why not right? We finished the dog potty time and went back up the stairs to the third floor and tried to go back to sleep. TV on all of the time, trying to figure out what was going on.

As I laid in bed and started to drift back off to sleep, another dreaded phone call, another throw up!!! ARGH! So I went prepared, I took our bedspreads, and anything else I could find to make yet another bed. Ran down the stairs again, dog followed again, cleaned up the mess, made a new bed, the hallway looked like a dump in the inner city, but I just could not run around the hotel with the dog and sheets full of vomit. So I left them in the hall for the cleaning service, why should I have all the fun! This I believe was the last throw up session, but the dog had to go out again, so down we ran, made doggy poop, ran back up the stairs and this time got to sleep, for about 2 hours before it was time to get up and try to eat some breakfast.

This is how we got started on our very long journey home post-Katrina.

A Katrina Poop!

I was reliving a Katrina moment just the other day, and one of our most memorable instances came to mind, so I, of course, have to place it here in my memory bank I.E. "my blog"!

We left our home on August 28th, 2005 with Katrina right behind us...there were 10 of us, and 3 dogs.  We left our cat behind with tons of water, and equal tons of food thinking we would be home in three days (as usual).  If any of you have ever evacuated for a hurricane, three days is the norm.  We also left a ferret in the house to keep the cat company!

Well, without going into too much detail, since most of America knows what happened in the Katrina aftermath, we did manage to get our cat from the house 11 days later!  All I could do what thank our Good Lord that he was alive, not very well, but alive!  I brought him to the nearest Veterinarians office in New Iberia close to where we were staying.  They cleaned him up, and put him on an IV to rehydrate him and get him back to his good old self.  He was a bit weak, but made a fantastic recovery.

We continued to live in New Iberia for a time, and Coco became more and more like himself, grouchy, fat, and making sure we still knew that HE owned US!

But as time went on with the cat I came to realize that as I was cleaning out his litter each and every day there was NO poo in there, the vet did tell me that it might take a while before his body went back to normal, since he had been without food and water for such a very long time.  Not a problem!  I was willing to do what I needed to get him back on his 4 little feet.

After a couple of more weeks in New Iberia, we had to move on to yet another location....our time on the road consisted of 9 moves with 7 kids, a cat, a dog, and a ferret that we rescued along with the cat.  Most of this I did by myself, since my hubby was back in New Orleans already working on Katrina damage.  So I loaded the car, with kids, our "stuff" and a litter pan for the cat, just in case, and got ready to leave to head to the Northshore (Lacombe, Louisiana) to live in a convent!  Yep you read that right, A CONVENT!, with nuns, with 7 kids, a cat, a dog, and a ferret!

As we drove out of the driveway to head to the "convent" my kids asked if we could stop to pick up some drinks and snacks to make the drive, so of course, I told them yes!  We made the stop at a local drug store, I left the kids and the animals in the car and ran inside to get some incidentals for the trip.  When I walked out of the store, I noticed all of the kids had jumped out of the van and were screaming and dancing around holding their noses....YOU GUESSED IT!....Coco had decided at that point it was time to get rid of 3 weeks of food, and water stored in his little body....the stench was overwhelming!  So there I was in the parking lot of the drug store with a bag and a pooper scooper, scooping out the first of many more poops to come!  I drew quite a crowd!  People asking if they could help!  I just thanked them, scooped out the poop, jumped in the smelly van and we drove for miles with the windows down just so that we could breathe!...It was not one of our better trips, but we did manage to make it to the convent and unload before the cat unloaded again!!!!

I Still Buy Hello Kitty Band Aids!

Most women my age are winding down with their "children" lives...maybe still working, maybe able to go to the gym, maybe even able to get their nails done on occasion.  And then there are women like me!  Still running toward projectile vomit, still smelling underwear, because you would rather smell them and take your chances than wash them AGAIN, still trying to get knots out of hair, still explaining why you need to eat your spinach...trying the very old explanation of "How do you think Popeye got strong?"  and they look at me like "who the heck is Popeye?"

Then there is the fact that owning a business that deals with kids is yet another notch in my belt of why I am still such a child myself!  I can't stop buying Hello Kitty Band Aids, or ones with Superhero's for the guys....I still wear Spongebob, Hello Kitty, and Disney Princess Band Aids, even to formal functions if I have a boo-boo!  Oh well!  I would rather a character Band Aid than one of those stuffy flex, flesh colored ones anyway!

So much for the Band Aid stories, just yesterday I was at my Gymnastics business (which is another reason why I still buy character band aids), when my little one ran in to the office to tell me about a verbal argument that was going on in the play room upstairs!  Apparently two children got into an argument over some building blocks, and one hurled a perfectly grand zinger at the other!  He called the other little girl "TOE FUNGUS".  Quite frankly I was impressed!  I mean "toe fungus"  what a great zinger!  I honestly wish I had thought of that one myself!  Just giving someone the "look" and then hurling "you are such TOE FUNGUS!" Humf!  So because I am still considered the adult in this situation, which is why they told me I'm guessing, I had to run upstairs just to make sure that this zinger didn't lead to a wrestling match!  To my great surprise it had not!  Thank the good Lord!  It did end up in a lesson on Toe Fungus though!  I asked, "OK who's hurling insults in here?"  and my little brilliant insulter raised his hand and honestly said, "it was me!  I'm sorry, I was just so angry that she kicked my blocks over!"  I told him thanks for being honest and that it was not nice to call her "toe fungus" and to please tell her that he was sorry!  She looked at me and said, "oh he said he was sorry, everything is OK now!"  I said that that was great and I was happy that they were such big boys and girls to apologize and then continue playing.  Then I got the best answer yet!  The little insultee was actually excited with the outcome of the insult from the insulter.  He had explained to her that "toe fungus" was actually mushrooms growing from her toes!  She took to that very kindly!  She thought that was the funniest thing she had ever heard and then ran out of the room to call everyone in the area "TOE FUNGUS"!  ACK this led to me explaining to all of the sitting parents the entire story which lead to a fungus discussion, which actually lead to someone saying in the end that all of the mushroom talk made her think of a salad that she was now craving.

So the moral of this story is............well I'm not sure if there is a moral, but at least there was a lesson in fungus, and a recipe for a great mushroom salad!!!

Guinea Pigs Galore

Yes I said Guinea Pigs!  Tommy wanted ONE guinea pig, just one little, teeny, tiny, baby guinea pig, just a cute little guinea pig!  So we got him one.....HE was a HE, his name was Kevin, HE was cute and sweet and made cute little guinea pig squeals....he loved carrots, and celery, and his little pellet food!  Then one day it happened....Tommy came running down the stairs after taking a shower yelling, "MOM....MOM....Kevin!  It's Kevin!!!"  I asked him what was wrong with Kevin?  FYI in the past we have had several guinea pigs, some were just great others were so lovable, they were loved to death!  So my first fear was that Kevin was our latest victim.  NO!!  not this time!  Tommy: "MOM!  Kevin just had babies!"  I looked at him like he had just swallowed a bird!  WHAT?  Yes mom, Kevin just had babies!"  So I ran upstairs only to find 2 "big" babies in Kevin's cage.  I asked Tommy how long they had been in there, since there was no way that Kevin could have possibly produced two babies of "that" size.  He told me that he had just gone in to take a shower, and Kevin was jumping all over his cage, and when he got out of the shower there they were, two babies the size of adult hamsters.  So, of course, I ran to the computer to google what baby guinea pigs look like, and sure enough they come out the size of a fat hamster, all haired up, eyes wide open, and to my great surprise, ready to eat.  This is what started a large snowballing effect of guinea pig-mania!

Trying to tell the sex of a guinea pig is more like trying to tell a child why algebra will be important in their life one day.  It's almost IMPOSSIBLE!!!!  The boys and girls each have a small Y "down there" but the boy "Y" has a dot the size of a microscopic amoeba!  And that's the tell tail sign of "yes I'm a boy!"  But the logical way to find out which one is a boy, is to figure out which one never gets pregnant....or at least that was our way to find out!  So 19 baby guinea pigs later.....we singled out the gigolos'!

Many days we would be in the room with the guinea's spreading open their little legs with a magnifying   glass trying to see the "dot".....and many times we thought we saw it and would separate that one out, only to find out 3 weeks later, yes this is yet another lady!  One had 4 babies, one had 3, one had 2 and so on and so forth!  It was like a guinea a day was having babies!  Don't get me wrong, they are adorable and so much fun to play with, and more than that so much fun watching mother nature take it's course....but somewhere out in the wild I would have enjoyed Mother Nature to take this course!  Guinea's can produce up to 5 litters per year and ours seemed to be following that rule well!

We have been able to sell some, adopt some out, and keep some....we are down to 4 ladies and 2 men!  One of my guinea's is a "special needs" piggy!  One day Snowball was standing in the corner of her cage looking out....I thought "oh how cute!" and walked away.  A couple of hours later my daughter came in and said "Mom did you see Snowball standing in the corner of the cage?  Isn't she cute?"  I realized it had been a lot of time since I first saw her there, so I went to her cage only to find out that she was STUCK in the corner, HOOKED to the bar of the cage by her tooth!  Yes, she is a half blind, half deaf, albino, hooked tooth guinea pig!!!!  Only in my family would we be blessed with a Half Blind, Half Deaf, Albino, Special Needs Guinea Pig!  So I unhooked her from the corner of the cage, looked at her tooth and realized that it was almost an inch long and turned up like a fish hook!  So I called the vet, and asked, what I thought was a ridiculous question!  "So does anyone over there take Guinea Pigs on as patients?"  And they said "YES of course we do!"  Sure why not I thought!  So I dragged Snowball over to the vet to see about this tooth!  Apparently this is not an uncommon event with some Guinea's.  Since Snowball is "special" her teeth do not touch so it allows for the top tooth to grow uncontrollably!  And being the mom that I am, I just can't let her go on like this, so we now have a standing appointment to trim down the tooth about once every three months or so!

Yep!!!  This is my life in a "nutt"shell!  I'm a mom of 8, with a St. Bernard, 2 Cats, several fish, turtles, lizards, and more guinea pigs than a normal person would put up with....but who ever said I was normal?  

A Simple Story Remembered!

My Mom was diagnosed with kidney cancer and 4 months later passed away.  She fought a great fight and with a very faithful spirit passed away on January 2, 2000....My Dad was a very stubborn Sicilian Italian, that my Mom took great care of all of the time.

After my Mom passed away, my Dad created a memorial of her with pictures everywhere!  When you walked in the door there she was, she was in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in the bedroom and not just once but several times.  His heart was broken, the love of his life was gone.  They were married for 53 years when my Mom passed.

There were several moments when I realized all that my Mom had done for my Dad....and most of them funny!  He would call to tell me things like he couldn't find the soap!  I would tell him to look in the cabinet in his bathroom and he still couldn't find it, then I realized I had not bought soap lately and I'm sure he hadn't, so of course there was no soap! I'm guessing that he thought there was an endless supply of soap, since my Mom would never let it run out!   I would have to run to the store for him, and believe me I had no problem with this at all, but he would tell me to get 3 pieces of bologna, and I would buy 6 he would ask why and I told him that with 6 kids it was hard to get to the grocery every 2 days like my mom would to get 3 pieces of bologna.  He just didn't get it, I was an only child, so he had no idea of what it took to have 6 kids.

But one day, I got this very very excited phone call from my Dad....he had boiled an egg and completely beside himself!  He just could not believe that he was able to do that.  So I congratulated him, and cheered him on, and told him I was so very proud of him.  About a half hour later he called me back and told me he thought he had done something wrong to the egg.  I asked him what he thought the problem was, he said it was with the yolk!  I again asked him, what was the problem with the yolk?  He said that it was yellow all around!  I said that that was PERFECT!!!  He said no!  That every egg my Mom had ever boiled had green around the yolk, so there was definitely something wrong with his!  I could not stop laughing.....I told him that Mom had ALWAYS over cooked the eggs and that's why the greenish color to the yolk....I told him that what he had done was perfect and I had wished I could cook them that perfect!  His answer was:  "Well, I think I'm going to put this back in the pot and let it cook some more, I certainly don't want to eat an egg different from how your Mom cooked it!!"...... I.....LMBO!!!!

IF YOU DON'T HAVE IT....Improvise!!!

We were all in church on a Sunday a while back, at this particular time in my life I ONLY had 7 kids, but we were sitting right behind a family that also had 7 children.  This mom and I had grown up together and we had mirror image families.   So as most mommies know, you're supposed to go to public places prepared for anything that may happen while traveling with children.  Well, if you are a mom of 7, you can only hope you get all 7 kids out of the house without forgetting a shoe, a sock, a pair of pants, or worst yet, one of them!  So things like tissue, baby diapers, diaper bags, etc, usually don't make it for the ride.  On this Sunday, I did manage to drag a diaper bag with me, but only God knew what was in it....

As Mass went on, I noticed that the mom in front of me was searching around frantically for something/anything because one of her kids had just announced that she may throw up.  Rather than running frantically to the back of Church, because we all know what would happen then, running and vomiting is not very attractive, she was trying to find something for her to throw up in.  She looked at me to see if I, the other mom of 7, may have something to catch the mornings breakfast!  But of course I didn't!  So we were looking around at anyone near us with kids to see if they had something!  One mom looked at me like, "vomit in MY stuff, I don't think so!"  Then another elderly lady handed me a tissue!  I thanked her but thought "yeah right!" All of this frantic searching took less time than the stomach to travel breakfast up the food pipe and reach the mouth!

So in a panic, I dumped out my diaper bag, super balls went flying, old stale cheerios hit the floor, several Tonka Trucks made loud dings as they hit the pew, a pack of "women's paraphernalia" dropped on one of my sons foot,  there was nothing useful in it for a vomit moment other than the bag itself, and gave it to her for the catch!  She didn't even bat an eye, she grabbed the bag, held it in front of her daughter's face, continued to participate in Mass and let her daughter toss her cookies in it!!

After Mass was over, she looked at me and said "Thanks so much!  I hope next time we sit together I have something to help you out with!"   I told her "No problem".....Then we both laughed our butts off, because before we walked out of Church she asked if I wanted the bag back!?!  "Nah!!!  You can keep it!"

God Made Gravity to help Stick Us to the Earth

Having a conversation with a 5 year old over meat sauce and macaroni is pretty interesting.  Somehow we started talking about how meat sauce looks like the crust of the earth, then we moved on to how macaroni resembles rocks and logs and sometimes funny looking animals.  I was quite intrigued by her sense of how the earth looks and how it was created and how it was shaped, she knows quite well that the earth is round.  As she went on to explain to mom and dad that while the earth might look flat, because we can see for long distances, the earth is actually round, and the reason it looks flat is because it's such a big ball that our eyes make it look flat.

So I started asking her questions about how she thinks the earth got here, and did she think that there may be other places that are like earth.  She began to explain that, God made the earth, and she was pretty sure that He had made other balls, called planets, that looked like earth, but she wasn't exactly sure how many or if there were people on those balls.

Our conversation went on for a while about what the earth was made of, and how big it was, and why people could live on this "planet".  Then she asked me if I knew what a planet was?  I told her I thought I did, that when I was in school I was pretty sure that one of my teachers had explained that to me.  So she told me that since it had been a "LONG" time since I was in school, that maybe she needed to explain it to me once more, so she did!  "You see there are lots of other balls out in space, and they float around one big giant ball, the sun, and some of them are big and some are really small, and some (amazingly) are named after cartoon characters!"  That's where she got me!  Cartoon characters? I asked!  She said "YES" cartoon characters!  I asked which ones? and she told me Pluto, you know Mickey's dog?  Ah!  yes I didn't realize that.  She said "Mom, there were so many of those balls out there, they just couldn't think of lots of names to name them, so they started having to use cartoon characters names".  Well that made sense to me!  So on we moved to why Pluto and not Goofy!  She said it would be "im-mapro-priate" to name it Goofy, since that was a "funny" name and this was serious business!  AH!  again I was trumped by her knowledge!

Then the "piece de resistance" (with all of the French hyphens and dashes) was just how do we stay on this "earth" without floating into space.  "Well, you see, God made something called gravity!  And thank goodness He made it!"  I asked why?  "The gravity is what God uses to "stick" us on this earth, and it keeps us from floating out into space.  If he hadn't made gravity then we might not be sitting here eating macaroni and meat sauce!"

So there you go!  There are lots of balls out there that float around one big giant ball, and at least one of them is named after Mickey's dog, and there is something called "Gravity" that sticks us to our ball so we won't go floating off into space and not be able to sit around a dinner table and eat meat sauce and macaroni!  It's very simple...and I love lessons from a 5 year old!  They make my day!

Puppies in the Potty

Just wondering how many moms out there in mommy land have ever gone to the bathroom and found bobble head puppies floating in the toilet?  Well, yes you've guessed it...for some reason poop and potties are a very big part of my life.  I went into the bathroom and shut the door, mainly because I never and I mean NEVER get to go pee alone.  Either there is a kid, a cat or a dog that follows behind me, the kids talks to me, the dog waits till I sit down then either licks my face or sneezes on me, and well, the cat, yes the cat will normally stand up on his hind legs and paw at my face while I'm on the potty!  So right before I manage to do the getting ready to go to the bathroom stuff, I see something out of the corner of my eye, to my great surprise there were 6 bobble head puppies floating in the toilet.  Now what to do?  I start to fish out the puppies, while yelling "who put the puppies in the potty?"  I can hear laughing going on, then I hear "MOM!  Don't flush the toilet!"  Well, really now!?  I'm not that stupid!  So as I am fishing in the toilet, several of the heads start to fall off of the puppies!  Then I really got mad, and when I get mad, hysterical laughter is not far behind.  So of course all I could think was, wow this will make a great Facebook post or better yet another story for my blog!

I let in the puppy floating culprit, so that she could help me take the floating pups and bring them to safety and a bath.  We did manage to get them all out, heads included, so of course I had to ask the big question, "why on earth would you put your puppies in the potty?"  Her answer was not one I wanted to hear....she told me that she accidentally dropped them in there AFTER she had peed, she was trying to reach for the toilet paper with the puppies in her hand, she couldn't get the paper so she put the puppies in her lap and the inevitable happened she dropped them and didn't want to stick her hand in there to get them out!  "GREAT so that means I just stuck my hand in PEE!? "  "Yes Mommy, but you can wash them with soap and water, you'll be fine!"  You'll be fine, my famous last words to anything that happens around here, and now I'm getting it back from my 5 year old.  Now I know how they feel when I say it to them.  But on the other hand I always flush the toilet and I never drop my puppies in there...so my "you'll be fine" is much different from her "you'll be fine".

Then I started to think, where's the toilet paper???  So, I ASKED!  I don't know why I ask any questions around here, but her answer was, "I put it in the trash can, cause I didn't want it to get mixed up in my puppies!"  Of course!  Who would want to mix up nasty toilet paper with bobble head puppies in a toilet full of pee!?!

It's ANOTHER Poop Story!!!

So right after I had my 4th baby, my darling hubby decided to take the oldest three to a place called Discovery Zone, it was one of "those" places that you could let your kid run wild in balls and tunnels and slides while you sat and waited it out with other non-suspecting parents!

My oldest had been on a Raisin Bran kick, eating it several times a day and enjoying every minute of it, he was a picky eater and had a total of seven food items that he ate, so adding one more was a thrill to me, the food Nazi!  The others were fairly good eaters, but one was still a diaper wearer and the other was a constipated mess!

My darling hubby was watching the kids and enjoying the moment, and of course I was at home with a very, very newborn, and more than enjoying my moment!  Peace and quiet, not something a mom of 4 gets on many occasions.

All of a sudden, 30 minutes after my hubby had left, he was HOME!  NO!!!!  I thought, why me?  I was just getting a taste of peace, a sample of quiet and there they were HOME and for what reason, I asked?  WELL, he started to tell my why they were home, but they weren't going to be there for long.

I cried I laughed so hard at his answer, and I still cry with laughter when I tell the story.....so here it goes, for your eyes only:

Shortly after he got to Discovery Zone and twenty-one dollars later, all he could find was Charles sliding down a slide.  So he asks Charles where is Alex? (my daughter) and Charles says she is in the tube flapping her arms like a bird!  John knew what that meant!  A poop was on it's way!!!!  So he starts to call her from the bottom of the tube, and she says she can't come down.  So John asks her and Charles where is Greg?  Neither of them knew.  So he left Charles playing and Alex flapping to look for Greg!  Only to find Greg in the bathroom trying to clean himself up from a morning Raisin Bran poop!  ALL OVER THE PLACE!!!  My poor, dear hubby starts wetting paper towels and helping to clean the mess!  He finally gets THAT mess cleaned, and realizes he has to go rescue the flapping child in the tube....when he gets back out to the tubes and balls he sees Charles standing in the balls turning red and NOT moving.  OH dear God....why me?  He says!!  So he tells Charles to finish his business and he proceeds to try to rescue Alex, the flapping one, from the top of the tube!  He starts to climb up the tube to get the kid and he gets stuck!  Of course, why not?!?  So he straightens out his body and slides himself UP the tube to get the ever so lovely flapping child.  He manages to hook her in his arms and drags her down the tube and gets her over to the side in a sort of safety mode.  He then proceeds into the balls to rescue the red, straining child....and manages to hook that one too and gets him to safety.  Now he has all three smelly, dirty, pooped out kids in his arms, safe and disgusting.  He makes his way to the counter and tells the girls there, "I just paid $21 to get in here less than 15 minutes ago, they have all crapped on themselves, so I'm going home to clean them and I AM COMING BACK!!!  So please let me back in!"  She told him, "Of course!"  What else would she say?  I mean a dad with 3 kids that crapped all in less than 15 minutes.....I'm guessing that it may have been a first for her, since she was laughing so hard she could hardly answer him.

So there they all were, in the house, all crapped out!  John and I threw them all in the tube, cleaned them off, put on brand new clothes, put them back in the car, and off went my Prince Charming, back to the scene of the crime!

Now any mom would have said "the hell with that" Twenty-one dollars down the drain, there is no way on God's Green Earth I would have ever gone back....I would have cleaned them up, thrown them in the bed for a nap, and grabbed a bottle of wine!!!!  But not Prince Charming......he took them back and then stayed for another 3 hours....gave me a much needed rest, and made me think of him as the BEST this earth has to offer in a husband!!!

Doohickies and Wigglebops: What are you?

Doohickies and Wigglebops: What are you?: I was in Sam's one day a long time ago, I only had 5 kids with me, one attached to my chest and the rest following like little duckling...

What are you?

I was in Sam's one day a long time ago, I only had 5 kids with me, one attached to my chest and the rest following like little ducklings aside the basket.  As I was trying to fill my basket with giant boxes of diapers, and equally giant boxes of diaper wipes a very tall gentleman looked at me and said, "So what are you, a good Catholic or a stupid Protestant?"  At first I was taken aback, but then I realized he had probably been in my shoes years ago.  So I said, "the good Catholic brand!"  He said, "Yeah, me too!  I have 9 kids!  Only back then there were cloth diapers and we had to use facecloths to wipe the poo!"  I told him that I had been in that same position, not because only cloth diapers existed, but because I had forgotten to stock up on those wonderful inventions of throw aways.  He laughed and I continued to struggle with 2 very large boxes of diapers.

As we continued through the isles, which by the way I never took that many kids to Sam's again, actually haven't taken any kids to Sam's again, I had the one hanging from me in diapers, one walking with diapers, and one that was just potty trained, not sure if I have to go on with this but you can only imagine with that many uncontrolled butts what happened next!  The one hanging made a grunting noise, turned red and next thing you know all I could feel was wet, slimy warmth up against my body.  Hurrying along so as not to be completely clothed in poo, and trying to get out of there ASAP, I turned to find another one leaning against the shelves with this look of "total relief is on it's way" and it was, in his diaper.  At this point I was fit to be tied, or just ready for a giant glass of wine, the one that was just trained looked at me, and all I could say was "PLEASE HOLD IT!!!"  "I CAN'T!" were the words I didn't want to hear, but I heard them!  So we ran to the bathroom and got her there NOT just in time!  PEE was everywhere!  I wanted to cry, but I remained strong and did what any mother of 5 would have done!  I grabbed them all and after and hour and a half filling my basket with lots of needed items, we left that basket right there in the middle of the bathroom door and we left.  

That day was a learning curve for me, I came to realize I just was NOT one of THOSE moms that could do it all and remain calm through it.....I got them all in the car, laughed me fool head off and headed straight home!  Threw them all in the bathtub, washed, dried, clothed, diapered, powered, brushed hair, (ok not really), but tried and put them all in their rooms to play and I did then what any mother should do.....I opened a bottle of wine, drank a glass and waited for dad to come home so I could run out and at least buy a small pack of diapers and order pizza!!!!

My days at Sam's are now in peace, by myself, no pee, no poo, no more diapers, no more wipes!  Several kids have been added to the flock since then and we've graduated to large packs of underwear, large packs of socks, lots of milk, huge packs of meat, but the one thing that remains the same is the WINE!!!!  I still maintain a mom needs her glass of wine!