Babies at Breastaurants.......

If you've ever had a child then you know that once breastfeeding moms get together there are endless stories of leaks, squirts, pain, poops, and even private showings of the boob!

I have breastfed everyone of my 8 children, some for longer than others but most of them for at least a year.  

One of my kiddos used to make the funniest sounds while nursing...he would hum, smack his lips and some of his sounds even came from the back end which were embarrassing at times, since I was never sure that if others heard him they would know it was him and not me!

One day I was at a gymnastics meet with my daughter and I had the baby with me...of course he did what all babies do and that was WANT TO EAT!!!  So I turned my back to the people sitting next to me...covered up and started to nurse.  There he started....huuummmmmm....smack, smack, smack....hummmmmm......pfffft (out the back end)....and some more smacks!  There was one of our team dads sitting right next to me, so I turned to him and said "sorry but I'm nursing and he's quite noisy".  The poor dad looked at me with a very uncomfortable smile, and said "no worries, that's what babies do!"  I said yes and smiled (but I was thinking, I don't think they all do it with this much gusto!)  This poor dad, I could tell was very uncomfortable with me next to him, so I decided to get up and move to a spot where no one was sitting.  I sat down at the other end of the bleachers and made myself comfortable and started to nurse again, I looked up and there was another dad looking to sit next to me. I said, "I am nursing, I moved over here so that no one would feel uncomfortable, if you're OK with a nursing mom, then sure go ahead and sit down."  So he did, and proceeded to tell me that his wife had nursed all of their kids and he was quite the expert at nursing babies.  So I proceeded to feed him and there went the noises again!  Hummmmm.....smack....smack....hummmmm.....Then all of a sudden he gave a grunting, loud push and pooped all over me, him, the blanket, and the bleachers!  All I could do was sit there and start to laugh hysterically.....this poor guy next to me looked over at me, I thought he was going to pass out!  He got up and told me "good luck with that one!" and walked off.

So I cleaned up as best I could.....thank goodness this was one time I had extra baby clothing with me....got him all sparkly and dressed, then he went right back to the breastaurant, of course he was now on empty!

Repeating Mommy......Repeating Mommy......

I find myself repeating myself often these days...not quite sure why...not quite sure why...wait did I say that already?  I can't seem to figure it out!  It's like I have 8 kids or something....

Wash your clothes.....WASH your clothes.....

Clean your room....CLEAN your room....

Take out the trash......TAKE out the trash.....


and the list goes on and on and on

So I've changed my strategy after all these years!  It's starting to work!  I now use the "Mommy asked, not she's pissed" strategy!  Otherwise known as the "Make them feel guilty" strategy...

This is how it works, I may be preaching to the choir at this point, but somehow I feel accomplished that I've finally figured this out!

Now all I do is ask ONCE!  "Can you please take out the trash?"....If nothing happens, like it usually does, then I start with the "under the breath guilt dissertation"
It goes something like this (bear in mind that if you're going to use this method, you really need to perfect the level of sound in your voice, up for the capital words, down for the lower case words, it works I promise):

"All I do around here is take out the garbage! I cook for them, I clean for them, I teach them, I NOW wash some of their clothes cause they just won't LISTEN to me...and NOW I have to take the TRASH out too!!!  You'd think that just ONE of them would see all that I do, AND that I carried them for 9 months in my body, gained all kinds of WEIGHT, had cravings for stuff that any normal human being would get sick on, then went through the PAIN to bring them into this world, got PEED on, pooped on, SPIT up on, and I, their lovely mommy now has to take out the trash!  TOO!!!!"

Usually at about three steps downstairs I have at least one of my kids running behind me to take it from my hand and bring it out for me!!!  And their excuse is always, "Gee mom why didn't you ask ME, you know I would have done it!"  (suck up!!!)

This has become a tried and true strategy....I suggest it to the world of Mommies....I have more, but try this one first, see the outcome and pass it on to those that are flying by the seat of their pants......they will thank you one day!!!

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!!!!