A day in my shoes

Charlie is getting to the age where he is learning something new almost on a daily basis.  He is such an easy-going baby and so much fun to watch. He has recently mastered raising his arms for "So Big!" and clapping his hands. 

He is also very good at climbing the stairs and, unfortunately, he LOVES it. Too bad he hasn't yet figured out how to get safely back down the steps. For those of you who haven't been to our house, we have a large wooden staircase right in the middle of our home.  We did not realize that it was too wide for a standard baby gate until after he started climbing the steps, so I'm very anxious for the extra-wide gate we ordered to arrive.

In the meantime, I spend most of my day holding Charlie because every time I set him down he heads straight for the staircase and starts to climb. If any of you would like to try out a day in my shoes, just follow the rules below:

1) Find something (a sack of potatoes, for example) that weighs approximately 20 pounds. 

2) Carry it around in one arm the entire day, doing pretty much everything one-handed (brushing teeth, cooking, cleaning up after meals, working on computer, etc). Ideally, your 20 pound object should interfere with whatever it is you are trying to do. If, for example, you attempt to undertake the daunting task of sending a quick email, you should bang your object on the keyboard the entire time you are attempting to type.

3) You are allowed to set your object down for two 1-hour intervals (nap time).

4) If you must set it down to free your hands quickly, you have 5 to 10 seconds - 15 seconds tops - before you need to pick it up again before it starts climbing the stairs.

5) If you need to set it down for a luxurious 5-10 minutes without picking it back up again, you will first have to safely barricade it somehow and then pay for those minutes by choosing a bookshelf, cupboard or drawer and completely emptying its contents.

6) If you decide you need a bathroom break, you must unroll and re-roll a large portion of the toilet paper while you go. Another option would be to dump out the bathroom trash can.  Also, your 20 pound object should be leaning against your leg and pulling your pants down as you try to pull your pants back up.

7) As an extra touch, if you don't have a couple of older kids running around, you could invite some children in from the neighborhood and have them mess up as much of your house as they possibly can.  And tell them to bring along their homework so you can help them with it. They should also be extremely hungry and want complex snacks while they are there. At least one of them needs to spill their snack and try to clean it up by spreading it around even further.
(Note: if you put down your 20-pounder while re-cleaning up the snack, have one of the kids repeatedly place it in the middle of whatever it is you are trying to clean).
Also, the older kids need to have at least 34 fights/arguments every hour.
Feel free to remind yourself that they are learning good conflict resolution skills for their future. Repeat this reminder as often as needed.

8) You can finally be done around 8:30 or 9:00.  I'll exempt you from having to run upstairs to put the baby back to sleep again 3 times before you go to bed at midnight. I will also graciously exempt you from changing your chosen object's diaper while simultaneously rolling it around on the floor.

Unfortunately, I can't really recommend the above exercise as it could give the unrealistic impression that being a stay-at-home-mother is just extremely annoying and frustrating. But when that 20-pound object is an adorable, loveable baby, and when you can watch those older ones grow into children capable of demonstrating kindness, love and generosity (in between all the squabbles) everything I described above is totally worth it.

They are also great at helping me recognize the areas of my life that I need to work on. Like patience. And detachment from all those superficial distractions life offers (usually on a shiny, glowy screen...such as the one I'm using now. Yes, I see the irony. You don't have to rub it in. Sheesh!) And patience. And did I mention patience?  Yeah, I've got a long way to go on that one.

Oh! I almost forgot. Here's a picture of Charlie at Halloween. He's Charlie Brown!

Sam saw this picture of the Pope hugging a man during his visit to a rehabilitation hospital and said, "Mom!!! Is that St. Francis hugging Daddy??"

He was so excited I hated to break it to him that no, Daddy did not get to hug Pope Francis. But we were still happy for the other guy :)  He does look quite a bit like Seth from behind.

Elena and Sam were playing some version of tug-of-war upstairs while I was feeding Charlie when I heard the start of a cry. It sounded like a cry of pain that would soon escalate, but it went silent almost as soon as it began.

A little while later, I heard Elena say, "Sam, you're the best brother ever!"
Sam: "Why?"
Elena: "Because you knocked out my tooth!"

She was so happy to have it out, she doesn't even care that we can't find it.

We'll miss you, Grandma

My grandma didn't quite make it to her 103rd birthday, but she was pretty dang close. Holding off until just past midnight, she passed away on the anniversary of her own father's passing.

The visitation and funeral were beautiful tributes to her memory, and it was so nice to see all the family again. One of my favorite parts was when everyone had the opportunity to stand up and share a memory. At the very end, Sam stood up in front of everyone and with a loud voice said, "I know why Grandma wants to go to heaven.  She wants to be with Grandpa Lawrence!" I think she would have been proud to see her faith passed down to this 4-year old descendent of hers who embraces the hope that this good-bye is not forever, and that we will all be reunited again someday.

At one point, I was reminded of a story Grandma once told me of my great-aunt's visitation.  I was young enough at the visitation that I barely remember it. Several years afterwards, my grandma told me how much she had enjoyed watching me walk right up to my great-aunt and, full of interest and curiosity, peer in to get a closer look. Laughing at the memory, she said how her sister "would have just loved that!"

So I smiled when I saw my own children (and my nephew) go up to their great-grandma several times to pay their respects and say their last goodbyes, knowing how happy she would be to have these little great-grandchildren there.

I will miss bringing the kids to visit her; she would always ask, "Do they talk a lot?"
And I was always able to answer very honestly, "Yes. They never stop."
"Good," she would say, apparently happy to know that her genes were being passed along.
The only Irish blood my kids have comes from her, but apparently that has been enough to completely fill our home with the "Gift of Gab." Once, upon hearing the story of how Grandma's father used to offer to pay her if she could stop talking for 10 minutes, Elena decided she wanted to try. After 4 successive failures at this attempt, she said, "Let's just try again tomorrow."

Here's Grandma with 3 of her (nearly) 7 great-grandchildren. (And this is a woman who, after having to hold off on marriage until she was 38 due to an interruption from WWII, thought she would never even live to see the day she had a grandchild.)

Falling Behind

We've been extra busy around here so I've had to let go of several things for the time being, one of those things being the blog.  I have a few quiet moments here while Charlie sleeps, though, so I thought I would finally update this thing.

Our most exciting news is that Charlie started to crawl about a month ago! He has already started to climb our treacherous steps so we will all have to get used to maneuvering around baby gates for the next year or so. He has also mastered opening all the kitchen drawers and cupboards and pulling everything out.  As an added bonus, he's great at smashing his fingers when the drawers slide back shut.

Seth's dad had his appendix out a few weeks ago. Of course, it landed right at the peak of harvesting time.  He is lucky to have 5 boys at times like this! Seth has been putting in extra hours out in the field; Sam and Elena are out with him now. It's nice for him to have work where the kids can come along. He asked me the other day if his being gone so much has been getting to me.

Fortunately, I haven't let myself get stressed about it.  I've found that if I can focus on the bare necessities (basically keeping the family fed) and let pretty much everything else go, we can all stay happy.  Sure, walking through our house is like going through a mini-obstacle course and I'm running out of clean clothes to dress the children in.  Also there are times when getting a shower in is next impossible. But I've learned to just turn a blind eye to the mess for now, throw my greasy hair up into a ponytail, and keep my head a safe distance away from heat sources. I'm sure in about 2 weeks when I try to "catch up" on everything, I may have a small breakdown, but that's what chocolate is for.

It doesn't help that in the middle of all of this, Charlie came down with a nasty cold and fever, requiring me to hold him for 2 days straight. Also my grandma had a heart attack so we threw a last minute trip to St Peter in this week and had a nice visit with her in the hospital. We maybe should not have made it a surprise visit, however. At one point, I was very seriously wondering if her excitement over seeing the kids was going to kill her.

Charlie's awake so I guess I'm done here. Here he is crawling:

Now that it's getting cooler...

Our house is filling up with flies.  Luckily for us, Charlie has made swatting flies much more entertaining for the whole family.

There's something about killing bugs that our boys seem to love.

First Day of Preschool!

Sam was super upset after his first day of preschool because he had to leave before lunch. "Everyone else gets to stay the whole day!! Why do I have to come home early??" We had signed him up for half-days mainly because I miss him and I thought a full day might be a bit long for him (and also I'm super cheap and considered it to be a little bit of a waste of money to pay for him to eat, run around outside, rest on the floor, and read stories since we can do all of that at home quite easily). 

I figured I would rather have him go a full day, however, than come home and sulk for 4 hours while he waited and whined for everyone else to get done with school. So we switched him to full days.

On his first full day of school, I came to pick him up and he was standing by his teacher crying.  I thought maybe he had been worried I wasn't coming (I was about 2 minutes late), although that would have been unusual for Sam. But, no. He was crying because "everyone else gets to go on the bus!!! Why do you have to pick me up????"

It makes me laugh to think of people who expressed concern to me in the past that kids who don't go to daycare will be clingy, shy, dependent and unsociable.  There's not much escaping the personality you're born with (actually, conceived with, to be more accurate) at that age.

Fun at the Fair

Thanks, Grandma, for our day at the fair!

Elena, Alex and Sammy rode this little roller-coaster again and again.  We were only able to get them off when the roller coaster had to be shut down for maintenance.



Charlie's first time on the Merry-Go-Round



Grandma and the kids at the end of the day.  



And, as always, the goofy shot :)

Milestones

Elena has been wiggling her loose teeth for the past month or two, and she finally had one tooth dangling, but couldn't quite bring herself to yank it out. The next morning, she woke up to find her tooth lying under her in bed. I'm not sure how she managed that one, but she has always been a restless sleeper.

Later that same day, Seth was rubbing Charlie's gums and his first tooth had popped through! We had told Elena she might loose her first tooth the same day that Charlie got his, but we didn't actually think it would happen.

"Toothless Wonder" as Elena calls herself.  She even made up a song with that title.

Later that week Elena finally taught herself to ride her bike without training wheels. She has been refusing to let us help her all summer, and we were starting to think she would be 10 before she could ride. But that's pretty typical of Elena: after watching other kids tie their shoes, she went off and taught herself, declining any offers from me to help.

Get ready to say, "Awwwwwww...."

Sam is not shy about asking girls to dance with him, but most girls his age are too shy to say yes.  Such was not the case with a little girl at a friend's wedding last weekend. She immediately agreed to dance with Sam.  After a minute of normal 4-year-old dancing, he started to spin her around a bit, and she love it.

For the rest of the evening, if Sam took too long of a break, she would track him down and drag him (sometimes literally) back out onto the dance floor. To make the evening even more fun, they had Minneota's jazz band - which is waaay better than you would expect a small-town community band to be - play for the dance. 

Here's the dance:

 

Here's Sam being drug back onto the floor for more: