Use only as directed...

I have a strawberry on my arm, and I'm not wearing the pants I intended to wear today. It's making me nostalgic for my childhood. I was cleaning the kitchen when my nephew ran in and told me to hurry up and get outside or I'd miss something fun. I found my brother pulling the kids in a truck bed liner attached to the back of his tractor. I jumped in with them. The rules are that you're not allowed to hold on, and when you (inevitably) get thrown out, you run and try to dive back on.

When we were kids, John would come up with these insane plans that mostly ended disastrously. Aaron and I were sometimes participants, sometimes casualties, and practically never the recipients of subsequent discipline.

John has not outgrown this but has honed his skills. His children, nieces and nephews are the beneficiaries. Every time we see him he comes up with something new. Here is what I remember over the past few years:

1. Crash test baby. He attached a toddler riding toy to a bungee cord and slung the kids into an oversized pillow against the wall.
2. Hunting. He hid stuffed animals in the front yard and gave the kids PVC pipe for guns.
3. Lotion torture. After baths, he made them lay down on the floor. He dripped cold lotion on them as "torture."
4. Motorcross skiing. He got a water skiing rope, a motorcross bike, an old pair of skiis and a chair. He attached the skiis to the chair. We sat in the chair holding the ski rope he'd attached to the bike. He pulled us through a snowy field. He came up with a similar game using boogie boards in the flooded creek.
5. Munchkin knights. He set up staged jousting matches after we took the kids to Medieval Times.
6. Farmer David. Today he stood on the back of the tractor and let David drive it.
7. Steamroller. Lay the kids on the floor and roll over them like you're a steamroller.

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Thumb sucking as a gateway drug...

So Rand has developed his own method for eating rice cereal.

1. Suck thumb desperately.
2. Remove thumb for a nanosecond to take a spoonful of cereal.
3. Reinsert thumb.

Is this how crack addicts start?






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More brothers h conversation ...

David: "Mommy, Jacob said the f word."
Pause
Me: "What is the f word, David?"
David: "It's fart. I just know you don't want me to say it."



What the world feels like to a 3 year old ...

Bryan: "We don't want to be an orphan, right?"
Me: "Why don't you want to be an orphan, Bryan?"
Bryan: "If you don't have a mommy or a daddy, then you will get eated by monsters."

Road trip

I decided to take the boys to see my brothers in the Chattanooga area. Here are the highlights from the road:

1. The mountains were beautiful.
2. It takes a loooooooong time to get to our cousins' house. - Bryan
3. We saw 17 cops on the way.
4. It takes a loooooooong time for it to be Bryan's turn to pick a movie.
5. Just because you are freaking out, desperate with hunger, does not mean you have to nurse well when someone is able to feed you.
6. A 7 year old can be a huge help in the car.
7. Grown up movies (read Star Wars) are dumb. - Bryan
8. It takes a loooooooong time to get to our cousins' house. - Bryan.
9. The book The Thirteenth Tale is very good. I listened to it on the drive.
10. WhIle filling up the car, if you push in the little button that holds the gas guzzle ( is that what you call it?) up, you close out the transaction and have to start over again to get more gas. Jacob
11. It takes a looooooooong time to get to our cousins' house. Bryan.
12. You can have a sudden and desperate need for a bathroom even if you were taken there in the previous five minutes. Jacob and Bryan.
13. After only nine hours of driving I can chill out enough to let us eat our dinner outside beside a beautiful field at dusk.




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Circle of quiet

"The sight of a meal's worth of dirty dishes, pots, and pans makes me want to run in the other direction. Every so often I need OUT, something will throw me into total disproportion, and I have to get away from everybody - away from all these people I love most in the world - in order to gain a sense of proportion."
from Circle of Quiet by Madeliene L'Engle

For Mother's Day, Chris always gives me a day to myself - entirely free from child and household responsibilities.

Saturday I ...
walked in the woods alone
prayed beside a river
drank tea
ate lunch at Panera
read Freedom of Simplicity
took a nap
read The Histories
took a bath
read Circle of Quiet
read Proverbs
ignored the mess
played the piano
bought a book
had bread, brie and beer for dinner
read poetry
talked to an old friend
listened to the rain
laughed.

Carry a big stick and run when you need to...

A wild turkey chased me through the woods this morning. Seriously. I don't know if turkeys can be rabid, but that's what he seemed like - a rabid turkey gobbling a war cry. What do you do in this situation? Do I pick up a stick? The only big one I see is a little too close to the turkey. First I decided to walk on nonchalantly and ignore him. He was undetterred and getting closer. Next with the subconscious influence of Avatar (scene where the hero runs and screams at some sort of dinosaur-monster), I take a couple of aggressive stomps towards him. But this turkey is a warrior. Fierce. As I'm thinking through the damage a turkey could do to me, it occurs to me that I can run faster than a turkey, so I ran. He chased me for a little while. The turkey, I am sure, left feeling like a mighty warrior. Defender of Red Rock Regional Park. Avenger of Thanksgiving. I left the field of battle considerably unnerved. I picked up a big stick, and flinched every time I heard a squirrel scurrying up a tree.

At the end of my walk, I looked down at my shirt. It says, "Undefeated."

The Children's Hour

I was playing the piano when I heard whispers in the kitchen. Moments later the boys launched a major offensive - everyone was armed. If I had been in a different mood, they might have all ended up in timeout. When we read this poem later in the week, I was so glad I hadn't been harsh.

The Children's Hour by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupations,
That is known as the Children's Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret
O'er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

Do you think, o blue-eyed banditti,
Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am
Is not a match for you all!

I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!

Another weapon in the arsenal...

So David discovered a new weapon for his big brother arsenal. A recent conversation between David and Jacob.

J: "I have the most powerfulest weapon."
D: "Thanks for saying I have the most powerful weapon."
J: "No, I said I have the most powerfulest weapon."
D: "Yeah, thanks for saying I have the most powerful weapon."
J: "David, I said I have the most powerfulest weapon."
D: "Thanks for saying I have the most powerful weapon."
J: (with the deepest voice a 4 year old can muster) "I have new Power Ranger kicks, David, and they're not all funny ones."

John and Aaron, this almost makes me feel ashamed of what I did to you when you were little.

Hello world.

I feel like I did in my first programming class in college. I had no concept of the basic tenets of programming. Everyone else in the class had taken programming in high school. The computer class in Fort Payne, Alabama was really word processing. I had no idea what the professor was talking about. Eventually I wrote the inevitable first program:

Hello world.

Well, hello blogosphere. I'm afraid I'm going to forget all the cute things my kids say if I don't write them down. So, I'm writing them down. This is going to be another shameless mommy blog. Probably only their parents and grandparents are interested.