It's Been Nice Knowin' Ya

I often sing the last line of this primary song, "So I say to myself, Remember this: Kindness begins with me." It's one of the ways I remind the boys (mostly Cooper these days) to be kind to each other.

This evening I was driving back from soccer with all three kids. I had just sung my line about kindness when I said, "When you guys are grown-ups and you hear that song, I hope you'll think of me. And I hope it's a fond memory."

That prompted the following conversation:

Peter: Yeah, and I'll go to your funeral.

Me: What?!

Peter: I'll go to your funeral Mom.

Me: Well, let's hope that's not for a while.

Peter: Cooper, do you want to go to Mommy's funeral with me?

Cooper: (long pause while he thinks about it) Yes. And I'll drive.

Peter: No, I'll drive you and Phoebe. Phoebe, do you want to go with us to Mommy's funeral? She's smiling, so I think that means yes.

Well, I'm glad we have that out of the way.

Aphasia

My brain feels full. So full of words and thoughts and epiphanies. And they're stuck. I start to express myself and feel muddled, like I can't quite grab hold of the words I want to say.

It's frustrating.

It's frightening.

I hope that it's temporary, a side-effect of the early-morning, late-night schedule I've been keeping. Or maybe it's the result of me trying to answer the hundreds of questions I'm asked each day by the two little boys that live at my house. Whatever the cause, I feel somewhat trapped in my own head.

Tonight, instead of doing the dishes or mopping the floor or planning my lesson for Joy School, I read a book. I feel like that act has unclogged my brain a bit, enough to write this post at least.

Maybe I need to read more and clean less.

Yes, That's True

"It's a lot easier to talk when you don't have your tongue out."

-Peter

Number One

We have a one-year-old at our house.

The birthday girl, slightly groggy after her birthday nap.

I wanted to decorate for the big day but didn't have any "girl" decorations. I reached into my limited knowledge of crafts and made some tissue-paper pom-poms. She seemed to know that the large pink orb hanging above the table was for her.

We had a fancy birthday breakfast of purple pancakes. The boys sang Happy Birthday to her multiple times during the meal. She loved it.

Her birthday fell on a particularly busy day, so we celebrated away from home.

We packed a picnic, grabbed her birthday presents, and drove down to have dinner with Bryan on campus. For her gifts I opened my box of twelve-month sized clothes and pulled out everything that still had a tag. She likes clothes. We also bagged up all of the Fisher-Price Little People animals we had in the boys' room and gave them to her.

A few months ago Cooper and I were shopping when he saw a little cloth doll. He said he wanted to get it for Phoebe. Since it was only a few dollars I bought it and tucked it away for her birthday. It's her new favorite thing.

At one, Phoebe loves her dolls, her brothers, giving hugs and kisses, books, walking, coloring, bananas, black beans, and pizza. (Yes, pizza.) She hates having her diaper changed, being held when she might be exploring, being told no, and her bed. She's my earliest talker, earliest walker, and latest teether. She is both sweetly affectionate and fiercely strong-willed. She laughs easily and often.

We love her.

Balancing Act

She walks!

Bird is the Word

I was up until three in the morning working on the chicken. I'm still putting the kitchen back together, but at least the food is in the freezer, this time fully cooked and divided into half pound servings. I shredded some, cubed some, and left the rest in large chunks.

The cooked and divided chicken.

Hard to believe this project took more than fourteen hours, eh?

Is That a Chicken in There With You?

A few months ago I tried to save us some money and bought chicken for $1.49/lb. The catch was that I had to buy forty pounds to get that price. I figured I would just go home and bag it into easy-to-cook portions.

Except that when I got home I had to take care of other things, so I plopped the whole forty-pounds of chicken into the freezer downstairs, fully intending to come back to it later that day.

I didn't.

This afternoon I wanted something out of the freezer, something that was underneath the giant block of chicken-ice. I tried to heave the bag (now frozen solid and seemingly heavier than forty-pounds) out of the way.

That's when the plastic tore.

I stuck my hand in the bag to assess the damage. Maybe there were smaller bags dividing the chicken which would mean I could just drop the whole thing back in the freezer and be on my merry way.

But I felt very cold, very raw chicken.

I was able to separate ten pounds of it, re-bag it, and stick it back in the freezer. But the other thirty pounds were so stuck together that I had to thaw the whole mess to get it to fit into any of my available freezer safe containers. And once you thaw meat, it's generally a good idea to cook it.

And that is why I've been thawing/trimming/cooking/chopping/bagging/freezing-the-now-cooked chicken since one o'clock this afternoon.

I'm very tired.

And when it's done (I still have some in the oven and on the stove and in both the crock pots) I will have a load of cooked chicken.

Hungry?

Doctor Mom

Peter is sitting next to me on the couch, experiencing his first sick day since starting Kindergarten. Most of us had colds over the weekend (Cooper has escaped the bug so far). Peter was running a fever for most of the morning, so I decided it was best to keep him home. This means I reported my first school absence this morning, which made me feel very grown-up.

I'm glad he's home. I'm not happy he's sick, but it's nice to have him here.

Let's hope I feel the same way at the end of the day.

The Sound of Silence

Peter has had two good days in a row. And not just at home. He hasn't gotten in trouble at school either. Two days may not sound like much, but it's quite the victory for Peter.

He even got a special stamp for "listening" along with the other kids at his table.

We may get the hang of this school business yet.

Curiosity

We went to the park again today. I think I'm trying to gather in as much sunshine as possible before winter descends upon us. Wouldn't it be lovely if we could preserve summertime like we preserve fruit, tucking it into the pantry for a particularly dreary day?

Phoebe had such fun playing in the grass on Tuesday that I plopped her onto the earth again today. She pulled herself up to stand using the leg of my pants and walked circles around me. Occasionally she would drop to her hands and knees and crawl off in search of a nice crunchy wood chip. I'm almost certain I caught them all before they went into her mouth.

I was chatting with a friend (her kids were having a grand time playing with the boys) when her face grew serious. She was looking at Phoebe. In a calm but urgent tone she said, "She's got- she's got-" She didn't finish the sentence. I looked down thinking that maybe Phoebe had moved from wood chips to weeds. I was wrong. Struggling between her curious fingers was something squirming to get out.

A wasp.

I was already bending down to pick her up when my brain registered the black and yellow segmented body. I took hold of her arm while my friend, who had stopped talking and started moving when she saw what Phoebe had, gently pulled Phoebe's fingers away. The wasp remained on the ground, struggling to recover from being examined by a baby while Phoebe started to cry.

I quickly checked her hands, her face, her arms for evidence of a bite. Nothing. Then I realized she wasn't fussing because she was hurt. She was mad because we had taken her toy and she wanted it back.

Phoebe is my animal lover. She is completely unafraid of dogs and cats, which is very unlike her brothers. I had no idea that her love of critters extended to the insect world.

I'm still shocked that she wasn't stung. Shocked and exceedingly grateful.

She stayed, much to her annoyance, in my arms for the remainder of our stay at the park.