ARGH School Assignments

So my daughter had a school assignment due on January 31.  Of course it was put off until it was too late, and… well… long story short, we were making her do it on February 7.

Anyways, what you need to know about this particular child is that she is stubborn, and meticulous.  She has to do things perfectly, or not at all.    Not that she ever does things perfectly, but she makes things A-MAZ-ING in her head and then when she can’t bring it to fruition she ends up frustrated beyond frustration.

Anyways, as she began her work, she had decided on “sapphires”  (it was a rock/mineral project).  So she had to make a poster with basic facts (mining, environmental impact, etc.)  – On a side note, it annoys me that schools always ask for environmental impact, but they never ask about ethical issues involving humans, like trafficking or child labor , but on with my story…  She was looking up information and drawing her poster.  Her father tried to help.  It ended up one, big mess.

About an hour later, she came down and presented me with a poster that was… well… atrocious.  The spelling was COMPLETELY all over the board – albeit they were hard words like ‘deforestation’, but still – it was absolutely unacceptable to hand in as an assignment.  Which I told her, “Looks great honey, let’s go fix the spelling errors together.”

“NO, IT IS MY ASSIGNMENT I WILL DO IT”

“Well, you can’t hand in a poster like that.  It looks terrible with those spelling mistakes.  Let’s fix the spelling.”

“NO, I DON’T NEED YOUR HELP.  I WANT IT MY WAY”

“Well, then let me write out the words on this sheet of paper the right way, and you can correct them.”

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Bedtime!”

She then came up a few minutes later, apologized for having attitude (yay!), but then when I suggested she fix it, she absolutely refused.  Sigh.

Meanwhile, I was getting petty and angry at my husband for not helping enough.  So I was sooooo annoyed on many levels.

Fast forward to the next day.

The next morning, she woke up, and refused to take her assignment to school because “it wasn’t done”, but it was more of a matter of her being embarrassed at the result.

Every morning as they leave for school, I say a prayer with my girls at the front door.  Usually it is something simple like “Dear God, thank you for today, Please help us to be more like you and to share your love today in all ways.”

This morning I was in a pickle.  I was mad at hubby, I was mad at kid, and the last thing I wanted was to be more like Him.  That involved lots of forgiving (which I didn’t want to do because I was mad), and kindness (also hard to ask for since I was frustrated).  So I worded an awkward “Dear God, thank you for today.  Please bless all the kids who need help today.”

Now, the interesting thing, is now that I ponder it, I realize I am just like my kid and her assignment.  Sometimes He only wants little corrections and we are so stubborn, and so insistent to do it “our way” (even though it is not right, and ends up being a mess that we are to embarrassed to show anyone).  So, I swallowed my pride, asked forgiveness for my attitude, and fixed my ‘assignment’ with my hubby and kid.

And one of my dogs pee’d on the assignment that my kid did, so we are going to work on it together this weekend.

Hopefully this time we are both a little less stubborn and have a lot better of a result.

Groceries

So, I recently spoke to someone about our grocery budgets.  She was shocked at how low mine was.  Not sure why.  I am certainly not a coupon clipper.  I don’t scout for sales or pre-plan my shopping.  I like brand names.  I was thinking and thinking about it, and then I came to some sort of run down.

School lunches make me want to punch myself in the face.  I hate them.  LOATHE them.  I don’t know how people do it.  I can never seem to find the right set of easy yet healthy yet cheap.  Half of it comes home wasted.  I hate them. I wish I knew how other super moms pack their lunches.  I looked into those bento box lunch boxes and almost fainted.  Some people spend 40 bucks on these things!  My kids would lose them in 2 days.  Permanent lunch containers are a no go for us.  I googled “Five dollar meal” lunches.  One site sent only 2 boiled eggs, some water, and an apple.  Is this the norm?  My kids would starve on that!  I have not in any way been able to come to a conclusion about this.  I have gotten better, but certainly haven’t mastered it.

As for dinners and other meals, basically, I buy what is on sale, plan out my meals while I am walking through Safeway (the only place I shop because the music is always good.  Make fun of me now…) .  I shop once a week, so every week has different items on sale.  I use up my pantry before I shop.  That’s about it.  I find the fact that I cook at home with basic ingredients is the main reason.  I love http://www.mealsmatter.org.  They got me started on the basics of meal planning.  And sometimes, I just look in my fridge, enter some ingredients into google with the word “recipe” and see what comes up. That’s it.  That is all I do, and my grocery bill seems to be quite a bit lower than some people (if you also factor in take out as groceries, which I do).  I love the fact that my husband brags to his friends about my cooking.

Other items?  Well, I was watching Nineteen Kids and Counting.  Man, those people make their own laundry soap!  Wha?  I am certainly not that domesticated yet.  I just buy what I like, and try to wait for it to be on sale.

And now for my kid story of the day.

Yesterday, I stood my eight year old in front of a mirror and asked her “Honey, what do you see there?”  She looked and said “I see a tall, wise girl…  Standing behind me.”   And THAT is why she is so awesome. 

The Flu.

Recently our family faced the flu.  Sounds pretty normal, but in a bigger family, it was like something took over our world.

It began innocently enough when my oldest daughter had a bit of a throat infection and my next daughter came to me and told me she was sick also.  I assumed that perhaps it was a bit of trying to gain my attention, but I hugged her and told her to lie down for a bit to feel better.  About five minutes later, she came down the stairs and promptly puked all over me and the oldest.  And I mean all over.  Down my hair, dripped down my pants, and somehow she continued to throw up.  As I jumped up calling to the oldest to get a bowl, she says to me “What kind of bowl?”….  Really?  Did she seriously ask me what the appropriate bowl was for puke???    Anyways, she got me the bowl, I rushed kid 2 up to the washroom to finish up there while I had a shower.

She was very sick.  I am pretty sure it was this Norwalk thing.  Not pretty.

And just as I thought maybe the light was at the end of the tunnel, kid number 3 started puking at about 2am.  Lovely.  Now the irony about her episode was that she was worried about making a mess with it…  This is the child that single handedly destroys my whole home, but was gagging on her own puke because she didn’t want to make a mess?  Apparently this flu brought with it a shift in the universe for a few days.  So I ended up holding a towel for her to puke into while my half awake zombie of a husband ran to get a bucket.

At this stage, he also went down.  Victim numero 3.  Yuck.  At this point I was aggressively cleaning all toilets (nobody likes to puke in a dirty toilet).

Then, the baby.  Oy.  The baby.  She didn’t puke, but there is something truly vile about what comes into a diaper when an infant has the flu.  This could seriously be used as a weapon.  I wonder if the government has researched this?  I have never met a man who could face a diaper with a straight face, let alone a flu diaper…

At some point in there (my memory seems to have wiped out the horror of that week), I went down for 12 hours also.

As I was sitting trying to rest I told my oldest “you wait, you’re next…”  (because I am a mean, mean mom).    She vehemently asserted that she was not going down.  It became our little game.

Shockingly, she did avoid it.  I don’t know how.  She is my most stubborn child, so maybe she just decided not to.  Who knows.

It’s funny how in moments like these it truly, honestly feels like you can’t get through.  I know that other families go through it.  I know people face FAR worse battles.  But somehow, on day 3 of no sleep and all puke, it seems like the worse possible situation to everyone involved.  It seems like it will never end.  But it will, and it does.  It always does.  Even day 3 can’t last forever.

We are all more or less healthy now.  I have caught up on some sleep.  This weekend I am going on a married couples retreat with my husband.  The kids are divided and conquered.  And thank God, the puking has stopped.

Stinky yet safe

So, I was going to write today about how sometimes it feels like I am in a weird version of Groundhog Day (Bill Murray)…  I get up, get kids going to school, get other kids fed, clean the same mess, play the same 5 kid shows, have the same naptime battle, do the same dishes, do the same laundry, cook dinner, repeat.  Every. Single. Day.   But that post will be for another day because my afternoon turned into a fantastic call to poison control.

As I was putting away my laundry today, I took the risk of leaving my 2 and 1 year old with the Disney channel for a few minutes.  I returned to find my two year old had climbed onto a toy box and knocked down my Galileo Thermometer (google it if you don’t know what that is) from my fireplace.  Awesome.  Really awesome.  The icing on the adventure?  My one year old was close enough to be covered in the liquid inside and cut herself a teeny tiny bit. So I did what any mom would do.  I panicked, put the 2 year old in time out, and tried to think out what I was going to do next.

I cleaned up the glass (surprisingly little thank goodness), mopped the floor, bathed kid one and kid two, then called poison control just to be 100% sure that the stuff that got on them was okay.  It smells like someone sprayed a bottle of WD-40 in my house.  Again, awesome.

So what is my tip today?  How do I tie this into some sort of ‘life lesson’?

I have no idea.

I have, however, learned the following things:  1. The stuff in a Galileo thermometer (in our time) is mostly alcohol, with water.  It is not toxic.  2. Never trust Disney Channel for more than 10 seconds, once my back is turned that child can destroy anything in record time.

That’s about it.  Maybe tomorrow I will write about my groundhog day experience.  Today I seemed to have broken the cycle. 

God Bless.

The no drama llama

My one year old took my cordless phone and somehow replaced all the names with random letters. I noticed last night when mom called and it came up as hhhg. So, if I rely on my phonebook, you might not get a call for a while. Or maybe I will randomly start calling and see who I get.  Which leads me to today’s topic: friendships.

I recently seem to be having lots of conversations with women about how hard relationships with other women are.

Now, to be clear, if I was an animal, I would be a “no drama llama”, so maybe this is part of why I don’t particularly face a lot of these problems, but I certainly see them around.

I think I have solved it.

No, seriously, I think I have figured out why women have such a problem with women!  (I am going to win a nobel prize for this).

There are a few reasons.

1. We are so darn sensitive.   I am serious.  I think women take everything to heart.  And over think it.  And then worry about it.  And then ask other women about it.  And then over think it some more.  Then *maybe* if you are lucky, another woman will come to you with their concern.  If not, they will likely be just trying not to offend you, since they know you are also of this breed and are sensitive also.  But then it looks like gossip.  And woman “A”, thinks that woman “B” was being catty, when in reality she was just trying to clarify her own thoughts as to why you would have placed your fork left of her plate when she clearly wanted it on the right.

Solution?  Well, stop thinking.  Take things at face value.  And make sure you present things at face value.  The old saying “do as you say and say what you mean” really applies.  This alone effectively eliminates a good percentage of drama.  And then, when someone says something, if you just take them as being honest, they will learn to be honest with you.  Period.  No games.  It is wonderful.

2. We seem to feel like (despite evidence otherwise) the entire world revolves around us and also relies on us to keep order.  The fact that two of our breed feel this way at the same time, sometimes makes communication difficult.  We can’t seem to wrap our heads around the fact that other people have their stuff too.   If we do happen to understand that, we are then faced with the inevitable fact that maybe everyone isn’t thinking about us 24 hours a day.  Which leads us to swing our pendulums in the other direction and feel like no one cares about us at all, and that we are useless.  It is a dangerous balance.

Solution? Suck it up buttercup.  People care about your stuff, just not quite as much as they care about their own stuff.  Want to maintain peace in the breed?  Acknowledge their stuff.  Listen when they talk.  That alone makes a big difference.  If that doesn’t work, resort to the male of our breed for venting (as they seem to be able to shut their mouths more than us), and have some wine with the gals.  Done.

3. We can not stand deception of any sort.  If you can’t be trusted with the little things, you sure as heck can’t be trusted with the big ones!  Lies, cheats, gossiping, talking behind someone’s back, anything deceptive really will almost immediately terminate a relationship between two females.

Solution? Do I really have to explain  that here? Leviticus 19:11 “Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another.”

The other little things that women can’t stand about women:  being “too sexy”, being not sexy enough, being loud, never speaking up, looking at one another the wrong way, refusing to make eye contact, being controlled by men, being too controlling, agreeing with someone too much or too little, keeping too clean of a home, being a slob.  Essentially, there is a complicated and sophisticated ritual between women.

I am pretty sure if these areas are thoroughly covered, that the female to female relationship works.   I mean obviously there are other things that may impact, but I really, truly think that all these things are the crux of the female to female chemistry.  If not, I feel that it is integral that I emphasize the importance of a good glass of wine together.  (Proverbs 31:6-7) “Give intoxicating liquor, you people, to the one about to perish and wine to those who are bitter of soul.   Let one drink and forget one’s poverty, and let one remember one’s own trouble no more.”

Allergy testing. Fun!

So, my baby daughter is part of the CHILD study taking place at the UofA.   You can read bout it here: http://www.canadianchildstudy.ca/overview.html.  I highly recommend anyone who is expecting to get involved with this.  It is a great opportunity to help with research in this much needed area.

Anyways, as part of the study, at one year, we got to go in and have allergy testing done (skin prick tests) for both me and my babe, and do some developmental testing for her, as well as spirometry test for me.

Well, the first thing I was told was that even if it is itchy, I was not to scratch for 20 min.

Has anyone had any of these done?

Itchy does not describe the level of what I went through.  More like along the lines of  ‘if you feel like you need to tear your skin off’.  Wowzers!  Of the 19 pricks, I reacted to 11.  4 quite intensely.  It was crazy.

For those of you that know me, I sometimes am… reluctant about spending lots of time outdoors.  I have a weird, irrational fear of bees and wasps (although I have been working very hard to face it).  So, I tend towards indoor activities a lot.  What does that have to do with the test?  Well, the most severe reactions I had were for trees, grass, and weeds.  Seems like the outdoors are aggressively and actively attacking me.  Hmm.  Interesting.

Which leads me to my thought of the day about irrational fears.

My mother-in-law once told me to pray for God to take away my fear and he would.  I have, He hasn’t.  I am not sure it is going to work that way for me.  I have an awful uneasiness that I will pass this onto my kids too.  I try very hard to hide it from them, but (I’m not going to lie) there are times when a bee buzzing has brought me to tears.  I had a hard time even working on my daughter’s school report on wasps because the pictures were freaking me out.  I have managed, for the most part, to conquer my fears of spiders, but the flying bug thing I have a long way to go.  I once (to my own embarrassment) freaked out when a bee came near my baby carriage and ran and cried.  Who does that???  I am trying very hard to defeat this irrationality.  I *know* it is not a reasonable fear.  I just have not gotten to that place yet.  I think I have gotten to the point I probably wouldn’t abandon my baby to fend for themselves ever again, but not much further than that.  It affects my life, it is embarrassing, and I just plain don’t like it.

If anyone has tips on this, please let me know!  I wonder if there is a patron saint of bees… or fears of bees?

In the meantime, I think that science has now given me legitimate reason to spend extra time indoors.  (Oh, and I have a really funny fear of spiders story too that I should share someday… involves me, 8 months pregnant, standing in the ditch on a highway.)

The Cost of Honesty.

So, two weeks ago, as I was pulling out of somewhere with my eight year old, I backed into a neighbors car.  No witnesses, barely any damage.  The dilemma started there.  Was is bad enough to leave a note?  If I do, what if she is crazy and tries to inflate costs?  If I don’t, would I be able to look myself in the mirror?  Would I be able to look my daughter in the eye?

So I left a note.

The woman never called.  I sat on it for a week, then went and knocked on her door.  She said that she saw no damage.  I walked her out and showed her precisely where I hit, and the small indent.  She said she would get an estimate and then get back to me.

Another week passes.

There was a knock on the door today.  It was my neighbor with her estimate.  $850.  Yep, you read that right.  EIGHT HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS.  Holy snap.  That is a lot of money.  So I apologized again and got on the phone with my insurance because, unfortunately, I don’t have that kind of money in my back pocket.

Now, long story short, they will pay.  In the end, with my rate increases that will inevitably come, and my deductible, I am the one paying in the long run, but for now the cost is covered, and my neighbors car will be repaired.

I am so grateful today that I am blessed with a life that I have the ability to have a car.  I am so grateful that I have the finances to afford insurance.  And I am sooooo grateful that I was honest.

I guess the cost of honesty is a lighter soul (and a lighter pocketbook ).

 

QUICK UPDATE:  Looks like I have no deductible since there was no damage to my car, and my rates may not go up because of an accident insurance clause.  So, my pocketbook can now worry about other things like the mortgage. 

Glitter Bombs and other fun

So I am sitting here tonight in my mess enjoying the quiet.  I made the biggest batch of chili I have ever made that is being doled out to the homeless tomorrow, so my house smells great tonight.

But that has nothing to do with glitterbombs.

A few days ago my two year old managed to find a brand new container of glitter make up and dump it in my master bathroom.

Do you have any idea about how much square footage one of those tiny containers can cover???  It is all over my clothes, my husband’s work shirts, my jacuzzi, my sink.   Shocking really.  So my master plan was to cover it in a towel, warn my husband, and figure out how to deal with it later (procrastination ALWAYS solves problems like this, right?).  The result?

Well, my six year old got to have a bath in my tub yesterday.  So, she got out, grabbed what she thought was a clean towel (from the floor??  Who would think a towel on the floor is clean???), and wrapped it around herself.  Glitter successfully transferred to my child and in a lovely sparkling path down the hall, down my stairs, and into my living room, where I appropriately freaked out, and sent her back up to shower.  Which she did.  In her bathroom.

So now I have glitter in 2 bathrooms, a hallway, a bedroom, my living room, all over my laundry room, and in my husbands clothes.  And just to add to the awesomeness of the experience, I washed the towel (thinking that might help) and his work shirt only to find he had left a pack of gum which I didn’t detect in his pocket.

So, lesson of the night:  If a bomb explodes, clean it up immediately, and thoroughly.   Covering it up and pretending it is not there only increases the mess and makes for a bigger problem later.  I suppose this is a life lesson that can work in relationships too.

And check pockets for gum.  Every time.

Post Number One!

Well.  The time has come.  I have decided to start blogging.

I figured my first post should probably be a bit about me.  I am a Catholic mom of 4 girls (8,6,2,1), have two female chihuahuas, and one male husband.  I am a photographer.  I volunteer as often and as much as I can.   I love sarcasm.  I hate Caillou (and yet my two year old loves it, go figure).  I enjoy a drink or two, and have struggled with smoking (or more precisely, not smoking) for years.   I am working hard, doing the best I can, trying to be holy, to raise kids that love God (and know how to put that into action), and to love my husband of ten years (no matter how many hours he spends on the computer).  I have traveled to Italy, kissed boo boos, and graduated from university with a degree in psychology (not in that order).

I think I am going to try to pick a topic a day to share thoughts on.   Today’s topic: Kids.

Recently I was out with a group of ladies that I am casual acquaintances with.  They were all discussing their ways that they are avoiding kids.  Most think I am crazy for using NFP.  They point to the fact that I have four kids as an example of my “failure” (not even considering that I could have *gasp* planned to have this many, and maybe more).  It’s crazy to me because when I really, really am honest with myself, a lot of my belief in NFP started from the fact that I wanted to be obedient to the Church.  I have this crazy notion that the institution that has been around for thousands of years with the greatest theologians to possibly have walked the earth may possibly understand the “big picture” more than me.  This is a hard teaching for me.  I feel like I am inundated every single day with reasons why I should get “fixed”, or have hubby “fixed”  (although he is not broken).  Why I should be on the pill, or using SOMETHING to prevent another baby.  It is hard because I am so secular, and so weak sometimes.  Sometimes I wish I did plan out everything “my” way and have the cars and vacations.

I like the idea of a planned out life.  Kids bring chaos.  I struggle with that.  Lots of prayer happens in my life around this topic alone.  I can’t tell you how many times I have found kids painting walls with their poop, or my poor dogs being ridden like horses.  Two years ago, we decided to announce to the kids that we were going to be spending the Next New Year’s eve in Mexico (I was somehow going to make money work), two months later, we let them know they get a new sibling instead.  My second youngest has a flair for getting in the most trouble as possible in the least time as possible.  We built our home 5 years ago, and now have fingerprints, Sharpie, dents, and crayon art almost everywhere.  I can’t stay organized to save my life.  This is the sort of thing I find in my fridge constantly (in case you can’t figure it out, one of my kids decided that they would bite out the side of a cucumber, then changes their mind):

And yes, that is also 3 bottles of Parmesan cheese.  I happen to have light, regular, and an extra one that I bought because I thought we were out.  On a separate note, in the back there is the first jar of cheese whiz that I have ever purchased. Bought it two days ago b/c it was on sale cheap. I am not even sure what to use it for, but it was a great sale..

I spend a lot of time in prayer asking for strength and humility and perseverance.  I am so happy that we have a God that is who He is.  I wish I could say that I am a strong, awesome Catholic,  but I am really just a normal mom, trying to live my faith the best that I can in a world that thinks I am crazy for it.  I love my kids more than sunshine, I love my husband, and I am so grateful that so often my prayers are answered when it comes to these things.

(oh, by the way, the kids turned out to be more happy with their sister than any trip to Mexico after all.)