Merry photos

Some Christmas photos for those of you who were not here with us to celebrate.

Waiting for Santa

A hard way to learn that mommy's better

Last night I was in our bedroom rocking Clara to sleep while David bathed the boys. Since Sam has a built in locating siren (the kid yells constantly) I could hear that David had already finished with Sam and taken him into his room to get him ready for bed. Clara had finally fallen asleep and a few peaceful minutes later I heard a heart-stopping thud in the tub and then Jackson screaming. Since he was screaming, thus clearly conscious, I decided to let David handle things and not risk waking Clara, who had miraculously slept through the screaming like a good baby should. I trusted that David would come into the room and tell me if it was a true emergency; though, the standards by which our family measures a true emergency have undoubtedly been skewed by the numerous times we've had to resuscitate Sam.

In hindsight I should have never trusted David to fill a mommy's role. Several minutes after the initial screaming Jackson started up again. I was to soon find out that the second round of screaming was daddy induced. The story goes that Jackson was trying to stand up in the tub and, in the process, gouged out a 2-inch long strip of skin from his back on the tub faucet. David went to the first aid kit to find supplies with which to properly cleanse and dress the wound. He found a package of something called "sting relief." Jackson had told him that it was stinging so David wiped away... with a pad containing a solution of 60% alcohol and explicit instructions stating to not use on broken skin. Jackson protested loudly. Why David passed over the antiseptic "sting free" pads in the first aid kit, one will never know.

David never fessed up to Jackson that he totally mucked that one up. Love just hurts, kiddo.

Little sisters get no respect

A little girl in Jackson's class brought her pet hamster... or guinea pig... hell, it may have been a rat....but the point is that she brought it to share with the class on share day. Jackson thought this was pretty nifty and asked if he could bring Clara to share. We don't have any pets so I guess the next best thing is a baby sister. I didn't see a problem with this and told him he could.

"Oh, cool! I can bring Clara to share."
"Really? I can bring Clara to share?"

"Sure. I'll talk to your teacher and find out what time so I can bring her."

"Can't she just come in the morning?"

"No. We can't stay all day. I'll just bring her during the sharing time."

Silence. And a puzzled look on Jackson's face.

And the lightbulb moment:
"Ohhhhhh, I thought I could just bring her to school with me and stick her in my cubby until sharing."

Picture time, picture time...

My blog updates seem to be becoming fewer and farther between. It's not that I don't have anything to say... I always have something to say. But, hey, here are some pictures to enjoy.

Sam boarding "the short bus."


Apparently super parents breed super kids.


Jackson's finally earning his keep.


Baby meets T-Rex


Baby eats T-Rex

And no one heard at all, not even the chair

Sweet Clarabel. Good times never seemed so good.
I'd be inclined to believe they never would.
But now I look at the night and it don't seem so lonely
We fill it up with only two
And when I hurt hurtin' rolls of my shoulder
How can I hurt when holdin' you

Hands.... touchin' hands
Reachin' out
Touchin' me
Touchin' you

Sweet Clarabel. Good times never seemed so good.

If you're cool like me then you recognize the above lyrics from Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline." And if you don't then get thee to iTunes and download some songs from the man with the sexiest voice evah! Whenever I sing this song to Clara when she's upset I try to channel Neil and sing it with as much gusto as possible. This took me down a notch in Jackson's eyes, from cool mom to total weirdo. But eventually he saw the enormous grins the song elicits from Clara and, being tightly wound around her tiny finger, he now sings this song to her daily. Several times a day really. Now I get to call him weirdo.

Thank you taxpayers!

We received a pretty hefty check the other day from the local school district. The money we received was for DRIVING OUR OWN CHILD TO SCHOOL. You see, back in January when Sam began attending preschool we passed on the opportunity to have him ride the school bus. Our reason was that he frequently stops breathing and the school had no aide to ride the bus with him to ensure that he survived the 12 minute ride between school and home. I suppose since Sam is unable to attend the school right around the corner from us that there are extra funds available to have him bussed to a facility which can meet his needs. Of course, if he is not riding that bus then what's the prudent thing for a school district struggling financially to do? Give the money to the parents of course. When I opened up the envelope containing that check I felt like a bona fide working woman. I had, after all, been earning money driving my child to and from school each day.

The check arrived only weeks after Sam began riding the school bus to and from school. Sure the breathing, or lack thereof, is still an issue.... but we have 3 kids now and have had to lower our standards a bit. But since seeing the check and calculating the daily wage I have seriously considered driving him myself again. It feels a little dirty knowing that the money comes from the taxpayers but does it really matter whether it goes into the pocket of Steve the bus driver or mine? If you're reading this then you probably know me better than Steve and I'm more likely to thank you by taking you out to coffee with your hard earned money.

Little star

What you are looking at is Clara's belly button. Do you see the perfect little star? Now some might point out (ahem *cough* David *cough* *cough*) that the star is inverted clearly making her the devil's child. But if you just tilt your head a bit to the left then it's all good.

Why I shouldn't write when I'm delusionally tired

I've neglected my blog. Oh, how I've neglected my blog. And do you know why? It's because I have 3 kids now. Holy donkey balls! That's a lot of kids. And it is these kids that have contributed to my extreme fatigue which has caused me to neglect this blog.

For the past week or so David and I have been trying out a new routine to allow more time for him to spend with the kids after work. It starts with David and I waking up at an ungodly hour, David leaving at half past an ungodly hour and then I get myself and all 3 kids ready by the time the sun comes up. That's a lot of kids to get ready in the morning... by myself. Now I could sleep in a bit later and skip my shower; after all, once I get Sam on the bus and take Jackson to school I can usually come back home to shower if needed. But a shower is how I must begin the day. Actually, a shower and coffee are how I must begin my day. If I could have my coffee in the shower that would be fanfuckingtastic, but I usually can't make it downstairs to the coffee maker before first coming to a semi-lucid state in the shower. That semi-lucid state is crucial to my children's well-being. None of them are capable of getting themselves ready in the morning without my help or direct supervision. Even the 6 year old has been known to get into the car with neither his lunch nor his shoes. "I forgot" is his mantra. I'm so looking forward to the day that he forgets his pants, and I know it's going to happen. Unbeknownst to him I'll sneak an extra pair into the car and when he realizes half way to school I'll simply commiserate with him about his sure to be embarrassing predicament. He'll whine and cry the whole way there, begging me to turn back. Once we arrive at school I'll save the day by pulling out his pants that I've hidden and say, "Huh, I guess I had an extra pair in here all along. I forgot."

So the whole point of this was really just to say that by 9am I'm already pretty spent so the thought of trying to write something after the kids go to bed is very unappealing. And when I do, what you get is a bit too stream-of-conscious and sometimes hostile and inappropriate. Eh, it's just a blog.

Parallelism

David's watching a nature program. On it is a fish. The male of the species attaches itself to the female and stays there... permanently. She is responsible for keeping this male alive. She does everything for him. Her very blood courses through his body. His only job is to stay put and pump her full of sperm.

Can any of you relate?

Trippin'

A few weeks ago David announced he was going to take Sam camping in Yosemite. Faced with the unexpected freedom of having to care for only 2 children I decided to drive 6 1/2 hours north to visit my parents. The drive up was quite surprisingly... not horrible. The visit itself was great. But the drive home had me mustering all of my good sense to not drive off the embankment. Clara did not want to be in the car. Actually, she wouldn't have minded the car if she could only have been in my arms; but this is illegal as you know. So I stopped several times to calmly ease her into sleep in my arms. But as soon as her sweet tush hit the car seat she would wake up and scream. After one such attempt we hit an unfortunate strip of highway which had no hospitable exits. So Clara cried. Despite attempts from "the Binkifier" (Jackson's self-appointed moniker) to soothe her and replace her binky from his place next to her in the car, she cried. Despite me singing to her, she cried. Thoughts of the studies on how continuous crying can detrimentally alter a baby's brain, mixed with flashes of news stories on families abducted while parked on the sides of highways. I couldn't decide what horrible fate to choose. So I did what any good mother would do when faced with such a stressful situation: I turned up the music really loud. There was no hope for Clara in either of the two possible scenarios, but my sanity could still be saved. So with Blondie belting it out on my car stereo I went to my happy place and Clara soon fell asleep. That's not entirely true. First she stopped crying and went completely catatonic as if her unanswered cries had caused her very soul to be wrenched from her tiny body. Then she fell asleep.

And now here are some pictures taken shortly before that catastrophic car ride.




And a few pics from the Yosemite trip that David was kind enough to share.

Music and rebellion

I thought that life would slow down once the boys started back to school... but it hasn't. Not only is it busier but it's more scheduled and routine. I dislike schedules and routine. I still have a lot of stuff to do but now there are certain times and places in which these things must get done. So I've been slacking on this blog because, well, that's one thing that I still have control over. I don't have to write anything. What I have been doing instead is reading the blogs of other people and thinking about how I should really update mine. Then I get a little bit of satisfaction when I shut down the computer after ignoring my blog for yet another day. Sometimes it just feels good to defy my own authority.

I've also been exploring some new music. Having thoroughly burned out on "Bananaphone" and "Froggie went a courtin'" I decided it was time to take some steps towards bringing quality, grown-up music back into my life. Pandora Internet Radio is a website I've been visiting a lot lately. It's kind of a no-brainer, passive way of discovering new music. Basically you put in a song or an artist that you like and then the magic web gods play songs that are similar. You can then let it be known whether you like the song or never want to hear it again. It's fun and free. I'm currently listening to some of the music right now which is why this entry is a bit uninteresting. I used to be able to listen to music while I wrote but something terrible happened to my brain after I had children.

It really is an alternative school

During the time we were hard at work trying to unlock the mystery of Sam, I bought some cheap memo recorders from Radio Shack that could record and playback a message of up to 10 seconds. The device was simple and had one very large button to press to play back the message. The idea was that we could record two different choices for Sam on two different recorders. For example, when pressed one may say "eat" and the other may say "drink." We'd let Sam listen to each message first by having him press the button with either his right or left hand and then we'd ask him to make a choice and press the corresponding recorder button. Brilliant, right? Sam didn't think so. He refused to use our ad hoc communication device. Jackson, on the other hand, loved these things and would frequently steal them from his brother to record messages for David and me. Usually he'd set the recorder near me or David while we were in the middle of a conversation, press the button and then run away. See, we're always getting on his case about interrupting us and with his stubborn innovative little personality I shouldn't be surprised that he found a way to interrupt without actually being there himself. So I did not miss the recorders when he finally grew tired of them... or maybe I hid them; I can't quite remember. But yesterday they made a re-appearance. Jackson had a friend over and the two of them were playing with these recorders up in Jackson's room. His friend brought one of them down to me and said, "You gotta listen to this." I pressed play and heard my little boy saying, "I have a girlfriend. She's pretty great. Her name is Natalie and I kissed her at school." Now I know about Natalie and it's always been pretty obvious that she has a crush on Jackson. But the two of them are friends and I always just assumed Jackson hadn't gotten into that whole boy/girl dynamic yet. So I was a little surprised to hear him speak of her as his girlfriend. And I realized my 6 year old has important secrets from me. It was during this revelation that the friend said, "Yeah, Jackson said the girls are really flexible at his school," and this is where the panic set in because his friend's speech was painfully slow, "and they let him..." Oh speak faster child! What do these flexible hussies let my baby do? "Um, they let him kiss them..." Where? Damn it! WHERE? "... on the lips." And I saw that the clock said 5:00 so I poured myself a drink.

You know you're living in Orange County when...

The woman who cleans my house was not able to come last week because she was recovering... from a tummy tuck. Apparently this was not her first surgical enhancement. She must be working her ass off saving up for her surgeries. Or is she paying a surgeon to do that, too?

Flummoxed

Jackson picked up Sam's toy drum the other day and looked through the clear, plastic top to the small colorful balls that rattle when you shake it. He saw that many of the balls hovered in mid-air within their plastic confines due to static electricity.

"Huh. When they made this drum they didn't put any gravity inside."

And at that moment I felt my brain twitch.

I was not strong

A few weeks ago while we were in Borders books two adolescent boys took note of Sam as David pushed him past in his wheelchair. Sam had his head hanging sideways and was vocalizing loudly, so it was hard not to take notice of him. But after David and Sam passed the boys began laughing and one said to the other, "He's retarded." Now I don't usually take issue with the word retarded itself, but when it is said in a mocking tone by two twits who don't know the first thing about Sam then I take issue.

"Excuse me boys but you really should be careful with your words. When you use a word like retarded you can really hurt somebody's feelings. And that little boy you called retarded... that little boy is my son."

Red faced the boy apologized and I caught up with David and my sweet, yet kooky, Sam. That day I was strong.

Yesterday we went to a museum in L.A. where there was going to be an outdoor concert for kids. We thought we'd take in some of the exhibits before the concert began, but Sam had other plans. He had woken up at 4am and was very tired which made him very vocal. He also stubbornly refused to keep his head up in his wheelchair opting to view the world sideways instead. Rather than subject the other museum visitors to his yelling, I sat outside with Sam while David viewed some nature photography he was interested in. It was a busy day at the museum and people were pouring in and out of the exhibit hall we sat outside of. And lots of people took notice of Sam. Yelling, mouth hanging open, head hanging to the side he was quite a sight. And lots of people stared. After a few minutes of this I grew uncomfortable. Usually I easily shrug off others' ignorance when it comes to Sam. But yesterday it stung. I was not feeling strong enough to deal with rude people. And I cried. I just wanted to go home. Yesterday I was not strong.

Joseph Smith was on to something

Sam has this month off of school. So I've had a 6 year old, an infant and a Sam to take care of, which is why I have not been writing much here lately. I wish I had something witty to say but I'm afraid I'm completely drained. Posting may be sporadic until Sam and Jackson return to school in September. Oh, sweet September. Or until we make that move to Utah where David can take on a second wife to shoulder some of the responsibilities. What? I really think I could be okay with it if it meant that I could actually go poop without a baby strapped to me.

He's a keeper

If the Invisible Man was a six-year old

Over dinner last night we were discussing the news about the future possibility of becoming invisible. Usually David and I talk about random stuff at dinner and Jackson sits at the table with us and appears to be listening. I might be relaying some info to David about something Jackson did in swim lessons earlier that day and Jackson will come into the conversation with, "And dad..." Obviously I think he is planning on expanding on the story and so David and I turn to him eager to hear his perspective.... "And dad, if I was a plant-eating dinosaur and I was being chased by a meat-eater but I was like two thousand feet tall, I could so totally just stomp on the meat-eater. That would be so cool!" And David and I search our memories for when this was pertinent to any past conversations we may have had with him. Because sometimes it is. Sometimes Jackson picks up a conversation we left off 3 days ago.

But during this particular conversation about invisibility Jackson was paying attention and living in the moment with us. So when he spoke up he actually had something relevant to say, "Oh man... if I was invisible I would like crawl under the table at school and untie everyone's shoe laces. Or if there was a bad guy I could just go up to him and like poke him and he wouldn't know who did it because I'd be invisible. That would be so cool!" I'm sure when the scientists were considering all the powerful uses for their invention they had these fantastic possibilities in mind.

Urine a lot of trouble (just couldn't resist that one)

After swim lessons today Jackson got out of the pool and began hopping up and down.

"Mom, I have to go to the bathroom."

"Go ahead and use the bathroom and then we need to go home."

"No. No! NO!! NOOOOOO!!!!!"

Whose demon child was this that had emerged from the depths of the neighborhood pool? Because I had brought a sweet and compliant child and watched as that child got into the pool. But this child did look vaguely familiar as his body convulsed and he barked his protests at me.

"Just go pee."

"Ohohoh, ooookaaaay!"

Mere seconds later he reappeared, apparently having practiced for the fastest whiz in the west.

"I'm sorry for yelling at you, Mom. Could you please tie my bathing suit for me?"

Either the malicious alien had been hiding Jackson in the bathroom all along (because, really, nobody can pee that fast) or Jackson's urine contains personality altering neuro-toxins which can build to destructive levels if his bladder is not emptied frequently.

3 winning pictures

I have 60 or so photos of Clara within the last week. Of those 60 about 2 are good and one is of mild interest.

The smile. She's been charming us with her smile for weeks now and I finally snapped a decent photo of her smiling. It's not visible in this pic but she has a single, adorable dimple on her left cheek.


The red blob above Clara is Sam's swing that hangs in our kitchen entry way. It caught Clara's attention once after it had been set in motion and it quickly replaced the ceiling fan in the category of "coolest mundane household item in motion EVER!"


And this is her just looking cute.