Catch-up

Here are the blog posts I should have been writing in the past month...

Mother of the Year
Oh it is that time again when I get to admit that my failures result in resiliency training for my children.  On Molly's third day of kindergarten, I had her scheduled to leave school early for a dentist appointment to have a cavity filled.  This appointment was rescheduled from the appointment I had written down on the wrong day earlier in the summer.  The morning of the appointment arrives and I email Molly's teacher to let her know Molly will bring in a note to leave early for her appointment.  I email the school secretary to let her know Molly will leave early for an appointment.  I forget to send the note with Molly, but the emails have been sent and this is the digital age, right?  I then go to my Mom's group meeting and to volunteer at the church garage sale.  While I am volunteering, I get a call from a friend who is crying about how she wrote the wrong day on the calendar for her daughter to take hot lunch at school (we have to order their lunches ahead of time at the charter school) and therefore her daughter had no lunch on the third day of school.  We lament about how difficult it is to be a mom sometimes and how we all mess up from time to time.  As soon as I get off the phone with her, I get a call from the dentist's office asking me where I am.  Oops.  I call school to find out my daughter has spent 30 minutes in the office waiting for me.  We are so late for the appointment we can no longer make it and she has to go back to class.  I call my friend back to let her know that the words of comfort I spoke where from the heart because I am right there with her in the "Mother of the Year" category.

To Give or Not to Give
The weekend that fell after Todd had been in India for 10 days, was filled to the max.  Saturday, I took all three kids to the Gopher Game by myself.  I saw more of the bathroom and concession lines than I did of the game.  I spent over $100 on crap for the kids.  But, they really enjoyed themselves so I guess it was worth it.  Then Sunday, I had family members and sitters driving kids every which way.  Zach and Molly had their first Sunday School meeting of the year.  Colin had a lacrosse game in Hopkins and tickets to see a play at The Children's Theater with me.  It was one of those days you drive around like crazy and just make it to everything almost on time.  As Colin and I left The Children's Theater, there was a man standing on the side of the road with one of those signs "Please Help."  I had $2 in my purse.  I asked Colin what he thought.  His response was "if someone asks for help, you have to help them Mom.  Give him whatever you have."

It wasn't long after this that the whole Romney 47% comment came out.  Personal politics aside, I thought it was interesting to see both sides of this debate play out and compare the responses to my child's response.  I had even asked Colin at the time, "do you really think it is ok to ask for money on the side of the road when we work so hard for ours?"  My son's response to that was "that isn't for us to judge, Mom."  And that is exactly what I teach him through weeks of Sunday School lessons and in those moments he has trouble with his friends.  How many times have I told him "the only response you can control is your own" and "the choices others make are not for you to judge, you can only be true to who you are." It made me think about the election rhetoric more from the personal values I try to teach my kids and less from the political rhetoric we associate with each party.  Those lines aren't so black and white and it took my 10 year old to remind me of my own prejudices.

If You Are Happy and You Know it...
One morning while getting ready for school, I heard the boys taking about what is "sexy."  After listening to this conversation for awhile, I asked "do you even know what sexy means?"  Without missing a beat, Zach says "yes, it means happy."

It took me awhile but I then realized...the song "If You're Happy and You Know it" and "If You're Sexy and You Know it" might have different beats and different audiences, but are close enough in word pattern that of course he thinks they mean the same thing.

The Spider, Take 3
Oh yes...it happened again.

I leave (late) to pick up the kids from school early last week.  Todd was home sick and we had been discussing (fighting) about the house issues that had come up that day.  I head out the door only to have him call me just as I am about to leave the neighborhood.  I answer the call and see my opportunity to turn onto the busy road to school.  Trying to be as safe as possible, I continue to check the cars behind me.  As I turn around to look out in front of my car, I notice a gigantic spider running across my dashboard.  I start screaming!

Todd is still on the phone at this point.  Todd doesn't like it when the kids scream somewhere in the house when he is on the phone with me, so you can imagine how excited he was to have his wife hysterically screaming right into the receiver.  He starts yelling at me "What is going on!?!" I can only mutter "spider."  He is screaming at me to pull over, but I am late to get Molly and I cannot stop.  Since I am experienced at this, I pray that spider stays on the dashboard near the glass and far away from me (prayer works I learned last time this happened).  I calmly but hastily drive into the parking lot and stop in the first spot I find.  I swear the spider turns his massive head, blinks all 100 eyes, and then winks with 50 of his eyes. This spider was big enough to have a head you could see turn, hair long enough to need a trim, and eyes visible enough that you could read its thoughts.  I should have ran screaming from the car in terror, but there were 100s of other parents in the parking lot and I didn't want to look like a total fool (minor fool is fine, but after the above mentioned dentist appointment incident, I was skating on thin ice at this school).

As I walked to the building to get my daughter, I called my husband on his phone.  I demanded (in a not so nice way that people who have just had near death experiences are allowed to speak) that he come to the school parking lot and kill the spider so I wasn't late to get the boys.  I was not under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES getting back into my car with this 200 foot spider stalking me.  He might have called me a few names under his breath, but he realized that I would rather call and have the car towed home than get back inside with that gargantuan monster lurking.  He agreed to leave his death/sick bed and come to rescue his princess (if only it were that romantic).

As Molly and I approached the car to wait for Todd, I noticed the spider was no longer on the dashboard.  It was now on the steering wheel!  The think was definitely big enough to drive off with my car, but I had been smart enough to remove the keys.  It blinked at me and sized me up.  I looked away and thought about running.  Todd arrived with a wad of paper towels.  With a rather annoyed sneer on his face, he took the spider down with a swipe of his towel covered hand.  As Molly climbed into the now spider free vehicle while whining about how we really do need to get a new car, Todd looked me straight in the eyes and said "That was one of the grossest spiders I have ever seen."  

The House
The House is trying my patience.  There are new problems every day.  Problems that are fixable, but problems nonetheless that take up huge chunks of my time and Todd's time and our realtor's time.  We are suppose to be 3 weeks from closing.  It might be 4.  It better not be 5.

I would like to gush about how wonderful the whole thing is, but right now I am up to my eyeballs in stuff that makes me want to gush about how awful it is.  In the end it will all be fine.  No house is perfect and we will learn to love some things and start saving to fix the things we don't.  The best part of it all is that it will be OUR house.

Really I equate the whole thing with having a child.  It sounds like a really good idea when you think about it.  Pregnancy sucks, just like building sucks.  There are parts that are fine, but swollen ankles, morning sickness, exhaustion, and the like make it less fun than you imagined.  Then you have the baby.  It is wrinkly, goopy, poopy, and loud.  You hurt from the effort.  You are so exhausted, you cannot appreciate the beauty in the moments in front of you.  But, six months passes and you have the cutest, smartest, best baby in the world and all that unpleasantness is forgotten.  Another six months passes and you start to think you should do it all again...

Not sure if we will ever get to the second six months in this analogy, but I am pretty sure we will think all the unpleasantness of this building process was worth it in the end.