Suzy Q Homemaker

It’s funny, really: Simon spent the better part of his morning mixing paints.  The rainbow he painted was several shades of brown and yellow.  He was quite proud.  Still, a good bit of the paint ended up on the floor.  Creativity leaves no survivors.

Last week, at a time I can’t exactly recall, I was telling Timothy to put on his underwear.  You see, with three-year-old children, there seems to be an unwritten rule about nudity: if you can be nude, be.  Timothy takes this rule very seriously.  Even though he had no real need to be dressed (we weren’t going anywhere), we’d rather not have him practicing his headstands on the couch in all his glory.  So there’s a constant battle of wills over whether or not underwear will be worn at any given time.  This is also because Timothy isn’t fully comfortable using the potty to contain his messes and we like to keep his frequent accidents contained.

This particular moment in history was like any other conversation with Timothy:

Me: Timothy, please put on some underwear.

Timothy: No! [does a flip on the bed where we are sitting]

Me: Timothy, you need to put some underwear on.

Timothy: No! I want my penis on!

Jamie and I fell into a fit of giggles and the underwear battle is lost for the next hour.  Timothy was free to roam nude for a little while longer.

How did I make it this far without whining about a million things on my blog?  I have had SO much to complain about, too!  And this is supposed to be the perfect outlet for venting about all that is wrong with my life.

Ok, there’s nothing wrong with my life but there have certainly been more than a few instances when I feared my sanity would be in check.  A small list:

• the water heater flooding our house
• the dry-out that included the loudest fans in the universe
• appointments with contractors, insurance adjusters, and restoration services
• lack of flooring in part of our house
• the pile of clothes that don’t fit

I’d get into the gory details of the flood and subsequent chain of events but that’s boring.  So I’ll answer the #1 question that seems to be on everyone’s lips whenever they haven’t seen me in more than a day.

How are you feeling?

Thanks for asking!  Physically, I’m feeling strangely well now.  Oh yes, I felt like I was on death’s doorstep for those first few months starting fairly soon after my encounter with the stomach bug that landed me in the ER for IV fluids.  With the other babies I had raging  nausea that had me puking day and night if I didn’t have food on an absolutely regular basis.  I clearly remember the one time I went shopping with my mom and sisters when I was pregnant with Corey.  I think we were at WalMart and I was starting to feel queasy.  We bought some oranges and shortly after eating one we still had to pull over for me to hurl in someone’s yard.  Thankfully, I’ve only puked about four times with this one (counting this morning).  And those times are completely unprovoked.  Like no warning, run to the bathroom or the vomitus is going to fly.  It’s so bizarre.  Overall, I’ve been feeling poorly in the evenings.  I’ve been calling it Backward Sickness.  Poor Jamie has to endure my whining after a long day of teaching whiny kids.  Feel sorry for him.

I’m still teaching Zumba and plan to do so until I am miserably large or something happens that keeps me from doing too much physically.  It doesn’t help that I’m having nightmares about having the baby months too early or him getting kidnapped.  Do you like how I default to “him”?  We don’t know the gender and won’t find out until he/she is here.  In my dreams we have a boy.  I think it’s because I’m thinking there’s no way Jamie and I could possibly make a girl.  The odds aren’t in our favor.  Yes, we’re driving other people crazy because they want to buy baby things for us, but I don’t care! Ha!  No, I do. But not enough to go spend  $1000+ on an ultrasound.  Sorry!  Don’t forget that we’re planning another homebirth.  While I am receiving shadow care with a CNM, we don’t actually plan on getting any other tests done that would require Blue Cross Blue Shield to bleed us drier than they’ve already bled us.

Now that I’ve opened the floodgates and reactivated this blog, I hope to be back in action.  I’ve had horrible writer’s block.  Plus I spend most of the day serving Sir Timothy and that requires constantly getting up and down–it makes sitting down to complete a thought virtually impossible.  So if this entry is scattered, blame him.

Happy Tuesday, y’all.

We had a hard time with Aiden tonight.  He was in the bathroom for a long time and when Jamie went to check on him he found Aiden just sitting on the floor by the door.  When asked what was wrong, Aiden simply said that he had “the poops” and wanted not to be around anyone.  Unfortunately, I can see through Aiden’s ways and with one quick glance behind the bathroom door I saw his iPod touch on the floor.

He lied.

Thing is, he was not supposed to be playing with it and then to lie about sneaking it just made everything worse.  Obviously we are taking the iPod away for two weeks which he was not happy about.  We asked him if he had any other ideas for how we should deal with this situation but he came up with something ridiculous like not wearing clothes to school for a week.

The night went downhill from there because he was so angry with us for taking away the beepbeepboop thing that he is fixated on non-stop.  He whined about all his chores and was all-out rude to everyone in the family to the point where we had to sit him down and have a serious talk.  It started when Jamie asked him about jealousy since Corey still gets to have his iPod.  It moved on to gratefulness.  Jamie asked Aiden if he thanked anyone for anything today.  Of course, Aiden’s answer was, “No.”  Then Jamie asked if he thanks God for anything and Aiden said, “Yes.”  We knocked around the idea of gratefulness for a while and Jamie suggested that tonight while he’s lying in bed tonight, Aiden should think about all the things that he should be thankful for.  This was difficult because he couldn’t think of anything to be thankful for during our conversations.  We did give him things to think about:

• Having a family that loves him
• Being healthy
• Being able to eat every day
• Having clothes to wear

You know, the simple things.

In the end, I pulled out and dusted off our copy of Journey Through Time which has some really great poems but also a lot of simple graces and prayers for children.  The very first one I turned to immediately stood out to me as one that I think not just Aiden but we should all say before we go to bed at night.  We’ve never been a “prayers before bed” family.  Ever.  But I printed this one out in a large font and am going to laminate it and hang on the wall by Aiden’s bed.  Who knows?  One day I may cross stitch this one for posterity.

I asked Aiden to read it aloud to us (which he was not happy about).  After he made it halfway through the poem he started to calm down.  When he was done I asked him if it helped a little and, wiping away his tears, he said, “A little.”

A little is all we need sometimes.

A Child’s Prayer

Father, we thank Thee for the night

And for the pleasant morning light,

For rest and food and loving care,

And all that makes the world so fair.

Help us to do the thing we should,

To be to others kind and good,

In all we do, in all we say,

To grow more loving every day.

–Henry Charles Beeching (1859-1919)