Boogers on the Wall

It’s 3:45 p.m. I just got home from picking up the boys from school. There are beanies, gloves, coats, backpacks, homework papers, completed assignments and book order pamphlets strewn throughout my living room. We have reading, typing, math, flash cards and spelling words to work on. My newborn needs nursing and my two-year-old wants to build blocks. Who has time to put together and cook dinner before 6 p.m.? Not me.

The block of time from when my oldest two sons get home from school until dinner has got to be one of the most stressful chunks of my day. The house is a mess, I am a mess and every child seems to need me all at once.

Some days I can go for an hour-long stretch in the afternoon without helping any of them (when the oldest two are in school and the youngest two are napping.) But for some reason when everyone is together, everyone needs mom. And who wants to cook something with four crazy kids hanging off of them?

A couple weeks ago I had a breakthrough. A light bulb went off after I nearly had a nervous breakdown.

It was a Monday (those are always so fun anyway) and I had been doing laundry all day. After school I tried to get dinner in the oven but no one would leave me alone. The oldest two wouldn’t sit down at the table to do their homework. The 2-year-old was flopping around on the ground throwing a fit and my newborn was screaming in her bouncing chair.

I shouldn’t have done it, but I started to put together an apple pie for dessert. I wanted to make a treat for us to eat after we had family night.

It was a true circus in our kitchen.

My poor husband. I was counting down the minutes until he came home to save me. I think I even called him to see where he was in his commute – twice.

That’s when I started making dinner at lunchtime. It sounds crazy I know, but it seriously works for my family and me.

After I get done eating lunch, my two-year-old and I put together dinner. (Luckily he loves to help me “cook.” And that’s usually the time of day that my baby sleeps.)

We brown chicken and roll it into enchiladas. We cook sausage and throw it into a breakfast casserole. Sometimes, if we are really ambitious, we put soup into the crock pot before lunch!

Most of the meals we normally eat as a family can be made ahead of time. So I’ve started getting as much ready for dinner as I can before the after-school scramble.

It takes a little more planning in order to get stuff ready earlier but it has made life around here much less stressful. I actually have time to flip through flash cards with my oldest son and read a few pages with my 6-year-old.

Now if only I could figure out a magical way to make doing the dishes less stressful!

When you write a letter to Santa Claus you can send it to the North Pole. But does anyone know where you can send a letter written to the Gingerbread Man? That’s the ongoing question at our house these days.

We have two sealed white envelopes with return addresses in the upper left corner, but no mailing addresses.

What’s inside? Special invitations in first-grade penmanship. Invitations meant to entice the gingerbread man to our local elementary school where my 6-year-old and his friend are going to trick then trap the little sugary guy.

But, unfortunately we don’t know where to send his letter.

Naturally we’ve had several run-ins with the cookie man. He’s evaded us several times when we’ve baked cookies. We had an amazing adventure a couple of years ago when we nearly snagged him by his foot. He’s even escaped my boys when they made dough men at preschool.

They’ve used entire skeins of yarn setting up traps to ensnare him. They’ve tossed flour and rolled out dough several times only to find that he magically leaps from the oven. Every. Single. Time.

We are still on the hunt.

And so you can see why my boys are desperate to get these two letters to the gingerbread man. If anyone knows where he currently resides, please fill us in.

One of my sons thinks he lives at the South Pole and works for an evil Santa.

I think he may be rooming with the Keebler Elves in a mini tree inside the forest.

Some of the laundry piles that filled my bedroom this week.

You think you have it all together. Then you end up in a check out line at Old Navy for the second time in the same half and hour with a poopy two-year-old and the lady in front of you sniffs around disgustedly.

“What is that smell?” she whines.

You take a deep breath then let her have it.

Then you realize you are struggling. You wish you had it all together.

The reality is there are dishes in your kitchen that have sat there for four days and you are going for the my-floor-is-so-nice-you-could-eat-off-it award. Not because it’s as spick and span as one of your dinner plates, but because it has so much food on it you could literally eat an entire meal from the trimmings.

Then you find yourself knee deep in laundry. The four garbage bags full of much-needed little girl clothes that your sister gave you have been dumped and scattered all throughout your master suite. It looks like your washer and dryer exploded in there.

Your baby won’t stop crying when you are heading home from a holiday party. You promised your kids you’d stop to get a treat but make them settle for a drive-thru Frosty from Wendy’s. The baby starts screaming so loudly that you unbuckle her while waiting for the food and start nursing her in the back seat of the van. Then your husband looks in the rear-view window and spots the car-seat-checking worker from the hospital where you delivered. Luckily she didn’t notice you because she probably would have called the police.

A week has gone by since your newborn’s umbilical cord has fallen off yet you still haven’t had the chance to officially bathe her.

You get texts and Facebook messages, look at them when you’re running errands, and then realize several days later that you never replied.

You have a stack that is two-feet high of junk mail, school flyers and congratulations-on-the-new-baby cards that you still need to sort through and get out of the center of your living room.

You wear the same sweats as pajamas that you wore all day because you are too worn out to change.

The list of things you’re failing at could go on and on.

My list is never ending.

The truth is I’m a sleep-deprived postpartum hormonal mother who is too tired and overwhelmed to get everything done that I think would make me feel like I am a successful stay-at-home mom.

The reality is I nearly lost it this week while shopping for outfits for my family to wear while we take family photos this weekend. Photos that will make us look like a normal family who has it all together. I’ll look like a happy, smiling mom who curls her hair and wears cute shoes.

My boys will wear matching, non-holey clothes and fancy shoes – not crocs.

We’ll huddle close and act like we never fight.

I’ll post pictures on Facebook and people will think we have it all together.

But we don’t. And I’m beginning to come to grips with the fact that we quite possibly never will.

My two-year-old and I heading into the grocery store earlier this week.

I wrote a blog post a couple of years ago about “cartless” shopping. At this point in time I’d rather live through that again than what I experienced this week: double-cart shopping.

My mom took great care of my boys while I was at the hospital delivering our new baby girl. She fed them, chauffeured them, cleaned up after them and loved them. And in pure grandma fashion, she bought them things.

My youngest convinced her to buy him a mini grocery shopping cart. He’d been dying to put it into action for a couple weeks. On Tuesday morning he saw his chance. When he heard we needed to run to the grocery store, he ran to his closet and pulled it out.

I tried to tell him we had to leave it home, but he was adamant. He wanted to take his cart to “help.”

And “help” he did. No matter what I did or said he wouldn’t listen. He was going to take his cart.

We walked side-by-side into Wal-Mart. Me pushing a big metal cart and him pushing a bright green plastic mini one.

He was in heaven. I was not.

His enthusiasm was cute. I’ll admit that. He ran to get things to fill his cart. But most things were too “heavy.” So he settled for pushing our cool whip and muffin mix.

Most people smiled and chuckled when they saw him coming down the aisle. They commented on how cute he was. But then again there were a few people who saw him and ran the other way. Especially when they saw how crazy a driver he was.

He was crazy. I can’t tell you how many times he ran over my feet. He nearly tripped me about a hundred times. He nicknamed himself “sorry” man because he was saying sorry to me so much.

I should have nicknamed myself, “come on” woman because I was saying that to him so much. I had to keep reminding him to pay attention to where he was going and to keep his legs moving.

Not to mention steering his cart in the right direction. For some reason he loved pushing it backwards. Maybe because he thought he had mad skills.

But he didn’t have mad skills.

He kept running into shelves knocking over things like ketchup bottles and cereal boxes. Then he’d get his cart stuck on a shelf and have to back up a few steps before he could move it again.

It got really scary when we tried to cross traffic when moving to aisles that faced the other direction. He ran into several people (mostly elderly) while not paying attention. That’s when people started splitting when they saw us coming.

I took dozens of deep breaths to keep from losing it. It was cute but it was stressful.

I love him but I don’t love his cart.

It took us about two hours to get our small list of groceries. I was exhausted at the end and I am sure he was too. He pushed that cart hard and he made it through the entire store.

We had to stop at one other place before going home – Sam’s Club. Luckily I convinced him that mini carts weren’t allowed there. We were in and out of there in 10 minutes. Granted we only had to buy some bulk bags of Halloween candy and giant tub of butter, but still.

To celebrate for not losing it at Wal-Mart and to calm my nerves, I opened up one of those giant Halloween candy bags on our way home and ate two Twix bars and a Snickers. I definitely needed some chocolate.

A view of our back yard. OK we have done a lot of work since this photo was taken in May but you get the idea – lots of tasty plants/weeds to try…

My oldest son nearly poisoned himself last week and I was totally clueless.

First of all let me say that he is the biggest hypochondriac I have met. Seriously if he got a bad enough hang nail he’d probably ask to stay home from school. Every little thing hurts him BIG time.

So when he instantly came down with a scorching sore throat last Thursday I rolled my eyes and told him to get a cold glass of water.

In my defense I had just given birth three and a half days earlier and was not feeling good myself. My sympathy meter was malfunctioning. OK it was non-existent. I didn’t feel good and I didn’t want to hear how someone else didn’t feel good. Especially when he was playing with his cousins two minutes before then and acting just fine.

But we were starting to eat dinner and he couldn’t possible eat. His throat was hurting too bad. I told him he might have a stuffy nose and his throat was probably dry because he was breathing through his mouth.

He sprayed some sore throat spray and I loaded him up on medicine. We ate dinner and put him in bed.

The next morning he had flaky skin and a pimple-like rash on his chin. His bottom lip was also swollen.

That’s when I knew something was up.

After questioning him for several minutes he confessed. He was playing in our jungle-like back yard with his cousin when he pulled a leaf apart. Inside was a white, milky substance that he decided looked delicious. (I don’t really know if he thought it looked delicious but something had to possess him to lick it.)

He sucked up the juice! The juice from an unknown plant, probably weed, from our unruly back yard! And then he tried to cover it up by coming down with an instant strep throat.

I was scared and mad all at once. And boy did he hear about it.

What?! Who eats the juice from a random leaf? Did he know how dangerous that was? Did he know it could have been poisonous?

We were lucky it didn’t entirely close off his airway! I don’t even know what plant it was! I explained to him that if he got worse in the night it could have been deadly. I told him that I know he didn’t want to confess to what really happened but he needed to. He should have. (I tried to speak calmly, but those of you who know me know that’s a serious struggle for me.)

What did he have to show for his taste test? A raw chin and swollen mouth. Which, actually, is much better than a hospital stay for poison control. We were lucky.

I took my newborn to a check-up the next day and asked the pediatrician if he thought I should bring him in. Luckily he said no. He said my son was probably just having an allergic reaction but to watch it if it got worse.

Thinking the fire-burning throat would deter him from sucking juice out of anything in our yard again, we teased my son as he was heading outside to play the next day.

“Don’t drink anything!” we said.

“I know, I’m allergic to that one plant,” he said. “I’ll stay away from that.”

“No! Stay away from ALL of the plants!!!” my husband and I shouted in unison.

Ironically the next Monday at school a group of gardeners from Thanksgiving Point came to the school to teach his third-grade class about plants. They taught them that tulip bulbs are edible and let them cut them open and taste them. Seriously?

You better believe I threatened my oldest with his life if he started digging up my bulbs and tasting them. If he isn’t afraid of poisoning himself, he better be afraid of me!

There’s nothing like the nurse not being able to find your baby’s heartbeat when you’re smack dab in the middle of labor and delivery. Scares. You. To. Death.

That’s what Monday was like for my husband and me. After 9 months of worrying about our unborn baby, the fear and anxiety came to a head when her heart rate kept dropping too low with each one of my contractions.

That’s when a supervising nurse came in to put a heart rate monitor on her scalp to track things more accurately. But she couldn’t find the heart rate on her scalp.

For a minute I thought I was going to lose it. She never found it with the scalp monitor and went back to tracking it with the abdominal monitor.

Meanwhile I thought I was going to have a heart attack.

The nurse said she thought that something must be going on with the umbilical cord during each of my contractions – not something a mother of a stillborn baby wants to hear.

Luckily I dilated completely and my doctor arrived within the hour. After one push our little baby girl was born and we were able to see what was dropping her heart rate. The cord…wrapped around her neck.

Seriously? If I ever get to create a world, my babies are going to come cordless.

I can’t tell you the gratitude I have felt in my heart that she is all right. The miracle of birth is just that, a miracle.

My husband and boys saw a couple leaving the hospital the next day. They were empty handed. The mother was crying as she left without her newborn baby. My oldest wanted to go tell her he could relate to what she was going though.

What eight-year-old has insight like that? Miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant death happen much more than any of us would like to think about.

As I sit at home after bringing my beautiful princess home today, I am more relieved than ever. I am so blessed. I get to snuggle her, cuddle her and kiss her chubby cheeks.

I don’t know why some babies make it and some don’t. I can’t explain why some babies are born healthy with a knotted umbilical cord and sometimes a cord around the neck is lethal.

All I can say is that my heart is full. Full of love for all my babies who made it to this earth safely and especially for the one who didn’t.

Don’t promise your child he or she can do something thinking that they will forget.

They won’t forget.

Several months ago my oldest son begged me to let him shave his head. I got it at the time. It was spring going into summer and most of the boys in his school were starting to sport buzz-cut short dos.

But I didn’t want him to shave his head. Honestly, there isn’t a real great reason why. I had three sort of good reasons:

1. I liked his hair how it was, that may be the best one I could come up with.
2. I told him I didn’t want him to have a constant sunburned scalp.
3. He was scheduled to get baptized into the Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints this past July. An event that I would take dozens of photos at…preferably with him with hair.

Those were my reasons.

I was adamant that he couldn’t do it. Then I talked to my husband about it.

Keep in mind that my husband shaves his head. I somehow forgot that at the time. (He started shaving it several years ago and can I just say that he looks good bald?)

Needless to say he came to my son’s defense. What would shaving his hair hurt? It’s not like he wants to rob a bank or light mailboxes on fire.

True. But I still didn’t want to slather his scalp with sunscreen and I definitely wanted him to have hair for his baptism.

I was able to put him off for several months – until this past week. We went to get haircuts and he threw a fit on the way. He reminded me that I promised he could shave his head after his baptism.

Dang. He remembered.

So my good friend trimmed my and my other two boys’ hair and we left my oldest son’s how it was. That night I took some buzzers to his head and left him “bald.”

I wish I had filmed his reaction when he saw himself in the mirror. He laughed while exclaiming, “Oh my gosh.” I don’t think he recognized himself.

I don’t know if he was happy with the results or not. (He wouldn’t let me know if he wasn’t.) Let’s just hope we have a few weeks until school picture day. If not, oh well.

But whether he likes it or not, he’s bald! And I’m OK with it. There are much, much worse things he could be asking to do. Or doing without asking. I need to pick my battles.

Deep down I think he wanted his head shaved because he wants to be like his dad. Which is why it was stupid of me to argue with him going bald.

His dad is the best man I know. I hope he wants to be like him in more ways than one.

I’m not a very good seamstress. Half the time when I sew I have to have a un-picker, scissors and band-aids close by.

But I did it. I sewed a few really easy things for our new baby. They were so easy I thought I’d share. (Granted I was able to find step-by-step tutorials on Pinterest which probably saved my projects from turning into giant balls of string.)

There are still a few things I want to make if I still have time and energy but here’s a few things I’ve done so far.

I got a package of striped onesies and decided to doll this grey one up. Then I made a felt flower for this headband to go with.

Here’s a link to a tutorial for the felt flower:

http://rainydaysjoy.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/felt-flowers-tutorial.html

I got this really cute polka-dot fabric from my husband’s grandma who passed away in June. I decided to make a skirt out of it.

Then I got a striped onesie and added a polka-dot flower to doll it up. I also made a matching headband. 

Here are two links that I used to put together the skirt:

http://www.fabnfree.com/2013/04/08/free-circle-skirt-pattern-super-easy/ http://craftideas.bitchinrants.com/skirt-tutorial/

Here is a link to how to sew the flower I added to the onesie:

http://www.flaxandtwine.com/2014/05/fabric-flower-tutorial/

I found a tutorial for a great baby bassinet sheet. It’s a pocket sheet not an elastic one.

It was so easy I decided to sew four.

Here’s a link to the tutorial:

http://pollydanger.com/blog/2012/08/27/tutorial-fitted-bassinet-sheet-from-vintage-sheets/

Here’s a look at the diaper changing cover that I made. I’m not going to lie, this was the hardest thing for me to sew. I also made a teal colored one but I am not going to post a picture of that one. It looks pretty scary.

Here’s the tutorial I tried to follow:

http://www.aloadofcraft.com/2010/03/tutorial-how-to-make-contoured-changing.html?m=1

Here is the set of burp rags I have made. I didn’t really follow a tutorial, but here’s a link to where you can easily find out how to make some:

http://www.anythingpretty.com/2012/01/burp-cloth-tutorial-field-tested.html

Finally, here are a few things I have crocheted. Some barefoot sandals, baby leggings and mittens. Who knows if they will actually fit and for how long, but they sure look cute.

Thank heavens for easy-to-follow Internet instructions otherwise I wouldn’t be able to make anything. Here’s to making many more happy sew-easy projects.