Boogers on the Wall

My poor swollen left ankle after walking around the state fair for four hours.

Do you ever feel like you missed the mark in teaching your kids to be grateful? Not only did we miss the bullseye, I’m pretty sure our teach-your-kids-gratitude arrow landed in another field. The field called self-centeredness.

How can I get my boys to be grateful? Grateful they have a nice home, food on their plates and clothes on their back? Grateful they have fun toys to play with, books to read and a television to watch?

I’m getting sick of the selfishness. No matter what I do it’s never enough these days.

Like last week. I spent two entire afternoons painting a Fenway Park-style green monster in their bedroom. My mom, sister-in-law, grandma and grandpa all came to help. I told the boys on the way home from school on the second day that it was almost finished.

“Did you put up the scoreboard? Did you hang up the logo?” replied my oldest son.

No. I hadn’t had time. Or energy. But he couldn’t understand that. He wasn’t impressed that we painted his entire room, all he could think about was what we didn’t do.

Then a couple days later my husband and I spent nearly seven hours painting our deck. (I never, ever will paint the stupid deck again.) After crawling around on my hands and knees, 8 months pregnant, I finally come inside to take a break and call it quits for the night.

“Mom, I can see at least three spots that you missed,” one of my sons remarked while looking outside our kitchen window and staring at the deck.

Really? Do you think my swollen, tired body wants to know you noticed my job was incomplete?

This last one was the kicker for me.

We took the boys to the Utah State Fair on Monday night. I wasn’t going to miss the annual ice cream festival. We got there at about 5:30 p.m. and headed straight to the Department of Wildlife Resources fishing pond so each of the little guys could catch a fish.

We waited in line for almost an hour.

They caught their fish, we walked around looking at all the animals then we headed to the ice cream tent. I enjoyed nine scoops. (It was the best part of the entire night.)

Then my sister took them on the giant yellow slide and we walked to see more animals. By 9:15 I could no longer see my ankles and my stomach could no longer bear its weight.

I told my family we had to get going and that’s when it all broke down. All I heard about while limping and pushing up under my tummy for support on the way to the car was how I didn’t let my oldest see the giant pumpkins. And my second oldest didn’t get a peek at the giant 12-foot alligator from Florida.

Forget the fact that we just walked around for nearly four hours. Forget that we paid a bunch to get into the fair. Then we paid to get into the annual all-you-can-eat ice cream festival. Forget that they each got to eat as much ice cream as they wanted and then slide on a sack down a giant wavy slide.

Forget that they each got to catch their own fish. Forget that they got to meet up with their cousins and check out freaky-haired chickens and floppy-eared bunnies. And don’t even mention the giant white turkey they tried to scare to death.

Those things weren’t enough.

All they could think about were the things they didn’t get to see or do.

I hobbled my worn-out body home. I was deflated.

I know I taught them better. Their two-year-old brother thanks me regularly – especially for little things like opening his fruit snacks and changing his diapers.

What happened to the oldest two during the past few years?

I’ve got to come up with a plan to teach them to be more appreciative. I’m open to suggestions.

My mom said my siblings and I were the same way growing up. Maybe it’s a maturity thing. Maybe other kids act like this too. Maybe my boys are destined to be self-centered until they are older.

Whatever it is I’ve had enough. I can’t keep busting my butt trying to please them only to have them point out how I could have done more.

I’m too tired and too pregnant for that.

These days I’m just fist-bumping my belly to survive. Why? Because I’m a tired, swollen, sad mess who waddles around her house trying to make it through the last month of pregnancy.

And when I lightly tap my tummy with my fist, my unborn baby girl normally wiggles or kicks right back and it’s like we’re giving each other a secret signal that we got this. We can make it. We’re in this together for however long it takes.

To be honest, I don’t even know if I’m actually bumping her fist. I could be patting an elbow, knee, thighbone or rump. But that doesn’t matter. It’s our signal and it works.

We are going to make it through the next several weeks. The countdown is on – T minus five weeks and counting.

I joke around like it’s a flippant gesture, but in actuality the bumping is helping me survive the madness of being pregnant after I’ve already delivered one of my babies stillborn at 37 weeks.

Because when she moves, I know she’s alive.

I don’t know what her birth will entail, or how long I’ll get to raiser her on earth (hopefully for my entire life) but that moment after the bump when she moves, I know that everything is all right.

So if you see me walking around patting my midsection, just know I’m checking in. Before long I might be known as that crazy lady who hits herself. Hopefully she’ll be born soon and I won’t have to worry and wonder anymore.

I’m grateful for the life that is growing inside me. I’m glad that things are going really well. But I can’t wait until she’s born and it’s all over.

I know it sounds crazy, but I’m going to keep bumping my tummy until she’s born. Then we’ll bump fists for real.

Dear Luca,

You finally came into our house this week. Not in the way my heart really wanted you to – running with open four-year-old arms to give your mom a hug – but you’re here now nonetheless.

We’ve lived at our new house for four months and I finally hung your picture – actually I finally hung several of them.

When I opened the box of your things it nearly took my breath away. There you were, pictured perfectly still. My sleeping angel.

Your sweet chubby face framed perfectly. Forever unchanged.

It tore open my heart to place your hand and foot molds into our curio cabinet next to the one and only outfit you wore. I could still smell you in the fabric.

But I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad I finally got around to making your presence more physical. Because heaven knows your presence always surrounds me – pictures, keepsakes or not.

Now you’re in my home again. I’m glad I could bring you here. Not in the way I dream of – I still can’t hold you, read you stories or kiss you goodnight. But you’re here nonetheless.

Until I can be with you for real,

Mom

Summer. I’ve always LOVED the idea of summer. Sleeping in ’til 10, staying in my pajamas all day as my kids play happily at my feet while I read a new best-selling novel. Ahh. Sounds wonderful.

Unfortunately, like Olaf from Frozen, I’m afraid I have very unrealistic expectations of what summer beholds for me.

There was no sleeping in until 10. No staying in my pajamas all day. My kids rarely played happily on their own and I didn’t spend very much time reading – unless my kids were in bed.

Normally when school starts I’m an emotional wreck – terribly sad that our summer is over. This year I’m emotional but I’m torn. Part of me will miss being with them all day – I love spending time with them and keeping a close watch over them. But the other part of me is ready for them to go learn and grow. I’ve realized this past week that I love the idea of summer. The idea that we all get along and have happy days relaxing and playing. But that idea is just that, and idea. Not a reality.

In reality my kids get up at the crack of dawn. Regardless of what time they go to bed. It’s the last week of our summer break and my oldest son has just barely figured out how to sleep past 7. Yesterday he got up at 7:30. Even on nights when we stayed up until midnight watching fireworks or looking at stars through our telescope, my kids still got up super early – before they were ready. Then they were grumpy all day because they were tired. And if you think my 8 and 6 year olds would take a nap, HA!

In reality my boys have spent 75 percent of their summer break mimicking, punching, yelling and beating the crap out of one another. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to intervene. There were rare moments when they’d play peacefully together, but that was the exception, not the rule.

In reality I’ve been more tired and sick this summer than any other year. I blame their little sister. And for some reason I think my kids can sense when I’m not feeling well. That’s when they go crazy.

In reality we bought a new house that has required a lot of unpacking, cleaning and yard work. And my kids hate yard work. Instead of digging out weeds next to me and “helping” they have fought, whined and bickered until I could take no more.

In reality I have had to force my boys to sit and read with me. My boys are amazing readers. But that doesn’t mean they wanted to crack a book on their “break.” They have cried and complained while we have taken turns reading very few books this summer. It has been more traumatic than therapeutic.

Finally, in reality my boys hate doing chores and helping me. A couple of weeks ago one of my sons asked me if I was lazy and that’s why I make him and his brother help clean up, make their beds and clear their dishes after each meal. Yep. I’m lazy. He nailed it.

Maybe they too had unrealistic expectations for summer. And I have failed them. They probably thought I’d let them sit and watch Netflix all day long (instead of just half of the day). They probably wanted me to pick up after them and wait on their every need. They probably wanted a mom who had the strength and energy to entertain them all day, every day. But I couldn’t do it this year. I have failed.

Don’t get me wrong, we’ve done a lot of fun things this summer. We’ve gone camping, to several movies, swimming, to the splash pad, to the park and on dozens of bike rides. We’ve had a few really fun family vacations and several exciting birthday celebrations.

But overall this has been the longest, hardest, most exhausting summer I can remember. I’m ready for a break. Maybe next summer my idea of a fun summer will magically transform into a reality. Then again maybe not.

I have been mourning my own death all week.

Sunday night I had a dream that I died. It wasn’t painful. It wasn’t scary. It wasn’t like the dreams I’d get in high school where I’d be falling off a cliff then black out at the bottom.

It was the kind of dream that made me wake up with a start, too sad to stay asleep.

I dreamt that Travis and I were in a fatal car accident. One minute we were on the road, the next we drove off a massive cliff. Then with a fluttering we were at our home.

My mom was there crying while she did our dishes and cleaned up our kitchen. She spoke to someone on the phone telling them that after 17 hours on the operating table, I didn’t make it.

Somehow she could sense I was there and she let me hug her while we both cried.

Then I walked into the room where all three of my boys were asleep. I watched over each of them for a while and just sobbed.

How was I going to leave them? Why couldn’t I stay? The most desperate, depressing feeling I have ever had in my life fell over me. How was I going to let them go on living without me?

I was going to have to miss everything. EVERYTHING! The good, the bad, everything.

I’d miss their awkward junior high years. I’d miss when their voices started to crack. I’d miss when they had their first real crush or when they went on their first date. I’d miss teaching them to drive.

I’d miss clapping for them at graduation. And I wouldn’t get to meet my daughters-in-law.

Not only was I going to miss out, who would be there for them?

Who would push them in the swing or catch them at the slide? Who would cut open their otter pops and wipe their juicy faces? Who would take them fishing and bait and cast their poles?

Who would lie by them at night when they couldn’t go to sleep?

It wasn’t going to be me.

In my dream my 6-year-old woke up and grabbed me by the shirt. I told him I couldn’t stay, that I’d be gone for a really long time and he cried and cried and cried.

I woke up with my heart broken. Broken by a stupid dream — a dream that has changed my way of thinking.

Heaven knows I’m tired these days. My 7-month-pregnant body is killing me, I’m sick of my kids fighting all the time and I can’t stand how messy my house keeps getting.

But despite all the aching, arguing and mess, I’m alive. I am here. Here to cuddle my boys to sleep. Here to read them stories in the afternoon. Here to try to figure out Pokemon and the best bait to use for a large-mouth bass.

Here to enjoy the ups and downs.

There are a lot of things about motherhood that irritate me, but this week I’ve been reminded that it all could end in an instant. I could be forced to skip all the good, the bad and the ugly.

I’m sure my boys would have been well cared for had I really died, but I’m the one who wanted this. I want to be with them. I want to raise them. I want to experience life with them.

So bring on the laundry and the rings in the toilet. Bring on the wrestling matches and the never-ending sass. I get to live with my beautiful family. Hopefully for a really long time.

I make a lot of mistakes as a mother. I set off the fire alarm burning my children’s breakfast at least twice a week. I forget to switch the laundry all the time and end up with moldy, stinky clothes, and for some reason I can’t keep my boy’s toenails clean.

But despite all the motherly mishaps, I must be doing something right. Because my cute, little rainbow-baby two-year-old son “needs me.”

Normally I write about how crazy, unequipped and awkward I am as a parent. Today I’m going to write about how somehow in all the chaos, something good is sprouting.

My youngest little monkey actually needs me. He says so about a half dozen times a day. And every time he says it, it melts my heart.

“Mom I need you,” he’ll say. Sometimes it’s muffled by the bulk of his binky, sometimes it’s screamed while he’s running for his life from one of his brothers. But no matter how or why he says it, it is the best thing I have heard lately.

A lot of times he’ll reach his chubby arms up to me stretching for me to pick him up, “I need you,” he’ll say.

When I’m in my bedroom folding laundry or getting ready for the day I’ll hear him holler through the house, “Mom, I need you. Where are you?”

Then there’s the times he’s tired or sad. That’s when he’ll cuddle close and whisper, “I need you,” in a sweet, quiet voice while he plays with my hair.

Knowing that someone loves and wants you is the best feeling in the world -especially when you feel like you are screwing things up all the time.

It helps me on the days when I burn our food or ruin our clothing. I just want to wrap my arms around his cute little neck, place my forehead on his and whisper,

“No little buddy, I need YOU. “

What is it like to have absolutely every single thing you say repeated back to you? Just ask one of my boys. They live in a copycat bug-your-brother-to-death kind of world these days. And it’s starting to bug me to death too.

Nearly ninety-five percent of what one of my sons says is copied back to him by one of his siblings. Not in a nice, “Is this what you said?” kind of way. But in a snotty, high-pitched messed-up voice kind of way.

These annoying copying spells are always followed by shouts of, “Mom, he’s mimicking me again!” Then the victim will lash out, fists flying, beating his brother until I intervene.

It’s exhausting. And it’s happening all the time.

I just don’t get it.

What is so fun about copying your brother? Why do you use that mean, snotty voice? Why do you want to repeat everything he says? Why can’t you stop? How do you even know what the work mimicking means?

These are some serious questions I ask my kids on a regular basis.

I guess the positive side is if I don’t hear all of what one of my sons says I can wait about 5 seconds to hear it again. Granted it’s not in the same context or tone, but it’s verbatim.

I know if my mother is reading this she’ll agree that some of this is probably Karma. I both bugged my siblings as well as shouted, “Mom he’s copying me!” all throughout my childhood.

But that doesn’t mean I want my boys doing it. It doesn’t mean I can handle it any more. I’m about to go nuts. They have even started copying our new Furby – Da Ena U Te?

Seriously?

What can I do to get my boys to show respect to one another? How can I get them to realize how annoying it is to have every word they say repeated?

Maybe I should start mimicking too. Maybe a taste of their own medicine would be just the ticket.

If I do it, maybe they’ll realize how stupid it looks and sounds and they’ll be horrified.

But I don’t know if I can do it. Can I stoop to that level? Can I make that same annoying voice that they make? Probably. Well, actually I’m almost certain I can, but will I? No, I doubt it. I can’t listen to it any longer let alone make that sound myself.

Help!

This is what the floor looked like after the first mopping. I got a two by two foot section done in one hour. It was pitiful.

I usually have some unrealistic expectations when it comes to getting stuff done. I always assume it will only take 20 minutes to weed my flowerbed, one hour to go grocery shopping and 2 hours to thaw a frozen solid pound of hamburger meat.

I’m usually way off.

Like when I decided to clean the cement floor in our rec room.

I started the first of July thinking I’d be done in less than an hour. Nearly one month later it’s finally done – even though I’m still not very proud of my work.

I seriously thought I’d be able to plop down on my hands and knees Cinderella style and happily and quickly mop it while sweetly singing something. I had a Lucifer dust-prints moment when I scrubbed for an hour and only got a two by two foot section done.

Now I don’t remember for sure how big our rec room is but I think it’s at least 600 square feet. I realized this was going to take a while.

Who knows when the floor was last cleaned? We moved into our house in the end of April. It could have been years since the floor’s been done. At one point there was carpet over the cement and so some grayish/black film was pooled in sections of the floor. Those sections were disgusting and wicked hard to scrub.

Over the course of a few weeks I tried a million different things. Ajax, Soft Scrub, bristled sponges, metal spatulas and I even borrowed a small buffer from my friend. Nothing worked.

Then last Saturday I was sitting at a Norwex party when a light bulb went on. When the demonstrator showed me the steel scrubby for grills/ovens I realized I might have something else to try – steel wool.

Which for some reason I happened to have in my craft closet.

That night I stayed up until 11:30 p.m. scratching and scrubbing the grime off. I did the same Tuesday night. I stayed up until midnight scrubbing on my hands and knees all the while sticking myself with steel wool slivers and scrubbing til my palms puffed up.

Besides being really hard on my 6-month pregnant boy, it was the most lonely, mundane chore I have done in a long, long time. Occasionally some nasty spiders would creep out from under the floorboards to watch me scrub. I didn’t want to stomp on them but they just sat and stared at me like I was crazy.

Here’s a picture I took of one of the spiders who crept out while I was cleaning. Disgusting!

And I was crazy. How could I scrub our entire rec room floor on my hands and knees with steel wool?

I couldn’t. Wednesday morning I went back downstairs, worked for an hour and then sat back and cried. I realized this was not going to happen. I needed the floor cleaned before two parties we are holding next week and I was out of time.

That’s when I finally caved and rented an industrial buffer. My husband had suggested it several times, but I didn’t want to spend the money. Let me tell you, it was well worth the $38.57 I ended up spending.

My boys and I picked it up after lunch and I had four hours to buff the floor. Luckily my youngest took a long nap. Unfortunately his brothers did not. It reminded me why I had been staying up so late to work on the floor. It’s much easier without their “help.”

They promised me they would play well on their own. Ha! They wanted to by right by me. It was awesome.

I wish all of you could have seen it when I flipped the safety switch and turned on the machine. It nearly pulled my arm out of its socket as it shot across the room. My husband warned me that it might take time to get used to but I shrugged it off. Man did it have a kick.

It took me a while to figure out how to keep it under control. My boys sat giggling at me every time it got away from me. Then I’d get mad at them and tell them to get out of there.

Good news is the buffer worked like a charm. Bad news is it worked so well it started to peel the paint off of the cement in powdery puffs. Mix that with the water that my boys so happily kept dumping periodically for me to keep the machine buffing well and we had a slippery, paint-filled mess. Wet paint was smearing across everywhere.

What more could go wrong with this floor? While I was trying to keep the machine under control my boys decided they want to help mop. They found rags and water and started splashing on the other side of the room.

Why did I let them? Because I couldn’t pay attention to what they were doing. I had to concentrate all of my efforts on keeping that machine in my grips. It was all I could do to keep it under control.

When I finally stopped for a second to see what they were doing they had paint splashes up and down their legs and they were creating a pond in the middle of the floor.

At that point I kicked them out. I couldn’t take it any more. I only had four precious hours with that machine and I didn’t have time to stop and clean up after them.

Too bad they don’t know how to play on their own. They kept coming to the rec room door every couple of minutes whining that they were bored.

When my 5-year-old darted across the paint-streaked floor behind me I nearly lost it. His bare feet were covered in grayish blue paint and I thought I was going to scream. I sat him down, wiped off the paint with some toilet paper, told him if he came in there one more time I was going to make him nap upstairs with his brother and got back to my buffer.

I buffed in peace for about five more minutes then decided I had to be done. I had earned my janitorial badge for the day.

But the floor still didn’t look very good and there were pools of wet paint everywhere. The stupid paint streaks were drying and it looked like one big smeared mess. It a rec room, it’s OK, right? Well it’s just going to have to be OK.

I needed to clean up the wet-paint streaks so I grabbed my mop bucket, my bottle of pine sol and mopped the entire floor one more time. My knees were killing me by the end and my hands were super swollen, but I did it.

I have scrubbed, buffed, mopped then scrubbed buffed and mopped again. The stupid floor might not “look” clean but it’s as clean as I can get it. And that’s going to be good enough.

It took way more time and energy than I thought it would and I had a major melt down at the end but you better believe that if I accidently drop something on the floor next week during one of our scheduled parties I would dare pick it up and eat it. That’s how good I feel about it.

Now it’s time to move on to getting the yard ready for the parties. That will only take me a few hours, right?

The finished floor. Sadly, I couldn’t buff up the black widow. I guess he’s around to stay for a little while longer.

Author’s note: I wrote this post then decided not to post it. Then changed my mind and decided to post it. Hey, I might be bitter and harsh and jealous but today that’s me and I haven’t censored myself yet on this blog. So read on if you dare. Just know that I don’t always feel like this, sometimes life just gets to me.

I have heard a lot of miraculous stories in my life. People living through fires, car accidents, tragic medical conditions, you name it – stories of humans surviving the most horrific and tragic of circumstances. Uplifting stories where you can’t help but be excited that these people pulled through. And although I am thrilled for them, I can’t help but wonder why not me.

I read a story yesterday that really struck me. A little baby survived in the womb living through its twin’s miscarriage and its mother taking two abortion pills. (You can read more about that here.)

Seriously? How exciting for that mom. At 6 weeks she though she had lost everything only to find out later that she had another life growing inside her – a life that is now four months old and healthy.

But I’m not only excited for her, I’m extremely jealous of her. Her baby lived through the most crazy medical situation possible. Yet my son died from an umbilical cord accident. An accident where fetal demise is so rare it’s not even funny.

Babies are born and live though knots in their cords all of the time. My own brother had his cord wrapped around his neck. But for some reason my little guy’s knot was too tight. Why?

I know what you’re thinking, “Give it up already!” I can’t. For some reason I have been bitten by the bitter bug.

Why can other people live through horrendous conditions and yet I had to give birth to a stillborn baby?

Now our family has not been without miracles. I’ve seen the hand of God in my life many times. Just last year my father-in-law walked out of a rehab center after suffering a ruptured aorta and multiple strokes. That has been one of the biggest miracles I have witnessed.

But I just can’t help but wonder why not Luca? Why couldn’t I have miraculously delivered my little boy BEFORE the knot cinched down too tight? Why couldn’t he be added to the list of babies who miraculously came back to life while his mother held him on her chest?

Heaven knows while I held his still, little body I thought that any moment his chest was going to move up and down.

But it didn’t.

I know that things happen for a reason but I still can’t figure this one out. Why do some people live while others die?

Uggh. I’ll never understand.

I will always wish my little Luca could have been saved by a miracle.

Here is a picture of the second craziest thing I have seen in a campsite bathroom. This squirrel was drowned in the toilet.

My boys are always telling me how brave they are. They swear they are brave enough to watch scary shows on Netflix, brave enough to tell scary stories with their friends, etc. But when it all comes down to it, they are chicken.

They won’t even stay in the house by themselves after we put them in bed if my husband and I are outside working in the yard. One night they sat on the top step of our deck in their pajamas getting eaten alive by mosquitoes while we bagged up weeds in the backyard – all because they heard “noises” in the house.

I have to give them some credit. They will kill spiders and chase away snakes for me. But I was reminded just how scared they truly are when we were face-to-face with a flapping fanged creature this past weekend during a camping trip.

It was late at night and we all went to the bathrooms to get ready for bed. I headed to the women’s but then forgot that my toothbrush was with my husband and our boys. So I went to the men’s restroom (there were no other men around.)

As if the smell and sight of the men’s bathroom wasn’t scary enough – there wasn’t even soap by the dingy sink – there was a small, furry nocturnal animal hanging from the corner of the ceiling.

My boys wouldn’t take their eyes off it as they brushed their teeth. It was fine for a while, until it started twitching. That’s when my oldest son started screaming and the brown and black creature took flight.

We were trapped in a small cement room with a swooping bat. It was flapping and flying all over our heads. My boys were all screaming at the top of their lungs – which probably only made the bat flap harder. I’m sure it couldn’t echo locate its way out of that room.

While all four of the men in my life stood screaming with their hands over their heads I took quick action. I hunched over, opened the bathroom door and the spooky little thing flew out into the night.

It was the craziest thing I have ever seen in a campsite bathroom. And I once found a drowned squirrel in a toilet staring straight up at me.

My boys proved how brave they were that night. Now I’ll admit it was thrilling and shocking, but they were SO scared. I thought they would have been more intrigued than terrified. They love animals and they love capturing animals.

Besides my second son dressed up like Dracula for nearly a year straight. Isn’t he half bat?

We will never forget the night we were attacked by a bat in the bathroom. Luckily I could think clearly enough to rescue our family. I guess I am the only one who is bat brave.