It's been a long day

I found out last night that my father caught a ride in an ambulance to a Des Moines hospital where he was to have his gall bladder removed this morning.  Just hours previous Jason found out that his father was in a Sioux City hospital waiting for his own gall bladder to be removed.  What are the odds that both my father and father-in-law would have the exact same surgery within an hour of each other.  Weird.

I got a phone call from my mom around 8:30 this morning that Dad's surgery went well and he was in recovery.  I found out from my mother-in-law that John is loopy from the pain killers, but otherwise recovering nicely.

On a different, but similar front, we had been noticing over the past couple of months that Callie (my cat of 17 years) had been losing considerable weight and was rather lethargic and unstable on her back legs.  I called the vet to see if I could get an appointment for today to get her checked out.  They could fit us in at 10:00 - I had 20 minutes to get the carrier found, put Callie in it, get the girls dressed, and drive to the vet.  I picked Callie up out of her cubbie - I didn't realize how skinny she had become over the past several months.   I put her in the cat carrier and there was not a bit of fight in her.  I knew this did not bode well for her prospects.  She gave me a few weak meows and then nothing until we got to the vet.

On the way to the vet the girls asked if Callie was going to have to have a shot.  I explained that it was quite possible that Callie may need to have a shot that would put her to sleep and she would never wake up. 

Breonna asked, "Would she die?"

"Yes, honey, we may have to put her to sleep so that she won't have any more pain, so yes, she may die."

The girls were very interested and curious about this shot that puts you to sleep.  There were assurances from me that they would never have this kind of shot.

After a couple of blood tests it was determined that Callie had acute kidney failure and there was not much that could be done for her.  At this point there were three blubbering girls in the examination room waiting for the vet tech to bring our kitty back so we could say goodbye.  We spent about 10 minutes petting her head and talking to her, telling her that we loved her and would miss her.  The vet asked me if I would like to be in the room when she was put to sleep, I declined.  The vet tech came back and took her and all I could say was "Goodbye baby." 

Callie was my first pet other than the outdoor animals that we had at my parent's house.  It was uncommon to have a pet for more than a year on the farm, so there was never a tight bond because I knew they would eventually be run over on the road, killed by another animal, or run away for greener pastures.  It was hard on me to lose her because I've had her since she was a tiny ball of fur, and I think it was hard on the girls to watch me in my grief. 

We brought her body home in a cardboard box and Jason and I buried her in the backyard when he got home from work. 

Goodbye my friend.  I love you.

Questions...

I never thought I would have to explain why God doesn't go potty.

The Boar's Head Tavern

I've been aware of the Boar's Head for quite some time now.  Jason has been a fellow there for several years.  I've met some of the fellows including the late, great Michael Spencer.  Loved him - he reminded me of my Uncle Dave.  Anyway, until recently I have only been a sporadic reader.  I had a hard time overcoming the format of the actual page.  Once I started using the Google Reader, I started reading the Boar's Head along with a few other of my friends' blogs.

Today one of the fellows posted this web site:

http://www.iwl.me/

This web site (supposedly) analyzes your writing and  tells you who you write like.  I pasted three of my recent blog posts in the frame.  The analyzer said I write like Mark Twain, Margaret Mitchell, and Steven King.  So I'm sarcastic, romantic and horrifying. 

I can live with that.

Oh so helpful (poor cats)

The girls really do want to be helpful.  Jordan decided I needed help making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch today.  She was trying to guide my knife hand as I spread the peanut butter.  As soon as Breonna saw Jordan was helping, she had to get in on the act.  She actually grabbed my hand to "help" and I ended up smearing peanut butter all over the counter.

We have cats - 3 of them and they have varying tolerance for the girls' antics ranging from Punkin who is very social and will allow them to pick him up or hug him.  Callie goes into hiding when the girls get up and comes out and snuggles after the girls go to bed.  Emmi is somewhere in between. 

I came into the living room and found this:

Yes, that is Punkin under a pink blanket.  Apparently he looked cold.

Corn on the cob

Corn is the girls' favorite.  So I asked them "Have you ever had corn on the cob?"  They asked "What's that?"

Really?  Of course I grew up on a corn farm and we had corn for almost every meal from mid July until mid August.  We had to get these girls some corn on the cob.

We went to a vegetable stand and bought a dozen ears of corn.  I brought them home and shucked them and got them ready to cook.  The girls were following me every step of the way "What are you doing now?" "What is that big pot for?" "What do you need all that water for?".

We got dinner on the table and I buttered and salted the corn for them and handed it to them - we even got out the little corn holders for them.  I put it on their plates and looked at them expectantly.  "How do I eat this?"  Breonna asked me.  Of course they don't know how to eat it - until recently they thought corn came out of a bag.  So I got my ear of corn ready and modeled eating it for them.  Once they figured that out there was no stopping them.  I had to make them eat their fruit and their hamburgers before they got another ear of corn.

I think that we will be getting more corn before the summer is over.

Drama Queen

We decided to take the girls to Dairy Queen for an ice cream cone. 

As we pulled in Breonna asks "Where are we?" 

Jason replies "Dairy Queen."

Breonna comes back "Oh, I keep thinking this is Drama Queen."

Domestic girl & swimming

Well, I was just domestic girl today ... I COOKED breakfast.  Bacon, eggs, and toast for Jason and the girls.  Then we watched the Prologue of the Tour de France.  During commercials I got up and cleaned in the kitchen and the living room.  After Tour coverage was over I made blackberry jam and a pineapple upside down cake for Daisy's party tomorrow night.

This afternoon we took the girls swimming at the Andover YMCA and Jason was amazed by the progress the girls have made in the pool.  Last time he went swimming with them they were clutching him for dear life even in shallow water.  Now they are paddling around, even in water over their heads, with only the aid of a noodle.  I hope this progress continues.  Breonna still doesn't like putting her face in the water, but I will be happy to get her so she can swim for survival.  Anything more would just be extra.

I LOVE the water slides at the Andover Y.  FUN!!  It makes the slide at the Coon Rapids Y look lame.  Mind you, I can only make use of them when Jason is around to watch the girls while I play (thanks Jason!!).  I guess I pay him back by watching the girls while he sits in the hot tub for a little bit.

It happens every July

In our house we don't really follow football, or basketball, or baseball.  We dig the Tour de France.  I have a feeling two little girls will be getting rather annoyed with their parents - probably starting tomorrow. 

I don't know everyone in the peloton.  I don't follow cycling year round.  I'm not a Lance Armstrong fanatic.  I dig the race.  It is different every year.  These guys are amazing ... climbing mountains, competing in sprints and time trials and this year they will be going over cobblestones on these bicycles that are made for speed.

Yeah, I know, I'm the one that can't be bothered to watch a football game during the season or the playoffs, but I'll show up at someone's house to socialize and watch the Super Bowl commercials.  I only vaguely pay attention to what my alma mater's sports teams do (it's not like I went to a big sports school anyway).  But the TDF - for 23 days in July I'll listen to Bob Roll, Paul Sherwin, Phil Liggett, and Robbie Ventura talk about the intricacies and strategies of Team Astana or Rabobank.  Will Mark Cavindish win the sprint at the end of the stage or will Stewart OGrady take it?  Will one of the Schleck brothers take the mountain stage? Who is going to get caught for doping?  Notice I ask who and not if? I don't know what it is, but I love watching it. 

Why do I know these people's names?  My brother is a bicyclist and he got both me and Jason hooked on the Tour when we moved into our house in July of 2003.  We have been watching ever since. 

I have a feeling Breonna and Jordan will think we are crazy for watching a bunch of guys ride bicycles around France for 23 days every July.  Maybe one day they will get it ... maybe not. 

Sleepy time stories

So every night we snuggle with each of the girls for about 10 minutes in their beds and then leave and let them go to sleep.  While we snuggle we have what we call sleepy time stories.  Typically Jason and I make up stories based on their stuffed animals or on their friends and tell them to the girls.  Tonight Breonna and I did it a little differently:

Me: Tomorrow we'll go to the Y and you and Jordan can go to Kid's Stuff.  Later this week we'll go swimming again.
Breonna: If we want to go swimming, I can take Jordan to the Y.
Me: Without me?
Breonna: Yeah.
Me: How will you get to the Y, it is a little too far to walk.
Breonna: I'll drive.
Me: You'll drive what?
Breonna: My car
Me: What car?
Breonna: My pink car with Dora on the side.
Me: You have a pink car with Dora on the side?
Breonna: Yeah, but it is in the shop getting fixed.
Me: So it is broken? How are you going to pay to fix it?
Breonna: I have money.
Me: What money?
Breonna: The money in the car.
Me: So where did you get the car?
Breonna: Someone gave it to me.
Me: Someone?
Breonna: Yeah, you don't know them. 
Me: So this is a real car?
Breonna: Yep.  They gave me a purple truck with princesses on it too.
Me: Where is that?
Breonna: I parked it so you wouldn't see it.
Me: OK - Why did they give you two vehicles?
Breonna: I don't know.
Me: Do you have a license?
Breonna: A what?
Me: A license - something that proves that you know how to drive (in theory).
Breonna: I'm going to school for that.
Me: Really? Where are you going to school?
Breonna: Well, you take a right and then at the stop sign you take a left (she is describing how to get to the elementary school she will be attending in September).
Me: When do you go to school?
Breonna: Every morning before you get up.  I get up when Daddy gets up to go to work and I come back before you wake up.
Me: Really? So does Daddy take you to school?
Breonna: No, I walk.

I think Breonna was telling me the story tonight.  I'm going to have to keep my eyes open for these strange people who give away cars though.  I need a new one with more space.

Serving with kids

I was just reading Julie's (The antics of the three 22nds) post about whether having four kids gives her an excuse not to serve (yeah, I know I'm behind). 

After we took custody of the girls and finally got them home, I suddenly got thrown into a world that I never had any reason to visit before - Children's ministries at our church.  Sure, I had tons of friends that have kids and they volunteer countless hours for the benefit of children in the church.  Julie is among those special people.  I can't think of anything more difficult than sitting with a flannelgraph and trying to get a dozen wiggly and distracted preschoolers to listen to you talk about God.  She does it ... and she does it well on top of everything else she has on her plate.  Scares the willies out of me.  Give me my computer and I can throw something up on the screen for the worship service - or let me take pictures or run the sound board.  Anything that doesn't involve talking in front of people ... even little tiny people.

This Sunday I spent my first stint in the preschool room.  The church is trying to give those who regularly serve a break for the summer and when I got to the room there was no one there.  Only one person had volunteered to supervise the preschoolers and she hadn't arrived yet.  However, the rule is: there must be two adults in the room.  Guess I'm working Children's Church beat.  What do we do? What do I say? Where are the crayons? Fortunately the other person in the room with me was a veteran - Val was a lifesaver - I was just the extra body there to keep us legal - she came in and she knew exactly what to do and where everything was.  I tried to help with the craft - messed that one up.  The kids were supposed to depict their families on a piece of construction paper using other little bits of construction paper that I cut up for them while they were listening to Val.  I cut the pieces WAY too big and most of their families came out looking like cubist abstract art.  I guess that's OK, they ARE preschoolers after all - what am I expecting Monet or DaVinci?

Over the course of the summer I will be leaping out of my comfort zone - VBS, Sunday School, Children's Church.  We'll see how it goes.

Oh, and to answer Julie on her post - if God gives what us what we can handle plus a little bit to push us to grow - I've got a long way to go to try to keep up with you.  Some people use their kids as an excuse, I'm hoping mine help me to stretch and grow in a lot of different ways including service.

Camping

Well, we were going to have the girl's first outdoor camping experience in the back yard tonight.  It is going to get down to 52 degrees overnight.  I was thinking - "What a perfect night to sleep outside!"  Jason was thinking - "Those girls are going to freeze!"

I was going to have them in their sleeping bags and throw a comforter over top of them.  I figured keeping warm would be incentive to stay in their own sleeping bags rather than coming over to mom & dad's air mattress and attempting to steal some of our covers.

The girls are (somewhat) happily sleeping in my old 2 man tent in the living room.  They really wanted to sleep outside, but Dad vetoed that idea.  We will keep that for another night that doesn't get so chilly.

The plan is: camp for one night in the backyard and then if that goes well, book a weekend at the regional  campground 5 minutes from our house and stay up there while we do all our normal stuff.  If there isn't a meltdown there, maybe we can head somewhere out of easy driving distance from our house - like Bemidji or the North Shore and stay there for a weekend. 

Until then, we will be here in the living room.

Still getting the hang of this...

I'm still trying to get the hang of this mom thing ...

I awoke this morning to hear Jordan wailing in the kitchen because daddy left for work.  Didn't really think that much of it - if the girls wake up in time to catch him leaving they tend to get weepy because they don't want daddy to go.  To be honest, I don't either, but there are those small things like the mortgage, food, electricity, gas - you get my drift.  Anyway, she came back into my room so worked up and sweating  - she had REALLY been crying I didn't really think anything of it.  I knew that no one was going to get back to sleep so we all got up and got some breakfast. 

We had planned to go to the YMCA so I could work out and then we all would go swimming afterward.  I got the girls clothes out, they dressed themselves and Jordan was unusually moody.  She would be happy and laughing and alternately crabby, whining and crying.  We all got in the car and headed to the Y.

So, until today the girls have not had much more than a sniffle.  I was not expecting to be called down from the weight room within five minutes of arrival and told that Jordan had a 101.2 degree fever.  How did I miss this?  They must think I'm a horrid mother dragging the little one out with a fever like that.  Until this morning I didn't own a thermometer.  We went to the store and got some Children's Advil Fever and a thermometer.  As soon as we got home she went to bed for a 3 hour nap. That seemed to do it - the fever was gone, but she was still pretty lethargic.

One day I'll be able to look at my kids and be able to tell that they have a low grade fever or a hangnail or  needs a dose of Vitamin C like my friends can.  Until then I'm still getting the hang of being a mom ...

The girls get a job

I bought the girls piggy banks a couple of months ago and they love putting money into them.  I told them that if they found any coins lying around in any room other than my bedroom they can have it and put it in their piggy banks.  I will occasionally seed the living room or the kitchen with pennies and nickels and watch the excitement as they find what they all quarters.  I have found that any coin is a quarter in their eyes.

They have now decided that they need more money to put in their piggy banks, so I have given them an ongoing job.  I have a bad habit in the garden - I will pull weeds but I won't put them in a bag and dispose of them.  I told them that for every garbage bag of  weeds they fill I will give them a dollar.  I am the final arbiter of how full they need to fill the bags.   They both loved the idea.  We went to Menards and bought them some work gloves with Spongebob on Breonna's and Diego in Jordan's.  I started pulling weeds and piling them up between them. 

Jordan started out strong but lost interest almost immediately.  She went and started playing with some wood chips on the top terrace.  Breonna actually stuck with it until her bag was almost full.  I think she is starting to see some value in patience and perseverance because she just lit up when we gave her that dollar bill.  Jordan was mildly disappointed with her dime, but when she went to put it in her bank she promptly lost it - took her 5 seconds to lose track of it.     

Bunnies

I have been asked about the bunnies in the picture with the girls.  Yes, those are bunnies with harnesses and leashes.  No, those are NOT our bunnies.  Jason's cousin Tammy's kids each have a bunny given to them by their grandmother.  They are very nice bunnies named Flopsy and Mopsy.  I asked, but I do not remember which is which.  We were in Sioux City last weekend to visit Jason's parents and his family. 

Bunnies - I don't think I would choose them for a pet.  Don't get me wrong - they are cute and lovable and I'm sure they are rather intelligent.  I have friends that have a pet bunny and he goes in the litterbox just like a cat.  My problem is rabbits and squirrels make my life miserable in my garden. 

I've described my garden in a previous post.  It is the thing that consumes a lot of my spare time in the summer.  Weeding, pulling weeds and eliminating vegetative infestations take up most of my time.  However, sometimes I also need to save pots that have been turned over by varmints that were digging to bury acorns for the winter.  My garden is pretty much a salad bar for nearby vegetarian creatures.  I also found this spring that the rabbits pulled most of the bark off of one of the larger shrubs in front of my house.  I hope it lives - I kind of like that one. 

If they would take direction I could tell them which shrubs to kill ... like the one on the east side of the garage: EAT THAT ONE!  Or the ones that I have to trim 5 times a summer along my driveway so they don't scrape my car as I pull in and out.  EAT THOSE!!  Leave the ones in the front yard alone.  Please?

Fun day!

This morning we slept in a little bit, ate some breakfast and got ready to go to the Y to swim a little.  The girls always love these days because they get to hang out, meet new friends at the pool and "do" mom's hair.  This involves finding a bucket of some size - anywhere from a cup to a gallon - and take turns pouring water over my head.  If they get hold of one of the smaller containers in the YMCA's toy bucket, it is fine but if they end up with one of the larger ones I am sure to be beaten about the head (because they can't control a loaded down gallon bucket of water) and half drown (because the water ends up going in my face instead on top of my head).

As I grew up with two younger brothers I don't recall having the fixation on hair styling.  Possibly because my brothers never really had much hair for me to style and my mother would never have let me touch her hair. I DO recall many hours of playing Batman (the cheesy 60's Adam West version) or Wonder Woman.  We raced around the backyard and vaulted on and off the propane tank which was either the Batmobile or the invisible airplane depending upon who we were emulating.  As we got older and more sophisticated we would play things like The Boxcar Children, Tom Sawyer, or Huck Finn and disappear through the culvert up the road and pretend that was our own little world.

If I got hurt (and I'm sure my memory is imperfect here) my mom would squirt some Bactine on the injury and send me on my way.  I don't recall a lot of wailing or cuddling after an accident.

I watch these girls and they can play "Mommy" for hours trading the mommy and auntie roles back and forth.  They scrape their knee in the driveway and obsess over it for days until you can't see it anymore - and even then they still often want a band-aid for it.  I need to understand these little souls before they are beyond my understanding - teenagers.

The Garden

So I have this garden in my backyard ... OK, it is really more like a park.  3 levels, a pond with a waterfall, 9 oak trees, hostas and perennials beds, wood chips, stone path.  I wish I could take complete credit for it, but the lady who lived here before us put her heart and soul into building it.  I am making improvements to it as I can.

So I have made rules for the girls:  PLEASE stay on the paths or the wood chips.  Do not go exploring through the foliage.  Stuff like that.  We bought them a play house that I put in the back corner of the garden so they could occupy themselves as mom pulls weeds. 

I had no idea that they had been digging in the dirt themselves - the flowerbox on the playhouse had a gross mixture of rainwater, dandelion stems, and dirt.  The girls who have up until this point been afraid of box elder bugs and gnats have started picking up millipedes and wanting to keep and feed inchworms in the hope that they would become a butterfly. 

Unfortunately they went stomping through the foliage and trampled down about half of my oriental poppys.  I'm rather attached to those poppys and was rather upset that they had met their demise under the feet of young children.  I needed space to process.  On one hand, they ruined some flowers that were going to make great pictures in about a week.  On the other hand, they are my girls and I love them more than any old flower in the garden AND they weren't acting like princesses and being all squeamish about bugs in the garden.  Deep breath ... Get over it Paula. 

So we all had a good day in the garden.  I put down a stone floor in the girl's playhouse so they wouldn't get quite so dirty.  And we cleaned out that disgusting mixture in the flowerbox and planted some impatiens.