Alone, almost

Do you hear that?

No?

Me neither.

The house is so quiet. And not “everyone is sleeping” quiet. It feels empty and odd.

The girls, Belly and Jilly, ages 6 & 4, slept at my mom’s last night. It was only Belly’s second sleepover and Jilly’s first. Fairly Odd Father is up in Vermont somewhere—mountain biking this weekend with some friends (please keep his pinky finger in your thoughts—we do not want a repeat injury).

Last night, my youngest—D—and I spent the evening together. We sat on the front porch and ate ice cream (his dinner) and then ran through the sprinkler until the mosquitoes dive-bombed us. We watched TV together and I realized that “America’s Funniest Videos” IS geared to a 2-year old brain!

It is strange to have the house so quiet. Contrary to what I may have thought at one time, one little boy is not so noisy.

That being said, I think it is time I get down to business and finish a meme I was tagged to do quite a while ago by Robin, who was able to reach me all the way from Israel.

In this meme, I am supposed to reveal eight random facts or habits about myself. The following should not be confused with this post, which had me spilling six weird things about myself. Let’s see if I can come up with anything else:

1. My mornings must include coffee and a shower, in that order. I don’t need to shower right away, but I need to do it before I get dressed.

2. I can’t sit still. I pace when I talk on the phone, jiggle my legs when at the computer and even ‘run’ my feet back and forth while I’m falling asleep. I’m not high-strung, am I?

3. I am a crier. I cry reading books to the kids (The Giving Tree is particularly difficult), watching a movie, hearing the news or just because. In the past few days, I’ve cried: when I accidentally slammed Jilly’s hand in the car door (miraculously, she was fine); when my friend got up to speak at her grandmother’s memorial service; after FOF left for his trip; when I saw my new niece; when I stubbed my toe. . .I think you get the idea.

4. I have an innieoutie bellybutton. It doesn’t stick out, but it isn’t like most innies which are just little slits. If FOF hadn’t taken the digital camera to Vermont, I’d take a picture. Or, maybe not; my belly isn’t the prettiest thing to see after three kids.

5. I am NOT a blond, even though I act it at times*. I was blond until I was about eight years old, and then it started to get darker and darker. Any blond picture of me since then is from dying my hair. In addition to blond (all shades, from white-blond to brownish-blond), I’ve been orange, red, maroon and dark brown. Someday I will post a ‘hair retrospective‘.

* for instance, I had spelled ‘blonde’ with a silent ‘e’, but spell check says this is wrong! Really?!?!? –hangs head in shame. . .or sham–

6. I do not like to follow arbitrary rules. This is a major reason why I chose to homeschool my kids, and it is also why I’m going to end this meme at #6.

I’m also supposed to tag eight people, but it’s a holiday weekend! No more work! Have fun and get wet to celebrate the start of summer!

I am in Love

Yesterday was a day for exclamation marks!

My sistah, the lovely “Mrs Q” who posts around the blogosphere from time-to-time, surprised us all! She had her baby a day earlier than her scheduled c-section!

Now, I was not there when the baby arrived, but I got the scoop, and since she has not started her own blog (yet. . .I’m working on her), I will share the scoop with you. It’ll be better if you imagine you are her, ok? Play along. . .

(dissolve to dream sequence; you look fabulous with this filtering thingy over the camera lens!)

Imagine that you are scheduled to have a c-section on Tuesday because your beloved second child cannot figure out how to get out of your belly. Instead of head down, or even feet down, this baby lies sideways, turning your poor distended stomach into a hammock of sorts. Sway, sway, sway. You are in p-a-i-n from all this swaying.

Imagine that in the darkened wee hours of Monday morning, you feel your water break. You start off for the hospital with your husband who breaks all land-speed records (he, in fact, causes a sonic boom!) by driving you to the one-hour-away hospital in 25 minutes.

Imagine that the hospital starts to get you ready for a c-section since the baby is still breech. You are still in triage, in a teeny, tiny little room. Everyone seems to be moving v..e..r..y…..s…l…o…w…l…y… even though your contractions are less than two minutes apart, and did I mention that this is your second child?

Imagine that you tell a nurse that you feel like you feel like there is too much pressure, you need to push. She smiles and tells you that all will be fine, to hang in there and wait for the anesthesiologist to get there (yes, you can imagine that this is all happening without a single narcotic in your system).

Imagine that you feel . . . something . . . and then, ohmygodthatisafootafootiscomingoutofmybodyohmygodohmygodohmygod. The nurse, glances over, shrieks, and runs out of the room screaming, “BREECHFOOTBABYBIRTHRIGHTNOW!!!!”, or something like that.

Imagine there are now eight others crowded into a teeny tiny triage room. One of these strangers gets the other leg down and then. . .SLOOP!. . .pulls out your baby after a couple of short pushes by you.

Imagine that someone cuts the cord and then the baby—-disappears! The nurses have run out of the teeny tiny room with the baby to find a place to clean the baby off. Wonder why you are still calling this child “the baby” and asks politely, “What did I have? Is it a boy? A girl?” Watch as everyone in the teeny tiny room looks at each other and realizes that no one knows! Someone is sent to find your baby, and you soon find out that IT’S A GIRL!

A beautiful, perfect baby girl with jet black hair and long fingernails. You are soon holding your perfect baby girl in the hammock position she loved for so many months.

Behold beautiful baby girl and momma.

And, here is me with my new–and first–niece. Could I look any happier? I don’t think so.

"Our" Soldier

Mother’s Day was a lovely day, complete with breakfast-in-bed and a basket full of potions to help me look and feel smoother, silkier and—dare I say—younger?

However, one the more memorable part of Mother’s Day this year was the phone call I received from Iraq at about 11:30am.

You see, one of our homeschool groups has ‘adopted’ two soldiers who are loosely connected to other members of our group. Earlier this year, each soldier submitted a modest list of items they would like to receive from home and, once a month, one of the group’s members mails off a package to an unknown destination.

I offered to adopt one of the soldiers for the month of April. Of course, this meant that on April 30th, I was rushing to the post office to mail our package of soaps, candy, coffee and travel-size tissues. I also included a few pictures the kids drew of themselves holding “American” flags (Jilly’s flag actually more closely resembled Luxembourg’s flag, but she tried!).

Never did I expect that my small box of items would result in a phone call from that soldier, just two weeks after I had visited the post office. Our conversation lasted over a half hour, during which he described the living conditions (“I don’t have it too bad”, although what he considers decent would be my hell-on-earth), his view on how long the U.S. may need to be there (“10 years”) and what he looked most forward to when he returned (seeing his wife and daughter, going fishing and having good coffee).

He told me to thank the kids for sending him drawings; he even took a photo of himself holding their pictures and emailed it to me. I would love to post the photo but cannot, since I did not get his permission to do so.

I’ve thought a lot about that conversation. Here is someone not much older than me, who is facing snipers’ bullets, seven-inch spiders, dust storms and army food. . . and, for what? Having just seen a local Marine wheeled by me in a casket, I can’t help but feel some despair over this situation. Just thinking about the war, the mess we are in, makes me want to just turn away from it all and wait for it to be over.

But then, I read the words below. It was written by “our” soldier to a close friend in our homeschool group, telling her why the packages we were sending mattered to him.


They do make a difference to get something, anything from a friend, family member, a stranger. We’ve all been home for leave and have gotten to see the news and it’s like they have forgotten what we’re still doing over here. Then we receive these care packages and then we know, it’s just the news stations, not the people.
In just a few months, “our” soldier will be home with his family, hopefully for good. My kids cannot wait to meet him.