Weepeet da sownding joy....

The munchkins are all tucked in their beds, ostensibly sleeping on this Christmas Eve eve.

Large Fry has moved beyond the need to have music playing to help lull her to sleep, but the twin Fries still like the comfort of the classical station playing in the background.  Since we live in nowheresville and don't even have our own radio stations, the classical station we get is out of Maryland.  Which actually has nothing to do with the story, really, except that I am enough of a writer to not want to have so many one-sentence paragraphs.

Innyhoo.

This being Christmastime, the classical station is playing sacred (and often choral) Christmas music.  The Fries growing up in our rather musically-inclined home, and especially now with the twin Fries being old enough for Junior Church on Sunday mornings, they've heard a lot of Christmas carols this year.

And because the twin Fries share a room, they're prone to talking instead of sleeping.  Really prone to talking instead of sleeping, and often end up giggling and shushing each other and Unca D has to shout upstairs at least a couple of times each night, to get them to settle down.  (Occasionally, Unca D must also go upstairs and lay down the law.)  Thus, we have an intercom monitor locked on transmit in their room, so we can tell when they're being little goobers and not sleeping, and respond accordingly.  Because, cute though they are, they are little bears when they don't get enough sleep.

Tonight was no different.  Hubby decided he was hungry for Friday's, and they let you phone in orders for pick-up here, so that's what we did for dinner after the Fries were tucked in bed.  So we're sitting here, eating our yummy Friday's dinner, when we hear something in the monitor.

Singing, to be precise.

Tonight's musical selection on our classical station included Joy to the World, and both Fries were singing along.  During the few measures between verses, Medium Fry observed, "Unca D sang dis sowng in chuwrch!"

It's quiet for another few measures, and then the choir sings the chorus again.

And Small Fry belts out, "Weepeet da sownding joy!"

My father's advice

Amazing home remedies that really work!

1. TO AVOID CUTTING YOURSELF WHEN SLICING VEGETABLES, GET SOMEONE ELSE TO HOLD THE VEGETABLES WHILE YOU CHOP.*

 2. TO AVOID ARGUMENTS WITH THE FEMALES ABOUT LIFTING THE TOILET SEAT - USE THE SINK.**

 3. FOR HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE SUFFERERS ~ SIMPLY CUT YOURSELF AND BLEED FOR A FEW MINUTES, THUS REDUCING THE PRESSURE ON YOUR VEINS. [REMEMBER TO USE A TIMER.]

4. A MOUSE TRAP PLACED ON TOP OF YOUR ALARM CLOCK WILL PREVENT YOU FROM ROLLING OVER AND GOING BACK TO SLEEP AFTER YOU HIT THE SNOOZE BUTTON.

5. IF YOU HAVE A BAD COUGH, TAKE A LARGE DOSE OF LAXATIVES - YOU'LL BE AFRAID TO COUGH.***

6. YOU ONLY NEED TWO TOOLS IN LIFE: WD-40 AND DUCT TAPE.  IF IT DOESN'T MOVE AND SHOULD, USE THE WD-40.  IF IT SHOULDN'T MOVE AND DOES, USE THE DUCT TAPE.

7. IF YOU CAN'T FIX IT WITH A HAMMER, YOU'VE GOT AN ELECTRICAL PROBLEM.

Thanks, Dad.  Don't know what I'd do without your help.


*My mother just did this on Sunday.  Right after explaining to the Fries that Unca D lost the tip of his left index finger in a factory accident because he "wasn't careful."  With a serrated knife.  To cut a banana, of all things.  Five stitches, folks.

**Dad's helpful advice for Hubby in particular.

***I've got a nasty sinus infection going on right now, that's settled in my chest and giving me a nice hacking cough. 

Geez. I'm now giving parenting advice?

This just feels so weird.

My second-cousin's wife has been having a rough couple of weeks.  They've got two little kids (2 years and 2 months), and between normal life, holiday crazies, and illness, she was about at the end of her rope.

We chatted for a little while tonight, and I think just having another mom's ear to bend, one who admits her own frustrations and occasional desires to cheerfully give away her kids, was a good thing for her.

It's almost astonishing that I've been a mom longer than she has.  I didn't realize that until after we stopped talking.


I remember asking my best friend once, about six months after the girls moved in, if wanting to sell my very cute, very much loved children to the nearest gypsy troupe meant that I was a bad mom.  "No," she laughed.  "It means you're human!"

I think, in a lot of ways, moms get the short end of the stick.  There are so many stereotypes about how perfect we're supposed to be, and how we're supposed to love our children and never be upset and always have a perfect house and...well, I could go on.  Reality is, however, far different from all that.  (Unless you're Martha Stewart.  Which I'm not.  Thank God.)

My downstairs looks like a toy-volcano erupted half the time.  The other half, it looks like the toybox threw up.  The throw blankets are almost never put away.  What the kids don't scatter, the cats do.  I'm lucky if the laundry gets folded, much less put away.

Little kids do not make for a well-ordered house.

Or a well-ordered life, for that matter.

And when your children are sick, you want to take care of them--but you also want them to behave like quiet little sick kids, rather than screaming banshees or, like my kids, being clingy and whiny and needing you constantly and you start running out of lap AND sanity.  I want to be a good mom.  I want to want to take care of them.  Sometimes, I don't.

And when you, as mom, are sick too?  Oh, man, that's a recipe for disaster, and the Doubt Gremlins start talking to you in force.  (Doubt Gremlins are close cousins of Worry Gremlins, whose primary purpose is to drive parents crazy with unrealistic but horrifying worries over their kids.)  You're a bad mom, because they're sick and still driving you crazy.  You're a bad mom for admitting that.  You're a bad mom for wanting thirty seconds of peace.  You're a bad mom just because!

Hogwash.  And, if we were in our right minds and not our own worst enemies, we'd know that.

But we're not in our right minds.  We're moms, and that has forever warped the connections for logic (few to begin with, in my case) that we had in our brains before we had kids.  We worry constantly that we're not good enough at this job, that we're irreparably harming our kids somehow and we don't even know it.  Our worries about what kind of moms we are run almost as deep as our love for our kids.

I can say all this right now, because I'm not having a crisis of mom-conscience.  I'm sick, but the kids aren't, and Hubby is home to take care of them while I rest.

But I've had them.  A LOT.

Sleep and chocolate seem to help me.  That, and the reassurance of my husband that I'm doing a good job.

I suppose we'll never really know what kind of parents we are until our kids are grown.

In the meantime, I'll have to trust that I'm doing the best job I can, and that how much we love our kids shows in the way that they come up to us and tell us, all by themselves, that they love us.

And take a page from comedian Jeff Allen's playbook, and have my kids write out their grievances and the date, and I'll initial it.  And then, when they need therapy because of how bad a parent I was, we can breeze through it.

Why I'm Addicted to Top Gear

And it's all my dad's fault.

We are in SO much trouble....

Last night, as Hubby was getting the twin Fries ready for bed after Wednesday night church, Medium Fry complained about an owie on her leg.

There was a nice, long, red scratch on her left calf.

"How did that happen?"  Hubby asked

"I took a scissor and did dat."

"You used scissors?"

"Yes.  I took a scissor and skwatched myself."

"Where did you get scissors?"

"From de owrange dwrawer."

Orange drawer?  We have lots of drawers in this house, but none of them are orange.

"From what drawer?"

"De owrange dwrawer.  Da little one.  I got da wred ones."

"The red scissors?" I asked, jumping in.  Those have been missing about a week, and Hubby has sorta blamed me for losing them, since (we thought) I was the last one to have used them.

"Yes."

"You're not allowed to use scissors by yourself!" I scolded her.

"Where did you get them?" Hubby asked.

"Fwrom da dwrawer!"

"Which one?"

"I'll show you."  Medium turned, wearing only her nighttime Pull-Up, to go show which drawer.

"Get your jammies on first.  Then you can show me."

Medium pulled on the rest of her clothes.

"Now you can show me."

"In hewre."  She ambled into the kitchen and went straight for the junk drawer by the fridge, where those red-handled scissors are normally kept.  You know, the drawer that has the childproof latch on it.

She pulled open the drawer until the latch stopped it.

"How did you get them out?" Hubby asked.

"I pushed dis down and den pulled da dwrawer out."  Medium demonstrated as she talked.

Yep, we are in biiiiiiiiiiiiig trouble here.

Genetics

About three weeks or so after Bro had moved back to PA, waaaaay back when the girls were still with us "temporarily," we had this huge blowout fight.  He made some decisions about how far to extend the guardianship power of attorney that he gave us, and didn't bother to consult us, and we were pretty upset.   When Hubby had finally settled down enough (Hubby, not me), he explained to Bro that he'd hurt me and he'd insulted me, and he'd better call me to apologize for his behavior before he expected to set foot in our house again.  And he was never again to deal with detailed matters like this with me; he was to talk with Hubby only.

I forget the precise reason I called him (it might have been about the paperwork to get Large Fry evaluated for speech therapy), but I called him.  Hubby was out with the youth group kids at a nearby state park, having a summer beach afternoon/evening and bonfire and stuff, and I was home with the Fries.  I should not have called him when I was alone, in retrospect.  Innyhoo.  I called him.  I was about to end the very-shortlived (until that point) conversation, when he said, "Listen...um...."

And like the polite sibling I was raised to be, I listened.  To an apology that wasn't an apology, followed by his list of reasons why I was mad and why he understood that I was mad.

Only one problem.  His reasons weren't my reasons for being angry.  So (stupidly) I tried to explain that, no, he was wrong, and continued with why I was mad.  He interrupted me, informed me that I was incorrect in my reasons for being angry, re-explained "my" reasons for being upset, and then asked me to stop interrupting him when I tried to correct his erroneous assumptions again.  And that's when he suddenly remembered promising Hubby that he wouldn't talk with me about these things...and he refused to let me even finish a thought, much less offer my side of my own emotions.  I hung up on him.  (For the record, he never did acknowledge that he was wrong, and that I knew my own mind.)


Innyhoo...I told you that story to tell you this one:

Medium has been eating very slowly tonight.  As I got up to put my empty plate in the sink, she cheerily said, "I'm so pwoud of yew, Auntie J!  You finished awl youwr food!"

"I'm not too proud of you right now," I commented, looking at her mostly-full plate.

"Awre yew angwee?"

"A little bit.  You're not eating."

"You awre angwee because you'wre not pwoud of me.  You awre angwee because I didn't finish..."  She kept rambling while I came out to the living room, where Hubby was sitting and watching Tinkerbell with the sickies.  "Your turn," I said.

He went into the kitchen as Medium continued to prattle about precisly why I was upset.

"Well, at least it's genetic," Hubby commented with a grin.

"What is?"

"Her telling you why you're mad."

*facepalm*

Medium has gone to the potty in the middle of dinner.  It's just her and me at the table.  Well, me, at the moment.  And that's when I hear a distinctive plop after the water has shut off.

Me: What are you doing?

Medium: Washing my hands!

Me [suspiciously]:  Did you pull up the stopper in the sink?

Medium [audibly pushes stopper down]: No! [water gurgles down drain]

Me: Then why did I just hear the soap go plink into the water?  [pause; water starts running again]  Turn off the water!


Golly.