Driving the Porcelain Bus

I’m not sure where it all started, my guess is either the stuffy, sock-smelling Chick-fil-A playground or the library, but Rush threw up in his pack and play Saturday night and it set off a chain reaction that ended (hopefully) in Trent’s lamest birthday ever.

I understand that there are certain unpleasant things that parents can’t avoid –trips to the emergency room, awkward confrontations with other parents, middle school- and I knew that going into the delivery room.  But I completely forgot that kids throw up in cars.  I’m not sure how I forgot that, especially since my own sister has thrown up at more times and in more places than anyone else, ever.  She’s barfed in more cities and countries than most people will even visit in their entire lives.

So even armed with a towel and a plastic bag for our drive home from visiting the grandparents last weekend, I was caught totally off guard.  I’m adding the “Cleaned” Car Seat in Gas Station Sink merit badge to my sash.  And although that contributed to the general parent grubbiness of my car, what actually pushed it over the edge into irredeemably filthy was the Sprite exploding in the front seat after Rush got so excited about drinking it.

He does always make the best of a situation.  At six AM, when the two of us had been up for two hours and he has just thrown up in Gigi and Papa John’s kitchen, he was sipping ginger ale and watching me clean the floor and saying “Lucky boy, lucky boy!”  Because of course he is a lucky boy; for a two year old it just doesn’t get any better than getting to drink coke in the morning.

So since that moment it’ s just been a long chain of illness for anyone who came in contact with us last weekend.  Trent left work early to take care of the boys once it got me on Monday, but he only made it a few hours longer than I did.  Then my mom came to help us with the boys, but she was only at our house for four hours before it got her too.  All I could think about was the ship in Swiss Family Robinson with the quarantine flag. 

Although if we’re putting up nautical flags, I’m adding this one next time we’re sick:

"Keep clear of me; I am maneuvering with difficulty."

Miraculously, thank God, Tate has stayed healthy through the whole experience.  He just watched us as we collapsed on the floor, one by one, and then all together.  I’m sure at this point he’s ready for a change of scenery.

So Trent, Happy Birthday.  I’m not sure if this birthday tops his 28th -when we moved- but at least that time we got to go out to eat.  We’ll have cake in a few days when we’ve moved past toast and crackers.

The Harvest

For the first time ever, we have…

tomatoes!  We can’t take credit.  It’s all about the bees, who have been hanging around our birdbath and evidently pollinating our plants.  Typically we eat the tomatoes as we’re walking back to the house, but there are so many that some are actually making it into salads these days.

We filled our raised bed with dirt from our compost pile, which at one point last fall contained at least five decomposing pumpkins, so pumpkin plants started appearing everywhere.  We let a few go in some empty garden space, and they have been our most successful greenery this year.  We have to trim the vines back occasionally when they try to take over our pecan tree, but for the most part we just let them be free.

And we grew an actual orange, Halloween pumpkin.

Which got about that big and then died along with all the pumpkin vines.  I don’t know if it was the heat or the combination of being both ignored and occasionally over-watered, but it’s all gone now.  It would have taken approximately 4 minutes on the internet to find out what kind of shade/sun/water needs a pumpkin has, but evidently that was beyond us.  No blue ribbons at the county fair for us.  But maybe next year…

Bubbling Boilers

You could walk into our house at any point on any day and there would either be a train set in the living room or cars or blocks or shoes lined up like a train.  No inside toy has ever captured Rush’s attention so completely.  His current morning routine is wake-up, eat breakfast, watch an episode of Thomas and Friends, pull out the train set.



It feels normal to be spending my days setting up towers of blocks at the bottom of a ramp made improvised from a Rubbermaid lid so Rush and I can drive cars into them, but some mothers are playing with Barbies and coloring.  That sounds so relaxing it would almost feel like cheating.  Rush isn’t big on coloring.  It’s important to me to foster my children’s creativity and I’m realizing it’s going to take more than crayons and a blank piece of paper. 



So sitting down to draw is not a typically a winning idea around here.  (Well, let’s clarify – I would enjoy it.  It’s not currently a winning idea for the rest of my housemates.)  But sitting down to make tunnel for the train – success!  A shoe box plus brown paper, markers and tape, and we have a great addition to the train set.  Rush is so proud of his creation; it was the first thing he told Trent about when he got home.  And now it’s an important part of playing with trains.



I stand behind the belief that everyone is creative and if you’re struggling with that you just have to figure out how you’re creative.  Rush and Tate have art in their blood, so I’m going to do my best to make sure they use it.  It’s going to stretch my creative thought process, coming up with ideas that work with what they’re interested in.  I’m looking forward to the challenge

Hot T and the Strong Abs

Yes, that’s sitting up!  Propped up on baby Roo and his own arm sitting up, but we’re in business.  We bought him that stuffed animal on vacation when I found out I was pregnant and Tate was just a little ball of cells  Look at him now.  Tate’s world is expanding and life is about to get easier for everyone.



Life getting easier with children is always a trade off.  We’re getting sitting up, but we’re also getting into the phase of lugging around jars of baby food every time we travel.   I can handle that.  We’re about to enter the age of Rush and Tate playing together; I can feel it.  I predict he’ll be sitting up in a sturdy fashion in no time.

Only a few more trips to the grocery store with Tate in the sling; soon he’ll be moving to the cart.  It will be a nice change from today when I prayed in the parking lot on the way into the store- “please don’t let us get hit by a car.”  I figured it we could make it out alive we would be okay.  We had an ordeal today over a bag of salad that split open as our groceries were being bagged.  I would like to think that if I were working at a grocery store and a bag of salad exploded as I was checking out someone, I wouldn’t send the woman with a toddler and a baby literally strapped to her chest with a piece of fabric to the far corner of the store to get another bag.  And dammit at some point along the way we lost that bag of salad.  I found it around ten o’clock tonight in the freezer.

But for now going to the grocery store with two children, while often a long and tiring process, isn’t hard enough to make me go alone.  That would mean going after bedtime and giving up my personal time.  Personal time comes at a high price, much higher than a trip to Kroger.

His People Are Nordic

There’s Rush, sleeping in his Viking hat.  Ed the Red would be proud.  I know I am.

Home Sweet Home

I had an absolutely wonderful time visiting my parents in Beaumont last week.  It’s amazing to have two homes – the house where I live now with my husband and children and pets that is constantly evolving into more and more of our home and the house where I grew up, which will always be home as well. 

Trent and I can’t think of the word for this, but I’m obsessed with it.  Is there a more specific word than geography?  I’m fascinated by how different two towns only about ninety miles apart can feel.  It’s hot in Pearland, but it’s HOT in Beaumont.  I love humidity (if I even go to Dallas I have to bring a tub of Vaseline to rub on my face because the air is so dry) but I didn’t realize until last week that the humidity here is mild in comparison.  And there are no locusts in the trees here, or if they are here somewhere, they’re quiet.  I didn’t realize I missed that sound until I was sitting in my parents’ backyard.

Rush and Tate got to spend time with all their grandparents and some of their aunts, so they came home fairly worn out.  Because overlapping naps continues to prove elusive, even with extra help it’s not easy to run around town these days.  We did make it to the Treasure  House, the resale store my mom managed for years, where I picked up a tablecloth with a coffee cup embroidered on it, and, even with all my new book sale books ready to be read, more books.

And speaking of books, my mom and I began cataloging all the books in my parents’ house.  It’s the first step to forming a library.  It was kind of an insane project, but now at least we’ll all know what they have.  Does it seem like over-doing it to have an excel file with all your books typed on it?  Are there cabinets in your house that you open and there are stacks and stacks inside?  Do you have a bookshelf crammed with books hidden behind a door?  It needed to be done.  I enjoyed it, but I did leave my mom to finish the typing and deal with the behind the door shelf.

I really love wandering their house and picking up things to read.  Rush had a hard time taking a nap one day (as in he did not take a nap) so I picked up Salinger’s Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction and read half of it while I sat with him.  I read that in high school (for fun) and while I didn’t remember one single thing about the book, I remember finishing it on an airplane, sitting on the left side near the back.  Thanks brain.

So we’re home and there’s really limited reading time.  Tate really wants to sit up and he’s getting so close.  He’s also an eating machine.  I don’t know if it’s a growth spurt or if he’s just really into eating solids, but he has demanded more and more food for the past few days.  Maybe he’s building up his energy for sitting.

Rush is so two.  Today he used the rest of my eyeliner to make a five o’clock shadow for himself.  Saturday he covered his room in baby powder. While I would have stopped both these activies before they began if I could have, let’s admit it, all these things sound fun.  I can see why he wants to do them.  He’s also really getting into sentences and hilarity:  “I’m a baby.  I’m Tate.” 

He picked out that outfit himself on Saturday morning, determined to get dressed even though the rest of us stayed in pajamas for the majority of the morning. 

I have no closing for this post.  If it were a paper for school, or a novel, or a short story, I would push through.  But I really need a shower, so…peace out.

I Shall Pretend I Am In A Smart Restaurant

Creatures who eat Kroger Value Cat Food

Possums:  Yes

Neighborhood cats:  No

Two-year-old boys:  Yes

Ticket to Ride

We like to play board games around here.  Playing together, Trent and I go through phases and switch games often.  But when we get together with at least one other person, we usually initiate a game of Ticket to Ride.  It’s a game of trains, connecting routes from city to city across a map of the U.S.  We’ve been hooked for the past few years.

Tate, 2 weeks old

While we first heard about the game from my uncle, my mom was the first person to fall in love with it and start drawing us all in.  We play a lot of Ticket at the beach, squeezing it in when the boys are sleeping.  As soon as it’s naptime, out comes the box.  Last weekend we started playing for money –$1 per game, winner takes all- which has made things a little more interesting.  The financial incentive has improved my game and now my plan is to save my winnings all summer then buy a yacht after Labor Day weekend.

Tate, 2011

In between games last weekend, I suddenly had déjà vu.

Rush, 2009

Ticket to Ride is a long standing love affair that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.  We’re still on track and picking up steam.  Pun intended.

Baby Quilts

First of all, a shout out to my dad on his birthday – Happy Birthday Jimmers!

And now on to my recent quilting epiphany.  It should have been obvious:  in terms of man hours, making a quilt for a baby is way less time and work than making a quilt for a full sized adult.  It’s amazing!  And fun!

It’s not that I had never started a baby quilt.  I recently found a quilt that I started making a few years ago for a baby who is now almost four.  That’s never getting finished.  But after making a quilt for my sister’s upcoming arrival, I’m hooked.

I did most of the piecing by hand, pretty soon after Tate was born.  It was right around the time when Tate was really little and not yet sleeping through the night and I was completely exhausted, but I was past the point of falling asleep immediately when I sat down on the couch.  I definitely didn’t have the energy to sit at a sewing machine and I wanted something to do with my hands for the hour I could stay awake watching tv.  So I just started sewing by hand.  At some point in the process, probably when I caught up on sleep, I realized that was taking forever and did the rest on my machine.  I also did machine quilting for the very first time.  I’m still hand quilting loyal for larger quilts and will probably hand quilt some baby quilts as well, but it was certainly speedy.

The other baby quilt I recently finished is titled “Fabric I Love.”  It was the first time I used the rotary cutter that Trent gave me for Christmas.  I really had a good time making it because it was completely in line with my creative process:  sewing and cutting and sewing and cutting with no particular plan, just watching everything come together.

I might fit in some additional smaller quilts, but my big project right now is finishing the two quilts for Rush and Tate, bunk bed size.  Because I split the quilt I was working on for Rush into two quilts, I had to add extra fabric and now I need a big chunk of time to lay everything out and reorganize.   My goal is to finish them by Christmas.  Well, Anglican Christmas, so I have through January 5, 2012.  That’s sounding overly ambitious, but hopefully a goal will add a little positive pressure. 

One Step Closer to Becoming a Man

Tate was born with an awesome head of hair.  It was long and thick from day one, and while he lost some baby hair around the sides and thinned out a little, mostly it just kept growing.  Tate’s hair was so soft and wonderful that Rush would sometimes lay next to him and fuzz with it.  I’m not sure if “fuzzing” is a real term or a Rush family specific word and it seems like looking it up online could come back with questionable responses.  So in case you need the definition, it’s when you rub something really soft, like a stuffed animal, on your face.

As much as I wanted to keep Tate’s beautiful long locks, I also didn’t want to cling on to the point of a baby comb over.  It was beyond my capabilities to give him a little trim, because every bit of hair on his head was long, even the sides.  So I took my darling little sweet baby to get an actual, real life haircut.

He was awesomely well-behaved and very calm throughout a haircut involving scissors and clippers.

He looks so big now!  He went from little baby to baby boy in a few quick swipes of the scissors.  I’m still shocked by how different he looks.  He’s dapper.

I really try not to be too nostalgic about things with the boys, because everything just moves so quickly.  A favorite outfit is outgrown, Tate starts eating peas, Rush starts knocking down his gate and wandering the house when he wakes up, Tate gets his first haircut; it’s happening so quickly.   I’m really having to fight the emotions this time, because in one quick burst I noticed how fast Tate is growing and Rush finished his first year of school.  As always, I’m just trying to cherish these moments.