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.