The Weekend I lost my Children

I count my children all the time.  I don't know what it is about five.  I didn't do this a year ago.  But now, I constantly feel like I may not have them all.  I count grocery cart seats.  I am forever thankful to the inventor of the grocery buses.  You know the ones where I can put a toddler and infant seat up top while my two preschoolers pretend to drive the cart?  They are a blessing from above.  But seeing as how these are not always available I often have to practice counting to five all while grocery shopping.

As I reached the checkout stand on Friday I glanced around and began to count my little ones.  One, two, three, four...where is the fifth?  Wait.  I must have counted wrong!  One, two, three, four...no I counted right!  Where is J?!  I quickly told the cashier I was missing a child and would be back for the rest.  I don't know what she thought; I simply waited for her to acknowledge that she heard me. 

Off I frantically ran, back the way I came.  You know these are times in which one's brain acts as if it is trying to power an entire city, but you really don't care if your hair stands up on end.  I am watching the exit door for my daughter, looking down every isle, and asking people if they saw a child all at the same time (while not waiting for a response unless their eyes light up).  After what seemed like ten minutes, near the ice cream, I found J walking with a woman who was trying to help her.  I don't even know if I thanked this woman properly...I seriously do not remember what I said. I was in a hurry to pick J up and get back to the rest to make sure no more had gone missing. 

Fortunately I loaded my car up with five kids that afternoon.  And I learned I had better stop and pay attention when someone (T) points out popsicles because if I don't, someone, particularly her highly distractable sister, will go and check them out for herself while I take off down another isle.

But apparently I am not counting often enough. 

On Sunday our family went to church, made a stop at the home improvement store, and then came home.  We unloaded our purchases and the children and came inside.  All of the kids were more than hungry so I got down to making lunch in a hurry.  Ryan was putting away things and I asked the kids to pull out plates for lunch. 

Usually about that time M is already in his booster waiting quietly.  It suddenly dawned on me:  I had never asked any of the kids to help him take off his shoes and jacket! I had never even seen him inside! Me: "Ryan, did you bring M in from the car?" Ryan: "No, I thought you did."  Me: "No, I thought you had him".  We exchange looks, raised eyebrows, and a "Ohhhh, that poor boy!"  Never mind that it has been about fifteen or twenty minutes and it is only ten degrees outside!

He was rescued, sniffles and all, from the garage.

So, if you ever see a mom with her nose buried in her list, ingredient checking, or intensely price comparing down to the ounce while her many children try to pass the time dreaming of popscicles, just know that she is the one who goes with the child you saw alone near the bakery. She will be forever grateful!

The Train is off the Rails

Our family train is officially off the rails.  No if's, and's or but's about it.  We are praying hard for an improvement, but in the meantime it has been absolutely insane.  What does off the rails look like, you ask?  Have you ever had such a day in which crazy things, out of your control, not of the positive sort, keep happening to you and you simply want to go to bed and start over?  Ya, that has been the last seven or eight days around here.

It began with a day in which I tried to take the girls on a bike ride and forgot to tuck my pants in my shoe and thus, ripped them quite grandly and a hundred yards later the girls were cold and I needed to stop and close the cover on the bike trailer.  I was simply trying to get some quick exercise...Then I got home and managed to track dog poop through the family room and into the kitchen, all the while wondering who had "such muddy shoes". I mean, really....it was just supposed to be a bike ride to enjoy one of the last pleasant days.

Later we had the incident of M pulling a carton of cream off of the counter and spilling it down the front of the dishwasher, across the floor, and as we later discovered, also into the otherwise clean and full dishwasher. Seriously, I was just trying to make some soup.

I have had to clean up potty accidents much more than usual this past week.  One of the couch cushion covers is currently hanging up to dry in the basement. You are welcome to come and chat anytime on our comfy couch!

 M spilled an open water bottle on a library book while at Z's swimming lessons.  The book survived, but he was soaked for the afternoon of errands. Not too much harm done there.  Just every person we saw surely thought I was quite the irresponsible mom for not taking care of the poor kid's diaper.

Our family has been working on a very nice 1000 piece puzzle depicting a pleasant fall scene.  We were nearly done.  But, apparently, our older dog, Jax, decided that the table upon which we have been doing the puzzle is suddenly his favorite spot in which to keep an eye on the neighborhood while we are gone.  We came home to 1000 pieces on the floor (at least we hope they all were there). Now, this is getting ridiculous.

Then we had a rather large scare.  M fell down the last two stairs in our house and nearly knocked himself out.  It was a weird fluke thing with something that was left on the stairs and him trying to go around it.  Usually, M is very careful.  Ryan actually came home from work to help me monitor him (keep him awake for a while, watch his eyes, and all that stuff).  He is OK, but it was obviously terrifying.  OK, can I take a vacation now? For those of you wondering: yes we have stair gates, but they don't fit in this home's stairs (we recently moved) and M usually waits for me before venturing onto the stairs (yes he really is that kind of mellow kid).

Oh, ya...and our truck's check engine light just came on.  Seriously????

But wait there is more! This last weekend we went to celebrate my brother-in-law's birthday at my parent's home.  We packed up and headed out.  The guys all planned to spend the day attending a college football game.  So, my sister and I decided to spend the afternoon at the outlets and leave the kids with grandma.  In the first store I kept feeling this strange sensation on the outside of my left calf.  I finally looked down and saw water spots all over my lower leg and boot.  I quickly traced it to my purse.  Imagine my horror when I opened the top of my purse and saw a mini swimming pool!!! We quickly paid for what we were holding and went outside with some paper towels that the clerk had given us.

Outside I began trying to fix the situation.  I pulled out items and began handing them to my sister: wallet (not too much harm done), the checkbook (it will dry out), cell phone and keys (those were in an upper pocket),
bags of cheerios (no problem there), a bag of pretzels and raisins (again, no biggie), a container of wipes (whatever), a couple of diapers (why these didn't soak any liquid up I'll never know), a few dripping grocery lists, and THE CAMERA!  You have got to be kidding me! To finish this cleaning effort I then try to dump out the remaining water onto the ground and discover a few rolling pennies, girls clips, and a few bobby pins.  We were such a sight to behold!

So, where did all of this water come from?  A water bottle. I was feeling rather dehydrated that day and stuck it in my purse when we got out of the car.  Simple as that.  It somehow came unlatched and whoosh!  I hardly ever keep the camera in my purse, but had quickly put it in my purse on our way out for the weekend.  Currently, it is drying out, but we do not hold much hope for its survival.  After its trauma it turned itself on and had an unresponsive white screen.  So, other than pics that I either had or I receive from my mom (such as below) this blog may be 'pictureless' for quite sometime. 

Life with five very small people is crazy enough on a normal basis.  Lately it has been a nearly too much to handle.  We will appreciate any and all prayers involving our family and peace.

We did have a fun time with family and our kids had a blast with their cousins.  S (blue pants) and her cousin are about 7 months apart.  And J is only 4 months apart from my sister's son.

We are crazy and blessed!

One of Ryan and my favorite places is the ocean.  We both grew up on the Pacific coast.  We basically dated on the beach, became engaged on the beach, and so on.  It is something that beckons to us whenever we are near.  The large expanse is peaceful, but powerful.  It is away from noisy cities and the busyness of our everyday lives.

But the one thing we do not like about the ocean is how expensive it is to live near it.  We also do not care to raise our family in the culture that is so pervasive along the Pacific.  These were among the reasons we moved our family to the Great Lakes area a few years ago.

Little did we know that God would bring us back to the beach.  See, we knew that the lakes were large and all, but never realized how much at home the edge of Lake Michigan would make us feel.  There are beaches, marinas, seagulls, sand, rocks, shells (of a different sort), and sometimes waves! And we live only five minutes from this beauty.  Granted we do have a serious winter season around here, but even that has its advantages.

The last few days our area has been experiencing extreme winds.  Reportedly, there are gusts over 60mph.  We can attest to that now. 

This morning Ryan and I had the brilliant idea to all go and walk near the lake to enjoy the huge waves being created by the wind.  Often we have these impulses, I think, to pretend that we are still young adventurers with no kids who can decide things on a whim...But I digress.  So, we bundled the kids up heavily to protect against the wind.  Feel free to calculate the wind chill of 53 degrees and 60 mph winds...We loaded the marshmallow kids, the double stroller and dogs, and headed off. 

Oh, it was amazing to see.  The lake had turned into a rolling ocean with spray coming off the waves and white foam everywhere.  How relaxing.....

I open my car door. It closes on my foot in one quick wham.  I try again, step out, and start laughing.  At this point I begin to realize that this is going to be quite a challenge, but possibly hilarious.  We load the stroller, insulate the baby, and set off down the nice pleasant walking path along the lakeside.  I can just imagine what the passing drivers thought:  "Those parents are nuts." "Are they crazy?" "Oh, those poor kids!"

Just to push the stroller into the wind took nearly every muscle in my body.  The kids were stuck motionless for a good thirty seconds, probably in shock.  But as Ryan and I tried not to cry from laughing we all walked about 200 looong yards in probably ten minutes.

Then we turned around and walked with the wind.  Z nearly ended up in the road, a good 7 foot veer to the side.  T looked like the racing sausages at Miller Park because she wouldn't hardly move her body but was somehow propelled forward.  And Ryan and I were still laughing hysterically. 

In the parking lot a gust actually knocked J full over and our stroller tipped suddenly on its side while we were looking at the scenery (she was fine-buckled in her car seat with a lot of blankets, and M was in Ryan's arms to see it all).  Ryan said that it was the biggest gust he had felt yet. Apparently...

Have you ever seen the weather channel reporters out in a hurricane who are getting knocked over and pushed to the side uncontrollably, can't look in all directions, and are purely running on adrenaline?  Ya that was us!

We made it home safe and sound and even managed to take some pictures!  T is in the pink, J in the purple.  Can you believe that the last picture is what I drive along at least two times a week?  We feel very blessed!

Light at the end of the tunnel!

By: Heather
I don't know how many times we have been informed, "It all goes so fast..enjoy it".  For us, I think we receive those comments primarily as we are trying to herd our brood through some sort of retail line or simply attempting to shuffle everyone through a parking lot without any catastrophes. I am fairly sure that we attract these comments at those particular times because our eyes are darting in five directions at once, we are having three conversations, and usually carrying much more than your average luggage cart. Thus, it appears that we aren't enjoying ourselves. 

Well, often we aren't!  Don't get me wrong, it can be fun, sometimes, to all go out places.  But there are times, despite the best preparations, that Ryan and I can leave what was to be a delightful excursion wishing only for a hot tub on a quiet island. 

One such time was cherry picking.  Cherry picking sounds like fun, doesn't it?  We thought so!  Understand, we are nearly pros at the 'pick-your-own-fruit' thing, or at least we thought we were.  We pick about two hundred pounds of apples a year and often a third of that amount in plums, and sometimes some berries.  But we had never harvested cherries.  We did our research, I knew how I was going to store the fruit, had a jam recipe ready in the kitchen, etc.

Well, in case you weren't aware, cherries are A LOT smaller than apples, or even plums.  However, we never contemplated this obvious fact.  So, I happily told the farmer we would take him up on his "pick 7 pails, receive the 8th free" deal. 

I'll never forget picking for a few minutes, looking down..... looking at Ryan....and then slowly muttering about how it was going to take a lot of cherries to fill up a pail. To which Ryan raised his eyebrows and knowingly said, "um, ya, they are kind of small". 

Three and a half hours later in the hot sun, with bites all over us, Ryan and I with serious neck cramps, and juice running down 10 arms (way past the elbows) we had our 8 pails of cherries!  See, about 15 minutes into the picking M decided he was tired, needed a nap, and would not just wander around the trees as usual.  So, back to the car I trudged carrying a crying S, who was also hot and tired, to get a backpack for Ryan to put M in and a front pack to put S in on me. We had planned on just leaving her in her carrying seat while we picked the fruit- recall our miscalculation.  So, for the remaining part of the picking Ryan repeatedly reached up high for cherries with 30 pounds on his back (M is nearly 100% muscle) while I awkwardly picked and moved ladders around for the kids with S in a front pack.  What an absurd sight we all were!

Our older three were great troopers and enjoyed the day for the most part.  But you can see how sometimes us adults just might not be having a blast.  It can feel like a really long haul anticipating the days of a little more independence on the part of our children. Yesterday, though, I witnessed a beautiful beacon of hope. 

As we walked out of the grocery store yesterday with our two carts (the extra for the purpose of carrying our littlest ones) Z and I parked them near the trunk and I began placing and buckling the younger children into their appropriate car seats.   I turned around to unload the groceries and put the carts back only to see a gleaming smile on Z's face as he asked if he could take the carts back.  He had placed all of the groceries into the trunk, including the milk, very neatly.  I astoundedly said, "Wow, of course!". 

This may seem small, but it was a very happy moment to realize that at least one of them is getting old enough to not just want to help with everyday things, but able to recognize a need and take care of it!

Yeah!!! There is a light at the end of tunnel.  By the way, we have all enjoyed the jam, crisps, and syrup from our more than 100 CUPS of cherries.