Me & Maxine

Oh pregnancy. There are so many neat and wonderful things that happen to a woman's body and spirit when the miracle of life is growing in her womb.
And then, there's me when I'm pregnant.
My husband has so eloquently and carefully started referring to me as Maxine. Have you heard of Maxine? Well, if not, she's a Hallmark greeting card character that has a little, uh, shall we say, sass! She speaks her mind exactly the way she's thinking and doesn't really care two hoots what anybody else thinks.
Maxine might be a tad bit misunderstood, or at least that's how I feel when I'm pregnant. There's something about the filter over my mouth that goes bad. Let's say a "normal" person's filter would be fine enough to strain pulp from orange juice. Well, during the nine months of gestation, my filter starts to loose it's efficacy and soon it's only able to filter the equivalent of a manhole grate.
I'm not trying to be ugly. I'm not trying to make a point. I'm not even trying to push my "weight" around just to have my moment of getting what I want. There's something that just happens in my brain that cares less how it affects other people.

Not good. I know.
One time while working at FBA, my previous full-time and monetarily paying job, a male co-worker of mine and me were talking something work-related out. We had a pretty cordial and happy-go-lucky relationship, up until I got pregnant with Katherine. I don't remember what we were talking about, or what exactly was said, but he stopped in mid-sentence, looked at me through the corners of his eyes as if he'd never seen me before and cautiously said, "Listen, I'm not exactly sure what's happened to you, but when you are pregnant, you are, uh, a little, uh, spicy and mouthy."
Whatevah!

It must have been the same day during my break, that as I was walking across the parking lot of Wal-Mart in all of my 8 1/2 month pregnant glory, a retiree that had just moved down from "I own the world" acted like the waddling pregnant woman wearing a bright lime green sweater couldn't be seen and almost ran me over. I stopped traffic, turned square to him facing down the 2-ton vehicle, face bright red and declared loudly where everybody could hear, "Can you not see I'm trying to cross the road here?" while Vanna White-ing it by showcasing my larger than life physique.
Seriously, it wasn't like nobody noticed me.

But back to my man-hole grate size of a filter.

We had an aunt that we affectionately compared to Maxine also. Her name was Aunt R and she has left this earth to be with the Lord. (That's how us Southerners like to term it). Comparing her to Maxine was all done in jest and she embraced their similarities, but Aunt R was truly a cartoon character in real life.
It was a 10-12 times/day occurrence that Aunt R would take a drag from her Virginia Slim cig held delicately between her index and middle finger, and declare in her gruff smoker's voice, "Dammit!" It could have been over something as minute as her favorite show was over until next week, or the timer went off to alert her the cookies were done. Whatever it was, the response was always the same, "Dammit!"
Well, in addition to being compared to Maxine, Jim has also started comparing me to Aunt R. So much now seems to be THE END OF THE WORLD in my little mind and keeping it all in perspective is turning out to be an arduous task.
I'm even in the process of penning an email to my friends apologizing for my less-than-leadership response to a meeting I was co-leading last night. I wanted so badly to pull the whiners aside and say, "Seriously, nobody is forcing you to stay here. You don't like it, Leave!" Now, doesn't that sound like the leader Christ has called to be in this position. I think not. So, the fine particles that used to get trapped before, are now passing through along with all the crap the hurricane in my body has created.
There is one request I have. Pray. Pray for my husband to have the strength and wisdom to not send me off into public places without duct tape over my mouth. Pray for my children to have Godly wisdom in understanding their mother still loves them, just says some things that might be contrary to her previous ways of parenting. Pray for the Lord's hands to be gently placed over my mouth, with all fingers closed tightly to not let anything nasty spew forth. Pray for my friendships to endure my pregnancy, even when they had nothing to do with it.
I love my husband. I love my children. I love my friends and family and community. I just hope they can see past my mouth here lately and know, the old Kel will be back soon. Back to being concerned about everybody's feelings.
Amen

Thank goodness for friends who tolerate the kitchen

It's no secret: I'm not a cook.
Nor a baker.
Nor, do I really enjoy doing anything inside the kitchen beside cleaning it up or reorganizing it.
So, when family or friends offer to do things with our children that involve making kitchen activities fun, I'm all over it. Because frankly, that's why God made all types, right? I find it a blessing and privilege to depend on other's strengths to teach my children stuff I could care less about, and hopefully they'll look to me for the same.
So don't waste your time wondering what my response was when Bamah called one day and said, "Papa found this adorable Gingerbread house and thought the grandkids would like putting it together and decorating it. Would you mind if they came over for the day to do that and make some Christmas cookies?"
Or even, when my good friend 'A' said she wanted to have Katherine over to make/bake/decorate some sugar cookies with her daughter, AC.
We all know the answer to those two requests.
Just thinking about the patience I would need to muster up to do something like these two activities makes me want to go chill out and watch some HGTV.

Thankfully, our children not only have their father to encourage healthy kitchen habits, but also loving friends and family to do the same.
Even our neighbors make a point to include our little ones in baking.
Make sure you keep me in mind when your child needs tutoring in math or your closet needs a good cleaning.

Tent fun

Baby steps, Kel, baby steps.

Rather than dive into the longevity that a Christmas post merits and take away time from teaching my anxious pre-reader more about blending sounds, today's post will be short.

I remember loving to build tents in the house and play in them. I also remember that if I constructed the tent, it was usually going to fall down easy and if I actually spent the time to make it sturdy it was taking away from productive play time. So where was that happy medium?

Rather than put that type of pressure on two little ones who don't need to be moving furniture by themselves and leave it up to them which sheets to pull out of the closet, I decided to put one together on a day that was too cold to go outside.

VIOLA!Complete with a rocking chair for mothering baby dolls, pillows to lounge on while reading, and a tractor blanket surrounded by none other than, Monster Trucks!
Usually, the amount of time I spend building the tent is equal to the amount of they spend playing in it argument-free. So, after a while, Captain Destructo must be removed and put in his bed for rest time. That way, Little Lady can read in peace.

(What I'm not able to convey with just words and pictures about this marvelous sheet-tent was it's abhorrent smell. I chose to use the yucky sheets we cover the dog's bed with and my lawdy-be, they stunk up the entire house. Thankfully the little people didn't mind the concentration of smell collecting inside the tent, a marvelous combination of wet dog and soured sheets. Needless to say, all the sheets got a good run through the good ole' washin' machine after the tent was dismantled.)

I'll be on hold until the sleep fairy backs up the moving van at our house

I'm still here.

I haven't left.

If anything, even if I wanted to leave, I couldn't. But I don't, so no worries there.

My blogging, unfortunately, has taken a back-burner to the ever-so-present every single waking moment of the day reality of INSOMNIA.

I've constantly got that worn-out I'm a mom of small children mixed in with a little is she aware of concealer look. Those "bags under the eyes" make-up commercials would turn me away for fear of being able to show anything positive with the end result. Tylenol PM worked for about 10 days. What's next that is fetus-friendly and won't leave me in a drug-induced morning stupor unable to hear my toddler screaming, "I got poop in my pants, mama" before he spreads it ALL OVER the bed and walls. (Experience has taught me that poop in the bed usually takes about 3 days to fully recover from)

(I feel your pain, Hill)

I am a self-diagnosed Princess & the Pea when it comes to sleeping. Everything must be just right for productive sleep to occur. The temperature, wind-speed, weight of the covers, pillow numbers/placement and sounds must be on a 9 out of 10 scale for optimum-sleeping-conditions to occur. Anything less is null and void, I'm up like I've downed 3 Red Bulls ready to discuss which part of Trigonometry I enjoy the best.

Something about this pregnancy has sparked my body's insatiable desire to produce nightmares that are every parent's worst, well uh, nightmare. There's always some type of conflict and most of the time someone is dying or is close to it. Boring infomercials don't even put me back to sleep, I just pick back up where the nightmare left off, because I'm OCD like that.

So, since I'm already very sensitive to little sleep (without a growing fetus in my womb), adding normal stresses of raising two very active children into the mix of a body I feel is borderline too old to be birthin' anytime soon, has broken me of blogging. To put it honestly, this pregnancy is kicking my butt.

Blogging has been my outlet. It was my answer to not developing pictures for the last 3 years or not keeping up a memory book. I would get the blog printed at the end of the year and felt good about solving both motherly inadequacies.

But, my need for sleep has trumped. As it should.

Little people are depending on me each day to be loving, provide food and be a bearable human in the house. Notice I haven't thrown in "extras" because there's no time for extras. Most of our friends are sick half the time and potty-training mixed in with cold weather makes a good excuse for the park to be put on hold until Spring.

There are so many things I wish to write about: us seeing the Rockettes, our budding ballerina, our low-key Christmas, Monster Jam tickets, my wonderful birthday-week, potty training successes and even the oddly opposite ways Jim and I handle our illnesses (I could write on and on about that one), but they'll have to wait until I can get sleep back into a more normal routine.

Here's where I get selfish: to the 3 people who might still be reading this blog, please keep me and my sleep-needs in your prayers. I appreciate any and all you have to offer. Maybe even some bible verses for me to read at 2am or even explain what's going on.

Know this, I LOVE blogging. I hope to get back to it soon. I love writing about our children, telling funny stories, taking pictures while thinking of interesting ways to explain them, all the while knowing that one day they'll have their mother's crazy thoughts in a bound book to read over one day when they're old enough to be interested. It breaks my heart, but I must have a self-appointed time-out, regroup, and hopefully return sooner than I think I will.

Until.....whenever mi amigos.