Random thoughts

Good news is, my sleeping is back on track and the horrid nightmares have been replaced by my normal wacky dreams. The kind that cause me to awaken and question, "How in the world did I arrive dry after surfing Hawaii Five-O size waves to the elementary school Jim and I toured for Katherine's Kindergarten, and why was I the only one privy to why Scarlett Johansson split with Ryan Reynolds?"

Hey, at least it's back to fairly normal around here. :)

So, after 3 weeks of accumulating LOTS and LOTS of ideas for blogging, the best scenario I have for solving my dilemma of how in the world I'll find the time to write about it all, is to list my random thoughts.

Warning: No rhyme or reason to follow.

Random Thoughts, maternity-style:

1. The Gingerbread House's demise...Yes, she is my child.

2. How is it that little boys can make a gun out of a state of Florida puzzle piece? We've never really approached the subject, and I frankly didn't think we'd need to for another couple of years or so, but how the 2-year-old boy (who doesn't watch anything remotely related to guns) figured out that you hold out the gun, point it at someone and make "uh uh uh uh uh" sounds mimicking an uzi, I'll never understand.

3. My children have both started declaring, "Mama, you wear me out." Hmmm, wonder where they've heard that from?

4. This year, the king and princess in our household got to partake in the heart-warming Father-Daughter dance. At least, I believe she felt like a princess. There is nothing sweeter to me than seeing my husband, the strong, handsome, manly-man he is, treat his little girl like a Lady. He wined and dined her, at Panera, escorted her in her carriage, while opening the doors, twirled her around the dance floor, teaching her the YMCA dance, and stopped by her favorite ice cream joint on the way home, McDonald's.

I admit, I pushed for this outing for me, mostly. I was the one in tears watching him delicately hold her hand, gush about her beauty and sing her praises. He already spends lots of one-on-one time with her all the while inadvertently teaching her what to expect from a man. But, going on a date with a daddy who cherishes you instills a confidence in you that can't be measured or equaled. She thinks he has hung the moon, and he reciprocates by adoring her. I look forward to the day that every man must try and measure up to the standard her daddy has set, which from my own experience with her daddy, will be pretty dang hard. I pray she'll always be a daddy's girl.

5. We've entered the not-so-fun world of THREE CAR SEATS IN THE BACK ROW. I thought it best to hike my off-balanced self up into the attic the night Jim and Little Lady were off cuttin' the rug and get the baby gear down. There were a couple of moments while sitting up there looking down at Nathan scooting the ladder further out of my chubby toes reach, that I thought I might be stranded up there, without a phone, for at least another hour before Fred & Ginger came home, out of shouting range of any neighbors, and it made my heart skip a beat. But, he didn't push it too far, and I was successful and safe at getting it all down, knowing full well that I'd be in trouble from the "Bossman" for even trying to do all that by myself, in my condition and all.

So that night, because I had a great nap earlier and everyone else was asleep (that's when I get most of my work done 'round here), I attempted to install 3 car seats in the back of a 2007 Nissan Murano. Just in case you didn't know what the back seat of a 2007 Nissan Murano looks like, I'll fill you in... Yeah, you're right, doesn't look that roomy. BECAUSE IT'S NOT! The unanimous decision was made to put the oldest, more mature child (translation: the one that hits the least), in the middle to buffer the infant from Captain Destructo. So after wrangling/fighting with/contorting my 6-month pregnant body into uncomfortable positions (who am I kidding, sitting & lying down is uncomfortable half the time), I finally got all three back there. Whoo Hoo!

This car is nearly paid off and I'll be d@#$%d if we're getting another extended payment. Those car seats were going to fit, even if I had to get out the chainsaw. But luckily, I didn't have to wake the neighbors and all three car seats stayed intact.

So the next day, Katherine eagerly got in the car to try out her new Captain's Chair position. It was the day for the annual Boy Scout spaghetti dinner fundraiser, so daddy put in his volunteer hours down south, and me and the kiddos headed off to church on our own. I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but daddy ended up not driving the car at all for that entire week and I was the one that realized the car seats were not going to work.

I had managed to combine my OCD tendencies with my type A personality and make all the seats fit so well that Katherine was unable to fasten her own seat belt. Her little hand couldn't fit in between the sardine-packed seats, so I got to lean over the infant car seat, pry it back and fasten her seat belt for her. Fun times!

My husband, who seems to have the wisdom of Solomon at times, after a week of listening to the woes of seat belt drama, calmly suggested I remove the infant car seat and put the other ones back the way they were. We would figure out something soon.

It was that night, I had what I thought was a heaven-sent epiphany: all we needed was a seat belt extender! I spent hours on line looking up the Murano handbook, reading it's policy on adding an extender to the back seat, locating Nissan parts, pricing them and emailing the parts department questions. The next day, I called our local dealer and they offered to supply us one, for FREE! Hot dog, thank you Jesus! You rock!

In two days, Nathan and I made the trek in the rain to go pick up the extender. But, we were in Jim's truck because he took the car to get the brakes replaced. Bad idea, Kel. Didn't realize until he got home that the extender only worked in the front seat. Not the back seat at all! Nada. Nothing. Can't even do a safety violation loop-ti-loop and rig something to work.

It's at times like these that I feel like I might have been a sailor in one of my past lives. Words spew forth out of my mouth that are normally foreign to me, but after much frustration, they flow out like we're best friends and visit every day with each other.

I'm at a loss. Our next option is to visit the junk yard, cut out a back seat belt and sew an extension myself. That is one place this gal from Sparr can say I have never visited and nor do I feel comfortable going there. I don't speak junk yard lingo, although maybe my sailor tendencies might come in handy. Who knows?

So, like the sands through the hour glass, so are the Days of Our Lives...

6. I've got the answer for our seat belt problems. Jim teases me about buying a 1985 Suburban or a 15-passenger van. I'm opting for the van. Preferably one with a faded, dull white paint job so as to make it easier for me and the kids to paint it.

Katherine has already declared that she wants a princess/castle scene painted on her side and she said Nathan can have Monster trucks and construction equipment painted on his side. Abstract kid-style painting, nothing fancy. Maybe we could even find some dollar store wall appliques. Sweet.

I'm hoping to add some flowers, a green pasture and possibly a rainbow on the hood. Something pretty that I can look at while driving down the road. Something to take my mind off the lack of air conditioning and reminiscing about how nice our previous car was.

Oh, we need vinyl seats and vinyl flooring also. That way, cleaning up spills and vomit can easily be taken care of by hosing it out. It really is a win-win situation. We save on another year's worth of payments, our kids have enough room to each have their own basket of toys within arm's reach and the whole world would know where we are at all times. Better than a tracking device, really. And truly, most anything we got after that would be an improvement. Let's lower the standard a little bit so all we can see is up.

7. Katherine felt this was very important to document, so here goes.

Here, she's polishing her photography skills. Working on centering.

She's got the camera rotation thing down pat.

And she's even sporting the zoom. Not bad girl.
It wasn't long after this photo session that Nathan woke up and destroyed her masterpiece. Ugh, little brothers.

8. I have a theory on why Nathan will wake up in the middle of the night asking us to rub his feet. He moans and groans making it very believable that he is genuinely in pain. It goes like this...

Part 1: I remember having horrible growing pains in my knees. They ached and ached and the only relief I could find to get back to sleep was to contort one of my legs up underneath my pillow, lay my pillow on my leg calves and sleep like that. Something about twisting my knees this way took the pressure off and I could sleep.

Part 2: Jim has size 14 feet.

Part 1 + Part 2 = Nathan has growing pains in his feet.

Better get used to specialty shoe shopping little guy.

9. No, I did not temporarily lose my mind. I did think it would be cool for our kids to enjoy some Florida snow, a.k.a. shredder paper. Keeping it in the bathtub was my answer to a quick clean up. They loved it until it got scratchy.


10. I've been wanting to post this quote for a long time. Don't have any idea who this guy is, nor do I feel like Google-ing him.

"We obsess about the future and we get anxious, because anxiety, after all, is simply living out the future before it gets here. We must renounce our sinful desire to know the future and to be in control. We are not gods. We walk by faith, not by sight. We risk because God does not risk. We walk into the future in God-glorifying confidence, not because hte future is known to us but because it is known to God. And that's all we need to know. Worry about the future is not simply a character tic, it is the sin of unbelief, an indication that our hearts are not resting in the promises of God." Kevin DeYoung

Well said, Kevin. I've had this quote on my fridge for over a year now. Nice little reminder I say.

11. Katherine and I attended an official Tea Party with real china tea sets, a live 3-piece string band and little girls running around dressed up in princess outfits and hats. Too cute.
12. Every pregnancy of mine brings on the same things: Maxine-like attitude and major nesting syndrome. We are fortunate enough to have a 4-bedroom house, but not too many people know it. The 4th bedroom has been treated like a storage facility/garage rather than a bedroom for 8 years, until now. I have been working my tail off to clear out the final frontier of our house. This was the last room to be conquered. Every single room in our house has been re-floored, painted, or remodeled in some way, except this one. It has been the one to receive the "stuff" we've been hanging on to for - who knows why. Some of it is memorabilia, but most of it is borderline hoardish. If we haven't used it in 5 years, why are we keeping it?

So, an organizer worth their weight in organizing materials knows that all the stuff to be cleaned out either has to go somewhere else in the house, donated or it's trashed. I knew that the majority of stuff in there was mine, so "the process" began. I first cleaned out our closet, then Katherine's, then the hall closet, Nathan's closet, the foyer closet and finally the side shed. There is an astonishing amount of stuff piled up in our dining room, waiting for the yard sale next week.

The 4th bedroom and closet are cleaned out and ready for painting. (as I pat myself on the back)

One way all this was possible was a sweet trip Jim took with the kids. His brother R invited them to go fishing. I wouldn't have considered it a relaxing trip, but Jim's tolerance level is much different than mine and he knew that the side shed was my goal for that Saturday. Fishing with 3 pre-schoolers is a challenge, but cleaning out that side shed with two of them running around would have been enough to push me over the edge. Thank you daddy, for your sacrifice. (I'm pretty sure he had more fun fishing than helping me, though.)
Nathan on his best behavior.
13. One of Nathan's presents for Christmas was tickets to Monster Jam. He is an official Monster truck fan and so carefully points out while I'm driving down the road, "Dat monser twuck gonna cwash ovuh dose caws and smash 'em, Mama!" The trip was cut short because of crazy cold temperatures in Tampa. But he did make it to half-time and declared, "Dada, I cold. I wanna go home and git in da baf." His favorite truck is "Gavedigger."

Jim said you know your mom is a redneck at heart when she tears up over her toddler "getting to experience a Monster Jam." I can't help it.

14. Katherine and I got to see the Rockettes before Christmas and a Beauty and the Beast play. The Rockettes seriously made me want to lose some weight and take a dance class and the B&B play convinced me that if only I had less fear of being on stage and a better body, I would have been a great actress. Just ask my parents! I thought so back when I was 7 and seriously think I could pull it off. Oh well, my kids will have to suffice for an audience.

15. We all took a family trip to the local tractor pull. You know who LOVED it!
And Jim's duplicate in the sleeping department managed to FALL ASLEEP during the tractor pull, that was housed under a metal roof! Seriously! She is so his child. I'm suffering from major insomnia for a couple of months and she's able to fall asleep during a tractor pull. Unbelievable, I swear.
Thankfully, I've updated from months worth of falling behind.

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.