Well, he did it. Finally at 13.5 months he decided it was time to take off. He was too funny since he used his little puppy like an old man with a walker. He'll push that puppy around and get to his destination and then sit with it by his side and when he's ready to roll again up he goes and rolls along with his puppy paving the way. I really should get some pics of him with his little walking puppy before he stops using it altogether. But with the encouragement and surrounded by the thrilled exclamations of tons of brothers and sisters I guess he figured it was time and like the shining spotlight. Milestones just never grow old to me. He's got to be one of the funniest babies we've had as they've learned to master this huge right of passage. He's soooo proud of himself and after falling down will sit there and clap and say "yea!!!!".
Well, I have come to the conclusion that I have way way too many things I like in life and that I want to pursue. I looked up today and realized I have 104 things going and can't keep up with 1/2 of them....though I think and obsess over them constantly. Just to name a few of the ones that are at the top right now.....
With the encouragement of Jean, my midwife, I am looking into starting midwifery back up. It would be an incredible 2nd income for us and the fulfillment of a dream for me that was never lost. It was laid down for a long while but I can't help but think that all of those years of studying and apprenticeship were not ever to be utilized in my life. I can start a correspondence course for now and work on my actual clinical time in 3 or 4 yrs when I complete my academics and also making the children a little older. The thought of this is sooooo exciting but kind of daunting too since I still have my family to nurture and tend to. I would never give up homeschooling to pursue this though so that is definitely prioritized over everything. We are making way too much progress and seeing way too many turning points in the children to not follow through with homeschooling. And I just love it too much.
So then I have my blogging that I have come to love. Some days are more lifeless than others and when I read back through some of the posts I can't believe how humorless and void of personality they are! But I love knowing I will have this to look back on in years to come and remember the day in and day out life that we lived as they grew. So, I don't want to lay it down at all.
Then we have sewing. I have a passion for sewing now. I can hardly wait to begin making the girls dresses. I found some fabric the other day that was neon green with purple polka dots and then the same neon green with hot pink stripes. It was coordinating fabric and will make the cutest dresses for the two of them. The girls loved it. I could've done a whole bedroom for them out of it! It's so great. I'm still wanting to go back and get it just to have on hand when I do get the sewing machine. And I'm now back in my fabric search for the perfect nursery fabrics. I sold the heirloom honey oak canopy crib since I never did like the color of it. The walnut colored one was my favorite and I still miss it. I thin maybe because I was sentimentally attached to it too!!! Anyway, Garrett is the only one that has slept in the honey colored one and I never have liked it with the nursery being what it is. I've always longed for a white Simmons canopy crib and we finally found one so I sold the honey one and we got the white one. It re-lit the fire and I am now on my search again for the perfect fabric to compliment the whole "children by the sea" nursery. I'll see if I can scan the pic of the look I am after. And once found I will start sewing on our dream nursery. Brad got most of the hallway finished so once that is completed we will start painting the nursery "seagull blue" to see if we can get it done before baby Gavin arrives. Anyway, so there's sewing that I can hardly wait to tackle on the list of pursuits!
Then there's photography that's very much up there at the top and then reading, gardening, cooking and the list just goes on forever. I'll never in my life get to them all! I've had a hard time fighting off the urge to go take some college classes on photography at ASU. I really really want to dig into that a little more. I love what I am able to get of the children in the pics I so amateurly take so I can only imagine what a little knowledge behind it would do.
And all of this going right along side everyday life of 5 loads of laundry a day (1 white, 1 dark, 1 denim and 2 towel loads), dishes, floors, and just general upkeep....not to mention schooling the children and how many different paths it is so easy to walk down in expanding what they are learning in the books. Right now we have a surprise science lesson the storms brought to us. Grayson and Evye found tadpoles in a huge puddle in town and brought as many home as they could in a bucket and we have watched them go from tiny little tadpoles to full grown frogs. It's amazing even for me!!!! It's been so much fun. But as science presented itself to us we took it and went with it and looked up everything we could in books and on the web on the life cycle of a frog, what they eat as tadpoles and how to care for them. Apparently they're either low maintenance or we did something right!!! But it has mesmerized all of the children from Grayson all the way down to Grant. Aubrey is so taken with them she kisses them on a regular basis. It's amazing none of them have turned into a prince yet. She certainly has given them ample opportunity.
And in the midst of what the storms brought our way in the form of amphibious creatures we also had the chance to rescue 2 turtles. Brad found this really really large aggressive one out in the back pasture. He was dusty and tired, as Grayson put it. Although I kind of highly doubt the tired part of it since he was all too happy to snap at anything that came near him. And whoever said turtles are slow I think was just out to start a myth that all of the gullible people in the world might fall for. That freakin thing would chase us around the carport and intentionally snap at our feet! Anyway, in our efforts to teach the children kindness to animals we blew up the little 2 ring pool, washed him off and let him swim around...in which he was still snapping! Once everybody was ready we took him down to the river to live a fulfilled life and then headed to Eden to get dinner. The very next day a smaller one appeared and we took it down to the river too to live a full and rich turtle life. So, we seem to be getting plenty of hands on scientific experience with wildlife around here, not to mention lessons in habitat that accompany it all.
On the same day as the turtle Mother and I had gone into town and Brad was here with all of the children, minus Garrett. We never really got around to discussing just how it was he heard it when he was supposed to be mowing but somewhere in there our 2nd rattlesnake of the year was discovered. Much to my dismay he shot it into 5 pieces and no pics were taken! It was a big one though and had 4 or 5 rattles......enough to be heard loudly from a distance. Finally as he was trying to coax him out from under the cactus he was able to get a good look at his tail. I was all for getting some good pics but he said the whole point was to blow his head off...so that's exactly what he did with his 10 gauge shotgun! Anyway, so yet another rattlesnake finding...this time out in the gin lot. Not surprising given the amount of overgrowth and sheer wild grassland that is on that side of the fence. Until it's officially our property though we can't do much about that.
(Garrison and his new found favorite shoes...much to Brad's utter dismay! They mysteriously disappeared a few days ago.)
And I knew that life couldn't be too boring for too many days. It seems we have gone through a period where nothing startling or actually out of the ordinary has taken place......though I guess ordinary is pretty relative though to a person who has no kids. But it finally started again with Garrison. Sometime last week (I was too exhausted to try and document it then) Garrison woke up that morning crying and, what seemed to be, sucking in air. I figured it was croup and expected the cough to come next. It was the same wheezing sound that always seems to go with it and makes you think they are going to die here at any moment. The cough never came and he continued in his breathing like that all day. Brad finally got home and assessed him only to discover he was really trying way too hard to breathe. We have had so many false alarms that I tend to down play it sometimes, I think, just because it never really is anything. But I stayed worried all day and by the time Brad got to him he kind of relieved me in a weird sort of way to know that somebody else thought it was really not sounding good. So, with Mother here Brad and I took off for the ER. And man, what a difference it is here than in FW!!! There were only 3 other people in the ER waiting room and we got called in within 10 minutes and were taken to a room! By the time we got there I had already given him 2 rounds of Albuterol and he'd also taken 2 doses of Prednisone. Despite all of that he was still working at breathing. So, they kept him for 4 hrs and gave him a breathing treatment with the breathing machine. There was nothing to explain his sudden onset of difficulty breathing so they freakin diagnosed him with asthma!!! What??!!! I found it really hard to believe and just sat there knowing this is not at all what I had in mind. It didn't even feel right and I knew in my spirit that asthma was not his problem. There wasn't a peace and there wasn't anything in me that agreed with the diagnosis. But to a dr that must diagnose the problem he declared it with the onset of asthma and sent us home with treatments to live with it. By the time we left Garrison was doing great and finally slept. He hasn't had any signs of it since. We were also told that a pediatrician would not be willing to take an ER dr's word for it and they would not consider him asthmatic until they assessed him. So, I guess technically he hasn't been diagnosed with it. But it was a funny sort of day and one that didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the week. No one else got sick and Garrison hasn't showed any other signs that we were told to look for of having it.
Then while staying with Granny Sat night this past weekend Aubrey started crying at 10:30 that her ear hurt. And let me start by saying that Evye has had an ear ache for no apparent reason for 2 wks now. We finally took her in and they didn't find anything. Given the symptoms she has had it is all pretty much allergy and head related and the sinus pressure is making her head and ears hurt. So, we pretty much are just having to stick with Tylenol on that end. But Aubrey has heard nothing but ear complaints for 2 wks now so I didn't take her seriously! I could've made my life a whole lot easier and just believed her at 10:30 instead of living through the hell that I was about to unknowingly put myself through. I was extremely exhausted and all I could think of was going to sleep. She cried for 2 freakin hours! She'd lay there and get really still and then just start kicking and wailing and saying her ear hurt. I finally broke a Tylenol tablet in 1/2 and told her to swallow it. I didn't come prepared for anything since this was just going to be a 1 night stay. She allegedly swallowed the pill at midnight. By 2am I was kind of at my wits ends and more than a little irritated with her. I kept telling her she had medicine and there was nothing else I could do at that point. At one point in there I did call Brad and ask if I should just take her to the ER too......since, afterall, we had just visited one a few days ago with another kid. I knew though that wouldn't fix anything and only prove to keep us both up all night. So, finally sick of debating it all, I got dressed in total disbelief of what I was doing and at 3 am I gathered her up and we headed to freakin Walgreen's!!! To put it mildly I just stuck a bra on to spare the cashier and put dress sandles on with high water pants that shrunk a year ago in the wash and an oversized shirt. Without brushing my hair I fingered it into a ponytail. I gathered up Aubrey in her little purple nightgown with her little pink bear, belted her in and we wound our way through dark empty streets. And then there it was all lit up like a neon bar at 3 am. Lights shining so brightly we had to squint to pull into the parking lot. And, on a side note, I found it rather amusing who all goes to Walgreen's at 3 am on a Sun morning. Much to my chagrin, due to the way I looked, most were young guys out buying Mother's Day cards and toothpaste or different kinds of meds for various ailments. I thought the funniest one was the guy who was buying a Mother's Day card and Immodium! I got news, if any of our kids ever have to buy that combo I'll be telling them to skip Mother's Day that year and I'll catch them next time around.
Anyway, I always find it a little odd too that when you go in the shape I was looking the really scary perverts choose then to hit on you! Why is that???!!!! When Grayson was little and Scott and I would go up to Kroger at all hours of the night there was a messed up guy there that did it everytime! It's actually a little scary to think of what he goes home and does on the internet. Anyway, leave it to me to find the store with a pervert who is so desperate he'll hit on anybody and everybody.......even if you are 8 months pregnant! So, with Aubrey very awake and wide eyed we got liquid Motrin and Tylenol, nighttime ear drops and something to make her ear feel better....which she informed me was a soft little flannel baby doll. By the end of it I felt like one of those American Express commercials that do the: 1 bottle of children's Tylenol 3.24, 1 bottle of children's Motrin 4.56, 1 bottle of ear ache relief 7.89, 1 soft cuddly baby doll 5.99.......a night's worth of peaceful sleep.......priceless. By this time it was going on 3:30. I gave her what I could in the Suburban before ever leaving the parking lot so it'd have time to start working. I got back to Granny's and just as I was putting the drops in her ears I found the mysterious Tylenol tablet hiding in the sheets of the bed! So for 4 freakin hrs I laid there mad at her thinking she had Tylenol in her system and she was just moaning and groaning cause she was out of sorts, which is unlike her but completely possible since she's kind of the wild card. Then I felt completely remorseful and cuddled her as she fell asleep almost instantly.......and continued to sleep until 10 Sun morning. I had visions of sleeping late and foregoing church but, as it was, I got up and readied the girls and Garrett and off we went to m eet Mother who had the other 3 boys.
So, more into the life with lots of kids......after Garrison's and Aubrey's little issues this past week just yesterday Garrison, the one who usually shows no interest in putting foreign objects into his body was playing in the bathroom while Evye bathed. I realized a little too late he had her earrings and was trying to pierce his own ear. So, I confiscated the one earring and never thought about it again...........until about 10 minutes later when he came in and kept saying he wanted to get the earring out. Not really thinking much about it I told him it was already out. He kept sticking his finger down in his ear and I finally, in my dense state, realized we were indeed missing the other earring and he was frighteningly obsessed with his ear. Once I looked in I pulled out the post part and then realized in horror that the other side of the earring was buried deep within. After much effort on my part I got it out and in horror saw something else still buried. I then began to think he had stuffed a little treasure trove of objects down in there. Brad arrived home and between the 2 of us we came to discover that in all of his shoving small objects down his canal he had dislodged his ear tube and could now feel it down in there. To our relief it was just his tube and posed no danger but, on the other hand, he was completely obsessed with removing it. After much pinning him down and fishing on our part we finally realized it was a losing battle and he was all too happy to live, letting the tube stay within his ear. So, there it still sits....which was fine with me too by the end of it......though it kind of ticked Brad off that all of his expedition endeavors into the canal were to no avail.
So, we arrived at today...which started off kind of hectic but fairly normal. We had to go to Eden to have Mother's water turned on so I had everybody go through the morning routine and got them dressed decently to make a trip into town too. Just as all of them were ready I went in and discovered that Grant had dug out the Hershey's syrup and sucked the rest of it out like a bottle. It was a sticky mess..........and the crispy cleaness of his white shirt was now fingerpainted deliciously in muddy brown....along with the floor that seemed to have been finger painted in the process too. In a little dismay I undressed him......and moved on to Garrison that now had to be changed too if I wanted to keep them in matching outfits. That was our 1st delay. Then the oven man called and said he finally had the part ready and was on his way. We have had no oven or stove use for 4 wks now so I was quite ready to regain that luxury again. So, I decided to delay the trip. By then it was lunch time and then heading into naptime. With oven/stove fixed and the children now sleeping we broke out the school books and started into that part of the day. I could no longer hold my eyes open by 3 and decided I'd lay down on the couch so I would hear the little ones when they woke. Garrrison, in all of his Aubrey ways, woke up quietly and decided today was the day to break into the medicine cabinet.......which is supposedly way out of reach with no allure. But, no, he scaled the cabinet and decided on a large 1/2 full extra strength Tylenol bottle. I guess he played with them awhile before getting the bottle open at the kitchen table. Of course, I woke up to pills everywhere.......and I don't mean just a little bit everywhere....I mean, like, everywhere everywhere. With the majority around the table I went on a hunt and began finding them in the bathroom, hallway, kitchen, and children's room. And now my thoughts tried to grasp the insane thought of trying to find them all before Garrett's hands and mouth did. I cleaned it all up, which took forever, only to discover in that great feat that that was not the only thing he and Grant had teamed up together and opened. I found 2 empty children's Tylenol bottles in different trash cans throughout the house. Lids were discarded in the floor and empty med bottles that used to be 1/2 full were in trash cans. I called Brad more irritated than worried and asked for signs of drinking too much Tylenol. All turned out fine and I again cleaned up those messes. Finally a massive amount of spaghetti, a homemade favorite celebrating the use of our stove again, was ready for dinner. All of them ate 2 huge bowls of it all and I guess at some point in there Grant got full. I looked up to the kitchen floor splatter painted with.....of course, nothing less than handfulls of spaghetti. He had managed to truly splatter paint everything, including Garrett. Somehow he got him right in the head and so I began work on Garrett. It was pretty evident from the beginning that he was going to need much more than hand picking noodles out of his hair and a wet wash rag trying to get the sauce off his head and out of his hair. So, all 3 little boys went to the tub. And oh, how great it is to have older kids! Sometimes I really don't know how moms without them do it. The older 3 completely cleaned the floor mess up while I bathed the spaghetti laden bodies. The girls hand picked up all the noodles and Grayson wiped the now dried sauce up with a wet paper towel. After completeing that task he mopped what remained and I came out to a perfectly clean floor and 3 pretty proud kids of what a great job they'd done. It actually turned out to be quite the team, as I am learning ways to maximize profeciency and make the older ones feel appreciated at what they can now do. And, no I didn't have the time or the patience to get pics of the Hershey's syrup, Tylenol pills (which we're actually a little scary to look at all over the floor) or the spaghetti toss......though the thought did insanely occur to me as I cleaned each and every thing up.
So, that's a run down of the last few days. It never gets old. I don't know how people cannot have stuff to write about. I have so much that I never seem to get it all in.
(Mother's really cute and homey, soon to be painted rent house!)
Oh...and Mother got the job at the county working with the sheriff and his deputies. She's going to be in charge of motor vehicle registration and everything having to do with voting. We are all pretty excited. Since buying the other's place is still out right now she found a place to rent. It is soooooo cute! It reminds me of the Spicewood days. It's that homey. The landlady has already agreed to pretty much anything Mother wants to do to improve it. One of the older men at church has invited us out to his place at the lake and take what we waant in the way of landscaping. And Mickey has tons of rock on his ranch that we can border flowerbeds with. So, we are getting ready to get all of her stuff moved there. And we amazingly were blessed by an incredible glass top cookstove/oven that is only 2 yrs old in almost mint condition for only 100.00 on craigslist. It's amazing! So, though it was a little odd that the house didn't come with an oven, she has been so blessed by how well she came out on that end of things! She goes to pick it up on Sun on her way down here. It'll be so good to have her close again. We've already had to establish boundries with the children since if it was up to them they'd all live with her but I think it'll work out to be the most incredible thing and she'll love her job. (Her back yard)
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