Morning Things

Mar16

To say that I’m not at my best in the morning may be an understatement. I am a night owl, I am not a morning person.

But I am an amazingly fortunate night owl, I rarely have to get up at a prescribed time in the morning. (Thank you Honey!) However, I do have children.

This means that many mornings I lie in bed three quarters asleep trying hard to be all the way asleep while children drape themselves over me and talk to me in ridiculously loud voices. I respond in grunts, mumbles and sometimes yells (Don’t ever tickle my feet or stick your finger up my nose when I’m sleeping I do not like it.) that I hope will make them all be quiet for just ten more minutes. (Ten minutes is, of course, the magical morning time that will make everything better.)

This is not my proudest moment of the day.

I look sort of like this in the morning but grumpier and less cute.

It takes a Thing to get me up. An extra nudge to convince me that leaving my comfy bed, where sleep might still happen, is what needs to be done. Often the Thing is the beckoning bathroom. (Which makes me feel old.) Some days it’s the sound of children getting into what they shouldn’t. (Think, yogurt falling out of the refrigerator, and chairs being moved for access to high places.) Sometimes the Thing takes the form of animal mischief. (Puking cats, barking dogs, frightened chicken noises…) On terrible mornings the Thing is a warm wet puddle spreading from a nearby child. And on horrible days the Thing is the alarm clock and my conscience. It is rare that a conversation with a child will be the Thing to rouse me in the morning but it does occasionally happen. (Read Just Imagine for a rather dramatic example.)

On a recent morning Clara was snuggled into my nice cozy bed and talking at me about, well, actually, I have no idea what it was about. Clara was talking and I was making mumbly, grunty noises hoping she’d stop when she dropped a Thing into conversation.

“Mom, when Trip dies, you can make him into hot dogs.”

It was, without a doubt, a Thing. Suddenly I was wide awake, simultaneously giving a lesson on what hot dogs are made of, proclaiming that no one is ever eating our dogs and getting her breakfast ready. Just in case my neglecting to get out of bed in a reasonable amount of time and feed her was giving her ideas.

Motherhood, A Frighteningly Forgetful State

Feb16

In my experience when you become a mother, especially after you have become a mother three times over, you forget things.

And by things, I mean everything.

I forget to eat breakfast.

Each time I leave the house I forget my wallet, my sunglasses or my car keys.

Sometimes I forget all three.

Last week I had to jump out of the truck and go back to the house for my forgotten jacket. It was 3° … Fahrenheit.

I have found that it is annoying to forget kids shoes when you go to the grocery store but a serious inconvenience to forget your own.

I discovered that not only is it both annoying and a serious inconvenience, it is also embarrassing and possibly unsafe, to forget your kids snow gear when you travel north for the holidays.

I forget meals and dishes, laundry in the washing machine and to take my contacts out. I forget to call people, cut the low hanging branch over the sidewalk, find a dustpan for the garage, clean out the truck and which kids is named what. I forget to paint my toes, where I left my shoes, what I did with my tea and to sign Ivy’s schoolwork.

To date I haven’t yet forgotten that I have children but at the rate I’m going I figure it’s only a matter of time. Preparing for the worst I have come up with a test in case I ever become confused on the subject.

It’s very simple, if you are a mother and can’t remember if you have kids or where they might be, take a nap.

That’s right, find a blanket, lay down on a couch in front of a fire and fall asleep.

Guaranteed reminder of your current motherhood status.

And yes, Clara was just about a sick and she looks, I was just as tired as I appear and Jane was being just as mischievous as her smile makes her out to be!

Practice Makes Perfect

Sep5

I went from sleeping to sitting bolt upright in bed with a shout that I”ll not repeat in print. I looked over at John who had been startled into the same position, our eyes met, we both groaned, got out of bed and followed the noise of little feet.

It takes much less than a giant clap of thunder to pull Clara into our bed and we hadn’t made it to the bottom of the stairs before she passed us at a run and was burrowing under our covers. I checked on Ivy, who wasn’t even wakened by the rain coming into her room, and listened to John and Jane try to come to an agreement on going back to sleep in between the rumbles as I checked the rest of the windows. Jane has never been the snuggling type but the storm was right on top of us and they headed down to our room. Soon windows were closed against the rain, the air was getting thick and hot, and I went to climb into my considerably smaller portion of the bed to fall back asleep…

Then, there was more thunder.

And more lightening

And quaking girls.

And little girls hiding under the covers.

And little girls playing peek-a-boo.

And little girls giggling.

And hot.

And stuffy.

And crowded.

And one grumpy Dad leaving to find a different bed.

And a sad, Jane following him.

And a sad, small girl coming back.

And a sad, small girl wanting to sleep on the couch…

… on her bed…

… on our bed…

…on the floor…

… by her sister…

…by her other sister…

…by Dad…

…by Mom…

… with a cat…

While the other happy, small girl continued to gleefully snuggle into my spot in my bed.

Hours went by.

I’m sure that there are proper ways to parent a two year old who is roaming the house during a thunderstorm that involve something more than following them about wishing that this will be the spot they want to sleep. Something more than wishing with all your exhausted body’s might that this time they will actually want to cuddle, so that when the next flash of lightning comes they don’t come looking for you even though they very clearly just told you to “Go away!” Some ingenious parenting technique that calms the two year old enough to lay down with a parent and at least attempt to sleep.

I’m sure there is a proper way to do it.

At four in the morning I can’t figure it out.

The following day after five hours of broken sleep the idea eludes me.

In fact I still have absolutely no idea what to do.

But with more thunderstorms in the forecast I’m afraid I’m going to get a chance to figure it out.

After all, you know what they say, practice makes perfect.

We got up around 3:30 with the first big boom, and I thought, “Dang, I can’t even use this for the One Day One World Project.” Be careful what you wish for. Before we were all back asleep I had my (admittedly poor but cut me some slack I’d only had two hours of sleep at this point) picture. Check out Northwest Frame of Mind and see what other people were doing between five and six am.

Bee-Beep, Bee- Beep, Bee-Beep!

Aug28

Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep!

The house is on fire!

I elbow John’s sleeping figure.

He doesn’t move.

Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep!

….No, that’s not the smoke detector…

It’s the alarm going off- we’re late!

I poke John.

He doesn’t move.

Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep!

…I peer closely at the alarm clock, 4:23, alarms do not alarm at that time in this house…

It’s the cell phone!

I poke John.

He doesn’t move.

Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep!

…It’s not the phone…

THERE IS A PERSON IN OUR ROOM!

I poke John.

He doesn’t move.

Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep!

…Oh – It’s Jane…

She wants breakfast.

I poke John.

He doesn’t move.

Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep!

She tells me she needs yogurt.

I look at John… give up, and get up.

Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep, Bee-Beep!

I follow Jane, toward both the yogurt and the beeping.

It’s the refrigerator door alarm.

Jane appears to have been up for sometime. Jane in the fridge

Sadly for her I do not serve breakfast at 4:30AM.

The next twenty minutes crawl by in a sleepy, horrible, tangle of whining, crying, and waking of sisters only ending after a terrible game of musicale beds.

Finally, Bee-Beeping silenced, kids settled, I find my way back to my own bed.

I poke John.

He lifts up his arm to make a space and I scoot back under the covers with the sudden, suspicious anger that he was feigning sleep earlier.

But John is warm and his arm is heavy over my chest. I snuggle in, sigh and barely have time to mentally forgive him before I drop headlong into sleep.

And that is an unfortunately true story of my wee hours of the morning this week. Clearly my brain has absolutely no idea how to function at that time. Grabbing my camera as I walked through the house was a minor miracle! I am again linking up with Northwest Frame of Mind and her 1 Day 1 World project. Check out who else was up between Four and Five this week.

Storm – The Amazingly Dense Dog!

Aug9

Storm isn’t really a snuggley sort of dog, so much as a the-bed-is-comfortable-and-I-want-some sort of dog.

Many nights, while I am reading in bed, she crawls up and falls asleep near my feet. Which is fine – until I’m ready to go to sleep. I put down the book, turn out the light, curl onto my side and pull the blankets up over my shoulder- and the blankets don’t pull. They are stuck under fifty pound sleeping dog, fortunately I’m an in-shape sort of lady – I’ve got muscles. So, I shove my feet under her hoping to either annoy her off the bed (that works for Trip) or shove her over the edge.

But Storm doesn’t so much as budge.
DSCN8221-(2sm) I was puzzled for a long time how a medium sized dog could grow to mastiff sized proportions in her sleep making it near impossible to push her off the bed. Now, after many nights of study, I’ve got it figured out.

As soon as she gets the slightest hint from me that I’d like her off the bed Storm continues to “sleep” while pushing her head down into the bed as hard as she can and noodle-izing the rest of her body. That way if I stick my feet under her belly or shove at her middle, she is still firmly attached to the bed at both ends. This density-increasing technique of her’s seems to effectively double her body weight – at least.

I always win the who gets the bed war, (you can see she’s on the couch in the photo) but I’m hoping she never teaches the kids her density-increasing technique in retaliation for getting kicked off every night. It’s tricky enough getting those girls out of bed in the middle of the night, if they turned into NFL players in their sleep we’d be doomed!

It took me all week to stay up late enough to get a picture but this is what goes on at our house around one am. I am again linking up with Northwest Frame of Mind and her 1 Day 1 World project. Click over to see who else was up in the one o’clock hour.

Note: For those of you who are sticklers for accuracy (Hi Honey!) Yes, I am aware that the dog isn’t actually increasing her density and NFL players weigh much more than twice what our kids do.

Dear Brain,

Jul14

Dear Brain,

I’m ever so grateful for all you do, however. However. We need to talk. It’s about sleeping- I know, I know. You don’t get enough. Believe me, as your body- I know. But here is the thing Brain, I think if you actually tried at night we’d get much better sleep.

For instance, when it’s too hot. I’ve already done the hard stuff. I’ve woken you up, diagnosed the problem and gotten the synapses firing. So could you please do something useful with those brain waves of yours? Throw off the covers. Open a window. Turn on the air conditioner. Anything! I know you love John, I do too. I’m all about snuggling but sometimes we need to let your emotional attachment relax for a few hours and run to the cooler side of the bed!

And so long as we are on the subject of temperatures, let’s talk about being cold. The blankets. They aren’t that far away. There is an entire chest full of extras just at the foot of the bed. So, smartypants brain, when we lose the blankets, could you please rouse yourself enough to find one!? I know – you feel that finding a blanket in the middle of the night is an insurmountable task. But trust me, trying to sleep huddled under a pillow for warmth is also pretty damn difficult.

My other request, is admittedly, a bit harder. It involves the children. Yes, I know, don’t even start whining about how you deal with them all day, they are still our children all night long. And when they come down at night with their pointy elbows, tickley hair, nonstop talking and excessive body heat we need to remove them. Not just hide on the other side of the bed, because, perhaps you’ve noticed, they follow us there! Brain, I have done the pregnant thing- three times. Ditto on the nursing and the co-sleeping thing. I have shared my body and my bed and now? Now I am done. I am too tired, too hot and I am done sharing. We need them to go back to their room in the middle of the night. Yes, they are cute, and their cheeks are soft and when they do fall asleep they are lovely and angelic. But mostly they talk and giggle and manage to stuff their fine, wispy hair up our nose and steal our pillow. They’ve got to go Brain, they’ve got to go.

And finally, when we get a chance to take a nap, could you please just settle down and let us sleep. Stop composing to do lists, dinner ideas and blog posts in our head, you can do that when we wake up. You are jeopardizing our scant hours of sleep and we need it all Brain. We really need it all!

This has been a great partnership, you and me, body and brain. Just think how much better it could be with a little bit more shut eye – we could do anything!

Here is to a continued fantastic union and a long well rested life!

Love,

Your Body

Click above and hop on over to Perfection Pending and to read more Manic Monday posts!

It Was Time For The Roosters To Go

May20

Recently I posted about having too many roosters. Today I wanted to elaborate a bit on that part between having too many roosters and new package’s in the freezer.

Bare with me it won’t be as bad as it sounds.

…it was time for all the roosters to go.

And so, in an activity not usually reserved for Easter weekend, John and I butchered the extra roosters while the girls watched. The kids said goodbye to the pretty ones and pointed out the mean one that should go first. They drifted in and out, asked questions, refused my offer to share in the plucking and before it was all cleaned up they even learned a bit about hearts and intestines, lungs and gizzards.

We have been butchering our own chickens (and deer and an occasional turkey, duck or lamb) ourselves for their entire lives and so I didn’t have any concerns with the older girls, they’d been through this all before. But this was Jane’s first chicken butchering experience that she was old enough to really take in so I kept a bit of a closer watch on her. Perched on a stool through much of the process she gave a few birds one last pet before I handed them off to John and his axe. She asked a few questions, played with a few feathers and eventually left to play with Ivy who had declared the whole process, “Boring.” Perhaps it was because she was introduced to the scene at the tender age of two or perhaps it was because the rest of the family was unfazed but Jane seemed to take it all in stride.

A few nights later Jane was having a bit of trouble settling down to sleep. And by that I mean she was popping out of bed like a Jack-in-the-box every 45 seconds with a new ridiculous request. Having exhausted my entire line up of lets-go-to-sleep-now tricks I tried to give her a little pep talk about everyone who was sleeping.Your sisters are sleeping, the dogs are sleeping, the cats are sleeping…

Me: “…The chickens are sleeping, they are good chickens. I said “night ladies” and closed the door and they aren’t going to get up they are just going to sleep in their coop all night.” (Yes, I know, look who’s being ridiculous now. It was ridiculous sounding and ridiculous to think it would work – which it didn’t. Clearly I was desperate!)

Jane: “Then why Dad knock them?” (I’m sure you can see where this is going but it took me a bit.)

Me: “Knock them?”

Jane: “Yeah, why Dad knock them?”

Me: “What do you mean?” (A long day, it had been a very long day.)

Jane: “On the table with a knife.”

Me: “Ooooohhhhh! When Dad killed the roosters?”(Now that I’ve finally caught on I’ve immediately started to worry that perhaps she was not as okay with the process as I thought.)

Jane: “Yeah.”

Me: “They were naughty roosters.”(I’m still grasping at straws as well as panicking thinking that not only have I traumatized her with chicken butchering but now she’s never going to go to sleep! What have I done?!?)

Jane: “Cause they were peckin’ me?”

Me: “Yup.”

Jane: “Those naughty roosters soup?”

Me: “You got it!”

Jane: “Okay.” (Phew!)

Jane happy with her answer curled up under her blankets and stayed there for three minutes before she came downstairs with a new problem.

I’m starting to despair that my two year old will ever learn to stay in her bed and go to sleep but I’m proud to say she knows just where her soup comes from.

Empty Threats

Apr14

After threatening to stay up all night if one of her sisters couldn’t sleep with her in her room, Ivy then told me that I had to let her get up and color or she wouldn’t be able to stay up all night.

Nice try girl.

Nice try.

In other news: Jane told me she couldn’t go to sleep because the trees were cold.

Then Jane told me she desperately needed yet another sip of water for her parched throat that was possibly, but not likely, dry from the enormous amount of talking and yelling she had been doing or there would be no way she could ever fall asleep. Or at least I’m sure that’s what, when translated out of two year old speak, she was attempting to convey.

I said, “No.”

I said, “You’ve already had enough water.”

I said, “You have to go to sleep now!”

Then she whined and complained and got out of bed and caused general havoc while making noises at decibels that were without a doubt contributing to the aforementioned parched throat as well as threatening to wake her siblings.

I said, “OK! FINE! I’m getting the water.”

*sigh*

Nice try Mom.

Nice try.

You Know Your Kid Spends Too Much Time With The Dog When…

Apr7

… they start sleeping in the same unusual position.

While Storms preferred sleeping arrangement is upside down in a recliner I’m pretty sure this was the first time Clara slept in one. Perhaps after watching Storm sleep that way so often she just though that was how it was done?

Sadly for Storm her favorite recliner didn’t make the move to the new house so she’s had to adapt her favorite sleeping position for the couch.

I’d say she’s made the adjustment flawlessly!

The New Keyhole

Mar18

In our old house there was a door to a bedroom that, at some point before we arrived, had it’s doorknob changed to one of a different style. The “fix” left behind a small circular hole that was fantastic for checking on sleeping, or potentially sleeping, kids. As an added bonus every so often I was presented with some cute photo opportunities.
This house, however, has nice sound doors with door hardware attached as it was meant to be and no gaping holes.

A feature that, I will admit, disappointed me far more than a woman should be disappointed when looking at nice hole free doors in her nice new house. But then I noticed that some of the doors do have old fashioned keyholes in them.

And if I line it up just right…

Jane through keyhole